Cakeaway

My sweet-toothed creations.

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Chocolate cupcakes with vanilla, cream cheese frosting (taken from a red velvet recipe) and decorated with little pink flowers.

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Lamb Burgers

500g lamb mince

1 white onion (chopped, fried and left to cool down)

2 cloves of garlic (crushed and fried with onion)

2-3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1 teaspoon powdered paprika

1 teaspoon powdered cumin

1 egg, beaten

Salt and pepper

Easy peasy, mix everything together (add the egg last), shape into 4 patties (mine are slightly oval in order to fit in baguette instead of buns) and whack into the oven at 180 degrees Celcius for about 25 minutes.

Watch out, because lamb releases a LOT of fat when it cooks, I had to take them out to drain the baking tray a couple of times. It would probably be better to grill these so the fat could drain off, but...I don't have a grill. Make sure to reduce the cooking time if you do this.

  For a mint yoghurt sauce, chop up some fresh mint and maybe some finely diced cucumber if you like, too. Stir it into plain yoghurt. Apply to burger. I also served the burgers with sliced tomato and lettuce. Cheese also always helps.

Home Chips

Normally these would be really easy, I just chop the potato up, season with salt, pepper and dried rosemary and whack them in the oven with too much oil to be remotely healthy. But I forgot I was making chips and was hungry so par-boiled the cut up potato for 10 minutes before putting them into the oven to reduce the cooking time. Apparently you can also do this by microwave and then fry them.

Make sure to leave the skin on! After being par-boiled, they took about 30 minutes to brown up in the oven, but if you do them from raw then they take up to an hour, depending on thickness. You will need to turn them over during this time.

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Root Vegetable Soups

So I know I'm meant to be blogging about sweet treats, but I am going to be posting some savoury creations too, from now on. As I adapt recipes I find so much, I need to be able to write down what I made in order to remember!

First up is soup, because I got a blender for Christmas. I went to Tesco and grabbed some fresh herbs and reduced vegetables so made these five portions of soup for £1.70! (excluding the onions which I already had). Great to bang in the freezer.

Parsnip and Coriander Soup

1 white onion - chop and fry until soft but not too brown

2 cloves of garlic - crush and fry with the onion

1 vegetable stock cube in 500ml boiling water

1 bag of parsnips (500g I think?! There were about 5) - cube and boil same as if you were just eating them.

10g fresh coriander (half a packet) - chopped

Salt and pepper for seasoning to taste

1-2 tsp paprika to taste (optional, I just added this to give it a bit more of a zing)

Root Vegetable and Coriander Soup

1 white onion - chop and fry until soft but not too brown

1 vegetable stock cube in 500ml boiling water

600g bag of "Tesco Fresh & Easy Root Vegetable for Mashing" (includes diced  carrot, swede and potato) - I pierced bag and microwaved for 7 minutes (less than indicated on the packet)

10g fresh coriander (half a packet) - chopped

Salt and pepper for seasoning to taste

For both of these soups, just blend everything together! Add more water to reach the consistency you prefer.

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Some better photos of my Chocolate Lava Cake.

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Chocolate Lava Cake (serves 3)

175g dark chocolate

25g unsalted butter

75g caster sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

25g plain flour

Cream or ice cream and a sprinkling of icing sugar to serve

It's melted in the middle! Unfortunately you can't see in this picture, but I wanted to eat it instead of take pictures half way through so...

EDIT: Here are some better pictures of take 2!

Melt the chocolate and leave to cool down.

Cream butter and sugar together.

Beat the eggs and add the vanilla to them.

Slowly mix into the butter/sugar mix along with the sifted flour and salt.

Stir in the cooled chocolate.

Pour into 3 WELL greased ramekins or dariole moulds (helps to put a circle of baking parchment in the bottom) and bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 10 to 15 minutes (depending on how you want the cakey vs. melty ratio).

tip out of the mould (if you greased it well enough, it will come out though you might have to run a knife around the sides), dust with icing sugar and garnish with your choice of cream or ice cream. Strawberries also work really well with this as well as a sprig of mint.

If you want to prepare the mix ahead of time (for example if you don't want to be faffing about during a nice dinner), you can refrigerate it. I did with this one, though I had to let the batter warm up a bit when I took it out the fridge as it went a bit solid!

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Gingerbread house: before and after.

This took me about three days! But it was well worth it for all the lovely feedback I had from friends and family. And, of course, eating it was a pretty good part too. Unfortunately, the 'before' photo is not that great as I had to take it on my phone.

This was made completely from scratch, without a kit or anything. I had to use my superior mathematics and engineering skills (HA) to make up my own template.

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Festive gingerbread biscuits iced with regalice, royal icing and edible glitter!

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CAKE AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3

Thanks for the name ;) I have yet to set up an ordering process though!

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Strawberry Cheesecake, adapted from a Hummingbird Bakery recipe.

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Banana and Cinnamon Cupcakes with Golden Syrup Buttercream

For the cupcakes:

2 large eggs 60g dark muscovado sugar 60g caster sugar 130g self raising flour 1 tsp baking powder 120g unsalted butter 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 1/2 bananas, mashed

For the buttercream

equal amounts unsalted butter and icing sugar 3 tbsp golden syrup 1/2 banana, sliced ground cinnamon, to sprinkle

I made mine large (almost muffin sized, due to the cases I had in the cupboard) which made 9 cupcakes, and took 20-25 minutes to cook at 180 degrees centigrade in a fan assisted oven.

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Four layer chocolate and sponge cake made for my boyfriend's 21st birthday a while back, decorated with chocolate icing, marbled blue regalice, white royal icing, mini marshmallows and regalice penguins.

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This is an Alice in Wonderland themed cake that I made for a cake competition at a university barbecue in June. The decoration could be a lot better, but I decorated it in about an hour, fairly hungover (having made the simple chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream, teapot and teacups the previous day). But it still won!

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Simple chocolate cupcake with buttercream icing (my first attempt at piping like this, so I need some more practice!) and a hand made regalice penguin.