Vegan Chocolate and Chilli Cupcakes

I often make cupcakes, they are quick and simple.

When I was a Rainbow leader I used to make them with a team of 5 year olds, if you were wondering how easy they are are to make.

But now my teen is a vegan...yeah I know....so what to do?

Help is at hand! In the form of egg replacement. I was sceptical so I tested the Orgran brand (other brands are available), and the recipe, so that you can make them with confidence.

For a deadly twist I went for chilli chocolate flavour, but dried fruit, just chocolate, or other flavours are simple to substitute into the basic recipe.

I tend to make double this recipe and make 12 cupcakes, it's a bit odd as I realise the maths doesn't add up, but they seem to not rise as much as cakes with real eggs, feel free to experiment based on your pan/cake case size.

One of the things you will notice is that the consistency of the baked cakes is changed due to the lack of egg, the cakes don't seem to hold together as well, so always let them cool a bit before removing them from the pan, even if they are in paper cases they will still crumble if you move them when they are hot.

Using chilli oil rather than fresh chillis or crushed chillis means that the heat spreads evenly through the cakes. I decorated the cakes with vegan butter cream icing (using the non dairy margarine) and vegan chocolate drops.

Warning: depending on your chilli oil - this recipe may be extremely hot.

Ingredients

• 3oz Vegan (dairy free) margarine
• 2oz Sugar
• 1 egg replacement portion
• 3oz self raising flour
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons chilli oil

Method

Cream the margarine and sugar together.
Mix the egg replacement powder with water and add to the mix.
Add the flour and 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder.
Add 2 teaspoons chilli oil.
Divide into 8 paper cake cases.
Bake for 15 minutes at 180c/250f/gas 4.

This post is not sponsored, but contains affiliate links.

Rainbow Cake

DD has always fancied making a rainbow cake. We have tried in the past and found that either the cake was pale and barely looked like a rainbow, or we had to use so much colouring that the cake tasted horrible!

As DD just came out as gay it seemed the perfect time to do this thing properly!

So I asked twitter who told me about gel colouring, specifically Wilton, when our local Hobbycraft let us down we turned to next day delivery from Amazon and on Sunday we grabbed our Mary Berry cook book and DD began her Great British Bake Off style fun. She decided that the recipe for a 4 layered cake was not good enough, so she doubled the quantities and made a 6 layer cake... it was HUGE!

Smooshed Creme Egg Bakes - Neither big nor clever

*trigger warning for huge amounts of creme egg cake recipes

On social media and in the world of blogging it seems you cannot blink this Easter without another picture of a cake covered in broken Cadbury Creme Eggs.

For anyone visiting from Uranus, a creme egg is a chocolate and fondant confection of teeth rotting sweetness. The centre wittily resembles that of a real egg.

In my youth I too liked a creme egg at Easter, and like many before and since, I poked my tongue into the moist middle with delight. But as I've grown up my sweet tooth has diminished and the diabetic inducing sweet no longer appeals. That would be fine, and I could ignore them and get on with my life that except that the world has gone berserk adding the eggs to anything and everything claiming that it makes something tastier and more Easter themed. I blame Pinterest.

Well, adding creme eggs doesn't improve things. It just adds extra sugar, and the horrible look of a house attacked by angry trick or treaters (ooh idea for Halloween cakes - no! stop, enough). A smashed creme egg looks like a smashed egg, that is not attractive. They taste only of sugar and American disappointment.

And if you don't believe how prevalent this horror is just look at a few of these examples! We have chocolate brownies and they are delicious, they do not need the addition of gloop, but despite that a recipe exists with just that.

Brownies made by The Minis and Me

And as for a creme egg 'blondie'...well, I really have no words, a blondie is something I already view with some suspicion, to add a creme egg into this dubious American mess can only end badly.

Blondies via MamaMummyMum

Cakes, whole cakes, already a treat, chocolate flavoured and covered in icing (frosting) I'm fairly sure crushed  creme eggs all over the top are an unneeded gilding of the cocoa lily!

Cake from Chilling with Lucas

Cheesecake, cheesecake!, is there no end to the abomination that is the creme egg takeover! A cheese cake needs no extra, it is cheese, soft and delicious, maybe with a tart fruit addition, but a smooshed creme egg? No no no. Just no.

Cheesecake from MotherGeek

And breakfast, the first meal of the day, where we need some protein and goodness, do we need creme eggs? No we do not, and yet it seems there are those among us that think a creme egg will improve a croissant. A croissant! That sophisticated and chic French pastry of delicate buttery loveliness, just no.

Croissant from Californian Mum in London

And last and most unnecessary of all, the Scotch Egg Brownie. I'm not sure I can fully express my horror and disgust, to hide the runny candy egg within and innocent brownie casing, to trap the unwary nibbler with a horrific gooey mine...

Scotch Egg Brownies form Nobody Said it Was Easy

I am ashamed of you all - I am especially ashamed of those blog readers that are, even now, writing down some of those recipes for later. You are sick! Sick I say! (or you will be later) Stick to proper recipes using chocolate mini eggs like normal people.

Recipes for Easter like mini white chocolate nests,  or regular chocolate nests, or even chocolate mini egg fudge, these are for normal, good and proper people.

Chocolate nests from The Messy Blog

Thank you to all the bloggers who agreed to be featured in this round up of loathing and disgust. All photos used with permission from the original posts.

Come and chat over on Twitter or my Facebook page I'd love to hear from you

Baking Rock Cakes with children

I have a trusty old recipe book, it was the first cook book that Mr TM bought, and I've inherited it. It is by Marguerite Patten and just covers everything you could ever need to know about cooking, oven temperatures, cake tin sizes, what 'dropping consistency' actually is...and everything else. I use it a lot. One of the recipes that Mr TM loves is the one for rock cakes, so called for their look and shape not their texture!

They are simple to make and a good choice to make with children (inserts joke about how I usually use dried fruit) as it's a real 'bung it all in a bowl and mix' type recipe.

If you are baking with small children as helpers I suggest, clear surfaces, pre weighed and measured ingredients in plastic bowls like on a cooking show - maybe leave one thing to weigh like the dried fruit. And invest in some anti slip mat stuff to put under the bowls as they mix.

For the cakes you will need:
8oz self raising flour
4oz margarine or butter
4oz castor sugar (I sometimes only use 3oz as Mr TM isn't keen on over sweet cakes)
4oz dried fruit
1 egg (beaten)
some spice if you like that sort of thing
2 tablespoonfuls of milk.

Sieve the flour into a bowl, then rub in the margarine until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Kids love helping with this bit, but ensure that hands are washed first! The odd nibbled crumb won't do anyone any harm. Next add the sugar and the fruit, give it a stir, add the spice if you are going to use it, then add the beaten egg to pull it all together. The mix should be sticky, but not runny, add milk if needed..

Plop small 'lumps' of mixture onto a greased (I use silicone baking parchment to save myself the bother) baking tray, they will spread a bit, so space them!

Bake in a hot oven for 12-15 minutes. Eat when cool. (it's always cool to eat cake)

Orange and Almond cake - so easy a 16 year old can make it

Last weekend I was bored. It was raining (again) and DD was bored too. I suggested we do some baking. I fancied making some bread rolls to go with the soup I had previously made, and then DH suggested that he fancied some rock cakes...DD wanted to make something more fancy and worthy of 'Bake Off'. In the end all our wishes can true, I made the rolls (recipe and method etc here) then I rustled up some rock cakes and DD decided to try a BBC cake recipe from our little GoodFood magazine 101 Cakes & Bakes

She chose the orange and almond cake, fascinating as it uses an entire orange, skin and all, in the recipe. It was moist and delicious, and I heartily recommend it - easy too, she made it all without help - and from start to eating in less than 2 hours (the book says 50 minutes - more of that later)

Ingredients:

• 1 medium orange
• 6 oz softened butter
• 6oz light muscovado sugar (we used caster sugar as it's all we had)
• 3 eggs (ours were large...)
• 6oz self raising flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
• 2oz ground almonds
• icing sugar for decoration

 You also need a 9inch round deep cake tin - ours has a movable bottom(!) , and a blender or smoothie maker.

First roughly chop the orange, peel and all, and whizz it up in a blender (remove any pips first) to a puree.
Then add the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and bicarb to the blender and whizz until smooth...our blender isn't big enough for all this so we did some in stages and then just mixed it all in a bowl, it was very runny so it wasn't difficult to mix.
Pour it all into the greased tin and bung it in the oven (Gas 5/190C/fan 170C) the recipe says 30 minutes but I think our cake need at least 50 minutes, maybe a little longer as the middle was still runny after half an hour, in true Bake Off style DD turned down the gas for last 15 minutes to ensure it cooked without burning.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin for a while before turning it out and dredging the top with icing sugar.

The cake was delicious, really orangey (surprise) and with a crisp outside and moist middle. The recipe book claims it freezes well, but ours didn't get a chance. We all really enjoyed it and will be making it again.

Serves 12 (ie gives 12 slices, we had 4 each obviously)
Per slice 266 calories

Banana cake recipe

Yesterday evening I made a banana cake. I live tweeted it because I am silly like that - but I also thought I'd blog it because I've made this recipe twice now (on recommendation form @parsnip45 on twitter) and it's really nice. And the second time I needed the recipe I'd lost the link!

The recipe is so nice that my husband is sneakily buying bananas and hiding them until they are over ripe and then declaring "Oh you'd better make a banana cake with these, shame to waste them"

Reasons we like the cake are; it's easy to make, it uses up over ripe bananas (and we all know how they suddenly go brown when no one is looking), it has no nuts in (though you could probably add walnuts if you like them, I do but DH doesn't) and no raisins either. It's just banana cake.

I use a recipe form The BBC site  http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/bananabread_85720 but I slightly alter it, I miss out the salt and add up to 2oz less sugar than the recipe calls for. I don't like a really sweet cake and even with the less sugar it tastes nice.

So here is the step by step guide.

• 285g/10oz flour (I use self raising, but plain works)
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (less if using self raising flour)
• 110g/4oz butter
• 170g/6oz caster sugar (this is less than the BBC version, but I prefer it)
• 2 eggs
• 4 ripe bananas, mashed
• 85ml/3fl oz buttermilk (or normal milk mixed with 1½ tsp lemon juice or vinegar) - I just add some lemon juice to semi-skimmed milk and it thickens it ok
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

You need, weighing scales, 3 large-ish mixing bowls, a wooden spoon, a fork, a sieve, a loaf tin (5inches by 8inches) and an oven!

First I sieve the flour and the bicarb in a large bowl.

Then cream the butter and sugar in another bowl.

Mash the bananas in your third bowl using a fork. (this is a perfect job for kids if they are helping)

Add the mashed bananas to the butter and sugar, add the eggs, vanilla extract and milk too, mix it up - it will be sloppy.

Fold the sloppy mix into the flour.

Line a loaf tin with baking paper and pour in the mix. Sprinkle some soft brown sugar on the top (optional but gives an ace crunchy texture and a shine)

Bake for about 1 hour 20 minutes on gas 4 (check cake is cooked through by poking a knife into it - knife should come out clean not sticky, give it a few more minutes if it's not done)

Lift it out and cool it - we often eat it while it's still warm! It's a really moist cake, probably keeps OK but I have no experience of this!

The day I stole my daughters Ed Balls fame

So on Ed Balls Day in 2013 my daughter made a cake.

I guess Ed Balls day was still fairly new, no one got excited. We ate the cake. The world moved on.

This year on 28th April I tweeted

Cake for breakfast! After all...it's Ed Balls day! Have a good one! #EdBalls #EdBallsDay pic.twitter.com/K325rdkKWO

— Tattooed_Mummy (@tattooed_mummy) April 28, 2015

and thought not much more about it, it still tickled me that we had made an Ed Balls cake but otherwise...well that was it.

And then, someone rounding up witty Ed Balls themed tweets shared it on a list. Then The Guardian mentioned the tweet. Then Mashable shared the tweet, and Buzzfeed shared the tweet, then The Metro picked up on it. Finally it appeared on the BBC News website.

My daughter was livid. I had foolishly (because I hadn't been thinking) failed to mention her or mention that it was 'her cake'. I was 'famous' for five minutes, my daughter was not.

She is proud of her cake, and furious at me. Here, have some cake.

I am proud that my daughter can cook

I like cooking and I like baking. I don't tend to watch TV shows about it but I like to be in the kitchen and rustle up something tasty. I don't get all worried about expiry dates (see a post where I ranted about them here) and except for cakes, I am pretty relaxed about measurements and quantities. I'm the sort of cook that bungs things into a pan, slops in some water, uses measurements like 'a knob of butter' and 'some flour'.

I think I like that 'knob of butter' is so common in the uk it's on packets of things. It seems so official pic.twitter.com/pj7Kqomv8Q
— Tattooed_Mummy (@tattooed_mummy) March 22, 2015

I have been pleased to have DD help me cook since she was old enough to stand on a chair and see the counter top. It's great to start early, teach about hand washing, why we can't lick our fingers (!) while cooking and why we should tie our hair back when using the gas cooker. Knife safety, fire safety, all great learning topics while you bake too. We used to make cupcakes (buns?) together often when she was a toddler and we still make them now - she just does most of the work now that she is 15. (while I'm on clearing up duty) She has grown into someone that likes to cook too - and she is also a big fan of TV baking, somewhat in love with Mary Berry and inappropriately fond of Paul Hollywoods kneading technique!

She can cook pancakes using 'some flour, an egg or two and some milk and a splash of oil'.

Pancake making

She can poach an egg (almost as perfectly as I can), fry eggs, scramble them, make omelettes...lets just say she is good with eggs.

Fried Egg muffin

She can make pastry (much better than mine - she has cold hands) , cook pies, biscuits. She can make pasta bakes and whole meals from scratch. She knows how to mash potatoes and how to prepare vegetables.

Cake

Peach, parma ham, and mozzarella pizzas with rocket

And all this makes me proud, particularly when her friends come round and she cooks. I hear them saying to her that they are not allowed to cook or that they don't know how to. Dd has told me that several friends don't do any cooking at all at home - reminding me of my own friend who left school without the first clue how to cook - once ringing me to get advice on fish fingers and finally marrying a man who could cook, which was just as well!

Do your children cook? What age did you (or do you plan to) start cooking with your children?

Because you need to start them young, nothing nicer than finally realising you have a child that can cook you breakfast and bake you a birthday cake.

Here's some we made earlier (last weekend). Happy Easter!

Easter Biscuits

Easter cakes

Bacon, Maple Syrup and Whisky Cupcakes. Oh the humanity!

Remember the blog post about poke cake, where I thought about baking an American dream cupcake?


Well I made them. DD and I cycled out to the supermarket and bought the shameful ingredients (well not the whisky, or the maple syrup, no shame in that!) we had to substitute vanilla cake mix as that was all that was on offer! and we set to work like the Bad Bakers we are.

We followed the recipe we found on Pinterest,

though I added whisky to the cake mix not more maple syrup as by the time it was being mixed it smelled horribly horribly sweet!

and it was revoltingly gloopy by now too, no wonder Americans refer to cake 'batter' *barf* it looked and smelled vile, but we thought of Kylie's hopeful face, her Poke Cake face.....and we bravely added the bacon

neither of us wanted to lick the bowl. The sloppy, sweet smelling, lumpy horror we had created terrified us.
We shared the mixture into cupcake cases, ready for the oven...

Time passed (we made whisky and maple syrup icing as we waited)

They emerged looking surprisingly OK. So we let them cool, and then iced them, added a tiny slice of crispy dead pig for decoration. At this point my DH asked what the hell we were doing, why we were making something so disgusting and why on earth we were taking such trouble for something so obviously nasty!

They were ready....

I was nominated the first taster.

And a truly surprising thing happened. They tasted lovely, really really nice, sweet with maple syrup, a bitter tang of whisky a surprise salty crunch of bacon!

I ate several. Would I make them again? Not using the vile packet mix which is full of horrible chemical sounding stuff and was stupidly expensive. But yes, I will add maple syrup, whisky and bacon to my usual cup cake mix on occasion because ....well because BACON!

Don't forget you can join the Bad Food Bake Off here  - the linky is still open

Found: a fab recipe for no spread cookies

Amongst all the laughter at terrible recipes that can be found on line (see this post) , I stumbled across a rather fabulous recipe for sugar cookies at bakeat350.co.uk I was after a "no spread" cookie recipe as often when I try to make cookies (UK translation - biscuits) they lose their shapes and spread all over the place!

DD and I tried this recipe this afternoon, we divided the mixture and made some plain and some with chocolate chips, some plain chocolate and some colour chocolate beans! W experimented with thickness of the cookies too, making some thinner and crispy and some fatter and softer. Both types were nice!

DD was keen to try the new cookie cutter that Father Christmas had given her and the cookies turned out really well! It's a recipe I will be printing out and sticking in my recipe book.

Nice Apron there DD

Some plain

some choc chip

some coloured chocolate beans!

UK Recipe Translation
375g unbleached, plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
200g sugar
225g butter, cold & cut into chunks
1 egg
Optional
3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/2 tsp pure almond extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180c, gas mark 4

Mix the flour and baking powder. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the egg and vanilla and almond extracts (if required) mix. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat until combined.

The dough is crumbly, knead it together with your hands until it's in one lump for rolling.

Roll on a floured surface to about 1/4" to 3/8" thick, and use you cutters to cut it into shapes, knead left over bits back into a ball and re-roll until it's all used up, places the biscuit shapes on baking trays (use parchment to prevent sticking) and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack. Decorate as required.

Dairy Free Apple Cake Recipe - perfect for Autumn

A cake that is nice and simple to make although there is a fair bit of time involved in the preparation and then the cooking. It is dairy free.

The Apples we used were from the tree in our garden and it's a great way to use up a glut of autumnal goodies! 

I helped to peel and dice the apples, but only as we needed so many! DD (aged 13) did all the rest. Why not give it a go? It's from my Amish cook book. If you are struggling with 'cup' measurements (American) try this conversion website.

And ignore the temp they list for cooking as that's F not C.

The temp you need is 180C

And here is the tasty result. Which Mamacrow and Eddsnotdead tried and declared nice. And then DD ate for breakfast and tea until it was all gone!

 

Have you been doing any autumn baking?