Lemonade Scones

I have posted like a gazillion times about blueberry on this blog. Ecspecially blueberry jam. Anyway, we're not talking about jam. We're talking about lemonade scones

No, they don't taste like lemon, neither are they fizzy. I was half expecting bubbles fizzing around my mouth when I ate these. But no, solid soft sweetness.

These scones are literally the most pillowy. Well the dough is pillowy and soft. I tried cutting the dough and my cutter had difficulty going through because the dough kept of puffing back up! I used a good effort and a half to puncture the pillow with the cutter. (Again, by pillow I mean dough!). It was literally like the dough was breathing. That sounds weird but it was so puffy and aerated you wouldn't put it past yourself when you make a batch of these yourself.

I finished my semester 1 exams for year 12! (Yee-haw!) It was the most amazing feeling after I finished, I was literally dead on the floor from relief. But, oh wait. Hold up a minute. I have a second set of exams 10 weeks from today. Kill. Me. Now. And then the biggest exams a month after. Yep, 3 sets of exams. THREE! It's cray.

Oh well. Hopefully I won't die by the end of the year. LOL. I will though, I know I will. An eighteen year old who dies from a heart attack because of the stresses of school. Take that, curriculum council.

Lemonade Scones

                  Makes 9

- 2 cups of self-raising flour

- Pinch of salt

- 150ml cream

- 150ml lemonade (or soda water if you prefer them less sweet)

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Line a tray with baking paper.

Sift the flour and salt in a bowl, then make a well in the centre. Pour in the cream and lemonade and stir until a dough is formed. Be careful to not overwork the dough, you want to make sure it stays light and soft.

Put a dusting of flour on a clean surface, and roll out the dough until it is about an inch thick. Use a cookie cutter or cup to press out round scones. Place the scones on the tray, and bake for 10-12 minutes. They should be pale with a light golden colour.

Serve with jam and cream.

Orange Poppyseed Sponge Cake with a Blueberry Glaze

School has been a choccerz term and I have exams next week. Pause. Why is it that whenever I post I always talk about school work or just school in general? Wow. School has taken over my life.
I seriously need to go out and do something. (In baking language that means stay in the kitchen and bake away my sorrows!)

I have exams next week and I haven't done as nearly as much as I should have to prepare for them. Lol, I feel so guilty...
No I don't.

Yeah I do.

Do you know what I like about this cake? You can eat it straight from the pan. No need for those things people call knives and forks.. so fiddly, and so 10 years ago. I prefer to go in with my hands. Totally joking, but with this cake, trust me, it's hard to resist.
I made this for mothers day which we celebrated last week because my family is weird and we got the dates mixed up (I have no idea how considering there are adverts and posters everywhere advertising mothers day.) Hmmm.

But yeah, we celebrated a week early. Last year it was 2 weeks early, I have no idea how. So my theory is that next year we will get it smack bang on the right day. It's a hard concept for my family to grasp..
Um. So anyway, about this cake... the sponge is as light as a feather and it only has 2 eggs. I.e. you don't need to use 20 dozen eggs to make a fluffy sponge cake. You. only. need. two. T W O. 2. two. I don't know how else to say it. Two eggs = you need to make this cake asap.

And also, theres only 50 grams of butter in this cake. 50. grams. of butter. FIFTY. 50. Five-zero.

This is the time when you are supposed to be off your seat jumping for joy because you are able to freely stuff your face to your hearts content knowing that you've only consumes 50 grams of butter for the entire cake! How crazy is that!?

Crazy good.

Oh, and can we also talk about this crazy pool of blueberry madness? Yeah. Blueberries, milk and icing sugar as a glaze heated over the stove and poured straight onto that spongey, feathery, light, heavenly tasting cake. *Wipes drool off chin*

I need to stop ranting, and you need to go make this cake ploise.

Orange Poppyseed Sponge Cake with a Blueberry Glaze

- 50g unsalted butter, melted
- 1 tablespoon finely grated orange rind
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup self-raising flour
- 2 tablespoons poppyseeds
- 1/3 cup reduced-fat milk
- 1/2 tsp of vanilla beans -or- 1tsp of vanilla extract -or- 1/2 vanilla pod

Preheat oven to 180°C/160°C fan-forced. Grease a 6cm-deep, 19cm square cake pan. Line base and sides with baking paper.

Place butter, orange rind, sugar, eggs, flour, poppyseeds, vanilla and milk in a large bowl. Stir to combine.

Spoon mixture into prepared pan. Smooth top. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean (cover cake loosely with foil if over-browning during cooking). Remove from oven. Stand cake in pan for 5 minutes.

Blueberry Glaze
- 1/4 cup tinned blueberries (a couple of Tb of juice if you're feeling funky)
- 2 Tb milk
- 1 cup icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)

Place blueberries in a large bowl and smash until juice from berries is out and until berries are left in relatively large pieces. In a seperate bowl, whisk together icing sugar and milk. If mixture becomes too thick, add more milk. Pour in blueberry mixture to icing sugar mixture.
Heat over a stove until mixture begins to bubble, keep a very close eye as it can burn easily. Once ready, take straight off heat and pour straight onto cake that is still in pan.

Chocolate Orange Cream Cheese Pound Cake

That title just says it all, doesn't it? Chocolate plus orange says enough. But chuck cream cheese into that and you've got yourself a fabbo-losso cake!
This isn't really an easter cake. But since today is easter day, I am going to pretend that this is one. All hail this mouthwatering orange infused, chocolate chunked easter cake!

I think this unholy heart disease amount of lard (butter and cream cheese..mmm) that's in this cake makes you want to push it as far away from you as you possibly can. Yes, I understand that those thighs need toning, that those love handles need to be gone and that you need that flat stomach. But honestly, this cake cancels all of that out. One whiff of the heavenly smell that this cake produces from the oven will be enough to slap that weight anxiety out of you.

We all need to indulge. And chocolate and orange is the way to do it. Oh.. and cream cheese too!

I hope everyone is having a great Easter! I am.. as you can see.. I went a bit overboard with the chocolate buttons. It's all part of the chocolate festivity..right?

I love it when you get a cake out of the oven and it has that satisfyingly large gaping split in the middle of it, it makes you want to get your whole fist and stuff it in the cake. Anyone else feel like that? No? I think it's just me then.

Remember, there are two things to note when baking this cake.
1. Forget dieting
2. Add those chocolate buttons!!


Chocolate Orange Pound Cake

          makes one 9×5-inch loaf

- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons orange zest
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 4 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 cup dark chocolate pieces


Method
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Grease a 9×5-inch baking pan and dust with flour. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

On a clean cutting board or counter, place the granulated sugar. Add the orange zest. With a bench scraper or the back of the spoon, work the zest into the granulated sugar, creating a fragrant and orange flavored sugar. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together softened butter and cream cheese. Stop the mixer occasionally to scrape down the bowl and make sure that the butter and cream cheese are evenly mixed. Add the citrus zest to the butter and cream cheese mixture, and beat on medium speed until smooth and creamy, about 3 minutes.

Stop the mixer. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. On medium speed, beat in one egg at a time, beating for one minute after each addition. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat in vanilla extract.

Add dry ingredients all at once. Beat on low speed until dry ingredients are completely incorporated. Fold in the chocolate pieces.

Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes, rotating once or twice during baking. Bake until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, or with just a few crumbs.

Some people find that the cake takes up to 75 minutes to fully cook. You might consider loosely placing a foil tent over the cake after about 45 minutes of baking. This will keep it from browning too much, and help the center bake up.

Cake will last, well wrapped at room temperature, for up to four days.

Chewy Ginger Chocolate Cookies

This week has been absolute hell. I've had 4 assessments and they've each been worth 10-15% of my school mark. Can someone please explain to me why school is so stressful? I'm 17 years old, I don't need to have a heart attack due to such stress at an early age please.

I wake up in the night panicking about what I have to study, and what I need to do the following day. Life is stressful, and I have really bad anxiety. I know.

Anxiety + the stress of year 12 = heart attack, I think so. Waah!

After this death week though, I have been looking so forward to hitting the kitchen and baking up a storm. Lol, so sad considering all my friends are going out to parties on Fridays and Saturdays. Wooo! Go me! -__-

I haven't had enough time to bake as much as I wish I could this year - for the obvious reasons of my being up to my ears in paper and books - but I'm trying!

I've been rabbiting on for this whole post. Shall we start talking about this chewy cookies because I'm feeling like this is starting to get awkward..

Nb: If you want the cookies chewy, when placing "in balls on tray" press them down and then place in oven.
I put mine in balls and instead of being chewy, they were soft and cake like. But still great!

Spice makes everything better.
Spice with chocolate buttons? Fainted.

Chewy Ginger Chocolate Cookies

makes 4 dozen cookies

adapted from Big Fat Cookies

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1 large egg

1/4 cup molasses

1/2 cup chocolate chips (milk chocolate or semi sweet)

1/4 cup granulated sugar, for rolling dough balls

Position a rack in the middle of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or just spray lightly with cooking spray.

Sift the flour, baking soda, spices and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.  In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and brown sugar until smoothly blended, about 2 minutes.  Stop the mixer and scrape the sides of the bowl as needed during mixing.  Add the egg and molasses and mix until blended and an even light color, about 1 minute.  On low speed, add the flour mixture, mixing just to incorporate it.  Fold in the chocolate chips.

Spread the granulated sugar into a small bowl.  Roll a heaping tablespoon of dough between the palms of your hands into a ball, toss the ball in sugar to coat and place on the prepared baking sheet.  Continue making cookies, spacing them about 2 inches apart.

Bake the cookies one sheet at a time until the tops feel firm but they are still soft in the center and there are several large cracks on top, about 12-14 minutes.  Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

The cookies can be stored in a tightly covered container at room temperature for up to 4 days.

Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread

This is a low fat banana bread.
It consists of a hearty cup of oats, a few large ripe sweet soft bananas, fragrant cinnamon, silky plain flour, a teaspoon of good ol' bi-carb soda.......okay I'll stop there. But you get the jist right? This bread is low fat yet it has all the ingredients to make it taste like a full fat banana cake. Whatever that means.

I haven't actually eaten the cake, seeing as I can't have bananas, but my Dad said it was so good! Yee-haw! A low fat oatmeal banana bread thats good? You can't be serious!

I didn't really get time to take pictures while I was making it (but to be honest, it's so easy to make that there wasn't really a reason to!)

Y'know what I like about this dessert though? You can eat a lot of it and never worry about getting fat.

 Unlike my previous Vegan Chocolate Cake post. I demolished that in one night and my pants felt tighter the next day so we all know that I gained roughly about 7 kilos!

Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread
adapted from the Weight Watchers site
makes 1 loaf of 10 slices, 4 points per slice

- 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 3 tsp canola or walnut oil
- 1 large egg, beaten
- 2 medium egg whites, beaten
- 3 large bananas, ripe
- 1 cup uncooked old fashioned oats
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a loaf pan and set aside. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients including the oats and cinnamon.
In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a potato masher or fork. Add oil and whole egg and mix thoroughly.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Batter will be fairly thick.
In a medium sized bowl, with an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter in three additions.
Pour batter into pan and bake until top of loaf is firm to touch, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool in pan for 5 minutes. Flip out and cool on a wire rack for another 10 minutes. Slice loaf into 10 equally sized slices.

Easy Vegan Chocolate Cake

Have you ever found a vegan recipe that actually worked? Well I have.

And let me tell you, it is amaaazzzing! The cake is so moist and chocolate-y and delicious, I nearly ate the whole pan. Like, no, in all seriousness.. I nearly ate the whole pan.

Awkward.

I baked this last night, on a Friday and it was bliss. What's better then sitting down on a comfy couch, when your home alone watching a new episode of Glee? Nothing.

Chocolate and Rachel Berry singing makes me so happy!

I saw this recipe on Joy the Baker (story of my life!) and the whole day at school I was dreaming about baking this little thing up/I was craving chocolate cake with a cold glass of milk. So, straight after school I ran to the kitchen and threw this together. I didn't time how long it took me, but trust me, it was so quick!

Dry ingredients, measure, put into bowl.
Wet ingredients, measure, put into bowl.
And then chuck them together! Ta-da!!

I used a block of roasted almond chocolate and broke it up and threw it into the batter! Trust me, you should really use the chocolate chips in this cake, it takes it to another level!

Om nom nom. You should really make a double batch of this cake because one aint gonna last!
And also, the recipe calls for a bundt cake, but since I didn't have one I just used a 21cm round cake tin and it turned out perfecto!

Vegan Chocolate Cake
    makes 1 9-inch chocolate bundt cake

- 2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup warm coffee
- 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- small handful of chocolate chunks and/or cocoa nibs (optional)


Place rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch bundt pan with vegetable shortening and dust with cocoa powder. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together coffee, oil, and vanilla.

Add the wet ingredients, all at once to the dry ingredients and whisk until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks and cocoa nibs, if using.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. The batter will be relatively thick. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.

Cake will last, well wrapped at room temperature, for up to 3 days

Valentine Butter Cookies

Yes. It's that joyous time of year again. Valentines day. The day of the year where I shut myself up in my room, eat chocolate and listen to Adele..and cry? No, I'm totally joking!

Except for the chocolate. That's a must on every singles Valentines day. Talking about being as single as a pringle; I made these fabulous butter cookies. Both of my best friends, who are also best friends with eachother share the same birthday. And yes, it is Feb 14th, the day of Valentines. Is that a good thing or a bad? I dunno. I would be happy getting all those boxes of Guliyan from my family.

I started Year 12 - aka my final death year of school - 3 weeks ago, and I've already had 4 breakdowns. Oh my god, how am I going to survive!? I'm stressed out to the max and the real assessments haven't even started!

Talking about assessments, I studied my ass off last weekend for Biology and I went to my first test on Monday morning. I did the test, I was pretty tricky but hey, I thought, I reckon I did okay.
Ha. Biggest. Lie. Ever.
I got it back yesterday. The paper lay innocently on my desk and I flipped it over.. 57%. Yes. My first assessment of Year 12 and that's my result. Great start to the beginning of the year. Note the sarcasm!

And yes, when I got home I had a binge. It consisted of 6 of these cookies. It also consisted of my putting 10 kilos on each of my thighs. Yee-haw! Go me!

..If you ever feel like you need to eat your feelings (story of my life) go for these! Buttery, but good!

Valentine Butter Cookies

3 cups all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 Tablespoon milk

Method

1. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

2. Beat together butter and sugar in an electric mixer until light in color. Add egg and milk to the mixture and beat until well combined.

3. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the flour, mixing until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

4. Divide the dough in half and stain with gel food coloring if desired. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

5. Preheat oven to 375.

6. Remove one package of dough from the refrigerator at a time. Sprinkle your work surface and a rolling pin with powdered sugar. Roll the dough to 1/4”, rotating the dough around the work surface, making sure it doesn’t stick.

7. Cut dough into desired shapes and place on a greased cookie sheet, or a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Brush with a bit of beaten egg and milk before sprinkling with sugar in the raw or sanding sugar.

8. Bake for 7-9 minutes, rotating the pan half way through baking. Remove from the oven when cookies have barely started to brown on the edges. If you’re not using a silicone mat or parchment paper, I like to remove the cookies from the pan when they are still very warm. This will ensure they won’t cool and stick to the pan. Just be careful, they’ll be a bit fragile.

Lemon Almond Polenta Cake

I aspire to be like Nigella Lawson when I'm older, settled down and a mother of about six! I love the way she dances around the kitchen like a diva, throwing things into her bowl left right and center, and then producing the most perfect cake you will ever see from her expensive oven.

This light, crumbly, lemon infused tea cake is taken from the queen of the kitchen herself. The majority of the cakes batter is composed of ground almonds (or almond meal) which adds a subtle yet noticeable flavour to the cake. The almond also works to retain moisture in the cake. And let me tell you.. you need that moisture in order for you to salivate as soon as the cake touches your lips.

I would like to say that this cake is healthy so that more of you would try it out. But the 200g of caster sugar that goes into it begs to differ...

 

Lemon and corn. The ingredients sound simple enough. And sure enough, the cake is too! I think every recipe that comes from Nigella is easy to understand, and the best thing is that the ingredients are in your pantry already!

  Lemon Polenta Cake adapted from Nigella Lawson (Serves 16)

 

  

Ingredients

- 200g soft unsalted butter, plus some for greasing
- 200g caster sugar
- 200g ground almonds
- 100g fine polenta/cornmeal
- 1 1⁄2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten-free if required)
- 3 eggs
- zest 2 lemons

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line the base of your cake tin with baking parchment and grease its sides lightly with butter.
Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.
Mix together the almonds, polenta and baking powder, and beat some of this into the butter-sugar mixture, followed by 1 egg, then alternate dry ingredients and eggs, beating all the while.
Finally, beat in the lemon zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.
It may seem wibbly but, if the cake is cooked, a cake tester should come out cleanish and, most significantly, the edges of the cake will have begun to shrink away from the sides of the tin. remove from the oven to a wire cooling rack, but leave in its tin.  

Cupcakes with a Strawberry Frosting

My sister hit the big 21 a week and a half ago. To celebrate her big milestone she had a Mexican themed party a couple of days after her birthday.
And me being the unorganized, clumsy and careless sister, I was appointed one task and one task only. The cupcakes..duh!

Now, there aren't many mexican flvours that can be distinguished by the party guests, so I went with the one and only; strawberry. I haven't ever really made any flavoured frostings - apart from the usual vanilla and chocolate, obviously - so I was so excited to try this one out. I followed my usual buttercream icing recipe which consisted of the usual butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence, but I improvised when it came to the strawberry tinting and flavouring. Yes. I made the other half of the recipe up.

But don't get discouraged, it works. The recipe totally works! (woohoo!). But to be fair, I did a "trial run" a few weeks before the actual party to test out the recipe. I'm not sure I used the right ingredients for strawberry frosting, but hey, it turned out to be edible so I don't care. Mum and I were wandering around the food store and I was lingering in the canned fruit aisle. I spotted a tin of canned strawberries and I went from there! Because I like to think of myself as organic and chic, I used grated beetroot to create the baby pink colour. This also added flecks of beetroot to the icing which could be mistaken for tiny chunks of strawberry.

Anyway, my story about beetroots and strawberries is probably boring you!

The recipe:

Strawberry Frosting (ices 12 cupcakes)

- 2.5 cups icing sugar
- 250g butter
- 2 Tb of canned strawberry syrup*
- 1 tsp of grated beetroot

Method
Cream butter until light and fluffy. Add icing sugar and continue beating until well incorporated. Add canned strawberry syrup and grated beetroot and stir well to combine.
Spoon in to piping back with a 1M Wilton nozzle and pipe, pipe, pipe away!

*Syrup in which the strawberries are in inside the can.

Lemon Drenched Vanilla Cupcakes

Yo. I'm back. And I bear gifts!...well a recipe, but it counts as a gift, kinda.
I have been up to my nose in study.. the majority of the time was spent on facebook though, yeah I got waaay too distracted.

Chem is a distaster, no newie there, but I'm starting to move up in the world with maths, I had the exam on Monday, not too hard, not too easy. So, it counts as a good exam for me.
I finito semester 1 exams on Tuesday and I'm so excited so I can run back to the video store and demand Kardashians season 3.

Anyway, onwards with the show my chums!