so i bake stuff sometimes

I'm a girl who loves baking and attended pastry school in London for 2 years. So, here are the things I bake (or occasionally just eat) instagrammed and commented on for my reference, and your pleasure.

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Apple cake! Simple and delicious. The recipe is HERE.

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pokemon donuts!

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クリスマスケーキ🍰

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It's been ages since I posted, huh. That's because I moved back to Japan for work😌 My tiny Tokyo apartment doesn't have an oven so I can't really bake right now, but I DO go out to eat cute bakes pretty often, Japan being the land of cute. Just check out these Halloween soufflé pancakes I had last weekend!👀

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Cinnamon Bun Day 2022

Obviously I couldn’t miss my favourite day of the year...

I whipped up a mini batch of just four rolls the night before October 4th, using a Japanese recipe from Youtube for some no-knead apple bread. I just swapped a cinnamon-sugar-butter mixture for the apples.

It actually worked, and they’re pretty tasty! Slapped at bit of sweetened cream cheese on top of one, and with a cup of coffee it was a perfect start to the day. 

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Profiterole “cake”

So it was both my parents’ birthdays over the weekend, and my mum requested profiteroles. As far as I’m concerned a birthday needs a CAKE, so I switched things up a bit and made a big choux pastry ring topped with profiteroles to make it a bit more cake-like.

The ring was filled with vanilla pastry cream and whipped cream, and the profiteroles were filled with cream. Everything was topped with a dark chocolate ganache and sprinkles. Not forgetting the birthday candles!

It was sooo good. Profiteroles are one of my favourite desserts and even though this admittedly looks a little rustic it tasted like heaven.

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Speculoos Coffee Ice Cream

Okay....this might be my new favourite ice cream flavour!! Coffee and speculoos (yes Lotus Biscoff is the brand here but I prefer to say speculoos.... I don't like the word "biscoff" ok) are two of my most loved dessert flavours, so combining them in ice cream form had to happen! Honestly I don’t know why the company doesn’t make this flavour ice cream themselves because you literally eat these biscuits with coffee anyway because it’s the perfect combo! But I digress. I've seen some 'easy ice cream' recipes floating around lately where you just whip cream and condensed milk together, then add any extras and freeze - no churning required. It sounded too good to be true, but it really works!

I just whipped 500ml whipping cream and about 1/2 a can of condensed milk together, scooped maybe 1/3 out and added espresso to that part, then added a packet of crushed lotus biscuits (the sandwiched kind for added goodness!) to the other 2/3. I swirled it all together so it was like coffee ripple and put it in a couple of tupperware to freeze, saving 2 biscuits for decorating the top.

It was so easy and SO incredibly good, I would definitely make it again!

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Lemon Birthday Cake

Here's a cute little birthday cake I whipped up a while back, the night before it was needed! It was a last-minute thing so maybe not my finest work, but I kinda like how the piped flower decoration turned out.

Innards shot! It was a lemon yoghurt cake (sorry but I cannot for the life of me remember which recipe I used), split and sandwiched with buttercream and lemon curd, iced with more buttercream. It was pretty delicious too if I do say so myself.

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Butterfly Buns

I recently had the urge to make a British children's party classic: butterfly buns! Was it even a party growing up without some of these on the table? Not for me.

It had been ages since I last had one, but they were as good as I remember! I definitely won’t be waiting so long to make them again. The recipe I used is here.

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Lemon Cream Roll

Made this lemon cream roll cake for Easter lunch yesterday. It was really easy, just a basic swiss roll sponge (I used this recipe) that I baked the night before, rolled up with whipped cream and lemon curd inside. Divine!

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Strawberry Macarons

I made a batch of strawberry macarons for my aunt's birthday!

I think the more I make them the easier it gets. I always follow this recipe, which is easy to follow and gives lots of details and tips that really help! Whipping the egg whites to the right stiffness, folding them into the sugar/almond mix until it's exactly the right consistency for piping the cookies.... there's a lot that can go wrong, so practice definitely makes perfect better. These ones actually came out great, and my aunt really loved them! I coloured the shells a pale pink and sandwiched them with buttercream and strawberry jam.

So cute!

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Raspberry cheesecake pancakes

Happy Pancake Day!!

I made raspberry cheesecake pancakes this morning and they were AMAZING. I used a pretty basic pancake recipe but tried making them slightly more healthy and filling by subbing half the white flour with oat flour, and using skyr + a bit of water instead of milk (higher protein ya know?). Layered some pancakes with a cream cheese/raspberry jam mixture plus extra raspberries, then served them with chocolate sauce and whipped cream........heaven. These pancakes were so good, they satisfied even MY crazy sweet tooth and kept me full until past lunchtime (+ thru my morning workout✌️)!

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Custard Toast

So I've been seeing this thing called "custard toast" everywhere recently and it looked so yummy and easy that I gave it a try this morning!

Basically you whisk some yoghurt (I had skyr), an egg, some vanilla and sugar (or honey) together, and then spoon this onto 2 pieces of bread that've been flattened a bit in the centre. Then top with some fruit, and oven bake a few minutes until set.

I used blueberries and raspberries and it tasted really good! Made a great weekend breakfast. Using brioche instead of regular bread would be even better, I think...

Full recipes and instructions are all over insta/tiktok if you want to try this!

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バナナケーキ

Had some ripe bananas to use, so I made a quick banana cake...

I decided to try out this Japanese recipe I found online because 1) it looked cute (I didn’t want a loaf like most banana cakes/breads are), 2) it used small quantities and I didn’t want be left with a huge amount of cake and 3) Japanese recipes tend to be less sweet than Western ones, and I wasn’t in the mood for anything too rich.

The recipe was easy and fit my 15cm round tin perfectly. And more importantly it tasted good! The only thing I’d change is that next time I’d bake it for a bit less than the 40-45 minutes it says. Maybe my oven runs hot because it was slightly overdone.

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Christmas cake 2021

I finally decorated our family Christmas cake today! It's mainly my dad that eats it, and he isn't a fan of fondant icing, so this year rather than wasting icing that won't get eaten I only used marzipan to cover and decorate the cake.

Marzipan is naturally kinda yellow so the colours and designs I could use were bit limited (no snowmen or snowflakes!)... so I kept it simple, using a bit of red colouring, my trusty Swedish elk cutter and making some sprigs of holly. I think it came out nicely! I mean look at it...

Not as fancy as a lot of the Christmas cakes out there, but cute and definitely unique!😅

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Gingerbread Men

It’s bonfire night....which in MY house means we eat gingerbread men.

I made a small batch of them today that will probably be mostly eaten tomorrow, since we’re going to take them to a fireworks display to snack on as we watch.

I’ll put the recipe here since there’s no link - it’s one I’ve adapted a lot over the years and made my own. It makes a delicious, SUPER crunchy biscuit (I think it was originally a gingerbread house recipe, which explains why they are very....structurally sound). 

GINGERBREAD MEN

200g plain flour

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground ginger

80g salted butter

20g caster sugar

45g dark brown sugar

2 1/2 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat your oven to 190c/170c fan.

Melt the butter, sugars and golden syrup together in a pan.

Sift the flour, bicarb and ginger into a bowl.

Add the melted butter mixture into the flour and mix to make a dough.

Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking paper (otherwise it’ll stick to your surface and/or rolling pin), then stamp out your men. how many you get will depend on the size of your cutter. I usually get around 7 large or 14 smallish men out of this quantity of dough.

Put the biscuit shapes on a lined baking tray, and bake for 8 or 9 minutes.

Cool for a few minutes on the tray before transferring to a wire rack to cool. Devour!

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Coconut Macaroons

I had a couple of egg whites that needed using so I googled some potential recipes and decided to whip up a few coconut macaroons... Dipped and drizzled in dark chocolate they are YUMMY and so easy to make.

I used this recipe if you want to try it!