Catherine's Baby Shower - Carrot Cake

I love baking cakes. I remember being in my grandmother's kitchen stood on a foot stool so I could reach the work top to sieve the flour, cream the butter and sugar and of course lick the spoon when Nanny Jones wasn't looking :)

I agree with Cat about Mary Berry's cake recipes. Simple with stunning results and her carrot cake recipe  is no exception. I did however add some vanilla essence, cinnamon and nutmeg to my cake as I love those flavours in carrot cake. I also found the frosting worked better with a large tub of cream cheese instead of mascarpone. The addition of bananas makes it so moist and tasty.

The finished cake looked pretty with some white chocolate carrots on for Cat's lovely vintage afternoon tea baby shower!

Carly x

Happy Easter!

Hi, it’s Catherine again - here with a quick review on Easter Biscuits, another recipe from the one and only Mary Berry, found on the BBC Food site; for recipe click here. I must admit I recently made these biscuits for Mother’s day, as I wanted to make a batch of simple biscuits that I could bag up to be given as presents and these looked great.

The recipe was pretty easy and I managed to make more than what was stated. I only made one change which was swapping the currants for sultanas (for personal taste).  For the ones iced, I didn’t have a piping bag so spread the icing with a knife (that’s why there’s some lumps) - They looked great in a little bag, tied with ribbon and went down a treat.

Happy Easter everyone, we'll be back after the weekend with recipes and ideas for a Spring picnic!

xxx

Cut and Come Again Cake

I believe it’s always nice to have cake or biscuits available at the weekends, especially when family and friends could be visiting, and with Easter upon us, what better reason to bake this yummy fruit cake.

The Cut and Come Again Cake, recipe from Mary Berry, from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible is simple and I love simple recipes. I was passed this recipe from Charlotte, as its a regularly requested cake in her household. As you can see from the photo, I believe I may have left it a bit too long in the oven as it came out slightly on the dry side however it was still tasty and all eaten the following day after baking the night before.

What was good about it is you can put all the ingredients in all together, mix and pour into a greased deep tin; ingredients were changed slightly from original recipe: 350g self raising flour, 1 1/2tsp mixed spice, 175g butter, 175g muscovado sugar, 3 large eggs, 375g dried fruit and 3 tbsp milk - I added a little extra cinnamon and also sprinkled some sugar on top before going in to the oven (180oC/ Fan 160oC/ Gas 4) for just under 1 1/2 hours, though I recommend checking after an hour. I think next time, as there will definitely be a next time, I would just go for all sultanas as I’m not a big fan of currants but this recipe is so easy, you can really play around with it.

Catherine x