Leftovers Flapjacks

Today, May the 20^th 2012 is in fact World Baking Day. The idea is you bake a cake, take a picture of it in a strange place and upload it to http://www.worldbakingday.co.uk. Check the website out if you’re in need of some serious procrastination. Or, if like me, you are too poor to actually bake a cake on this auspicious day, bake something random with the leftovers in your cupboard! I was lacking in the egg/flour/everything department but what I did have was loads of porridge…

Actual Ingredients to make flapjack

225g butter

225g demerara sugar

75g golden syrup

275g porridge oats

The ingredients I used

About 200g butter

Whatever was left of a packet of caster sugar

About 6 sachets of syrup flavoured Quaker’s Oats

A random handful of mixed dried fruit

Preheat the oven to 160⁰C/Gas Mark 3. Prepare a traybake tin with foil.

Melt the butter in a large pan with the sugar and syrup (or whatever ingredients you have…)

When they are completely melted take the pan off the heat and stir in the oats until they’re completely covered. This is when I added in some dried fruit I had lying around.

Pour into your tin and press flat. Bake in the oven for about 35 minutes or until golden brown. If you had any cooking chocolate you could melt that and drizzle it on top of the flapjack once it had cooled. (I didn’t have any chocolate D: )

So there you are! How to bake when you don’t actually have the right ingredients. Happy World Baking Day!

Coconut Loaf Cake

It’s at that time of the year where I’m trying to use up all the random ingredients in my cupboard rather than buying more…and I just so happened to have had half a packet of desiccated coconut knocking about, so here we go.  Also I apologise for the lack of photos. I must have been having a moment today when I was baking because it was only just before I poured the mixture into the tin that I remembered I needed photo evidence! Luckily for you lot it’s a ridiculously easy method so I think you’ll live.

Ingredients

200g self-raising flour

Pinch of salt

2 tsps of baking powder

100g butter

100g caster sugar

50g of desiccated coconut (plus extra for decoration)

Zest of half a lime

1 egg

125ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C/ Gas Mark 4. Prepare a loaf tin lined with greaseproof paper.

Combine all the ingredients except for the coconut into a large mixing bowl using an electric whisk. When the mixture is smooth add the coconut and combine using a wooden spoon or spatula.

Pour the mixture into your prepared tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a knife comes out clean when you stick it in the middle.

I also had leftover jam from the boob cakes so I cut the cake in half and filled the middle with jam. I then made some buttercream icing and slapped that on top with a sprinkling of coconut. It’s quite a crumbly mixture so I suggest eating it with a fork and a big ole mug of tea!

P.S. Bit of a plug here but I’m currently the food correspondent for my university’s newspaper The Galleon

so if you fancy following me on that then look right here.

Birthday Cakes Part Two

Hello fellow bakers and cake fiends! Deadline time has felt like a long, desolate, cakeless place but WOOHOO because it is finally all over. I have now scarily completed my second year at university. Now, I know I said I wouldn’t be doing any baking because of deadlines, but that is an absolute lie because I am a notoriously bad stress/procrastination/do ANYTHING else baker. Also it’s been one of those times of year where every person I know seems to have a birthday …sooo here we have Birthday Cakes Part Two!

Krispy Kreme Birthday Cake

I made this for my friend who is a bit of a Krispy Kreme fanatic. He was actually given FOUR cakes for his birthday from various friends so there was a lot of baking-love being spread about the place.

I made it by baking two round cakes using a 6 egg vanilla mixture. I then used a cup to cut a hole out of the middle, stuck the layers together with butter icing, and drizzled plain water icing over the top like a Krispy Kreme glaze.

Red Velvet Heart Cake

I stole my mother’s heart shaped tins from home so that I could make this pretty cake for one of my lovely creative writer’s birthdays. I used a red velvet mixture which is basically chocolate cake with red food colouring, although I don’t think I used enough colouring because apparently the cake was more ginger than red. Gingerness is apparently not only blighting my hair but also my cakes these days. Anyway, there was also an ish with crumbs that kept sticking to my icing because I stupidly decided to cover the whole thing, sides and all. However, there is nothing that a dusting of edible glitter can’t solve so it looked alright in the end!

Marble Chanel Cake

I made this for another very lovely creative writer who is also a fashionista, hence the inspiration by Coco Chanel. I made the cake marble by making a vanilla mixture and a chocolate mixture and spooning them alternatively into the tins. This cake always goes down well because it just looks so pretty! I am not particularly artistic so I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I tried to pipe chocolate horseshoes but everyone seemed to get it so oh well.

Boob Cakes

I made these for my friends surprise 21^st birthday. There was an open bar so I can’t honestly say I know what happened, but apparently a whole breast went so they must have tasted alright! We also had firework candles exploding out of the nipples, because, well why not? The cake was a basic vanilla mixture with a few drops of red colouring. Then I used butter icing and jam in the middle and more butter icing on top, with a slighter darker mixture to define the nipple. When my mum texts me asking what I’m doing and I say piping a nipple on a cake I think she genuinely worries about what I do at university.

So along with horrendous days spent in the library wondering why I wanted a degree in the first place, this is what I’ve been doing. Now that I’m finished and not going home for another 3 weeks or so, I’ll hopefully bake lots, funds permitting! However if the sunshine decides to make an appearance you’ll probably see me out and about with a wine glass in my hand…