58. Coconut Choc Chunk Cupcakes

July 11, 2020 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

These were made to fill a complete and utter craving I had for chocolatey goodness without just eating the whole bar in one go. They’re so quick and easy to make, I made them on my work from home lunch break! They went down pretty well and didn’t exactly last long!

Makes 12 cupcakes

Ingredients

(6oz) butter, room temperature
(6oz) golden caster sugar
(6oz) self-raising flour
3 eggs
(2oz) desiccated coconut
(4oz) dark chocolate chunks
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a cupcake tray.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add in the flour and then the eggs until well combined.
Mix in the coconut, chocolate, pinch of salt and vanilla and mix until well distributed.
Divide evenly into the cupcake cases (I found a heaped tablespoon was about right).
Bake for 22-25 minutes until risen, golden and a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool and enjoy!

45. Espresso Chocolate Cake

January 16, 2020 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

I have the week off work!!! It has honestly been so nice to just chill out this week, as Christmas felt really hectic and not like a rest. To make full use of this I went to visit my Dad for a couple of days, and while there, decided that, you know, baking was required. And as Dad and my step-mum love coffee, an espresso cake that was definitely not too sweet was the right way to go.

This cake is really easy and the perfect afternoon snack for coffee time. I hope you enjoy!

Makes 1 cake

Ingredients

For the cake

170g (6 oz) butter
85g (3 oz) demerara
85g (3 oz) light brown sugar
170g (6 oz) self raising flour
2 eggs
75g (2.5 oz) dark chocolate, melted
1 espresso (1 oz = ~30ml)

For the buttercream

200g (7 oz) butter, room temp
300g (10.5 oz) icing sugar
50g (1.75 oz) dark chocolate, melted (+ some for grating to sprinkle)
1 espresso (1 oz = ~30ml)
a pinch of salt

Method

Preheat the oven to 170C and line a square cake tin with greaseproof paper.
Cream together the butter and all the sugars until light and fluffy.
Add in the eggs one at a time and combine, adding in the flour if the mixture starts to curdle.
Add in the flour, and then the melted chocolate, and espresso. Mix until well combined.
Scrape all the cake mix into the cake tin, and spread evenly into all the corners.
Bake for 30-35 minutes until a skewer comes out clean and it bounces back.
Leave to cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes and then allow to cool on a cooling rack to room temperature.
For the icing, beat the butter until light and fluffy on its own, and then add the icing sugar in a bit at a time until fully combined. Add in a pinch of salt and mix.
Split the buttercream base into two and move half of it into another bowl. Add the melted chocolate to the first half and beat until well combined. Add the half of the espresso to the second half and beat until well combined. Taste to see how strong the coffee flavour is and add more espresso as needed.
Fill two piping bags with your two buttercreams and decorate the cake in your desired pattern (I chose diagonal lines). If you choose to sprinkle the shaved chocolate on, I chose to sprinkle it only on the chocolate buttercream to maintain the contrast between the two icings.
Enjoy!

44. Coconut Choc Chip Cake with Best Chocolate Buttercream

January 11, 2020 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

It was a colleague’s birthday at work this week, so I offered to make him a birthday cake. When asked what he would like, he ummed and ahhed, until I elicited the words chocolate and coconut fro him. That was as good a place to start as any.

But then he said white chocolate.

I don’t really like white chocolate in large quantities, as its REALLY sweet, and its not all that easy to bake with. So I made a white chocolate and coconut cake. This is not the cake pictured here. I was so embarrassed by not only the fact that the cake was ridiculously sweet (my boyfriend said he just pretended he was eating a white chocolate bar), but it was also hideous. I really messed up my ratios on the white chocolate ganache, and had been impatient when turning the cakes out and frosting so it was all crumbling and not smooth. It was not good.

So I made another cake. This one. Learning from my previous errors to make a cake that went down EXTREMELY well at work. Why not give it, or similar, a go this weekend?

Makes 1 cake and buttercream for 1 cake/12 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cake

170g (6 oz) butter
130g (4.5 oz) caster sugar
85g (3 oz) desiccated coconut (+ some for sprinkling)
140g (5 oz) self raising flour
3 eggs
100g (3.5 oz) chocolate chips (I used white choc chips)

For the buttercream

100g (3.5 oz) dark chocolate, melted (+ some for grating to sprinkle)
200g (7 oz) butter, room temp
300g (10.5 oz) icing sugar
2 tbsp milk
a pinch of salt.

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C. Line two sandwich tins with greaseproof paper and grease the sides.
Cream together the butter and sugar until well combined.
Add in the eggs, desiccated coconut and self raising flour, and beat until smooth.
Mix in the chocolate chips until distributed throughout the cake mix, then divide into your sandwich tins. (roughly 13oz in each tine if you want to be precise)
Bake for 20-25 minutes until slightly golden, and a knife comes out clean.
Allow the cakes to cool in their tins until the tins are cool enough to hold. Tip out your cakes and allow to cool further on a cooling rack. Place in the fridge to cool down further if you intend to spread rather than pipe your icing as this will make it less likely to crumble.
Beat the butter for your buttercream until light and fluffy.
Add in your icing sugar in two gos (or else it tends to go everywhere), and beat until light and smooth.
Beat in your melted chocolate and a pinch of salt.
Fill a piping bag and pipe a border around the edge of your bottom cake, then fill the middle with icing and spread to your border. This will keep it neat.
Place your top cake on top and decorate (piping or spreading) however you like! Sprinkle on a little grated chocolate and desiccated coconut and enjoy!

40. Whole Orange Cake

September 04, 2019 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

2 months??? Oops.

I really have no real excuse. I’ve been busy with exams and I did go on holiday, but 2 months is pretty inexcusable! I’m sorry, I’ll try not to let it happen again.

This week I decided to get back into baking with something I had never even heard of before, that I saw on Sortedfood, link to the inspiration video here. They put a WHOLE orange into their batter. Not just the juice, not just the zest. The whole orange, pith and all (well, except for the little stem bit).

I decided to take it to the next level and do a whole cake rather than muffins, and top it with some italian meringue and candied orange peel. Let’s get stuck in.

Makes 1 cake, serves 8.

Ingredients

For the cake

1 orange
4 oz butter
6oz caster sugar
6oz self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
2 eggs
2-3 tbsp milk

For the Italian Meringue/Candied Peel

4oz caster sugar
2 egg whites
Peel of one orange

Method

Cake:

Boil the whole orange for an hour. Pop the telly on and have a cuppa.
Take the orange out of the water and remove the little stem at the top, this should pop right off. Drop your orange into a blender, or use a hand held blender, and puree the whole thing.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar for the cake.
Add in the flour and a pinch of salt and mix in.
Mix in the eggs and the pureed orange and mix until fully incorporated, then mix in the milk until it is a reasonable consistency.
Line a cake tin with greaseproof paper or butter it, and pour your mixture in.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden on top and when skewered with a knife, the knife comes out clean.
Allow to cool.

Candied Peel:

Use a potato peeler to peel strips of zest off the orange, trying to get as little of the pith with it as possible. If any pith comes with your strips, scrape it off with the back of a knife or with the peeler itself.
Place your strips in a pan of cold water and bring to the boil. Once boiling, drain the water out and replace with cold water. Do this a further 3 times. It will remove the bitterness from the orange peel.
Place the strips to the side.
In a pan, combine the 4oz caster sugar with 4oz water and bring to the boil. Boil until the sugar has completely dissolved and the water is clear again. Put your peel strips back in and let stand for 10-20 minutes.
Take your strips out with a fork and allow to drain on some kitchen roll.

Italian Meringue:

Whisk the egg whites to medium stiff peaks.
Bring your sugar syrup mixture (what you have just removed your peel from) back to the boil and keep heating until it reaches 114C.
Pour the sugar syrup into your egg whites WHILE WHISKING, and keep whisking for another 7-10 minutes until your egg white mixture has cooled completely

Assembly:

Preheat your grill to high setting (unnecessary if you have a blowtorch)
If your cake has risen a lot and created a dome, consider slicing the top off to make it level.
Pipe your Italian meringue onto your cake using a star shaped nozzle to get lots of ridges.
Place your cake under the grill for about a minute to get the edges of your Italian meringue to brown. If you have a blowtorch, use this so you can control where it is browning.
Decorate the cake with your candied peel.

Enjoy!

36. Summer Berry Muffins

May 25, 2019 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

Summer is well and truly on its way. Its been warm and sunny basically all week with blue skies most days. It has been absolutely gorgeous. Just a shame we’ve been stuck at work! Hopefully these muffins will help you bring a little bit of summer inside even if you, like me, end up stuck inside unable to enjoy the weather. Thanks to Susie for the inspiration, she made some summer berry muffins last week and they just looked so good I couldn’t resist having a go.

These are a ridiculously easy make. No fancy techniques involved, nothing complicated here. Just some good tasty muffins to enjoy the British summer time with. Summer berries are great aren’t they? For this recipe you can either select your own mix of your favourite berries, or cheat like I did and go to the frozen aisle and get a bag of mixed summer berries and just defrost the amount I need. There’s still half a bag left if I want to make these again or just have them with some yoghurt or something. Tasty.

These are so easy you basically have no excuse not to give them a go this weekend. Let me know how you get on and I hope you enjoy!

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

120g butter, melted
150g golden caster sugar
240g self raising flour
2 eggs
140ml buttermilk (or 140ml milk and a tbsp of lemon juice mixed and left to stand for 15 minutes)
160g mixed summer berries
100g white chocolate chips/chopped white chocolate
2-3 tbsp lemon juice
70g icing sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 190C. Line or grease a muffin tray.
In a bowl mix together the buttermilk and eggs. Add in the melted butter (cooled, don’t scramble your eggs with really hot butter!)
Sift the flour and fold it into your wet ingredients. Fold in the sugar too.
Gently fold in your berries and white chocolate chips.
Fill your muffin tray evenly with your mixture and sprinkle a little extra sugar on the top of each.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.
Allow to cool.
Mix together the icing sugar and just enough lemon juice that it becomes drizzlable (is that a word?), but still a bit thick.
Drizzle your icing over your cooled muffins and allow to set before you pick one up and get immensely sticky fingers!
Enjoy!

Week 7: Cake, Bread and Charlotte

November 20, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Weekly update

This week was a real mismatch of activities. We usually have a theme, like cake or custards or tarts, but this week, anything went. It was also unusual in that we ended up having two practicals in one day and three practicals over all in the week. It was plenty busy for me.

Our first practical this week was a black forest gateau and I am actually really proud of how mine turned out. We worked with tempered chocolate for the first time to make a collar for our cake and pretty much everything went well. I ended up donating both my black forest gateau and my mango charlotte to my rugby club’s bingo night ad raffle fundraiser as prizes and they seemed to go down well!

Next practical was bread, where we made soda bread and dinner rolls. I neglected to take pictures, oops. I was pretty happy with how mine turned out though. I filled some of them with sun-dried tomatoes and olives and the rest had to be in various different shapes, such as crowns or knots or whatever else we fancied trying. It was good fun and one of the most relaxed practicals we’ve had in a good while.

Then on Friday we made our final exam dish. The mango charlotte. Oh man I hope this one comes up. I loved making it and want to again and again to be honest. It was great. We made a thin biscuit cake base and sides, then filled it with mango mousse, a coconut cream insert and then topped it off with more mango mousse and a passionfruit glaze. It was just incredible and so much fun to make!

All in all, good week had. Would do this week again.

22. Banana Coconut Muffins

November 16, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

Now I’m studying at Le Cordon Bleu, I don’t get an awful lot of time to bake just for fun, rather than practicing for exams. So I wanted to make something new for you guys, but something pretty easy. Muffins are definitely easy! I put a question out on my instagram story a few days ago and got some great ideas of what to make over the next few weeks, but I decided to start with my friend Beth’s suggestion “something with bananas”. Easy enough!

I have done banana and chocolate chip muffins on the blog before, so I decided to change it us and use coconut for something different. I’ve not used coconut much before to be honest, but I’m kinda enjoying coconut milk these days (Lactose intolerance life, wooooo), so thought I’d give it a go in my baking. These turned out pretty small as I made them in cupcake size rather than muffin, mostly because I wasn’t thinking, and partially because that’s what I had to hand. Either way, no matter the size, these turned out very tasty!

Makes 12 cupcake sized muffins

Ingredients

200g (7oz) flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
70g (2.5oz) butter, melted
80g (2.8oz) demerara sugar (plus extra to sprinkle on top)
125ml coconut milk or normal milk
75g desiccated coconut
1 egg, beaten
2 medium bananas, mashed

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.
In a bowl combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, desiccated coconut and cinnamon.
Make a well in the middle and pour in the milk, melted butter and egg. Fold these in to the dry ingredients until well combined.
Add in the mashed banana (you want it mashed as well as possible!) until well mixed in.
Divide the mix into a lined cupcake or muffin tray and sprinkle some demerara sugar on top of each one.
Bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden.
Allow to cool a little before eating!

Week 6: Cake week

November 13, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Weekly update

FINALLY. CAKE WEEK. You would have thought that cake week would be pretty early on, but apparently not. I suppose it makes sense that on a patisserie course we focus on pastry first, but still. Cake is pretty important. In the grand scheme of life at least.

We started the week with a lecture all about dairy products which was not bad at all. We had Chef Matthew who is just great, and really tries to make our lectures fun for us which I appreciate. We got to make our own butter by shaking up jars of double cream and then eat it on bread and have clotted cream on scones. It was pretty great as lectures go.

Moving on to the exciting part of the week, the actual baking. On Thursday we made a marble loaf cake and madeleines. I’m not sure why, but I found the practical went immensely smoothly and I just had fun doing it. Often there is a little sense of panic that I might be doing something wrong or not fast enough, but cake is my home ground. I have no worries when it comes to cake. Bring it on.

Both my marble cake and madeleines were pretty tasty and didn’t last too long!

On Friday we made genoise sponge. Thursday’s high didn’t quite carry over, but it was still ok really. Genoise sponges don’t have any raising agent, and so all the rise comes from beating the eggs, which is a bit of a work out. Who needs arm day at the gym?

While my chocolate piping obviously needs work (my piping bag fell apart a bit towards the end, not ideal) I’m pretty happy with how my cake turned out. I had good reviews from my friend Jacob, who I gave it to to share with his family. I already had so much cake at home, I really didn’t feel the need for more. Especially not one with raspberry jam in.. Not a big raspberry fan.

All in all though, I think this week went pretty well! Bring on more cakes please.

P.S. I REMEMBERED TO ACTUALLY TAKE PICTURES THIS WEEK AND I AM VERY PROUD OF MYSELF.

5. White Choc Chip Banana Muffins

August 05, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

When I asked my coworkers last week if they had any requests, I got a couple of quite specific and quite vague requests. One happened to mention they loved banana bread with walnuts, hint hint, nudge nudge. Another said they wanted everything (as long as it's not chocolate... unless it's white chocolate... please). Another asked for the chocolate espresso snowcaps again, which I happily provided (I love them too much not to fill that request).

So I thought about how I could best fill my coworkers' requests. I can't make a banana bread at the moment, because I don't have a loaf tin in the new place. And I don't especially like walnuts. I also couldn't make everything, due to logistical problems, such as, I had only the weekend and a limited amount of tupperware to store it in.

White chocolate chip banana muffins seemed the way to go.

They went down pretty well and certainly made the office happy, but I don't feel they've been my best bake. Still, who doesn't like some banana-y goodness in cake form?

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

4oz (115g) butter
4oz (115g) golden caster sugar
6oz (170g) self raising flour
2 eggs
1 banana, ripe or over ripe
3.5 oz (100g) white chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Cream together the butter and sugar.
Add in the eggs and the banana, either mashed or cut into small pieces (doesn't matter too much either way if you're using an electric mixer).
Add in the flour, then the chocolate chips and vanilla extract.
Line your muffin tray with muffin cases and divide it up until your cases are about 2/3 full.
Bake for 18-20 minutes.
Let cool and enjoy!

No pictures... I got too excited about eating them...

1. Pear Nutmeg Muffins

July 22, 2018 by Sophie Faulkner in Recipe

So, two weeks into living in my new place and I've barely picked up a mixing bowl. Pretty appalling really. I can try and excuse it by saying I've been settling into my new place, finding a temp job, exploring London life. But, I've had so much time in the evenings to bake and I haven't I've just been lazy. Which is kinda what you need sometimes. But anyway.

New place, new blog, new recipe.

Well, new recipe to me anyway.

The blog Pastry Affair is one of my favourite baking blogs out there. She's been at it for years. YEARS. Scrolling through her backlog is one of my favourite things to do. It's so so good. I've made stuff from her site before, but she's American, so sometimes I have to adapt a recipe from her original one, as we can't get some of that stuff here in the UK. For example, this recipe called for applesauce. Americans use applesauce as a spread on toast or in cakes or as a dessert. In the UK we use it as a sauce with roast pork. It's a bit different. So as I trawled the aisles of Tesco looking for applesauce and found two options. Apple sauce with cider vinegar or Apple sauce with sage and cider vinegar. Neither seemed like they would work. I even checked the baby food aisle for pureed apple, but there was nothing. So whilst these muffins don't follow the original recipe (which you can find here) they are still delicious.

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (200g) self-raising flour
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 cup (200g) light brown sugar
5 tbsp (70g) unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup (60ml) vegetable oil
3 tbsp (45ml) apple juice
1 conference pear, thinly sliced

Method

Preheat oven to 190C
Mix the melted butter, vanilla, sugar, apple juice, oil and eggs in a bowl until smooth and well combined.
Add in your flour a bit at a time, folding it in, and then add your nutmeg and salt.
Distribute the batter between 12 muffin cases.
Add your sliced pear pieces into the top of your batter (as below). If you can slice your pear thin enough you can try and shape them into roses, as I did for a couple (and sort of failed), or just stick them in.
Bake for 18-20 minutes until tops are golden brown and bounce back. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Some roses were more successful than others...

New place means a new oven, which meant that unfortunately I turned my temperature dial just a little too far. While still tasty, my muffins were browner than I'd meant for them to be. Oops.

For my first bake in the new place, these were pretty damn good. Hope you enjoy them!