Sometimes life gives you too many carrots and a muffin craving.
Category: Cakes and Desserts (Page 5 of 8)
Usually when I feel compelled to eat my baked goods it is because they taste good. While this is also true for these Beetroot Muffins, there is also a more sinister reason.
In true Coffee Muffins style I yet again forgot about the posting date for the Fresh from the Oven challenge. However at least this time I remembered to make it before deadline day! This months challenge was hosted by Chele.
This month the challenge for MacTweets was “do something or add something you’ve never done but always wanted to try!”. As if making macarons wasn’t hard enough!
I decided that the next stage in my macaron learning was to move on from ground almonds and try a different type of nut. My favourite nut to snack on is pistachios, I don’t do it often as they are so often coated in salt, but when I do I am in heaven. So I made Pistachio Macarons with Chocolate ganache.
Christmas isn’t Christmas without the buttery pastry and spicy dried fruit filling of a mince pie.
Mince pies are one of the best desserts at Christmas time, they are great warmed with cream and ice cream, wonderful with a cup of coffee and amazing for breakfast!
Growing up in my family they were plenty of festive tiffins, tablets and meringues to snack upon which everyone loved, but my favourite was always the mince pie. I loved the spicy flavours and the dried fruit, and the smell! To some people it’s the smell of pine, to others mulled wine, but to me its freshly baked mince pies, that smell like Christmas.
Cherry and Almond Mince Pies
~ should make around 20 (with leftover mince meat).
- 1 batch of Cherry and Almond Mincemeat
- 1 package of pre-made shortcrust pastry
- 100 ml of milk, for brushing the top of the pastry with.
- Cinnamon sugar, optional
Pre heat the oven to 180 oC and grease a fairy cake tin.
Roll out the pastry till it is about 1cm thick. Using a cookie cutter cut out circles, which will form the base of your mince pie, and stars that will form the top.
Gently press the circles into the tin, filling each with around 2-3 heaped teaspoons into each pie. Top each pie with a pastry star.
After you have completed all the pies, use a pastry brush to lightly cover each star with a little milk. If you have it sprinkle each pie with cinnamon sugar before baking.
Leave the pies in the oven for around 15 minutes, until they have turned golden, leave them to cool on a rack for at least 5 minutes.
Writing this post on a full stomach is one of the hardest things I have had to do, I just absolutely could not eat another mince pie. Still thinking of the smells and the textures is making my mouth water.
Maybe in half an hour I’ll be able to eat one more…
You start with the best of intentions to make a wonderful batch of pistachio macarons for MacTweets since your first batch were as plain as plain can be. Then you realise that today is posting day, that tomorrow night will be hectic and you are going to be away all weekend. What’s a girl to do?
You borrow of course!
Today is my birthday! I’ve had some great presents and some lovely messages from friends and family. However my birthday treat to myself was to bake a cake, well that and the two pairs of boots I’ve bought today 🙂
Over the past year I have seen so many beautiful cake recipes, that I new I wanted to try something a bit different. My inspirations was almost entirely from Alejandra @ Always Order Dessert‘s amazingly vivid Italian Rainbow Cookie Cake with a little of Deeba @ Passionate About Baking‘s Lavender Mascarpone Cake thrown in.
For a couple of weeks now in the office there has been an almost constant supply of mince pies on the sharing food pile, so far I have managed to avoid these with my no mince pies till December rule. However this year I have an added incentive, tucked away in my fridge is a jar of homemade mincemeat.
I have promised myself that the first bite of a mince pie I have this year will not be the sad excuse that the supermarket’s sell. No, I will have a mince pie made entirely by my own hand.
Recently I have fallen in love with ginger all over again. It all started on a cold blustery day, it was dark, and my head was all stuffed up. Instead of making myself the usual cup of coffee and choccy biccy to cheer myself up, I decided to try something a bit different and made ginger and lemon tea. It really cheered me up, it was so wonderfully strong and spicy. The next day I bought the biggest ginger root I could find and began to scour the internet for ginger related recipes.
I’m so excited! After all the macaron problems I had, I finally made a batch with feet. (These are plain shells with a white chocolate ganache).
More to details to come in the near future!