Triple Caramel Rolo Cupcakes

Caramel, caramel and.... more caramel? Chocolate sponge with a caramel centre, topped with salted caramel buttercream and caramel sauce. And a rolo of course. 

Just look at that caramel. Look at that glistening, gooey sauce oozing from the rolo. Are you tempted? You're in the right place, my friends. This is caramel heaven! 

Meet your new favourite cupcakes! Fluffy and beautiful chocolatey sponge with a hidden caramel surprise inside and plenty of salted caramel buttercream swirls topped with no other than a runny drizzle of caramel sauce and a rolo. These could not be easier to make (once you get the easy peasy caramel sauce out of the way) but be warned: you will be nagged to make these all the time after they taste them!!

All you need for these cupcakes are some delicious chocolate cupcakes  (use your own tried and tested recipe or use my trusty recipe that I will provide at the end), some of my favourite salted caramel sauce, some basic buttercream and a whole load of rolos!

Rainbow Sugar Cookies

I had an overwhelming urge to bake sugar cookies this week. I have been ill and a bit miserable and I just knew a baking session would cheer me up, and of course I was right! Any kind of cookies cheer me up...

Whereas I usually roll out my sugar cookie dough and use cookie cutters to make cute shaped cookies that I decorate with royal icing, I decided to try something a bit different, more in line with how I make chocolate chip cookies. I rolled the dough into balls and rolled them in sprinkles before baking so they spread into puffy, fat cookies. I think I still personally prefer them rolled, cut and iced these were definitely an experiment worth making. And how cute are they?!

They are soft and cakey filled with sprinkle-rainbow goodness. They are also soooooo easy and quick to make, they take zero effort so they are just a dream to make on a lazy sunday like today!

Oreo Blondies

Soft and cakey blondies with a delicious, secret layer of whole Oreo cookies. Filled with a load of chocolate chips - this is a chocoholics dream!!

Every time I make blondies I am reminded of how much I love them. They always go down an absolute storm whoever I make them for! These one were especially popular because, lets be honest, who doesn't love Oreos? Martin cannot get enough of these!

I feel like the world has gone Oreo mad. The ridiculously huge range of Oreo flavours available, not to mention Oreo flavoured everything just shows our addiction. I personally don't like Oreos on their own, not one but. But I LOVE baking with them: they just make everything better.

As I've mentioned before, I love this blondie recipe because you can do absolutely anything with it. Check out my last blondie recipe here. I had a particular Oreo-bake craving last night and this seemed like the perfect, easy, whip-up-in-no-time option. Blondies don''t need any fancy equipment, ingredients or techniques, can be prepared in 10 minutes and baked in 30. Perfect to satisfy any sweet tooth that just won't wait!

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Fluffy and moist cupcakes flavoured with pumpkin puree and autumn spices topped with decadent, creamy cinnamon frosting. A must-bake for halloween!

Pumpkin spice just SCREAMS "winter is coming".
And I love it.

Pumpkin is absolutely dominating food blogs everywhere. Pumpkin muffins, pumpkin pie, pumpkin spice everything. I wanted to make my contribution! Complete with adorable, hand made tiny pumpkins to decorate, of course :)

I love baking with spice - ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, mixed spice,,, They transform a recipe beautifully and give a lovely warm, autumnal flavour. But I had never baked with pumpkin before so wasn't quite sure how it would turn out.  I was very very pleasantly surprised with this combination of flavours!

Gingerbread Cake

The perfect autumn cake - rich, moist and spicy. Drizzled with an orange icing for a beautifully sticky, indulgent treat.

This is one of my favourite recipes for a cake ever. Although I feel that it is a very autumnal cake, perfect for snuggling up with a cup of tea under a big, warm blanket I make this often throughout the year. The combination of golden syrup and brown sugar makes for a perfectly warm, rich flavour - just the right amount of sweetness to have a decent sized biiiigg piece and not feel guilty and sick. Slightly misleading though as it is by no means a healthy cake. Woops.

The beautiful spicy flavour comes from a combination of ginger and mixed spice. These compliment the other flavours and makes for a gorgeous treat to warm you up on a miserable day! The sticky top makes it feel oh-so naughty and adds a fruity, sweet edge. It is just ridiculously simple: icing sugar and orange juice, freshly squeezed or from concentrate, whatever you have to hand!

I made one for my family and friends at home which was gone in no time at all. I also took one into work which was received equally as well - everyone loved it! I don't think I have met a person who hasn't enjoyed this cake. A universally loved cake is a good cake, indeed :)

It's not the kind of cake you can whip up in 5 minutes like a vanilla sponge, it does take just a little bit more effort to cook the golden syrup and the butter then wait to cool etc. and it has quite a long ish bake time so it does need a bit of TLC but it is so so worth it!

Ingredients:

250g self raising flour, sifted

4 heaped tsp ground ginger

1 heaped tsp mixed spice

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

225g golden syrup

125g light brown sugar

2 eggs

250ml milk

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160c and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

2. Pour the golden syrup and butter into a small. heavy bottomed saucepan and warm gently before adding the sugar. Let it bubble away for a minute or so until it looks like this then remove from the heat.

3. While the syrup mixture is cooling, mix the flour, ginger, spice, baking powder and soda together in a large bowl. Once is it cooled, make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour in the syrup. Mix until fully combined.

4. Gently beat the eggs and milk together and add to the mixture stirring until a runny, pour-able concistency is reached. Pour into the cake tin.

5. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave it to set and cool slightly in the tin before turning it out and adding a topping.

6. This cake would be delicious with sooo many toppings: a syrupy butter, cream cheese frosting even vanilla buttercream! I personally enjoy simple orange icing drizzled generously over the top. Add a splash of orange juice to a few teaspoons of icing sugar and mix together thoroughly and pour over the top while still slightly warm. 

Teri x

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Cute Dinosaur Cake!

Happy 21st Birthday, Lindsey!

How cute is this little guy?? I have been looking forward to posting this cake all week. She has been starring at me from the kitchen counter, her little face sitting on top of her now half-body. Believe it or not, I baked this cake for my wonderful housemate Lindsey's 21st birthday this week. Although it may seem more suited to a slightly younger birthday, Lindsey loves dinosaurs and yellow so this cake was born! 

I was excited to actually have an excuse to decorate a cake again and just have fun. I adore decorating cakes, it's by far my favourite part of baking. But since I started this blog it has somewhat taken a back seat to leave time for developing new recipes and flavours for you. So I fully embraced this opportunity and hoped to produce a perfect cake for my lovely friend! 

She absolutely loved the cake so I think it was a job well done! Everyone else who has seen it has it has also been majorly impressed - clearly not realising it is much easier than it looks! I honestly believe even a complete baking/decorating novice could produce this cake with just a little patience and practice. So here is a guide for how to make this adorable little dinosaur. This is a long post with a lot of instructions but read them through once before you start!

Salted Caramel Stuffed Cookies

Soft, chewy cookies filled with a layer of gooey, rich salted caramel. Cookie, chocolate, caramel... Yum.

If you read my last blog post about salted caramel sauce you will have read my high praise for my latest cookies and no doubt been waiting eagerly for their reveal... Well wait no longer, here they are!
My favourite cookie recipe of all time adapted to include another one of my mega-favourites: salted caramel!! One big ball of chilled caramel wrapped in a bigger ball of cookie dough! When the cookie spreads in the oven so does the caramel layer. Can you even imagine?! Especially if you enjoy these warm out of the oven, the caramel layer oozes out and is super gooey. Of course the cookie itself cannot be overlooked, it is still delicious, soft and chewy and big and fat! The only way a cookie should be.

Salted Caramel Sauce

Easy-peasy, salty-sweet, super delicious salted caramel sauce. Heaven!

After another week of mediocre and failed bakes it's safe to say I have been disheartened and just fed up. I just couldn't see how I could keep this blog going and keep up with developing and posting recipes when my oven is so damned crap. It just seems to destroy anything that goes into it! I have seen 3 batches of cookies go into the bin along with 2 batches of choux pastry and NEARLY a whole Victoria sponge.

But persistence is key, my friend! I have just had to sit and watch my cakes like a hawk turning them round every 5 minutes or so so they don't burn on one side and have had to ditch the baking tray for cookies - resulting in some very odd shapes indeed! And this weekend I had a successful batch of cookies (successful is an understatement - they were heaven), chocolate cupcakes and vanilla cake. Hooray! 

Lemon Drizzle and Sprinkle Cake

Everyone's favourite classic cake. Sticky and super sweet with luscious lemon in every bite. Drizzled with syrup and sprinkled with coconut - a perfect teatime treat!

I have sooo many autumn recipes planned for this month (think apples, caramel, pumpkin and cinnamon... oh my) but this cake is my final "goodbye" to summer before welcoming these autumn months with open arms. If I had to explain summer in a flavour; sharp, sweet, colourful citrus fruits and all their beautiful goodness would be the only choice. A far cry from the aromatic spices and rich flavours of autumn. So what better way to wrap up summer and my first season of blogging (yay!) with the most citrus-y cake around with some coconut sprinkled in for good measure? I truly love the idea of just simply pouring a big vat of syrup over a cake to fill it with even more flavour and moisture to produce a wonderfully flavoursome but light cake that can easily be eaten in one sitting (no judgement from me... it is good). The coconut flakes also add some texture to this recipe, a little bit of bite to this super soft and sticky treat!