Back To My Roots- Not That I Ever Left- Wheaten Bread

Hi!

Continuing on from my last post- this wheaten bread is for the dinner party too. This is Irish Wheaten Bread in all its delicious glory.

You can't beat that wheaten bread taste, especially with the unbeatable ingredients we get here in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I don't think I ever really appreciated how good the ingredients were until I started baking myself. This bread is beautiful in every way. The taste, the smell, the texture.

I'm not going to lie, the first time I made it, it was a disaster. I treated it like white bread, as I hadn't made it before, or for a very long time and added too much flour and kneaded it for too long. This made it stiff and completely unlike what it should have been.

This time, I made it the way it was meant to be made. I used the techniques and and processes and together we will make beautiful bread.

The first thing you want to do, and I didn't because I just decided to make it at the last minute- didn't really plan it. See you never know what you are going to do or where life will take you. Anyway, grease the bread tin. To do this butter the loaf tin, this is a small, rectangular tin and then flour it with the same flour you are using in the bread. Tap on the tin edges to get the flour to move from side to side to enable it to coat the entire tin.

Preheat the oven as well to 200C in fan oven, so that would be 220C convection and gas mark 7. This will make the kitchen all toasty and slightly humid, good for bread making.

There, that's the first thing done! :) Fun, huh?

Now you want to weigh out all the ingredients into one large bowl. The ingredients you'll need are (This is from 'About Food') ;

For the Wheaten Bread;

- 500g Wholegrain Wheat Flour- I used Strong Wholemeal

- 1 1/2 tsp of salt- I did a twist

- 1 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate Of Soda

- 500ml Buttermilk

- This isn't on the recipe, but I added a little maple syrup, just a drop

Now the interesting thing is, I didn't have any buttermilk, so I made some. Cool, huh? I googled this and did you know that if you don't have or can't find buttermilk, you can take normal milk and add Greek Yogurt? I didn't, I knew you could make it, but didn't know what with.

I didn't have this either. So I googled further and found a Nigella recipe. If you add Lemon juice to milk, it sours it. I did have lemons, from the zest I used in the last blog. So I did this, and it soured alright! It also smelled like buttermilk.

The grainy look on the rim is the milk souring

Now you know how to make buttermilk. Now for the wheaten bread. You want to put the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl and combine, use a large wooden spoon. Then slowly add the first half of the milk. Then mix until combined.

Then the other half and this will create a loose and sticky dough.

Now you want to put this into your greased loaf tin and score the top with a floured knife. This allows the heat and moisture to come out when baking.

Then pop this into the oven and bake for around 35 minutes or until cooked through. The trick to knowing this is taking the bread out of the oven, slipping it out of the tin and tapping on the base. If it sounds hollow then that means it is done.

Again to ensure it was cooked I wrapped it in tin foil for a wee while to ensure it cooked through as sometimes it can be hard to tell with bread.

This is the bread done! Yum yum in my tum tum! With some good Irish butter it'll go down a treat!

Thanks again and I hope you have enjoyed my dinner party dishes. Not so fancy, but i'm not fancy.

Dinner Party Dishes- New and Improved Pear and Almond Tart

Hello friends!

Today, we are having some of the family around for dinner, these being the Winchcombes. Well some of them at least. Then there's mama and I, Cushla will probably be there, but in virtual form... who knows really?

These dinner's tend to be fantastically bazaar. Innuendos- subtle and not so subtle, laughter- all in kind spirit... most of the time, I'm normally the butt of the joke and lots of food and drinks.

So today, I got up and baked a new and improved Pear and Almond Tart. What's that you say? Yes I did bake a Pear and Almond Tart a few weeks ago, but that was a different recipe and after making it a few times, I decided it wasn't good enough, so I searched and searched and eventually found the old recipe that I used to use and now am using again.

So, I feel it is superior in every way and has a nicer texture.

This is a BBC Food Recipe from a chef called Simon Rimmer. I love this recipe and find it comforting and just down right yum.

The first thing you want to do is set the oven to preheat at 170C in a fan assisted oven.

(http://www.lemonsqueezy.eu/cooking-tips/all-about/all-about-electric-ovens)

Above is a guide to the different oven temperatures, according to what type of oven you have. I found this on the oven temperature site and have sourced the link above.

So I set the oven to 170C in a fan assisted electric oven. That means if you have a gas oven it would be 5. A convection oven it would be 190C.

So, we've preheated the oven, now we need to grease the tart tin. To do this, we need to get some melted butter (put a little butter into a microwave safe container and melt for 10 seconds.) Use this to coat the whole surface, rims and all in buttery goodness. Then lightly dust a little flour onto the tart tin to ensure the pastry won't stick.

The ingredients you'll need for the pastry;

- 225g Plain Flour- you can sift this if you like, but I don't really bother, there's nothing wrong with it. Unless there are grainy bits, then sift it please.

- 100g Unsalted Butter, cooled and chopped into little chunks

- 25g Caster Sugar

- 1 Free- Range Egg

This recipe says to add milk, but I didn't need it. If you do, it is 1tbsp.

I used my food processor to blitz this all together, but you could just use a bowl and a fork or your fingers. Although, it mightn't be a bad idea getting one, they are great and you can use them for pastes, sauces, dough, breadcrumbs... Need I go on? :)

Put the flour, sugar and butter chunks into the food processor and blitz until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg and mix slowly until the dough forms and comes together. Add milk if required.

Tip this out onto a floured, clean counter and gently knead until the dough is smooth and completely formed. Roll into a ball shape and then pat down with your hand until a flat oval shape. It doesn't matter how thick, as you will roll it out later. Wrap this in clingfilm and put into the fridge to chill and relax, maybe talk to the vegetables and ketchup?

I did it differently this time. Once the pastry is in the oven, it is kind of a race against time to get the batter done and the pears caramelised, so I cut the pressure and stress out and made the batter and pears whilst the pastry was cooling.

To make the batter you'll need;

- 225g Unsalted Butter

- 225g Caster Sugar

- 4 Free-Range Eggs

- 1 Lemon, Zest (I put two in as I love lemon)

- 50g Plain Flour

- 175g Ground Almonds

• 
  

What you want to do first is weigh out the butter and sugar and mix them together until light, pale and fluffy looking. Then add the lemon zest and eggs and mix slower, but not snail speed. Add in the flour and almonds and give a quick blast and then leave this alone.

To make the pears;

- 4 Large Pears- Peeled, Sliced and Cored- alternatively buy tinned pear halves in their own juice, no syrup. This will save buckets of time.

- A knob of butter, enough to coat the pan you are caramelising in. Not too much, as it will turn into a butter bath, but also not too little as then it won't make any difference. You want these pears to be buttery and caramelised, you won't get that if you are stingy and hold the butter back like a weight watchers advocate. (No offense intended) Butter to me means no compromises.

- 50g Sugar or depending on your other ingredients, as much as you need to make it caramelise and bubble.

Get the pear halves that are peeled, cored and all that and set them aside. Heat up a non-stick pan (unless you want to get into some 'sticky' business) (cue laughter) and put the butter in. Allow this to melt and bubble slightly before adding the pear halves. Add the pears and then sprinkle the sugar over them and toss in the butter. Leave this to bubble and caramelise, but keep an eye on it, we don't want it to burn, boil and bubble away to a thick, gooey mess.

Once the batter and pears are done, we need to roll out the pastry. To do this we need to flour a surface lightly with the same flour you used in the tart, so not self-raising, but plain. Take the pastry out of the fridge and put onto the floured surface. Roll this out with a floured rolling pin and roll out until thin. This depends on the size of your tart tin, I think mine is 20cm/8inches, so roll it out to fit the tart tin.

Line this with baking paper and weigh down with flour and the left over pastry cuttings, if you have some. Pop this into the preheated oven and bake for around 15 minutes or until set.

Once blind-baked, take it out of the oven and pour the batter in evenly, just before reaching the edge. It is actually a thicker batter due to the almonds, so get a spatula or spoon and portion it out onto the pastry and smooth. Add the pears on top of the tart and put back into the oven for around 30 minutes or until golden-brown and cooked through.

Once the tart is baked, take it out of the oven and wrap in tin foil, I do this as I feel if there is any doubt of it being baked through, I wrap it in tin foil, then I won't bake it excessively and dry it out. But it ensures that it is cooked. The residual heat off the tart will be trapped within the foil and carry on cooking the tart.

Once cooled serve along with cream/ ice cream/ chocolate sauce or whatever you fancy.

To make the chocolate sauce the recipe says;

- 100g Butter
- 100g Caster Sugar
- 100g Dark Chocolate
- 1 tbsp Cocoa Powder
- 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 125ml Water

Put it all over a water bath (bowl over a pot of simmering water) and melt it all together until luscious looking.

But I use ganache, which is according to my own estimates;

- 200g Dark Chocolate
- 200g Milk Chocolate
- 400g Cream
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- Knob of butter

- Pinch of Salt- seriously try it!? I was skeptical too with salt, but a little goes a long way in flavour.

You always want equal measures of chocolate to cream. Heat the cream until just before boiling point. Put the broken up chocolate bits in and stir until melted. Add the vanilla and salt and mix. Then add the butter- this not only gives it flavour, but it gives it a shine as well.

Anyway, that is the new and improved and my old friend the tart recipe done. This is a good one! Hope you enjoy this one? x

  

Coffee Cake with Coffee Buttercream

Hi

It was bucketing down again today, so I made coffee cake with coffee buttercream. Mama had, for the past few days been subtly hinting (not so subtle) how much she loved coffee cake and how nice it was to have a 'dotter' that baked. That's a little private joke for you there mama.

Dotter, was the way I used to spell daughter for years. I thought my way was better and that was the way daughter should be spelled.

Come to think of it, I did this with a lot of things- in P3- I was convinced that yellow was spelled and pronounced 'Lellow'. Nobody believed me- so I made my 'Lictionary' which was my version of a dictionary and I put all my words in it. Including real words, but they meant what I thought they meant and not actually what they really meant. For example, I used to think when I was 6 or so that pedestrians were called Presbyterians. Mama would say, 'Ciara, how do you know they are Presbyterians?' and I would say, 'Because they are walking on the pavement!!' Quite convinced and confidently. Kids say the darndest things.

This is a lovely wee cake that is the perfect balance between coffee and sweetness. The ingredients that you'll need are listed below;

- 220g Soft Butter
- 110g Caster Sugar
- 110g Soft Light Brown Sugar
- 4 Eggs
- 220g Self- Raising Flour

- 3 tbsp Espresso Coffee Powder (combine the coffee powder with a little water. Enough to make a thick paste, but is still liquid enough to pour. Base this on the consistency of cornflour- you know when it is liquid and solid?)

What you want to do first is pre-heat your oven to 170 C in a fan assisted oven. Butter and line your cake tins. I used 20 cm/ 8 inch cake tins and melted a tbsp of butter (in hindsight, this was too much, you should probably use a tsp) and with a pastry brush, coat the tin in a light layer of butter.

After that, cut out two small discs of baking paper and stick one to each bottom of the cake tins. This basically just double, triple and quadruple makes sure that the base doesn't stick to the tin. These were also non-stick tins. So I feel I covered myself well in the non-stick department.

Cream the butter and sugars together in a bowl until a light, fluffy and pale colour. Add the eggs and coffee  and start mixing on a low speed and then slowly increase the speed on the mixer until it is all combined. Chuck in the flour, probably not too forcefully unless you want a flour facial. ;)

Evenly portion the batter into the two cake tins and spread evenly using a pallet knife. Yes yes it is the trusty pallet knife to the rescue again. If you don't have one, I strongly advise you to get one- they are beautiful! Just use a spoon or knife and you'll be grand sure. :)

Pop these into the oven and bake for around 30 minutes or until risen, golden-brown and bounce back at the touch. And don't forget about the smell- the smell tells a lot. Yum!

Take these out and immediately tip them out of their tins onto a cooling rack. Peel back the baking paper and allow these to cool completely before icing. If you didn't allow these to cool, then the buttercream would melt and curdle in a disgusting mess. This would also seep into the cake. Basically it is bad.

To make the buttercream you will need the following;

- 100g Soft Butter
- 100g Icing Sugar
- 50g Coffee Powder

Pop the butter into a bowl and mix until soft. Add the icing sugar slowly until combined and taste as you go. I base my buttercream being done on whether it has an after taste of butter when I taste it. If it does, even very slightly, I add a little more icing sugar. Add the coffee powder and mix at a high speed until fully combined.

When the cakes are cooled, place one onto a plate or whatever you plan on serving it on and start icing. Get a spatula and put a heap of the icing on top of the cake. Put more than you'll need initially as this will help you to cover the whole surface in one without having to keep adding icing again and again, as this could risk getting the icing all crumby. When you have an even layer of icing on the first half, top it with the other cake. This will be the top of the cake and therefore the main part people will be looking at, so you want it to look good.

Spread the icing onto this half in the same way you did the first one. Although this time, you want to run your pallet knife, or whatever you are using at one level just above where you have stopped icing and rotate the plate in a circular motion to create an even layer of icing. Alternatively you could use a piping bag with a stared tip and pipe the icing on.

You could eat this alone, or with ice cream or cream. It is an indulgent and comforting cake that is great for any occasion.

The cake is done -yum! Enjoy!

And no baking adventure would be complete without a baking buddy;

Lemon Meringue Buns

Hi again. Sorry for not posting in a while, we were busy moving Cùshla to France for her year abroad. Wow- that took so much out of us all- with the travelling, Susie the annoying programme thing that brought us to where we needed to go (she was a computer). I loath Susie- I thought satnavs were supposed to be clear and polite. This one came with a lot of sass and kept saying either bare left, turn left, keep to the left or stay left and turn left in the next 300 meters then stay left... Stay left... Turn left. This chick was confusing. Made for an interesting trip though.

It was funny (let it be known that this was not funny to me, but the other two laughed their arses off.) We were having a perfectly lovely dinner, food was nice, company good and the atmosphere was good too. Food arrives and we all eat. My food however decides to leap onto my top. Making me look like I had up- chucked on myself. The five year old beside us looked at me as if to say 'what is wrong with you. You have a napkin for a reason. Your an utter mess.' Followed by a snide



 look from his dad and this man who was sitting behind mama and seemed to enjoy making me feel uncomfortable. He liked to stare. I was a mess and everyone knew it. That cheered the two up though and we all had a chuckle.

We were out at OX - the best restaurant in Belfast as far as I'm concerned. It is where the Doll with the Ball is or you may know it as the Thing With The Ring, or its actual name being the Maden of Hope or so i've heard

These buns are my own creation so I really hope you enjoy them as much as I have. (: One day I wanted to eat lemon meringue pie and buns, but was too lazy to bake both as it was quite late at night, and my priorities like revising were running weak from hunger. So I came up with these lemon meringue buns- combining both my cravings. Procrastination at its best!

The first thing you need to do is weigh out the ingredients, pre- heat the oven and put the bun cases into the bun tray.

What you need to make the buns are;

- 110g Butter
- 110g Caster Sugar
- 110g Self Raising Flour
- 2 Eggs

(This basic batter recipe is from Delia Smith- but that is where the help ended. Now it is all me! Haha)

That's the base to the bun batter. Ooh alliteration- I love it when that happens. You want to cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy and a pale light colour that looks delectable to shove into your gob. Then add the eggs- at this point the mix is going to look pretty grim as it will resemble scrambled eggs- no matter how slowly you beat the mix. Once you add the flour the mixutre will become beautiful and silky. I wanted to eat it raw, but the fact that that would involve consuming raw eggs especially turned me off the notion.

Get you ice cream scoop and don't get the ice cream out, we're not porkers. Use this to weigh and portion out even scoops of the batter into each bun case in the tray. Then pop these into the oven that you have pre- heated for around 25 minutes at 170C in a fan assisted oven. This will vary on your oven and the power that it is at.


I believe that one day it will be the case where a 'waiter's freind' isn't a bottle opener, but an ice cream scoop. Imagaing the magic it would bring. You want ice cream- not a bother, I have my trusty ice cream scoop handy. Pull up a bowl and eat!

The ingredients that you'll need for the syrup are (this is to drizzle onto the buns to make them moist and lemony.

This is the sugar and lemon juice

This is the sugar and lemon and water when it is bubbling

- 50g Lemon juice and zest
- 100g Caster Sugar
- 10g Water

Heat this all in one pan slowly until the sugar dissolves and then it all starts to bubble wonderfully around the edges and then the middle. Or until it is all warm and a little syrupy. Use a pastry brush or a spoon - NOT YOUR FINGER- UNLESS YOU WANT TO BURN IT OFF. You know when you were kids and you'd put your fingers into the warm, melted wax in the candle- well this is much much worse. Drizzle this over the surface of the buns when cooked and slightly cooled. It is good to do this when they are warm as that will help the syrup to really seep in and make them full of lemony goodness.

Leave the buns aside and let's get started on the meringue. This is Italian meringue, so it is cooked with the hot sugar syrup. I then grill it to brown the tops and set the meringue completely so it won't splat everywhere over everything.

The ingredients you'll need are, according to mum which come to think of it probably means Delia are 6 oz (ounces) of sugar for 3 eggs whites. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fluffy. To make it Italian meringue you need to make a sugar syrup like we did for the bun base. This is to cook the egg whites as it isn't going to be cooked in the oven.

- 3 Egg Whites at room temperature as this will help them fluff up more freely
- 6 oz of Caster Sugar
- 2 tbsp of water
- 50g Lemon Curd

Yours truly pouring the boiling syrup into the egg whites

Put all of these ingredients into a pan and heat until the sugar melts and dissolves, but hasn't crystallised. Wait until this bubbles and becomes quite syrupy and shiny and slightly thicker. Pour this into the whisked eggs whites slowly and then whisk at a high speed until the eggs whites are glossy and stiff.

Piping away- notice the hair net? No fooling around

Now you want to put this into a piping bag with a star tipped nozzle and pipe little stars around the top of the bun until completely covered. Then put this under the grill at a medium heat until the top is golden brown and toasty looking. Get another piping bag and with a small star tipped nozzle, pipe little strands of lemon curd over the meringue. Alternatively friends, we could spread the meringue on with a knife or back of a spoon, as you mightn't have a piping bag or nozzles. Works just as well.

Thanks again

Pear and Almond Tart for Janet

Hello- haven't talked in a while- but we're all here now and that's what matters...

Today is Janet's birthday. Birthday's are something to be celebrated, specifically with baked goods. Baked goods were meant to be for birthdays, well they are really for any occasion, but birthday's are super duper special and so this is definitely an occasion in need of a baked good.

Plus it also gave me a good excuse to bake this Pear and Almond tart- which I haven't made in a while. For one, it takes a while to make, and also I've been busy. But the smell and taste is all worth it- even if it will be going into someone else's tummy. :) / ):

The first thing you need to do is prep everything- this recipe takes a while, so it really helps to get everything sorted now, instead of as you go.

This includes, weighing out all the ingredient prior to needing them, lining your tart tin and preheating the oven.

The ingredients you'll need are;

For the pastry- all buttery and short. The thing I love about making shortcrust pastry is that it is like play-doh. Not only is it therapeutic, but it tends to make this satisfying doughy noise when kneading it. I can't explain it any other way, it is a completely unique noise that I can't help but love.

By the way, kneading is when you stretch the dough out and then fold it back on itself and repeat the process. This helps to bring the mixture/dough together and smooth it out as well. But I've talked about that in previous blogs, so I won't be repetitive.

- 150g Chilled Butter
- 300g Plain Flour, plus extra for kneading
- 100g Sugar- my own addition
- 2 sprinkles of Salt

To make the pastry, put the flour, salt and sugar into a food processor (or bowl if you don't have a food processor and use a fork or finger tips) and blitz together until combined. Then add the butter into this in chunks. Blitz or rub together with your finger tips until the mixture comes together into a light, sandy/ yellow coloured dough.

Now you want to tip it out onto a floured surface and knead it together into a smooth dough ball with your hands.

To do this, cup your hands and rotate the dough (clockwise, or anti-clockwise- whatever feels right) whilst gently applying pressure.

So you will be containing the dough between your hands and slowly pushing it together. Or knead it like you would with bread.

After around 5 minutes or less, the dough will be smooth looking and will have come together. Now wrap it in cling film, flatten it a little (doing this will make it easier to roll out after it has been chilled. Reduces the amount of cracks forming.) and either pop it into the fridge or freezer. I put mine into the freezer, as today was quite humid and with the oven on, it was quite warm in the kitchen.

To make the filling, you can put all the ingredients into one bowl- making this a good recipe on the washing up perspective.

For the filling;

- 100g unsalted butter (but again, I find that it doesn't really make a difference what kind of butter you choose to use)
- 100g Caster Sugar
- 4 Eggs
- 50g Plain Flour
- 100g Ground Almonds

Simply put these into a bowl and mix together until the mixture is smooth and silky. Leave this aside, now it is time to do the pears!

Peel one large pear, or two small ones and chop the head and tail off. Cut four slices off the pear, each corner, and then cut that slice in half. You should have eight pieces of pear now.

These need to be caramelised. Heat a non-stick pan with butter and sugar, about 1 tbsp of butter and 1 tbsp of sugar as well, but I just sprinkle it all in. Let this melt and bubble, before adding the pear slices. Saute the pears until they are soft and cooked through.

Now all the elements are complete. Let's really get down to business.

Take the pastry out of the freezer/fridge and roll out onto the floured surface. Roll out until around 1cm thick- you want the pastry to be quite thin. Line the tart tin with the pastry, prick the base with a fork, line with baking paper and the use the remaining pastry to weigh this down. Pop into the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

The reason you need to weigh the pastry down in the tart tin is because it has a tendency to bubble up and expand. But the other good reason for weighing the pastry down, especially with the left over pastry scraps is that it ensures that the sides of the pastry don't fall down or shrink whilst baking and also I can use the left over pastry- meaning no wastage.

After the tart is finished blind baking- this is where you bake the pastry until semi-cooked before adding the filling. If you didn't blind bake the pastry and put the filling in immediately this would cause a 'soggy bottom' (I feel like i'm channeling Mary Berry) and could stop it from becoming crispy and cooked through. Now you want to add the filling, pour the filling into base and layer the pears on top of the tart. Put the tart back into the oven and bake for a further 25 minutes at 170C in a fan assisted oven. Or until cooked through and smelling gorgeous.

You'll know it's done when you can smell it and it is golden-brown and a skewer comes out clean. Take it out of the oven, pop out of the tart tin, but keep the base on and put onto a cooling tray and leave to cool completely.

There we are- the tart is complete.  You could serve this with cream and dark chocolate, or just cream, even ice cream. Whatever floats your boat really. I dusted it with icing sugar and will let Janet do with it whatever she wants. Janet if you want to eat it- cool. If you want to feed it to a stray cat- that's cool too. If you want to through it against a wall because you've always wondered how that would feel (like in Tom and Jerry) I'm happy to help you fill that life wonder. Happy birthday Janet and have a lovely evening all!

Hope you enjoyed this one. Happy birthday Jans and I hope you like this? xx

This is a view of what the crust should look like

Finished Pear and Almond Tart

Chocolate Fudge Cake- with a few Little Twists

Hi, It's still me. :)

Photo courtesy of Miss Cushla Little- Sister <3

Trying to be all creative with my post heading using a play on words. But not sure if it is going to work. See my name is Little. But in many ways I feel more like a Haughey- the mum's maiden name. That's neither here nor there. Anyway, within the heading I've put Little in the hope that it would reflect my name, to mean with a few Little as in me twists and not referring to the size of the twists. But in fact they were little twists as I didn't want to go overboard just at the minute and possibly put too big a twist in the cake making it taste more of one thing and less of what it is intended to taste like, being chocolate.

Admit it, you love it when I babble and take ages getting to the point. I tend to go off on tangents a lot. I'll start saying one thing and go off onto a completely different topic because something I said in what I was originally saying then reminded me of something that made me start this new topic that I am now going off on a new tangent with. You following me... on my tangent? Hey, I've just done it again. I did not intend to talk about my tangents, I was going to say how it really annoys Cushla and mama, and possibly even the dog?

But they deal with it because what I say is sometimes interesting, but most of the time Cushla says I talk purely to make noise. Sometimes It isn't even English. It is just a string of syllables that I've put together for some bazaar reason to fill the deafening silence.

What's that you say? Get on with it? :)

This recipe, I found on the BBC Website on Good Food. Just assume that most of the stuff I bake, will be off the BBC website. It doesn't take a long time to bake, it just takes a little (see there is that sad sad attempt at playing with words again) time to measure out all of the ingredients.

Never in the past did I measure out all the ingredients completely before even starting to bake whatever it was that I was baking. But you know what, it really does save a lot of time. I'm not running from one counter to the other to get this and that, which really should have been put in immediately after some other ingredient. I guess it doesn't make that much of a difference, except from the possibility of me bashing into mama, Cushla or Toffee is significantly less. You never realise how small the kitchen is (even when it's not at all) until someone is in your space and always there when you turn around. I need enough space to run round and not have to factor in someone else. When I cook, I have a monopoly on the space in the kitchen. People just know not to come in. It's better for everyone in the sweetest way possible.

Okay, the ingredients for the fudge cake are;

- 175g Self- raising flour

- 2 Tbsp (Tablespoons) Cocoa Powder, I used Cadbury's hot chocolate powder ( Twist #1)

- 1 Tsp (Teaspoon) Bicarbonate of Soda

- 150g Caster Sugar

- 2 Eggs

-150ml Sunflower oil, I used 150g melted butter. A) I love butter. B) Butter tastes better. C) I had no sunflower oil (Twist #2)

-150ml Milk- the recipe says semi- skimmed, but whatever you have lying around is grand sure (If you don't have a measuring jug, only scales, I find that when I measure out liquids on the scales, it makes no difference whatsoever if you use the grams option.)

- 2 Tbsp Golden Syrup, I used Maple Syrup. A) I prefer the taste. B) I had no Golden Syrup. (Twist #3)

- 1 Tbsp of instant coffee powder. I've heard a lot about if you add coffee to something, it'll make it taste even more chocolaty. (Twist #4)

Buttercream:

Recipe Version:

- 75g Unsalted butter
-175g Icing sugar
- 3 Tbsp Cocoa powder
- Drop of Milk

           vs

My version of the buttercream:

- Enough butter to fill the required amount of buttercream you think is appropriate for the size of your cake, factoring in that you'll be adding icing sugar. I used around 150g as I needed more icing.

- Sprinkle in the icing sugar gradually to the butter and keep testing the taste after each combination. Stop adding when you cannot taste the butter anymore. You know that butter taste, kinda buttery funnily enough. I stop adding the icing sugar when that taste goes away. Not too sweet, but not too buttery in the sense that when you eat it you feel like you are eating pure butter.

- Half cocoa powder, around 1 Tbsp and half melted chocolate. I used around half a block of dark chocolate melted : 10 Large Milk Chocolate buttons melted. Mix that into the butter cream with a little warm water to help it become silky and smooth.

See which one you prefer. (twist #5)

Pre-heat the oven to 180C and bake for 15 or so minutes. Really this again depends on your oven and your batter. But what you want to look out for is an even, toasty warm colour that obviously isn't raw and is coming away from the sides. If it bounces back from when you touch it it is ready. If a skewer comes out clean it is ready. If it smells gloriously yummy scrummy dum dum it is most likely done. If not then, there is something wrong with your nose and what it is smelling. Lol.

It is probably best to butter and line you tins before starting anything. This and preheating the oven. If your oven is anything like mine, it will take an absolute age to preheat. So better to have something like making the batter to occupy you when it is taking its sweet time preheating or you'll get bored and actually try and do the dishes.

You want to put the flour, cocoa powder, coffee, bicarbonate of soda and sugar into a mixer and blitz them together. If or no other reason than to mess about for fun. Then add the wet ingredients. I added the eggs first and mixed them until the began to form a clump. To loosen this as I didn't want to be forming a cookie dough type mixture, I added the milk, maple syrup and butter. This really liquidised it. It looked like chocolate sauce and I had to fight there and then with my will power to not eat it all. Plus there were raw eggs in it anyway, so probably not the best idea. I actually added a little melted  milk chocolate here as well in the actual batter.

Pour this evenly into the lined tins and pop into the oven for around 15 minutes or until they are golden brown and cooked through.

Take the cakes out of the oven and immediately take them out of their tins. Do this by flipping the tin over so it is facing the cooling rack and tap it on the tray to make the cake fall out. Do this for all of them and peel back the baking paper. Leave them to cool completely now. Don't worry, It isn't like you'll just be sitter there wanting to eat it, you have to make the buttercream.

To do this, chuck the butter and icing sugar into a bowl and mix until creamed together. I normally do this by putting the butter in, creaming it and then gradually adding the icing sugar a little at a time and tasting it. But today for some reason I didn't. I chucked it all in at once and boy was that a massive mistake. Icing sugar everywhere. I breathed in so much I was coughing. But not over the buttercream. Felt like that should be clarified.

So if you don't want everything coated in a layer of icing sugar, or coughing icing sugar out in little clouds, it would make someone walking in not knowing what was going on think you swallowed a piece of chalk and are coughing little chalk clouds (you know the kind of clouds of chalk like you were beating two chalk board thingy's together like in the Simpsons, I mean that kind of cloud), do the buttercream the way I normally do it and not how I did it today. Then again, you may have some way of your own of making the buttercream. So in that case you do it that way. Each to their own.

I was watching Ina (Barefoot Contessa) the other week and she was icing a cake. She used little squares of baking paper and put them under the cake, so that when she iced the cake, the spare icing would drop onto it and not the stand. Meaning that when it was done, she would take them away and have a neat stand, un-iced.

So place your first little cake onto the baking paper on your chosen stand. Plop a lot of icing onto it and spread it out evenly just before reaching the edge. Place another cake on top of that and repeat the process. Do this again and again until you have no cakes left. Once all the cakes are layered you need to ice the whole cake.

Get ready to ice the entire cake. To do this put a heap of icing on the top, like so much you think the cake might collapse from the center out. Then with a pallet knife or a knife, gradually spread the icing out towards the edges. I used a rocking motion to do this with my pallet knife.

Have you reached the edge yet? Good good, now we ice the edges. To do this you want to take the left over icing on the top of the cake and spread it downwards and then get more icing from the bowl and begin to spread it evenly onto the sides to cover the cakes completely in icing- yum! Use the rocking motion again as this will help you use up as much icing as possible without either using too much icing, or tearing the cake in the process. That wouldn't be any good.

To get an even or evenish finish, run the pallet knife along the edge and gently scrape off the excess icing in an even motion and layer until the cake rim is even. Touch up where needed by adding or taking away icing. To do the top, run the pallet knife from the outside in to get an even finish.

Take away the paper base, by gently pulling it away, without taking the cake with you. :) That is the cake complete, unless you want to decorate it. I didn't, but if you want to you could do grated chocolate, or shavings of chocolate of whatever type. It really depends on your preference. Personally I'd use dark chocolate as it would stand out from the icing, but would also be in keeping with the flavours already used. I like white chocolate but wouldn't use it as it wasn't in the recipe and Cushla and mama despise the stuff.

Myself cutting the cake

I think shavings of chocolate are really pretty and create a nice finish. Hannah, Cushla's friend from Uni and who has a great blog called Tolley Bakes- amazing btw- anyway, she did chocolate shavings and that is where I learnt to do them.

I was laughing at mama trying to light the sparkler :D

Alternatively, I made this cake for my cousin Peyton's 4th birthday. It was a treasure chest. Wait no not that one, it was the one in Donegal. Yes, this wee munchkin got two cakes out of me. This was lined with Chocolate fingers on the rim. The reason I didn't do this was that the cake was too high. My bad. I'll find a photo of them so that you can see what I mean.

Well that's all for today. Thanks again