Norwegian Apple Cake

Ahhh, I'm finished with my essays (and my degree!) so it's time for some guilt-free blogging about a not-so-guilt-free cake. It's got apple in it though so...consider that one of your five-a-day?

Unlike the cheesecake last week, this recipe is very familiar to me, one that I make fairly often. It's a recipe that my mum has been making for years and that I've been making since I came to uni. It's REALLY easy and a real crowd-pleaser.

So here it is, my Norwegian Apple Cake!

Ingredients:
2 eggs

225g caster sugar

100g butter

150ml milk

175g plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

3-4 Bramley Cooking Apples (this is what the recipe in the book says but I tend to use two or three of any apples I have lying around, this time: Pink Lady apples!)

- Line, or grease and flour a 20 x 30 cm roasting tin.

- Whisk eggs and 200g sugar together until thick and creamy, and whisk leaves a trail when lifted up.

- Put butter and milk into a pan.

- Bring to the boil, and stir, still boiling, into the egg mixture.

- Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold carefully into the mixture until there are no lumps.

- Pour the mixture into the greased or lined roasting tin.

- Heat the oven to 200C, 400F, or Gas Mark 6.

- Peel, core and slice apples, and arrange them over mixture.

- Sprinkle with remaining sugar. 

- Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes until well risen and golden brown.

- Cool in tin.

- Enjoy!

I made this cake on a whim. It was the night before my essays were due, I was beginning to freak out because they were done, printed and I had nothing else to do. "I'm free," I said. "I could do anything, read a non-course book, watch a film, bake a cake. A cake. I could bake a cake!" Within the hour I'd run to Sainsbury's for butter, made the cake mix, cut the apples and had the cake in and out of the oven.  This kind of thing is perfect if you're in a rush or want something that doesn't need decorating since the apples do that for you!

 You should definitely make this. For me. Cheers!

White chocolate and raspberry cheesecake

For this little blog of mine, I'd like to think I'll update it once, maybe twice a week...it kind of depends on how the whole I'm-unemployed-after-Tuesday thing goes...* This week I wanted to make something quick and delicious to help feed the brains of my hosuemates and I as we power through our final year essays and exams.
It also happens that a food website I follow, Sorted Food, are running a competition involving making something from their long list of recipes in order to win a sexy Kenwood kMix triblade. So that's an excuse to bake AND potentially win something pretty for my kitchen. I'm. So. In.

The other week they made an AMAZING looking white chocolate and blueberry cheesecake which looked divine and definitely fits the bill as something quick and delicious.

Having loads raspberries in the freezer, I decided to use them instead of blueberries but, other than that, I was faithful to the recipe and it delivered. Oh man, did it deliver. The recipe is straight from the Sorted Food website and I highly recommend that you go there and have a look around and watch their video, buuut, for the sake of the pretty pictures I took, here's how I did it.

Ingredients:

 For the base:

150g hobnob biscuits

70g melted butter

For the filling:

500g of white chocolate

50g butter

200ml double cream

500g cream cheese

1tsp vanilla essence

caster sugar

250g raspberries (or whatever fruit you like!)

To make the base:

- Crush the biscuits into whatever consistency you prefer. Some people like it super fine, some like the odd chunk here and there. We left chunks!

- Melt the 70g of butter on the hob and add to the biscuit crumbs

- Stir until all of the crumbs are coated in butter before pressing into whatever is going to hold your cheesecake. We went for an 8 inch-ish glass dish, but the Sorted guys use dinky little ramekins. 

- Put the biscuit base in the fridge for it to set.

- Meanwhile, put the rest of the butter, the caster sugar and the white chocolate into a glass bowl or jug and place that into a saucepan with simmering water in it.

- Keep stirring as the chocolate, butter and sugar will all melt together gently.

- When it's melted, let it cool for a few minutes.
- While you wait, whisk together the cream cheese and double cream until smooth
- Add the slightly cooled chocolate mix with a teaspoon of vanilla essence and mix it again until it's smooth.
- Add the fruit to your mixture and stir it gently so that it's evenly dispersed but has not dyed your cheesecake mixture pink!

- Pile this on top of the chilled biscuit base

- Leave it to set for as long as possible...we managed about 45 minutes before we caved.
- Use any remaining raspberries to decorate and serve!

Just...just look at it. So. Good. And having made it just the afternoon, I think it's pretty much all gone now. My only slight issue with the recipe was that there wasn't enough biscuit crumbs for the base, so next time I make it I'll probably use 200-250g of hobnobs instead.

My chances of winning with kMix are slim but nevertheless, I'm so glad I tried this recipe! I'll definitely be trying it (and others from Sorted) again.


*Yep, deadline is the 15th, and I'm writing this on the 12th. My procrastination abilities amaze even me sometimes.

How'd-ya-do, how'd-ya-do, how'd-ya-do...

The date is the 9th May 2012 and the deadline for my final-year university essays is the 15th of May.

SO HERE I AM.

I'm starting this baking blog as I mean to continue: by prioritising it over everything else in my life.

This has been a long-time coming, I've been uploading pictures of the things I bake onto facebook for a few months now and I'm getting genuinely concerned at the amount of people who are telling me to stop it because my facebook feed makes them hungry. 

So rather than do that, I'm going to dump my bakes on you, little blog. This is going to be where I record recipes I like, cakes that I'm proud of, disasters that make me laugh etc etc. Baking is getting to be what I want to do for a living, too, so what's the harm in using this as a CV of sorts?I'll begin this thing with some photos of cakes I've made in the last year or so that I particularly like...

Candy Cane Cupcakes from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book. These are just vanilla sponge with a peppermint buttercream.

My first real go with ready-to-roll icing. I made this for a housemate's birthday!

 Aaaand the day after that I went from the innocent Little Miss Sunshine to some slightly more debaucherous boob-cakes, made using a normal sponge recipe baked in a Christmas Pudding mould.

Some cupcakes I made with my best friend - they've been done a million times but they make everyone smile.

Okay, enough. I'm going to sleep so I can write these essays, so I can get a decent degree, so I can land a half-decent job, so I can save money, so I can do something that my English Literature degree is irrelevant for: buying a shop and selling cakes in it.