Traditional Chocolate Cake

Let me just say something right off the bat. My Kitchenaid has made me lazy AF. I kind of knew this was the case, but it was really brought to light when I decided to make a chocolate cake from my old cookery book with nothing but a wooden spoon and a plastic bowl. Let's just say I really earned a slice of cake at the end of this.

As we all know, I have made many an endeavour down the chocolate cake path. It's a classic, and deserves to be given a twist every once in a while. So why not have a crack and an original? Here's the recipe I was working from:

My main difficulty here was that I was making this whilst at uni, so I didn't have a set of weighing scales, nor did I want to spend the money on some, so I had to get creative with my cups and spoons measuring. I was also a little confused when the recipe called for "sweet chocolate", so I went for a 52% cooks chocolate. When I was making the cake, I was a little unsure about the proportions. Usually with a sponge cake, there are more or less equal proportions of flour, butter and sugar, and I thought it odd that there was no cocoa powder involved. When I put the mixture into the tin it felt quite stiff, and I was worried that the cake would turn out to be dense and not that chocolatey. Luckily, I was wrong! I mean, it definitely would have been lighter had I used my electric mixer, and I'm probably going to come back to this recipe and mess around with it a little bit, but all in all, it was pretty yummy. I would recommend eating this when warm, but if it is cold, you can put a slice in the microwave for about 10 seconds to warm it up and serve with a dollop of cream - delicious!

Traditional Chocolate Cake (makes 1 large sponge)

Bare Necessities:
6oz/170g/1 1/2cups Plain Flour
4oz/115g/1/2cup Sugar
4oz/115g/1/2cup Butter
3oz/85g/~1/2cup Chocolate
3small Eggs
2tsp Baking Powder
dash Vanilla Essence
2tbsp Milk

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F/Gas Mark 4.
2. Grease and line one cake tin.

3. Break the chocolate up and put on a low heat with the milk.
4. Stir until the chocolate is fully melted and then take off the heat.
5. Cream together the butter and sugar.
6. Slowly add the eggs, flour and baking powder, alternating between the wet and dry until fully combined.
7. Mix in the chocolate and vanilla, and stir until fully combined.
8. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and smooth over slightly.
9. Pop in the oven for 45mins or until cooked through.
10. Place on a rack to cool.
11. Serve up with a dollop of cream (or ice cream) and enjoy!

Apple Jelly

I know what you're thinking. Apply Jelly? Are you sure? Well, to be perfectly honest, no, I'm not. I saw it in my old cookery book and thought it would be worth a try. As it turns out, it's quite nice! It's not like your modern day jellies, because its not transparent, and it doesn't have anything aritificial in. It's literally stewed apple, pushed through a sieve and jellified. It was also the first jelly I've ever made and I really enjoyed myself! Here is the recipe I was working from:

In the recipe, it mentions using powdered gelatine, with the 2tbsp of water for dissolving it in. However, I only managed to find sheet gelatine, which you soften in cold water and then add to the recipe, so I've adjusted my ingredients accordingly. It does also say in the original recipe what proportions to use with the Gelatine, however I found it to be too stiff because I didn't have a hair sieve, only a normal one, so I've reduced it slightly so that the jelly will have more wibble-wobble.

Apple Jelly (serves 2)

Bare Necessities:
1lb/450g Apples
2oz/60g Sugar
1piece Lemon Rind
1/2pint/1cup/250ml Water
6g Gelatine

1. Peel and slice the apples, taking care to remove all of the skin and core.
2. Pop them in the pan, along with the sugar, lemon rind and water.
3. Put the lid on the pan and stew until soft.
4. Rub the stewed apple through a sieve. It seems like it won't all go through, but trust me, it will. Just remember to scrape off the under side of the sieve every once in a while.
5. Follow the instructions on the packet of gelatine and then add to the apple puree.
6. Stir until the gelatine is fully combined and then pour into your mould. I didn't have a mould so I just used two glasses.
7. Pop in the fridge until the Jelly is stiff and enjoy!

Old School Rice Pudding

For Christmas, my mum gave me a really old cookery book called The Edinburgh Book of Plain Cookery Recipes which is an incredibly cool book published in 1932, and the official book for the Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, which is where her mum studied back in the day! This book contains recipes for literally everything you could ever need, from tea, to sponge cake to rabbit soup, and I've decided to give a few of these recipes a go.

As many of you may know, my search for the perfect rice pudding has been a long and arduous one, with varying degrees of success, so of course the first recipe I decided to try from this book was going to be rice pudding. It turns out that the recipe is not that different from the one my mum used to make my brother and me rice pudding when we were younger. It seems like a ludicrously long time to cook rice pudding for, and the skin on top can seem a tad off putting, but it's totally normal. I personally don't like the skin on top, but lots of people do, so eat it with your rice pudding if you want to, or push it to one side if you don't! Here is the recipe that I was working from:

Working from a very old recipe such as this one has it's difficulties, as I was beginning to realise. Firstly, I had no idea what Carolina rice was, and I didn't know what on earth a 'moderate oven' was. A bit of research told me that Carolina rice was simply a type of long grain rice, and that a moderate oven was approximately 180c. Also, as I don't like nutmeg, I decided to replace it with cinnamon.

Old School Rice Pudding (Serves 1-2)

Bare Necessities:
1 1/2ouces/45g/3tbsp Long Grain Rice
1pint/2cups/500ml Milk
1tbsp Sugar
1-2pinches Cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F/Gas Mark 4
2. Grease a dish.
3. Wash the rice, and put in the dish, along with the sugar and the cinnamon.
4. Pour in the milk and give it a little stir.
5. Pop in the oven for 2 hours.
6. Once cooked, serve up with a dollop of jam on top and enjoy!

Rhubarb Crumble

Now there's no denying my love for crumbles; no matter how full I am, I can never say no to one for dessert! However, the creme de la creme of crumbles (or should I say, creme de la crumble) has to be rhubarb. Slightly sharp, a great texture, and with a perfect, deep, pinkish colour to boot - for me, nothing can beat it.

Serve up hot with a large dollop of extra thick double cream or custard for the perfect summer dessert.


Rhubarb Crumble

The Bare Necessities
For the Rhubarb:
700-750g Rhubarb (roughly how much you see in the picture)
140g Sugar
100ml Water

For the Crumble:
150g Flour
90g Butter
50g Sugar

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C/Gas mark 6/390F.
2.Wash the rhubarb thoroughly.
3. Chop the rhubarb up into medium sized chunks - about an inch or so long. They don't need to all be exactly the same size.
4. Pop into a saucepan with the water and sugar, and put on a medium heat until cooked through, about 10-15 minutes. It's important to stir occasionally to make sure that all of the rhubarb cooks, but don't stir it too much or else it'll completely turn to mush!
5. Pour the rhubarb into a dish and leave it to sit. This allows some of the excess liquid to evaporate and also lets the rhubarb form a slight skin on the top, better enabling the crumble to rest on the rhubarb without sinking in.
6. In a bowl, pour in the flour and the butter. Rub the flour and butter between your fingertips until you get breadcrumbs.
7. Stir in the sugar.
8. Using a spoon, gently pour the crumble on top of the rhubarb. I use a sifting action with the spoon to prevent it from sinking.
9. Pop the crumble in the oven for approximately 
half an hour, or until the crumble has turned golden brown.
10. Serve up and enjoy!

Nectarine Ice Cream

Most people who know me know that I'm not a summer person. I don't do well with the heat, the bugs, or the sun. In fact, I think that there are only 2 redeeming features of summer; Pimms and ice cream. I might tackle Pimms another day, but today I'm doing nectarine ice cream. Chocolate ice creams are great, but nothing beats the refreshment that a fruit ice cream like this one provides. I've used nectarines here, but you could easily substitute them for peaches, just make sure you peel the peaches when you slice them up.

Nectarine Ice Cream

The Bear Necessities
600g Nectarines (roughly 5 nectarines)
125ml/1/2cup Water
150g/2/3cup Sugar
150ml Sour Cream
300ml Double Cream
1/4tsp Vanilla extract

1. Slice the nectarines in half to remove the stones and chop the nectarines into medium sized chunks.
2. Put the nectarines pieces into a medium saucepan with the water.
3. Cover and put on a medium until soft and cooked through (approximately 10 minutes).
4. Once cooked, take the saucepan off the heat, stir in the sugar and allow to cool (or if, like me, you're impatient, put it in an ice bath).
5. Once cooled, put the nectarines, their juices, the sour cream, double cream and vanilla extract into a food processor.
6. Blitz the mixture, but not until it's smooth, leave a few lumps in there to add texture. Unless, of course, you prefer a totally smooth ice cream.
7. Pour the mixture into the ice cream machine and follow the manufacture's instructions.
8. Freeze until you want to eat it, or serve up and enjoy!!

Rolo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

As we all know from past escapades, I love both rolos and cookies stuffed with things, so when I decided that the only thing that would cheer me up from uni blues was baking, I knew that this would be the thing to bake.

I know that it may be tough to not eat the rolos before putting them into the cookies, and also not to eat the cookies themselves before it's all cooked, but it's definitely worth it. This recipe would probably make about 50 cookies, but my housemates and I ran out of tray space, so we made 27 cookies, and a cookie-rolo tray bake that made about 28 cookie bites of varying size. They were equally delicious, so I've put both methods into the recipe and you can just do whichever one takes your fancy.

Rolo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

Bare Necessities

310g/1 1/2cups Butter
225g/1cup Granulated Sugar
275g/1cup Brown Sugar
1tbsp Vanilla
2 Eggs
375g/3 3/4cups Plain Flour
2tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
300g/2 cups Chocolate Chips
50 Rolos (about 5 packets)

1. Pop the rolos into the freezer for 1-2 hours.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 350F/180C.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in the vanilla and the eggs.
5. Fold in the flour and bicarb of soda until fully combined.
6. Mix in the chocolate chips.
7. Line 3 baking trays with baking parchment.
8. Take the rolos out of the freezer and their packaging, and with half of the mixture, roll small balls of cookie dough, flatten it out into a disk, place a rolo in the middle and fold the dough back around it, rolling the dough to make it a ball again. (n.b. these spread out a bit in the oven, so be sure to leave about 3cm of space between each one)
9. Pop the cookies in the fridge to chill for 15-20 minutes.
10. With the other halve of the dough, spread it out on a slightly deeper tray or dish with your hands until roughly flat.
11. Place the remaining rolos on the top.
12. Pop the cookies and the traybake in the oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.
13. Once cooked, take them out of the oven and leave them on the tray to cool a little bit before moving them to a cooling rack or board.
14. Tuck in!

Banana Cake with a Cream Cheese Drizzle

I'm an unashamed banana fan. I love them on their own, sliced up with custard, blended into a milkshake, placed on a pancake, mashed into an ice cream - you name it, I love it! But as any banana fan will know, they have a notoriously small 'yummy' window between leaf green and mud brown. So much so, in fact, that across the internet, people are making various comics expressing their outrage at a banana's inability to stay at optimum yumminess for long enough.

However, not all is lost! Thankfully there is one recipe that is renowned for salvaging these now brown bananas - banana bread! Unfortunately I've often found banana bread to be quite stodgy and heavy, so I decided to instead make banana cake. I would attribute the recipe but a) I can't find where I found it, and b) I changed it a bit anyways, so I guess it doesn't really matter that much.

Also, funny story... actually not really that funny but oh well. Basically, when my cake came out of the oven, I was letting it sit in the tin for a bit, and I noticed that the hot air coming up from the cake was making the baking paper move, and it made it look a bit like it was breathing, so I took a video of it, pretty cool, huh?

On with bananas!!


Banana Cake with a Cream Cheese Drizzle

Bare Necessities

For the Cake:
140g Butter
140g Sugar
2 Eggs
140g Self-Raising Flour
1stp Baking Powder
2 Brown-ish Bananas

For the Icing:
55g Cream Cheese
30g Butter
175g Icing Sugar
1tsp Milk

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170C/Gas mark 4/340F.
2. Grease and line a loaf tin. I'd recommend letting the paper stick out of the pan a bit because it makes it easer to get the cake out afterwards.
3. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and creamy.
4. Slowly beat in the eggs.
5. In a separate bowl, mash the bananas. They don't have to be completely pureed, but just a bit liquidy.
6. Fold in the flour, baking powder and bananas until fully combined.
7. Pour the mixture into the tin and pop in the oven for 45 minutes-1 hour, or until it's golden brown and cooked through.
8. Take the cake out of the oven and let it sit for 5-10 minutes in the tin, before moving it to a cooling rack to cool down.
9. Whilst the cake is cooling, beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and milk until they're fully combined and creamy.
10. Once the cake is mostly cooled down, but still slightly warm, move it to a plate, and drizzle the icing over the cake. You can choose to do only a little drizzle, but I chose to cover the cake with it.
11. Either leave the cake to cool down completely before serving, or take a sneaky slice before, and enjoy!!