A day of baking with my little sister

I've come back home from uni for Easter and me and my little sister decided to spend a day doing some scrummy baking! My mum bought me some new silicone cupcake cases and I decided to put them to good use by making marbled cupcakes, smarties cookies and layered banoffee cupcakes for my family and my collegues at Smugglers Adventure Caves.

Banoffee Cupcakes

These are delicious layered cupcakes. The cupcakes are banana flavoured, and once cooked are sliced into three tiers with toffee and thinly sliced bananas inside, topped off with chocolate.

Ingredients:

90g softened butter

110g brown sugar

2 eggs

75g plain flour

75g self-raising flour

1-2 overripe mashed bananas

2 tablespoons if milk

1/3 cup of cream

(optional) 1/2 tsp mixed spice

75g dark or milk chocolate

sliced bananas

1/2 tin of condensed milk (for the toffee/caramel)

1. Preheat the oven to 180degrees (160degrees if fan assisted oven)

2. Beat the butter, sugar and eggs together in a medium mixing bowl. You can use an electric whisk, or by hand until the mixture is light an fluffy.

3. Sift the flour into the mixture, and mix together, along with the mashed banana, cream and milk.

4. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes depending on how large the cupcakes are. Then remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

5. Remove the cakes from their cases (very easy with the silicone cases! they just pop right out!)

6. Cut the cakes horizontally into three slices. Reconstruct the cakes layering the toffee and thinly sliced bananas in between the tiers.

7. Top the cupcakes with chocolate and if you like a few chocolate shavings.

Not only did we make the gorgeously indulgent banoffee cupcakes, we also made some marbled cupcakes with a basic cake mix which we split into two bowls, dyed one with a few drops of red food dye and the other half with cocoa powder. We then baked them in the oven for 15-20 minutes and topped half of them with chocolate ganache.

To finish off our baking-fest me and my sister made some cookies with a basic cookie dough but adding chocolate chunks and smarties. YUM! The only thing that remains is to find hordes of people to consume the massive amounts of baking we have done today.

The Three C's: Chocolate Cherry and Coconut!

I've got essays for university to write... so naturally I'm procrastinating, and what better way to procrastinate then to spend some time in the kitchen baking cookies! Today I've got a yummy recipe for you... Chocolate, Cherry and Coconut Cookies:

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter

85g caster sugar

85g soft brown sugar

1 egg

225g self-raising flour

100g roughly chopped chocolate

85g roughly chopped glacé cherries

85g dessicated coconut

1/2 tsp of salt

Method

1. Preheat the oven to Gas mark 5, or 190 degrees, or 170 degrees if your oven is fan assisted.

2. Beat the butter, sugars and egg until it forms a smooth mixture.

3. Roughly chop the chocolate and cherries, and add them to the mixture along with the coconut flour and salt. Mix the ingredients until it turns into a thick cookie dough.

4. You can either use non-stick baking sheets or (as I usually prefer to do) just grease 2 baking trays.

5. Spoon the cookie dough onto the baking trays in large balls: this recipe makes roughly 20-24 cookies. ensure that the cookies have lots of space between them as the dough spreads out to over twice the size once it is in the oven.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-15 minutes until they start to go golden. Ensure that the cookies are still pale and soft in the middle and the edges aren't too dark in colour as it is very easy to overcook them.

7. Leave the cookies to cool on the tray for 5 minutes and they will firm up. Then carefully transfer them to a wire cooling rack.

In my opinion cookies are always best when they are still warm from the oven and squidgy in the middle. store the cookies in an air-tight container and eat within a week.

Alternatively you could try nutty cookies by exchanging the cherries and coconut for chopped nuts and a generous dollop of peanut butter!