Old reliables!

August is a crazy busy time at my work and we have to work some very long hours. Therefore, cake is a necessity to see us through! However, working long hours means that I haven’t had the time or energy to be creative or try anything new – definitely time to stick to making old reliables! 

One of my most reliable and best-loved recipes is my sticky ginger cake with lemon icing. I made three of these a couple of weekends ago and they all turned out beautifully. The fabulous thing about this cake is that it lasts at least two weeks, and even improves for being left to mature. The cake has a deep rich flavour and moist, sticky texture that is beautifully balanced by the sharp tanginess of the lemon icing.

Another of my favourite recipes is my Primrose Bakery lemon layer cake (made also here). This week, I decided to keep it really simple and just make a two layer cake (225g golden castor sugar, s-r flour and butter, 1.5 tsp baking powder, 25g cornflour, 4 large eggs, zest and juice of 2-3 lemons). I sandwiched the two layers with lemon curd, smothered the sides with lemon buttercream, filled the top with curd and then topped with buttercream piped stars around the top edge. Apologies – it was all a bit of a rush and I forgot to take a photo! This cake always tastes deliciously moist and zingy! 

Finally this week, I decided to make my Apple Amazing Cake – a cake that I have made loads of times but not for ages. It’s a fairly simple cake to make – as long as you remember that it will take about 3 hours to bake! It’s a mammoth of a cake, so great if you are baking for lots of people. I was a little disappointed with this cake this week – it just didn’t have the flavour that I remembered. It is quite a savoury cake – more like a light fruit cake. I’m not quite sure why it wasn’t right this time – could have been the apples – I’ve always made it with huge Bramley apples, but this time the shop only had fairly small measly apples and I wonder if they were lacking flavour. I also over-cooked the apples slightly, so that they were fully reduced to a mush, rather than having a few nice juicy lumps remaining. Think that I may need to give this another go in a few months when apples are at their best, to see if this recipe really is as good as I remember it to be!   

Bonfire Night Cupcakes

Ok, so this is a bit of a cheat as I haven’t actually made these cakes this year but seeing as many people will be making cakes in preparation for Bonfire Night parties, I thought I’d write a few quick posts and put up some pictures as inspiration.

I made these lemon cupcakes for a Bonfire party last year – it’s one of my favourite and most regularly used recipes – I love lemon cake! The recipe for the cupcakes and the buttercream icing are from the “Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery book”, but I added in the lemon curd filling.

Not sure that I would recommend these decorations if you are making the cakes for children – the black icing can be very messy! Creating black icing is quite tricky as you do need quite a bit of food colour – you do need a gel food colour and will need to take the extra liquid into account when mixing up your icing.

Lemon cupcakes with a lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream icing

Ingredients (single batch of 12 cupcakes)

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 225g golden castor sugar
3. 2 large eggs
4. 150g self-raising flour, sifted
5. 125g plain flour, sifted
6. 90ml semi-skimmed milk
7. 2 tblsp lemon juice
8. 1 tblsp sour cream
9. Grated zest of a lemon

Buttercream icing:

1. 110g butter, at room temperature
2. 500g icing sugar, sifted
3. 3 tblsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
4. Grated zest of 2 lemons
5. Black food colouring (a paste not a liquid!)

Decoration and filling

1. 4 tblsp lemon curd
2. 2 colours of ready-to roll icing
3. Black sherbert (optional)
4. Edible silver balls
5. Coloured sugar strands

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/350F/GM4.
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy this will take at least 5 minutes with an electric hand mixer – don’t rush this stage).
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing for a few minutes after each addition. It should result in a lovely light mousse-like mixture.
5. Combine the two flours in a separate bowl.
6. Combine the milk, sour cream and lemon juice in a jug.
7. Add one third of the flours to the creamed mixture and stir gently to combine.
8. Pour in one third of the milk mixture and stir gently.
9. Continue to add flours and then milk mixture alternately, stirring gently after each addition, until all have been added.
10. Gently stir in lemon zest.
11. Spoon mixture into the cupcake cases, filling to about 2/3 full.
12. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until lightly golden brown. The cakes will spring back lightly when touched, if cooked.
13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in tin for about 10 minutes, before carefully placing on a wire rack to finish cooling.

While the cakes are in the oven, make up the buttercream:

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter, juice, zest and half of the icing sugar until smooth.
2. Add the rest of the icing sugar and beat until smooth and creamy, but slightly stiffer than you would generally aim for when piping, to allow for the amount of colour you will need to add.
3. Colour the icing with black food colouring.

To fill and decorate:

1. Once cakes are cooked and cooled, use a tea spoon to cut a cone out from the centre of the cakes.
2. Cut the top disk off each cone and retain.
3. Fill the hole in each cake with a teaspoon of lemon curd and then replace a cake disk onto each cake to seal the hole.
4. Place buttercream into an icing bag with a star shaped nozzle (I use the Wilton 1M nozzle). Swirl onto cupcakes.
5. Sprinkle sherbert over cakes (if using).
6. Roll out each colour of ready-to-roll icing to about 2-3mm thick.
7. Use star shaped plunger cutters to stamp out stars and arrange on cakes.
8. Sprinkle silver balls and sugar strands on cakes.