Chocolate Fudge Cake

I will post something that's not sweet soon but I just have to share this one with you all. It's currently in the oven and smelling oh so gorgeous so I will add pictures later. (EDIT: errr it all got eaten so quickly there were no pictures taken....Ooopsie!)

Chocolate Fudge Cake

(original recipe can be found here)

Ingredients

For the sponge...

85g self raising flour

30g cocoa powder

pinch of salt

115g light muscovado sugar (I used soft light brown sugar and it worked fine!)

115g unsalted butter

1tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

2-3tbsp milk

For the sauce...

85g light muscovado/soft brown sugar

30g cocoa powder

225ml milk

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.

2. Cream together the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy.

3. In a separate bowl, lightly beat together the eggs and vanilla essence.

4. Slowly add the egg mixture to the butter and mix together thoroughly.

5. Sift in the flour, cocoa and salt. Fold this in gently.

6. Line and grease a deep, round cake tin (this cake rose a heck of a lot more than I expected it to.)

7. Spoon in the cake mixture and roughly smooth the top.

8. Whisk together the ingredients for the sauce. (I found that whisking it quickly got rid of any lumps)

9. Pour this evenly over the top of the uncooked cake mixture and then bake in the oven for 40-60mins.

10. Eat hot, warm or cold with whatever you want!

Pre-Christmas Baking

So about a month ago myself and a couple of friends were feeling a bit down so we decided to indulge in one of my friend's traditions of having a pre-christmas party. I have to say it was possibly the best idea we've ever had!!! We all decided that we were going to bake something for the party so we spent a morning making a complete mess of my kitchen while listening to Christmas songs and wearing Santa hats!!....In October! :)

I decided to make some gingerbread snowflake biscuits. Have to say they were pretty delicious! I will definitely be using this recipe again and again, in fact I might make some in a minute... Anyway here's the recipe!

Gingerbread Biscuits

(original recipe can be found here)

Ingredients

350g plain flour

1tsp ground ginger

1/2tsp ground cloves

1/2tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

100g butter

175g soft brown sugar

1 egg

4tbsp golden syrup

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Mix together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda.

2. Rub in the butter (using your fingertips) until it looks like breadcrumbs.

3. Add the sugar and mix.

4. In a separate bowl mix together the egg and golden syrup.

5. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together until it forms a dough.

6. Tip this out on to a clean, floured work surface and knead it until it's smooth.

7. Roll out the dough until it is about 0.5cm thick and then cut it out using whatever cutter you want/have.

8. Put the biscuits on a greased baking tray (I like to put grease proof paper on my baking trays too) and then bake in the oven for 10-15mins.

9. Ice if you want to!

I iced mine using royal icing. There it a specific way to ice biscuits using 2 different thicknesses of icing however after 3 biscuits I gave up on this method and just slapped it on using a palette knife, which worked quite well!! I then added some edible glitter or lustre dust to them to make them sparkle and shimmer like real snowflakes! I'm so incredibly excited to have edible glitter I wouldn't be surprised if everything incorporates it from now on.... Hehe!

My friends also made brownies, mince pies, white chocolate tarts and rum balls!! Lets commence with the silly pictures!

Quick Update

I completely fail at updating this!! Uni has unfortunately robbed me of my free time yet again. I have been sitting on some pictures from a while ago though so I'll upload those later today :)