Delicious Banana Loaf

Back in action

After a long blogging hiatus, I have decided to start blogging again. I can't promise that I will be as regular as I was BH (before Harry!), but I will be aiming to blog at least twice a week. I have continued baking the last two years, but not a lot of things that I would consider inspirational. However, just recently my passion for cake and cookies decorating (amateurish as it is!) has returned. To keep me blogging though, please leave lots of comments - I love to get them and that is really what inspires me.

My youngest sister is also a fanatic baker. She and I have been baking our way through the fabulous book, Cake Days, and just recently decided to also bake and decorate our way through Celebration Cupcakes, a book by a new zealander, Tamara Jane. The challenge is to not just bake the cupcakes, but also attempt to decorate the cakes in the same way as in the book.

The first recipe we chose (chosen by our mum) is for these chocolate vegan cupcakes. The recipe was chosen completely for what the finished product looked like, rather than the fact that the cakes are vegan. I've been fascinated by the photo of these gorgeous looking cupcakes since I was given the book last year. The intense purple of the icing was so gorgeous and I loved the flowers on top. My version isn't as stunning as that in the book, but I must say I was pretty pleased with my attempt. A word of warning though, I wouldn't eat the icing as the amount of purple food colouring I had to add to get that deep purple colour was frightening! My flowers need a bit of work, but hopefully with some practice, I will improve.

The cakes themselves are delicious. Mine weren't truly vegan as I did use cows milk, not having the recommended rice milk to hand. These would be a great recipe to use if you felt like baking but had run out of eggs and butter. They are also very easy to make and keep well.

Vegan chocolate cupcakes (from celebration cupcakes by Tamara Jane)

240ml rice milk (i used cows milk)
1 tsp white vinegar
150g castor sugar
80ml vegetable oil (I used rice bran)
1 tsp vanilla
120g flour
1/2 tsp b soda
1/2 tsp b powder
40g cocoa

- combine milk and vinegar and set aside for five minutes to curdle
- add the sugar, oil and vanilla to the milk mixture and whisk until well combined
- sift together the dry ingredients and then add in two batches to the liquid
- spoon into twelve cupcake cases and bake at 180c for 20 minutes
- when cold ice with butter icing and to make it truly vegan, make with something like olivio

Missing in Action

Hi everyone

I've had a few e-mails lately about my blog, making sure I am ok. I am great - thanks everyone :0) I am just really busy. Work is busy, Harry keeps me busy and just lately blogging is just another thing to do! So, while I may come back to it some day soon, at the moment I am having a wee break to refresh!

Tammy :0)

Quick and Easy Home Made Gifts

Harry had a very busy Sunday a couple of weeks ago as we had been invited to a second birthday party in the morning and a first birthday in the afternoon. In my pre Harry days I would have spent ages decorating little biscuits for my friends children, but with time being a bit more precious, these easy but still cute shortbread cookies were the quick version of decorated cookies.

A set of number shaped cutters are a great thing to have on hand to make quick and easy birthday gifts. These cookies were obviously for the two year old’s present. I simply made the shortbread in the number 2 shapes, whipped up a batch of royal icing (I whisk an egg white until frothy and then whisk in the desired amount of icing sugar – this kind of icing is less runny than glace icing and also sets to a nice thick consistency) and sprinkled over “boy” coloured sprinkles. The one year old party was for a girl and I made Number 1 shaped cookies and sprinkled them with pink sprinkles. In the past I have also made these for adult presents (a bag of 5s and 0s for a 50 year old, 3s and 0s for a thirty year old etc. Even just decorating the cookies with coloured icing gives some impact.

FFwD - Hachis Parmentier

This week’s FFwD recipe is Hachis Parmentier. If there was no photo of the recipe in the book, I would have gathered from the name of the recipe that it is some kind of hash, and that is one way of describing this recipe. Dorie describes it as a French version of Shepherds Pie. The full recipe, which my sister made, takes a long time as it involves making your own beef broth and cooking basically a casserole before topping it with a cheesy potato mash. I made the quick version which is made with mince, and I am glad I did as my sister said she felt like she did a lot for what is essentially a fancy shepherds pie. I am sure Hayley’s hachis had a much greater depth of flavour than mine. I actually added more tomato paste to my meat mixture to give it a bit more depth. I am not a lover of shepherds pie or mashed potato, but I did think that the grated cheese through the potato and scattered over the top was a nice touch. See what the other FFwDers thought here.

Cupcakes, At Last!

Last week book club was at my house, so for the first time in a long time, I made cupcakes. For my birthday at the start of the year, one of my good friends gave me the hummingbird bakery cook book. It is a lovely book full of delicious cakes, cupcakes, muffins etc but I had only ever made cookies from it. I had a look through it and found this recipe for peaches and cream cupcakes. They sounded delicious and also easy as they used a drained tin of peaches rather than fresh peaches.

The other thing I liked about the recipe is that it only had one egg and only 40g of butter. So many cupcake recipes have huge quantities of butter and numerous eggs, so not only was the recipe easy, it was also economical and fairly low in fat. Instead of making a buttercream icing, I topped the cakes with swirls of whipped cream. I love using whipped cream to top cupcakes, as I love cream far more than icing and it negates the need to serve some cream alongside the cakes. I made the cakes in pretty blue cupcake cases and topped them with little silver balls and blue flowers which I made a while ago. I think they looked really elegant and my book club friends enjoyed them too.




Peaches and Cream Cupcakes (from the Hummingbird Bakery cook book)

120g flour
140g sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
40g softened butter
120ml milk
1 egg
400g tin peaches, drained

• Combine flour, sugar and baking powder, then mixing in the softened butter using a cake mixer
• Combine the egg and milk and then gradually add to the dry ingredients. Mix to combine
• Place two slices of peach in each of 12 cupcake cases. Divide the cake mixture between the cases and bake at 170c for 20-25 minutes

TWD - Caramel Pumpkin Pie

Short but sweet post today. TWD recipe is Caramel Pumpkin Pie and was chosen by Janelle of Mortensen Family Memoirs. Pumpkin Pie is not big in NZ and I think this is only the second time I have made it. I thought this pie was ok. I didn’t really love the highly caramelised flavour of the pie. I prefer my caramel to be on the sweeter, creamier side rather than the highly sugared almost burnt caramel flavour. I halved the recipe and made two mini pies, and cooked the rest of the pie filling in a small ramekin for my gluten free mum who was up staying over the weekend. Mum hadn’t tried pumpkin pie before and loved it. See if the other TWDers enjoyed it here.