Food of Love

I don't celebrate Valentines day. It's not that I hate it, it usually doesn't even register to be honest. At least not until my facebook timeline is full of picture of flowers and champagne. Perhaps we are a scrooge of a couple but we're pretty happy whatever we are and V-day happens to fall a couple of days after my boyfriends birthday so it's still a social week :)


This year however, I was distinctly aware of Valentines day as I have been making Valentines cakes for about a month. And I must admit it was fun - I enjoy coming up with ideas for themed cakes. However when it came to getting back to my baking I was sick of all the pink hearts and sickly buttercream. So I decided that what truly spreads love is bread. Everyone loves bread, even if they pretend not to or, like me, try to avoid it for the sake of an expanding waistline, deep down we all want bread and we want it fresh and warm form the oven. And the best way to share the bread love is clearly a tear and share loaf.


I found this on www.shecookssheeats.co.uk which a great little blog written by Amy Jones (@jimsyjampots) and you can find the recipe here. It was originally made by Jason (@itschefjae) from the second series of the Great British Bake Off who I believe now works in Brixton Village so I am mega jealous of him!


Jason recipe called for each roll to be filled with fried red onion and grated cheddar. We rarely have cheese in the fridge but had just had enough to sprinkle on the top, so inside the rolls I used cream cheese with garlic and herbs. This provided a lovely creamy centre to the rolls.





When proving for the second time the bread didn't rise nearly as much as it should have which was disappointing. I'm not sure whether this was because our flat is so cold or because I had knocked it back to much/kneaded it too much or not enough. I put the dough in a warmer places and it rose a bit more. The bread was tasty but I think the bake was too close. I really need to read up more about bread-making and would absolutely love to do some kind of course in it so that I am able to make the perfect loaf!

But the most important part of this recipe is to enjoy with friends and loved ones :)

Salted Caramel Cupcake Recipe

A while ago my boyfriend posted a guest blog about making salted caramel cupcakes and I promised you the recipe (you can find his post HERE). I then proceeded to forget about this promise so apologies and here is it, finally:

Recipe: 

200g caster sugar                                                          200g softened butter 

2 eggs                                                                             200g self-raising flour 

2 tsp baking powder                                                       a tin of caramel 

salt                                                                                  533g icing sugar 

166g butter                                                                     40 ml milk 

• Cream together the caster sugar and butter. Whisk in the eggs one at a time.  

• Fold in the self-raising flour and baking powder until well combined (but be careful not to overmix, especially is using an electric mixer. 

• Gently stir in 1 tablespoon of caramel (I use the Carnation tinned stuff) and about 1/4 teaspoon of salt. 

*You can add the caramel and salt to taste but be careful of adding too much caramel as it will affect the consistency of the cake and how it bakes.

• Divide the mixture between 12 cupcake cases. I use an ice cream scoop so that all the cakes are even bt otherwise just fill to case to about 2/3 full. 

• Bake for 20 minutes then remove from the oven and allow to cool. 

• Once the cakes are completely cool, remove the center and fill with the caramel. I have a little device to remove the centers but you can also use a small circle cutter. 

• The buttercream is best made with some kind of electric mixer. You can of course do it by hand and I used to but you just can't get it as fluffy. Mix the icing sugar, butter and milk for about 5 minutes and then add the caramel and salt to taste. 

• Pipe the buttercream onto the cakes and decorate with some glitter and either a piece of dime bar or a shard of caramel. 

**When I make these in the shop I use dime bars as they are quicker and easier but I really like the effective of the shards of caramel. To make this heat 250g caster sugar and 1 tablespoon of water in a heavy based pan over a low heat. Do not stir and heat until it turns to a dark amber colour and reaches the hard crack stage. Pour on to a greased baking paper and allow to cool. Once cool you can break into pieces to decorate the cupcakes.

Farewell Brixton

I am a bad blogger. I haven't blogged properly in two months now and that makes me sad. I have really missed it but a combination of my commute, working hours and moving house left me exhausted and with little time to bake outside of work - let alone blog about it. I am not a natural writer (as you can probably tell!) so sitting down to blog takes me a while .

The last cake made in my small South London kitchen was rather a stressful affair. For some reason I agreed to make a birthday cake for someone the day before we moved so once again I worked away into the early hours of the morning this time in a kitchen that had been packed away into cardboard boxes! I was clearly suffering from sleep deprivation as I even managed to forget about one of the layers of cake but I think I got away with it being a two rather than three layer cake!

The cake was for a horse riding party so, perhaps inadvisable, I attempted to model a horse from sugarpaste. As I think I have mentioned before, modelling and cake decorating in general are not really my 'thing' and what I ended up with was a rather stocky creature! The brown sugarpaste I used was actually chocolate flavoured and it didn't seem to dry out as well as normal sugarpaste so I think I might avoid it in future.

I was relatively happy with how it turned out although in my sleepy state I forgot to take any decent photos of it. However there are a few things I would do differently if I was to make the cake again..... At first I thought I would cover the board in white and then the cake in green but as I was covering a 12" board I decided to cover the cake and board together to save sugarpaste. And as I could buy white sugarpaste in larger quantities (and therefore cheaper) I decided to opt for covering the whole thing in white. In retrospect I wish I had gone for green. I also would have made a jump and piped grass with royal icing (I actually tried this but I was without a stand mixer and had broken my decent hand whisk so was using a cheap and frankly useless replacement which would not do the job and ended up in the bin!)

Inside the cake was this simple and moist chocolate cake. I use this so often now that I now the recipe off by heart and the addition of melted chocolate in the buttercream really makes the difference.

500g plain flour
100g cocoa powder
700g caster sugar
7.5 tsp baking powder
200g butter/margarine
5 eggs
600ml whole milk

Mix together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and margarine. If using a stand mixer, make sure it is mixed well through to the bottom - it may even be worth getting stuck in with your hands! Whisk together the eggs and milk and add very gradually to the flour mixture whilst mixing constantly. Once it is all well mixed pour into a lined tin (I used a 10" round but actually think that 8" would be ideal) and bake at 150C. Check the cake after an hour but it may need a bit longer...

Once it is cooked, leave to cool and then cut in half and fill with this buttercream:

625g icing sugar
80g cocoa powder
200g softened butter
80ml whole milk
100g plain chocolate

Heat up the milk and melt the chocolate in it. Whisk it together with the rest of the ingredients for about 5 minutes until well mixed and fluffy. Fill and cover the cake and enjoy :)

So that was my 'so long for now' bake to the little corner of South London which I have come to love - Brixton, I will be back. But for now I have a pretty new kitchen complete with digital scales, a stand mixer, lots more baking tins and an live-in baking buddy so 2013 promises to be a pretty good year!

Goodbye 2012....

I have neglected this poor blog over the last month. Christmas crept up on me and I was spectacularly unprepared for it. My decision to make a lot of my Christmas presents and all of the tree decorations and cards proved to be a time consuming one! So when I wasn't making Christmas cupcakes at work I was baking, sewing, cutting and sticking - it was very great fun but I certainly never felt on top of things!

So although I had a wonderful Christmas, my resolution this year is to be better prepared for the next festive period. Here's just a little bit of what I got up to:

Amongst all this mayhem I agreed to make a birthday cake for my boyfriends younger cousin. She was having a 'Water Walkerz' pary and wanted a swimming pool birthday cake. ( I hasn't heard to water walkerz but it turns out to be an amazing place where you go in a giant hamster ball on water!). Cake decorating is not so much my 'thing' and I've not done modelling before, certainly not people so this was a challenge! Due my schedule of going back home to my parents for Christmas the cake (chocolate) was baked at my flat and then transported to my parents. It suffered somewhat from the journey so the cake wasn't as structurally sound as I would have liked.

The decorating process then started at about midnight; never a good omen when you have to leave to deliver it on your way to work at 5.30am! I made my usual chocolate buttercream and then melted 100g of dark chocolate and 100g of milk chocolate with a little milk and whisked it in. This created a really gooey chocolate cake without being too rich for children.

This was also the first time I had covered a cake and board all in one as opposed to covering the board first. Things were made difficult by the fact that I had forgotten My rolling pin, letters cutters and food colours amongst other things! But eventually, and with a little help from my mum, it got finished and I got a few hours sleep!

Happy 2013!

Guest Blog : Accidental Baking Champion

This is my first guest blog and something a bit different :) I will publish the recipe shortly but for now hear from a baker's better half....

'As the end of 2011 approached, my girlfriend boldly announced her new year's resolutions every couple of days (I think, to make sure we couldn't forget them and could hold her to account). One of those resolutions was to start a baking blog. I've known Ruth since 2008 and she's always spoken about wanting to have cafe, specifically to have a cafe specialising in sweet, baked, deliciousness. Countless times she has presented me with her creations; marvelous cakes, dainty macaroons, crumbly biscuits, warming tarts and of course the dazzling cupcakes. It's hard work having to try and keep it all off the waistline, but I know (trust me - I really do know) how hard she works to make everything she does the best it can be, as all skilled perfectionists do. I'm very proud of her and when she got her current job as a full time baker I was really overjoyed. It's boosted her confidence massively and given her a great new lease of life so thanks for being part of that and reading her blog!

All that said - I have NO idea why she does it. I understand I'm guesting on a baking blog here, but I really don't get what makes people bake. The mess, the time, the stress...it's mental! With that I think i should get on and talk about my own baking experience, what took me there, and where I'm going with it now (I think you can already guess that part).

A few weeks ago one of those pan-office emails went out about "The Great *************** Bake-Off". It was around the time The great British Bake-Off was in full swing, and was being arranged by one of the sales team. It invited everybody from the 150 strong events staff to submit a bake of any kind that would be judged, with prizes to be awarded in the following categories:

- Best Looking Bake
- Most Original Bake
- Best Technical Bake
- Best Overall Bake (I think this is a sort of judgment on general pretty/yumminess)

Our team, which sits seperately from most of the company briefly discussed entering. For no other reason than I thought it would be lazy not to, seeing as I know, oh too well, how our cupboards are clogged with all the ingredients and instruments i could possibly need, I piped up, declaring that I would enter and make some cupcakes. Of course, this initial verbal commitment didn't actually mean that I'd do it (or so I thought). So I went about repeating it and thought that eventually I'd just casually make up a reason that I couldn't. However, as it drew closer i realised that I was now in danger of letting people down, particularly the three ladies I work closest with, who were not going to let me off.

So, now comfortable with actually having to do it, I decided on Salted Caramel cupcakes, which Ruth had given me a few weeks earlier and were just delicious. Ruth had some caramel left over from being a prop at her latest market stall and the rest of the general cakey-ness was all in the house already so I didn't even have to go shopping - amazing!

The bake-off judging was on a Friday morning so the Thursday night before I settled down and began following Ruth's recipe to the book. I've not baked, let alone written about it before so my style might be a bit unorthodox but here we go:

MIXING - Fun Rating 6/10

I took sugar and butter (equal weights) and sort of mashed them together which took a little while but was strangely pleasurable. Then I put in some eggs and was left with a yellow mixture. I sieved in flour until it looked like cake mixture. Then I added a tin of caramel and salted the mixture to taste. I wasn't sure what it was supposed to taste like - but I just put in quite a lot of salt and it sort of always tasted good so I thought it would be okay.

SPOONING - Fun Rating 5/10

I spooned the mix into regular cupcake tins. I enjoyed trying to make sure they were all the same size but Ruth didn't seem to think it mattered.

BAKING - Fun Rating 2/10

This doesn't really involve doing anything, except for remembering when to take the cakes out which I did quite well. The oven was around 170 degrees C. Whilst I did that I made the salted caramel buttercream to ice the cakes with.

MIXING THE ICING - Fun Rating N/A

This was by far the worst bit. I had to cream some butter which actually was just a bit frustrating and quite painful. Once that was done, I had to add icing sugar, using and electric whisk to mix it all together. Again, I added a tin of caramel and salted the icing to taste. This was a terrible job as the whisk just chucked icing all over me every now and again.

FILLING - Fun Rating 6/10

I punched some holes in the cakes (which had cooled first) using a little device that Ruth has. Again, she mentioned i didn't have to be so precise but I actually thought that was quite fun. I filled the holes with yet more caramel, to give the cupcakes a delicious "melty" centre.

ICING - Fun Rating 7/10

I piped the icing onto the cupcakes and though it took me a while to get used to the required technique, I eventually managed to make them all look pretty good (in my opinion!). This was enjoyable because I was allowed to be precise. I sprinkled some edible glitter on the top and broke up some DIME bars to place on the top, sticking up jaggedly.

I boxed up the cakes and took them to work in the morning. To my surprise, people were genuinely shocked and many thought I'd just bought them from Hummingbird or something. I actually had a meeting that morning in St Pauls so I had to leave the office and walked there because it was a really nice day. I tubed back to the office and when I arrived I was desperate for the loo so I went into the Gents. A workmate came in as I was washing my hands and blithely announced that I'd just missed "my presentation'. I asked if I'd won something and he announced I'd won "Best Cake or something".

I was pretty pleased to have won, and when I went to the part of the office where people had gathered to purchase the goods (this was a charity bake off of course!) I quickly had it confirmed that I'd won Best Overall Bake. I was presented with a framed certificate (now proudly displayed on my desk) and generally with the congratulations and good-will of the office. It was a bit weird because I had never baked before but now I'd actually baked something good and been recognised!

Of course, now I get to the part of the blog about where I'll be taking my baking from now on. To be honest, I don't really want to bake again, It turned out that none of my team had actually got any of my cakes as they'd been hoovered up too quickly. So I made them some more the week after the bake-off (exactly the same) but this was more stressful and less enjoyable than the first time and that is enough for me.

I love Ruth's baking and she will always be able to provide me with doughy sweetness so I feel no burden to continue or develop my skills. If you are an amateur or professional baker, hats off to you. Not only do you create delicious food but I know from experience you do it even though it's hard and boring!

Thanks for reading, and for supporting Mixing Bowl Magic!'

J is for Jazzies

I love Jazzies. They seem kind of kitsch and retro and they remind me of being a kid! What's not to love about something that transports you back to the excitement of sprinkles?! Oh and they're chocolate :)

One of the most popular cupcakes at the shop is the 'Jazzy Marble'. It's a marble cake with two tone buttercream and Jazzies on top and it flies of the shelves and into bellies :)

I had some chocolate cupcakes left over from baking the Halloween cake so I decided to create giant Jazzies in cake form for this month's Alphabakes challenge.

I piped a large blob of chocolate frosting onto each cupcake. I then dipped each cupcake into a bowl of sprinkles. Move the cupcake around in the bowl until most of the top if the cupcake is covered. You can then use the palm of your hand to smooth the sprinkles and make sure all the cake is covered. To finish it off I used a little bit of the buttercream to stick a white Jazzy on top of the cupcake.

A very simple idea but I think actually rather effective and tasty :)

Alphabakes is hosted by Caroline Makes and The More Than Occassional Baker and November's host is Caroline from Caroline Makes.

A life of cupcakes....

It's now almost two months since I took a considerable pay cut and acquired an early morning commute out of London to bake cupcakes for a living. It has been a big change, I am very tired and my figure is fast deteriorating as I struggle to eat well and rarely get to the gym. It is a struggle financially and I will be sad to leave the little patch of south London which we have come to love. However all this is more than worth it to do something I love!

Before I started this job I had never covered a cake in fondant icing, in fact I rarely worked with sugarpaste at all. My focus has always been on flavours rather than decoration as you can probably tell if you've read my blog!

Since starting this job I have covered 4 celebration cakes, not to mention countless giant cupcakes; I have made first wedding cake (which was the first fruit cake I had ever made!) as well as wedding cupcake towers for every weekend I've been there. I've made my first cupcake bouquets, made 1000+ cupcakes in a day (same day as the wedding cake!) and even taught myself to make sugarpaste roses.

I'm so excited to improve on what I have learnt and develop new skills. I would love to do some kind of course so that I can get some real training but at the moment I am trying to teach myself as much as possible and learn from those around me.

Here are some examples of what I've been up to:

I want to say that two months ago I would never have imagined that I could have this job. Taking these leaps are not easy and I realise that I am fortunate in that I am young and have no mortgage or children to worry about so the risk was lower. But this whole experience has opened my eyes opportunities there are out there. I'm not special and I haven't always had the attitude of 'you can do whatever you want'; I just decided to go for it. And to be honest if it wasn't for the people around me who saw it a lot clearer than I did, I probably would have been brave enough - I am very lucky :)