Recipe: Classic Victoria Sponge Cake & Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

I think that the Victoria sponge cake was the very first thing I ever learned to bake as a child and baking it now always reminds me of weekend afternoons spent meticulously weighing and measuring ingredients and then taking the mixing bowl to my Dad to get his help with beating the butter and sugar together.
Then I would wait (impatiently!) for the cake to cool before slathering it with jam and making a soft, fluffy buttercream filling.
There were a lot of times when I just couldn’t wait any longer and the filling would go inside a still slightly warm cake which, of course, melted the buttercream and more often than not would cause the top half of the cake to slowly slide off the bottom half so I had to push it back on and squish it down gently to stop it happening again.

Today, instead of making an entire round cake, I doubled the mixture and made Victoria sponge cupcakes.
Once they were cooled, I hollowed out a small well in the middle of each cupcake, filled that with strawberry jam and then topped it all off by piping vanilla buttercream frosting over the top of the jam filled wells.

Recipe: Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes

Anyone that knows me knows that I am a chocolate freak.
Seriously.
I’ve tried giving it up and all that does is make me cranky. So naturally I needed a really good chocolate cupcake recipe.
I think this one has it all – it’s chocolaty but not overly sweet, it’s squidgy but not too doughy and the addition of the roughly chopped hazelnuts gives the whole cake a lovely bite and texture.
When I made these I experimented with a coffee frosting that went really well with the rich chocolate flavor of the cupcakes. Unfortunately because it was an experiment I don’t have a recipe for the frosting, but next time I make these I will make sure to write down how I make it.
But just look at them…I had to draw on deep reserves of willpower to not eat the lot in one sitting.

Recipe: Red Berry & White Chocolate Blondies

Until this month I had never made blondies. Actually, until this month I didn’t really even know what blondies were.
I know, I know.
The recipe I’m sharing today was given to me by a friend, hastily scribbled on a piece of paper and accompanied with the words “I don’t know if that’s actually correct but it looks about right…just have a mess about with it!”
So mess about I did, adding a little extra here and taking out a little there until I was happy with the result – a deliciously sweet, cakey and slightly chewy treat full of white chocolate chunks and juicy red berries that give a lovely tart bite to the whole thing.


I picked this up on a whim when I was grocery shopping, not really sure what I was going to use it for. I’m not ashamed to say that the entire tub went into my blondies. If you can find this or something like it then grab it while you can because these tubs make great ingredients for cakes, cookies and bars.

Recipe: Chocolate Brownies

The weather is (finally) getting a little colder and of course that means that I can get into the kitchen and bake things without wanting to pass out from heat exhaustion.
Now I haven’t made brownies since I was a child – before the whole scare about eating raw eggs happened I would sneak tastes from the wooden spoon or dip my finger into the mixing bowl and smile happily at the delicious mixture.
Ah, memories.
But I digress, which is something I do a lot so bear with me.
Unless you count packet mixes, which after this recipe I know I certainly won’t; then brownies were a distant memory that brought me back to weekends spent in the warmth of the family kitchen eagerly waiting for whatever goodies were in the oven to come out to a squeak of glee that the recipe had worked.
These brownies evoked much the same reaction when I made them yesterday. The recipe is not at all the way I remembered making these deliciously squishy squares of chocolaty goodness and there was a point where I wondered if it would turn out at all like a brownie but I persevered and I am very glad I did as this was the result:


It took me all of my willpower to not eat these babies right out of the oven. Yum.