Mason Jar Fillers

SALTED CARAMEL

VANILLA AND STRAWBERRY JAM

LEMON CURD

Bold enough for you? Did you get the message?

Well, well, well, these are the three fillers I did for my mason jars! 

Super easy, super tasty and super useful!! 

Strawberry and Vanilla Jam

The jam making process was fairly simple and straightforward, I put into use the skills I had learnt from Richard Hunt during the Cake and Bake Show which made the process that little bit easier remembering the tips that Richard had shown me and if you're anything like me you learn best when you're shown how to do it and then asked to do it by yourself!

The recipe and method for the jam was fairly simple anyway without the prior knowledge to making jam!

Recipe to make around 2kg of jam:

• 1.5kg strawberries (the softer the better)
• 1.5kg jam sugar (preferably with pectin as it helps it to set)
• juice of 2 lemons
• 1-2 vanilla pods, seeds scraped out

Method:

1. Sounds strange but trust me it's needed, pop 2-3 saucers into the freezer.

2. Put all the ingredients into a very large pan and heat slowly so that the sugar dissolves rather than burning.

3. Once the sugar dissolves, bring to the boil and simmer for around 5 minutes. 

4. To test, pull one of the saucers from the freezer and drop a teaspoon onto it; if a skin forms and wrinkles when pushed the jam is ready.

5. If the jam isn't quite set then bring back to the boil for around another 3-4 minutes. I had to do this at least twice before mine set so it all depends on the way you make yours!

6. Leave all to cool for 15 minutes, then take out the vanilla pods. 

7. Pour into a sterilised jam jar, mason jar or any container you have that suits this purpose!

Lemon Curd

This recipe was so simple and tasty, it helped so much with another recipe I used and it made the recipe taste even better!!

Ok so for the recipe you will need:

• zest and juice of 3 lemons
• 150g caster sugar
• 100g salted butter 
• 2 medium eggs

Method:

1. Add all the ingredients together in a small saucepan and whacks until the juice and eggs are all mixed in.

2. Continue to whisk over a low heat until the mixture is thick!

Ok so with this lemon curd I had the genius idea of trying some of it whilst it was still hot, please please don't do it!! As a matter of fact don't do it with any of these recipes as they will all be super super hot and burn a lot!! However once the lemon curd was a lot cooler but still warm I had the idea of dipping a digestive biscuit into the mixture and OMG heaven!! Definitely going to try out a lemon curd style biscuit in the next few months!

Salted Caramel

Last but certainly not least! The salted caramel that was a huge success with all my family when I used it in the birthday cake I made for my brothers birthday BBQ, recipe to come...

Anyway for the salted caramel you will need:

• 200g caster sugar
• 200ml double cream
• 1tsp salt (however I used about 3tsp to make it really salty but your preference!)

Method:

1. Melt the caster sugar over a medium heat into a light brown caramel, keep swirling the pan to ensure no burnt sugar and DONT USE A SPOON AND STIR IT!!

2. This bit WILL splutter but don't worry it's supposed to, pour the double cream into the sugar (still on the heat)

3. Stir over a low heat until you have a smooth caramel sauce consistency and then add in the salt. Leave to cool and pour into your desired container/jar.

So thats all my mason jar fillers, let me know if you try them out! Coming in the next posts you will see how I have used these in my baking!

Thanks for reading,

Caitlin xxx

School Coffee Morning

Hi All!

So let's talk coffee mornings. In particular the Macmillan Coffee Mornings. What a great idea because let's be honest who doesn't love cake, coffee (or tea, your preference) and a good chat with friends?! And if it's all for a good cause then why not? I mean you choose how much you want to give to this cause and then enjoy the coffee and the rest that comes with a coffee morning!

Well in our school's case we had a 'coffee morning' in which we baked/ bought in cakes for to be sold for a cake sale which in all fairness raised a lot of money for Macmillan and all enjoyed the array of cakes and fizzy drink on offer. I of course baked something to be sold as I thought a good cause like this deserved to be supported and so I made chocolate chip cupcakes. 

The cupcakes turned out a great success but to me I was super disappointed with the recipe that I used as it gave me a very thin cupcake layer and so I had pretty much too much icing to cake ratio which bothered me, obviously it did not bother anyone else as they went pretty quickly and everyone seemed satisfied with them!

As the recipe supplied a very small amount of batter I was only able to make around 6 cupcakes that were good enough to decorate and sell to people... annoying!! None the less I ploughed on with decorating them with a simple vanilla buttercream and some chocolate chips to finish off with. Even if I do say so myself, I think I have finally cracked the way to get the best vanilla buttercream that just tastes so good and is not runny, too thick or too sweet!! HALLELUJAH!!

Ok so I won't give you the recipe for the pathetic cupcakes that I followed but I will give you a simple recipe that I always refer back to when I want to experiment and add in different flavours or surprises.

Ingredients:
115g butter
115g caster sugar 
2 eggs
115g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk

Method: 
1. Preheat the oven to 180'C.
2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
3. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
4. Sift the flour in and fold in.
5. Stir in the vanilla extract and milk.
6. Divide the mixture into paper cupcake cases and put in the oven for 18 minutes until risen and golden.

Now I would give you the recipe to my amazing icing but I'm not ready to share that yet so... find your own haha!! I mean you could literally do anything with this simple sponge recipe, for example I've made mini Victoria sandwiches with them, made the whole batter into one big cake for a big victoria sandwich (if you do this cook for a little longer around 20 minutes or until golden and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean, if after this time it's still not clean cook it for 2 minute blasts taking it out and checking each time) or you could decorate with simple white icing (icing sugar and water) and sprinkles or even decorate with fondant icing... the possibilities are literally endless!! 

ENJOY, HAVE FUN and BE CREATIVE!! Maybe you could even make lots of different batches of these cupcake and then hold your own coffee morning for Macmillan? Well that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed reading and let me know what you thought!! See you next time.

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx

The Cake and Bake Show

Hi All,

Ok so if you're from the UK then you will know and hopefully be a big fan of The Great British Bake Off aka THE GREATEST SHOW ON THE PLANET!! Well I was lucky enough to be able to spend a day with two ex-contestants of the show, Glenn Cosby and Christine Wallace. As well as Richard Hunt from the Devon Scone Company (genuinely the nicest man ever!!) The scones and jam he showed me how to make were literally amazing... I'm salivating at the thought whilst typing away here!

So a few months ago I was able to spend a day with a travelling food show called The Cake and Bake Show, in which I was able to learn from these three bakers about the baking world, baking under pressure and baking in front of a crowd. I also learnt, during down time/prep time, the different tools and equipment that will help me in future baking life, OMG it was a lot of stuff and I honestly do think I used around 3/4 of all the things I was told about!

Working with Richard all day until around 1:00pm was great because it was just him and I working together creating scones and jam. I learnt a lot from him in this short time but it was definitely worthwhile! He was the one who showed me the proper way to make jam and how to let it cool a lot before putting it in jars because otherwise it will not set and be the jam texture you would expect. Honestly I think I would have never known this and rushed to put it in jars whilst still hot, thrown it in the fridge and hoped for the best! I also learnt the proper way to put jam and cream on a scone, by pilling it on! 

After a well deserved coffee break from the rushing around trying to prepare scones with clotted cream and jam on to serve to the audience, I was able to watch Glenn and Christine do two separate shows, baking very different things. Glenn made salted caramel and italian meringue buttercream cake and scones with lemon curd (insanely good, I've since tried the italian meringue buttercream and wholey moley it was amazing!!) Then Christine made an Eton mess and something else but it was so long ago I honestly can't remember. Anyway whatever it was, I do remember it being delicious!

Lunch came round and we all ate pizza, drank coffee and prepared for the final show where, as we were running out of time, we staged our own miniature bake off!! It was brilliant and I was able to be out front helping Glenn make another salted caramel, italian meringue buttercream cake whilst Christine made more Eton mess and Richard made drop scones with salted caramel (more like stealing Glenn's left over salted caramel...)

Anyway through helping Glenn I was able to learn and do a lot for myself as Glenn basically just instructed me to do things rather than teaching me, which honestly I preferred to have his guidance whilst I did it myself rather than watching someone else do it and then I have to try and re-create it. I learnt how to heat the sugar up to the correct temperature and how to add it to the whisked egg whites to create the italian meringue. It really wasn't as hard as people make it out to be (I was very impressed with myself). 

Well once our bake off drew to a close, we found that it was a draw and that no one could win as all the food was just too good!! After the show I was able to get Glenn and Christine's books and also to get them signed! I was also lucky enough to be given the remainder of the cake Glenn and I had created, after the audience had enjoyed some of it!

Right so that's that. I thoroughly enjoyed spending this day with these lovely and brilliant people! I really learnt a lot from them and had tonnes of fun whilst doing it! Thank you to The Cake and Bake Show!!
Hope you guys enjoyed reading, don't forget to let me know what you think and see you in my next post!

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx

Back to it... hopefully!

Right I really hope that this time I try again and stick to it!
Im so rubbish at this whole blogging thing but I really am going to give it a great go!!
I have done baking on and off again over the past few months so I'll just catch you up on those and also I have been really looking into the whole university life for baking so I'll talk a little more about this too.

Christmas!
For my friend's christmas presents I made them a box up of a cupcake, some biscuits and a milk bottle filled with a DIY hot chocolate with hot chocolate powder, marshmallows and chocolate chips in it. This idea was a great success and was super cheap to do as the ingredients weren't too expensive all together, the only things that did come to be fairly expensive was the box that it came in and the little milk bottles (all bought from Lakeland). I made different types of biscuits; round sugar cookies and gingerbread men. I also tried out a new cupcake recipe that added in greek yoghurt which actually made the cupcakes so creamy and amazing (even if I do say so myself!!) So definitely don't be put off if a cupcake recipe uses yoghurt, I nearly was and am so glad I persevered and used the yoghurt... What a difference!! (Unfortunately I did not remember to take a photo of the little boxes of goodness.. oops but I did get a photo of the cupcakes and very christmassy cases)

Easter was the next major load of baking I did.
I made brownies with mini, mini eggs on top, my first ever attempt at hot cross buns, white chocolate eggs with Oreo's inside and finally I made the same cupcakes I did for Christmas but with a Shreddies easter nest on top. I would advise not to use Shreddies as they tasted strange once warm from the melted chocolate and also they did not mould into a nest as easily as Corn Flakes would, definitely using Corn Flakes next time as Shreddies were a huge mistake!

The Oreo cookie chocolate egg things (great name I know) were incredibly easy to make. All you need is any type of white chocolate that you prefer (two big bars should be plenty) and Oreo cookies, you could use any type of chocolate that you like but white chocolate is the nicest for these recipe. You will need a piping bag and a mould of some sort that the Oreo's fit into.
1. Melt the chocolate
2. Fill the piping bag with chocolate (its easier to use one of these later on so just start using it and trust me you won't be sorry for using it!)
3. Put enough chocolate onto the base of each mould then place into the fridge until set.
4. Take a small blob of chocolate into each of the set moulds then place an Oreo on top and then pipe the remaining chocolate around the edges (be sure to cover the edges fully as this is what will glue the whole thing together) and then over the top of the Oreo.
5. Place back into the fridge for a remaining 20-30 minutes to ensure they are completely set.
6. ENJOY!!

Notice how mine aren't completely covered on the sides? Yeah thats because I didn't put enough chocolate on them. MAKE SURE YOU DO!!

My hot cross buns were a recipe from Sorted.com, great Youtube channel for easy and delicious recipes so make sure you check them out!! I found this recipe super, super easy and I guarantee you will too!! However I didn't make as many buns as the recipes says to just because I completely mis-judged the cutting up of them into smaller pieces so some of them took longer to cook as were too big, they were misshapen and some of them were a little bit harder to toast as they were too big. On the plus side though everyone who tried them said they were lovely. I think I'm just a harsh critic on my own baking. I am 100% a perfectionist!!

So that's all on what I've done so far. This summer I will be baking a lot more as obviously I have a lot more time and I want to do a lot more just so I can build up a small portfolio for university which I apply for in a matter of months!! Oh God how has that come round so quickly? I'm 18 in a few weeks as well, like what? I was 10 not so long ago?!!?!?! Anyway see you in my next blog post and please leave a comment if you would like to see me make anything in particular and blog about it?!

Thanks for reading,
Caitlin xxx

Apologies and a New Start

Hiya all!!

First things first, apologies to all for not being around for around 3 weeks (if not more!!) oops! I've been so busy with sixth form and have not really done any baking apart from last weekend when I made gingerbread biscuits with my nephew.

I'll let you know how I made the biscuits but I thought I'd get things straight and clear things up firstly and call this a fresh start, from now on I will upload every Sunday afternoon with something I have baked or what I wish to bake near Christmas time as yes it is the lead up to Christmas officially now that Halloween is out of the way!! I will also show you some Christmas baked gifts I have been thinking of doing for friends and some family and how I will be packaging them and giving them as nice little home baked gifts.

Ok, that's out the way so now onto the way I made some gingerbread biscuits (which by the way were so lovely) with my nephew, however he didn't really help other than cutting out the biscuits which was what he only really wanted to do! These biscuits had a strange texture for a gingerbread biscuit than what you would normally assume as they had a shortbread texture with the gingerbread taste (I know sounds strange but worked incredibly well!).

The Ingredients:

350g/12oz plain flour, plus extra for rolling out
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
125g/4½oz butter
175g/6oz light soft brown sugar
1 free-range egg
4 tbsp golden syrup

The Method:

1. Sift together all the dry ingredients and pour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter and blend until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then stir in the sugar. 
2. Lightly beat the egg and golden syrup together, add to the food processor and pulse until it all clumps together. Tip the dough out, knead briefly until smooth, wrap in clingfim and leave to chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper. 
4. Roll the dough out to a 0.5cm/¼in thickness on a lightly floured surface. Using cutters, cut out the gingerbread men shapes or when I did it I just used all different shapes that I had in cookie cutters (I used stars, hearts and gingerbread men) and place on the baking tray, leaving a gap between them as they spread a little bit. 
5. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden-brown. The original recipe says to leave on the tray once removed from the oven for around 10 minutes but I left them around 3 minutes and then moved them to a wire rack to finish cooling. When cooled decorate with whatever you want, I used icing sugar and water with different food colourings and also a few chocolate beans (as they were called but in short they were a cheap version of smarties!!).
   
   
   (I would have put a photo here, however I forgot to take photos of them!! Annoying, but no doubt I'll be doing them again so will hopefully take photos then.... if I remember!)

• Hope you enjoyed this post and, if you love Christmas as much as I do, you feel a little bit more Christmassy and hopefully will try these biscuits on your lead up to Christmas. Honestly they didn't take more than an hour to make and bake, the longest part was decorating but that doesn't have to take long if you don't want it too! My next post will be up next Sunday (9/11/14) because this Sunday I will be busy finishing work for school after this half term and getting things ready to go back on Monday! Hope you've enjoyed this read and will continue reading my upcoming posts as they will be more regular and hopefully will become a bit better with more exciting bakes that hopefully work well and maybe you can even try them out yourselves!
  
  
  Thanks for reading!
  Caitlin xxx
  
  
  
  

Galaxy Double Chocolate Cookies!!

Who doesn't love a cookie? Who doesn't love Galaxy chocolate? Well I think if thats the case then why would you not want to combine the two greatest inventions every to create the best unhealthy snack/ desert/ genius idea?!?! Here goes then!!

Ok, so I used Lorraine Pascale's chocolate chip cookie dough as my base of the cookie and then I substituted out my chocolate chips for Galaxy chocolate chips. It's kind of a simple idea to do but its amazing and I've done something like this before when I did Chocolate Orange cookies and they were so tasty that I thought i would experiment with a different chocolate.

The Lorraine Pascale cookie recipe is here:

• 110g of softened butter
• 200g of soft light brown sugar
• 1 egg
• pinch of salt
• 165g plain flour
• 2 drops of vanilla extract
• 1/2tsp of baking powder
• 1/2tsp of bicarbonate soda
• 30g cocoa powder
• 200g of chocolate (however the recipe is 100g of milk and 100g of dark chocolate chips.)

My ingredients.

Method:

1. Weigh out all your ingredients. Pre-heat the oven to 180C Fan oven.
2. Combine the butter (I always cube my butter up as I find it softens faster and it will combine a lot quicker) and sugar into a bowl.
3. Add the egg. It can go really curdled at this stage but keep mixing as it will go smoother.
4. Add the flower, cocoa powder, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, salt and vanilla extract and mix together.
5. Once you have a dough like mixture, add in the chocolate. I used the whole bar of Galaxy but you can add as much or as little as you want or even do half of this chocolate and half of another chocolate.
6. Grease and line a baking tray. Take some of the mixture and roll into ball shapes. The mixture should make around 9 cookies depending on how big you have decided to make them.
7. Put the cookies into the oven for around 10-12 minutes.
8. Take out the oven and leave to cool slightly before putting them onto a cooling rack as when they are fresh from the oven they are still very very soft and you might think they aren't cooked properly but give ten about 5 minutes on the baking tray and then transfer to a cooling rack to completely cool. 
9. Now you are free to enjoy your cookies whether that be with a cup of tea or with a glass of milk!!

Some photos of my baking experience!

My cubed butter all softened and ready to
mix with the sugar.

All my dry ingredients and an egg.

The butter and sugar ready to go.

The mixture. It makes more than this but
I forgot to take a picture before I had already put
some in the oven

The cookies in the oven! I didn't have any baking paper so
instead I just really greased the tray and they came off fine!!

The finished product!!!!

Thanks for reading this weeks blog!! Sorry its a bit late up, I am in college and the amount of work is unreal so I have barely had time to even think of anything other than my work!! But hopefully I will be getting more up soon!!
Thanks for reading!!
Caitlin xxx

Zachary's 3rd Birthday Party Cake

So I got given the task of making my nephew's birthday cake for his 3rd birthday party. I knew that a Star Wars or Spiderman theme was on the cards for this cake and luckily I had previously seen some Star Wars themed baking items in Lakeland (praise the baking gods for this shop!!) so Star Wars was the theme chosen for his cake!! In Lakeland I found some silicone bakeware in the shape of 4 Star Wars characters however when doing a practice run of the cakes they seemed to get very stuck in the case so I was left with half of a Darth Vader face and half of a Stormtroopers face... not very appealing! I was infact going to do it again for Zach's birthday party but I just ran out of time so I didn't end up using the silicone bakeware. For these cakes I just used a plain sponge found on the internet.

the failed Star Wars cakes with half faces!!

the silicone bakeware of Star Wars characters
£12.99 from Lakeland

Ok, so the actual birthday cake was a Darth Vader cake. I found the tin on Amazon and ordered it straight away! I thought of doing a chocolate cake because I had never used icing before and if the icing didn't work then I knew the cake was already dark like Darth Vader is. 

The Darth Vader tin
£7.20 from Amazon

Luckily, I was able to use the black icing that my mum got me!! I used apricot glaze to stick the icing to the cake and it worked so well!! I was so pleased with the way the icing turned out and it was simpler than I thought it would be trying to put the icing onto the cake. All I had to do was roll it out using a LOT of icing sugar because it did get stuck to the board a couple of times (oops) and then just fold the icing over the rolling pin and gently place it over the cake! (simple!!). I did however try to use white icing and dye it black but it did not work at all! It resulted in me and my phone getting covered in black dye and the icing gradually melting and getting stuck to my hands... not a good look!! So I advise pre-coloured icing at all costs!! 

I did a trial run on the Friday of the cake and that one worked excellently. I filled the chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream and it looked great so I was praying when I made it on the Saturday ready for the party on Sunday it would work just as well (which it did- HALLELUJAH!) 

The test cake all sliced in the middle and filled with buttercream!

Also the test cake with the icing placed on. I could see where
the icing on this cake had gone a bit wrong
 so I could do it better on the actual cake for the party!!

The actual cake I did I rolled the icing out a bit thinner and smoothed it out a lot more so you can see so many bumps on the icing. I moulded the icing to the cake all by hand as using a smoothing tool was a bit complicated as it's such an awkward cake to shape but I think it worked out well when I did smooth it out by hand. Also on the test cake I realised that I needed to leave a bit more icing for the sides and not stretch the icing over the sides of the helmet of Darth Vader because I found that the icing was cracking a bit. So on the actual cake I left a lot more icing to mould to the cake so it didn't crack any more. 

Just showing you how I moulded the icing onto the cake.

The actual cake for the party.
See it's more smoothed out and not so lumpy!!
(ignore the phone shaped shadow on the cake!!) 

So that's the end of this blog!! I hope you enjoyed how I made Zach's birthday cake! It was a struggle but I would definitely enjoy making more cakes for peoples birthdays or whatever (anyones birthday coming up? Let me know!) I really want to widen my cake making and really try to improve on making bigger cakes as I think I've nearly mastered cupcakes so I really want to move onto bigger cakes!! Let me know about anybody's birthdays coming up if you want a cake made perhaps???

Anyway thanks for reading!!!

Caitlin xxx