Lemon (and lime) drizzle cake - part 1!

My dear friend Sarah's 20th birthday was yesterday, and as part of her gift I decided to make her a birthday cake. I thought I'd  be a little adventurous, and so began my foray into the world of royal icing!

Candied limes (or any other fruit):

Ingredients:

•  Limes (or other fruit)      
• 1 cup water                      
• 1 cup white sugar            
• 2 tbsp caster sugar          

 Start out by slicing your fruit in thin discs or cubes. 

For citrus fruits, blanch them - drop them in boiling water for 30-45 seconds, then plunge them into ice cold water.

In a pan, boil enough water to cover all of your fruit. Add in 1 cup of sugar (or more if you're using a lot of fruit) and all of your fruit, then let it boil for 10-15 minutes until the pith (white bits) are starting to look a bit more translucent and the center is almost totally translucent.

Boil boil boil! Don't worry if it starts to bubble up - just ignore it, or take it off the heat for a few seconds if it starts to bubble over. Try not to disturb them too much; you don't want the sugar to crystallise.

Lay the fruit out on a wire rack to cool. Be careful -  hot sugar can cause nasty burns!

I don't have a picture of the next step, because my hands were absolutely covered in sugar, but essentially:

Get a small saucer, and add a few tablespoons of caster sugar. Pick up your fruit one at a time, coat them well in the sugar on both sides and lay it back down on the rack. You might need more than 2 tbsp, depending on how much sugar you feel like and the fruit you're using. 

Don't worry too much - just go crazy.

Wrap the rack up with cling and let everything cool and set in the fridge.

Tune in soon for the next post - making the lemon drizzle cake!

♥

Forest fruit strudels

It is no small secret that I love whipped cream. 

I also have a really bad habit of buying too much pastry because it's on offer...

So, today we are going to use some filo pastry to make some delicious fruit strudels!

You will need:

• Filo pastry (any multiple of 2 sheets)
• Fresh or frozen fruit - I used frozen forest fruits, but anything will work
• A few tablespoons of butter
• Brown sugar, Stevia or any other sweetener

 If you don't have any forest fruit berries to hand, you could always try...

Apple and sultana

Kiwi and blackberry

Peach and mango

Or whatever else you have lying around. If you have a fruit that browns, you'll also need some lemon juice.

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a plastic container. I did one at a time, but I wasn't sure how much I'd need.

Lay out one sheet of pastry on your counter top, and brush it liberally with butter using a pastry brush.

Lay another sheet directly on top of it, and brush the top sheet with butter.

Cut your fruit into chunks, or if you're using berries, grab a handful. Make sure to toss browning fruit with lemon juice so it doesn't oxidize and go a funky colour.

Place a small handful of berries on your pastry, leaving a space at the bottom and sides. Coat with your sugar or sweetener - about a teaspoon should do.

Fold the two sides in on each other, and then fold the bottom up. Press gently to seal, and then...

Roll em up! Give them all a good brushing with butter on top and bottom, then dust with your sweetener and some cinnamon (my dusting skills leave much to be desired).

Pop them in a preheated oven at 200C until they're a nice golden brown - about 12 minutes, though it could take longer. Make sure you keep an eye on them in case they explode and leave a juicy mess everywhere.

And you're done! Let them cool on a wire rack, or eat one straight away with a healthy squirt of whipped cream. I was so excited, I didn't even take a whipped cream photo :(

You can have a photo of my dogs butt to compensate. 

♥

Raspberry and chocolate cake

A friend of mine, Billy, is moving away to Australia to live with his girlfriend for a bit. When his sister (also my friend) invited me to his leaving 'do, of course I said yes! I wanted to have a nice catchup and see people.

Any excuse for a cake, eh? ;) 

It was a good job I brought one, too - I didn't know all that many people at all, but cake is an instant friend-maker. It went down a treat!

My tools of the trade: raspberries, some chocolate fudge ganache and two 24cm chocolate cakes.

I slathered the bottom of the bottom half (say what) with my ganache...

then made a huge mess with a piping bag and the rest of the ganache and some swirls!

The piping bag kept getting all... air-y? And then instead of coming out in a nice pattern it came out like spaghetti! I tried to cover it up.

The ganache was a pain in the butt to make. I accidentally forgot to use my whipping cream, so it was all... lumpy...

I didn't take a picture of that for good reason. It was grim.

Sooo I used the rest of the whipping cream with nowhere near enough chocolate, and it wouldn't set! I ended up putting another whole bar of dark cooking chocolate in, and it set into a nice fudgey chocolatey cream. 

Pop em together, whack on some raspberries and a little dusted sugar and wham! Delicious fancy looking cake.

It was wonderful and moist and everybody loved it, especially Billy! Fancy looking cakes don't have to be difficult, especially if you put swirls on it (even if they're a bit wonky). 

♥

Key Lime Pie

Here in the UK, avocados are pretty expensive. We're talking about £1 for a medium-large sized one.

Lucky little me found some for 39p (!) in Lidl, along with some cheap juicy limes. This pie was pretty much a no-brainer.

Armed with this baby, I set off into the wonderful world of experimentation!

Weirdly enough, I've never actually eaten avocados before. They taste kinda funky on their own, but when you pour copious amounts of sugar in it - winner winner, chicken dinner!

I kid; this post is under the 'healthy' tag after all.

Limes are actually a really pretty fruit, too. Not so pretty when you squeeze the juice into your eye.

You can tell I was tired when I made this, because after I took this photo I put the lid on and turned the blender on without taking the spoon out.

This delicious green mess is:

2 medium-large avocaods

2 limes, juice and zest

2 tbsp single cream

1 tbsp stevia

4 tbsp flour

I got to this by trial and error... I knew I wanted creamy, limey and a little sweet (is limey a word?), but I'm trying to keep it low on the sugar and saturated fat. Healthy is good ♥

In the mean time, I mixed oats, melted butter, cinnamon, chopped nuts and a few assorted raisins together. Just do whatever looks good, in a quantity big enough to cover your dish about half an inch thick.

Due to the obscenely large pie dish I have (it's bigger than my head) mine is a little thinner than I would've liked, but I made do.

Bake it in a 190C oven for about 10 minutes, then let it cool.

Schoooooop in your filling, chill and serve!

 ...Whipped cream? Whipped cream.

Happy Hanukkah! Er, Kwanzaa? Hmm...

Happy birthday Grandpa~

Birthdays are a special time for everyone. And when it comes to celebrating, nothing beats a delicious home-made sugar bomb, right?

Well, unluckily for me, my grandpops is diabetic - which makes baking delicious treats a bit more troublesome. And by that, I mean nigh on impossible.

There's two things my grandpa really likes - our dog Harold, and sweets. He's always had an awful sweet-tooth, so the diagnosis of diabetes was understandably distressing for him.

He's so cute. Who could resist that face? Looks like he has no legs though... awkward.

Bam! Wham! Stencil'd.

I painted a quick copy of Harold's face in Photoshop, printed it out and traced it out with a craft knife. This took an obscenely long amount of time but was totally worth it. If you're going to do this, I'd strongly recommend using card or something a bit stiffer if you want to use it more than once.

I whipped up a quick chocolate cake using Stevia instead of sugar, and as little oil and butter as possible. I was going for healthy here.

 

 

I recently managed to acquire a springform cake tin; I've been after one for ages! They are absolutely wondrous. I failed miserably using the baking parchment though, and opted for greasing with butter.

I baked this with the intention of cutting it in half. However, the tin was much bigger than I expected...

So I baked a new one! Which was too flat, because I ran out of flour :( Baking problems are the worst type of problems.

I spread one half with soft cream cheese, and the other with low sugar strawberry jam.

Squish! I panicked here because it looks ridiculously out of proportion, then remembered it's my family and they won't really care as long as it tastes good. Phew.

I may have gotten excited and forgotten to take progress pictures. :(

I layered the stencil over the cake, and then dusted caster sugar (because I forgot to buy icing sugar) over the top. I accidentally a huge amount in one spot though, so I grabbed a paintbrush and cleaned up the lines a bit.

I made some icing with cream cheese and cocoa powder mixed, and used that to stick the strawberry halves onto the cake. Healthy and delicious! Well, as healthy as cake can be, anyway.

A happy customer! ♥

Everyone loved the cake, and grandpa was super excited. He was so excited, he didn't actually notice that his dogs face on the front of it...

Gnocci and turkey and vegetable stew

Wham! Blam! Five of your five a day in one delicious stew. 

Turkey is one of my five a day... right?

This was actually really simple. I won't give you the full recipe, because I think this is the kind of soup where you can just use whatever vegetables you have to hand and it'll probably taste good.

I went for celery, carrot, red onion, spinach and green beans. I also used store-bought gnocci, because what do you think I am?! A cooking blog writer?!

Start off by dicing your meat of choice, then marinate for a few hours with whatever sounds good. I went for salt, black pepper, cumin, coriander and mustard. 

In the mean time, roughly chop your veggies. Heat some olive oil and fry your meat until golden brown.

While your meat is browning, heat a pot on medium high and add a tablespoon of olive oil, a few tablespoons of butter and a little flour. Stir to make your roux, then stir in your veggies. Add in as much boiling water as you want, then as many stock cubes as you need for that much water. Guesstimate!

Add your browned meat into your stew, then add flour to thicken to a desired consistency. Let it simmer for a while to reduce, then add your gnocci and cook until they've risen to the occasion.

And serve! If you make this gnocchi vegetable turkey stew, you could even find...

an extremely happy guest! ♥

Though if she's breaking and entering and you don't know who she is, you may want to phone the police.

And for dessert -

Pear pastries and cream~! And they say I don't spoil them...

Apple and Cherry Turnover

Welcome to A Cup of Charlotte - where we bake delicious pastries, drink copious amounts of brandy tea and chat about fashion.

Today, we're making apple and cherry turnovers.

Ingredients:                                                                                                                Makes 4 turnovers

Puff pastry: store-bought or home-made
2 tbsp butter
1 egg
1 tbsp water

1 apple, cored and chopped

8 cherries, cored and chopped

2 tbsp caster sugar

Icing sugar, to serve

 

 

These turnovers are actually surprisingly easy to make - minimal effort, so more time to enjoy while browsing your website of choice and stuffing your face.

 

Start by tossing the cherries and apples in the caster sugar. Put them in a small baking dish and let them stew in a 200C/400F/Gas 6 oven for 20 minutes. When you pull them out, make sure to keep the oven on - you'll need it soon.

In the mean time, roll out your puff pastry and cut into squares, about 3 by 3 inches. Divide the butter between the 4 squares, then relax and resist taking the fruit out 5 minutes early. Whisk the egg and water together in a small bowl to make an eggwash.

It's all smooth sailing from here. Spoon your fruit evenly between your squares; if you have slightly more foresight than me, use a slotted spoon to drain off the excess juice and avoid a murder on the dance-puff.

With a pastry brush, brush some egg wash along the right and bottom edges of your pastry. Fold the top left corner over to meet the bottom right one, and press along the edges with your fingers. To make sure your fruit doesn't pull a Houdini, grab a fork and gently press along the edges to seal them. Finish up with a good coating of egg wash, and prick a few holes into the top.

Put your turnovers in the oven for 20 minutes until they're golden and puffed, then serve and enjoy! 

Served with whipped cream is the only way to eat these. Double cream? Yoghurt? Try it... I dare you.

--Charlotte