Vanilla Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

I've been meaning to make these for ever such a long time, and although I know it's not an original idea, we seem to be having a mini heatwave reminiscent of summer and so it's probably the right time to share them. I took advantage of a recent day of leave from work to make the cakes and take them into work in the car. One of my difficulties with this recipe is that it's pretty difficult to transport the finished product for me - they're too tall for my tins and have a propensity to fall over and I had serious concerns about a successful bus journey with them. So my day off seemed like the perfect time to attempt them.

I was a little nervous because I've tried making these before, a couple of years ago. I can't remember which recipe I used but suffice it to say that the attempt was not successful. Overflowing and overdone does not make for a happy baker. And it was impossible to trim off the overflow without damaging the cones so I gave up and didn't attempt them again. Until now, when I saw the recent (well, relatively so) BBC Good Food magazine cover and remembered that I needed to conquer this recipe. I looked at their recipe which calls for 200g each plain flour, butter and caster sugar, 2 eggs, 4tbsp custard powder and vanilla (but no raising agent) and decided not to trust them (my loss probably - I guess with no raising agent that amount of mixture would fit into the cones) partly because the recipe states that it makes 10 yet calls for 12 flat bottomed cones...

Anyway, I decided to use a standard victoria sponge recipe and go carefully when filling the cones, which worked admirably. And then make a lovely soft, whippy white chocolate buttercream to top them with, along with the obligatory flake and chocolate sprinkles.

Vanilla Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes
Ingredients
125g softened butter
125g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
1-2tsp vanilla extract

For the white chocolate buttercream
105g butter, softened
175g icing sugar

70g white chocolate, melted and cooled slightly (I used Green and Blacks with lovely vanilla seeds in it)

small splash hot water

To decorate
Chocolate sprinkles

Flakes (I used full size Cadbury Flakes, chopped into thirds. You'll need 5 flake bars and I had a piece leftover)

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Stand 14 flat bottomed cones in a 12 hole muffin tin, placing two on the top of the tin (or just stand them on a baking sheet).

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the eggs, flour and vanilla and continue to mix until well combined. It will be quite thick, this is ok.

- Divide evenly between your cones. I had intended to make 12 but found myself with too much cake mixture. I think 14 was right because 12 would have been too full or overflowed. There was just one cone that I thought was slightly underfilled.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes then allow to cool on a wire rack while you make the buttercream.

- Beat the butter until it is very soft. Add the icing sugar in two stages, beating well until it is smooth and creamy. Add the melted white chocolate and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. I added a small splash of water to make it easier to pipe and used a Wilton 1M tip to pipe the buttercream. 

- Decorate with sprinkles and flakes and admire your handiwork!

My colleagues were really very impressed with these and there was some discussion as to how the cake managed to get inside the cone... not many people knew that cones bake quite happily without burning and it was a source of wonder!

I'm pleased to have finally managed this recipe successfully - I made these a good few weeks ago before changing jobs and they were a final farewell to my lovely and much missed colleagues (although I am lucky enough to be working with lots of lovely new people now too).

I guess this is the explanation for my blog absence too - moving to a new job with more responsibility on the other side of the country, settling in and getting to grips with the job and people haven't left me much time to blog. Added to which I've sort of only half moved house - I am renting somewhere and simultaneously trying (currently unsuccessfully - anyone fancy a nice three bed semi with potential to develop?!?) to sell my house means that I'm back and forth and parted from most of my baking equipment for much of the time. Time to bring out the violins! I probably won't be around much for a while (certainly not until I get an internet connection in the new place - I'm sorry I haven't been commenting much recently, I'm still reading) but I'm still alive. Thanks to all the people out there still reading ;-)

I'm going to enter these into the Calender Cakes challenge, as I'm just catching the end of National Cupcake week and the challenge this month is cupcakes. Hosted this month by Laura of Laura Loves Cakes and co-hosted by Rachel of Dolly Bakes.

Yeo Valley Blueberry Yogurt Cake

Quite often I do something I think is fairly sensible but then doesn't really work out... what am I talking about I hear you thinking. Well, I buy fresh berries with all good intentions of eating them and then when I realise that I'm not going to manage it I freeze the berries. All well and good, but they then stay in suspended animation in the freezer for a very long time. Too long. 

I need to clear the freezer(s) out in a reasonably short time frame (I'm not going to manage it, but I'm going to try) and since a large amount of fruit is currently resident in the freezer it seems sensible to try and use some of it up. Whilst browsing the internet recently I came across a recipe for Raspberry, Lemon and Yogurt Tealoaf on the Telegraph food and drink website. The recipe is by Sarah Mayor and has been published in the recent cookery book from Yeo Valley - well known for making yogurts. 

As it happens I currently have a fridge full of yogurt too (another of those healthy things I buy but don't always get round to eating!) and so this seemed like the perfect recipe to use up some ingredients. I didn't want a loaf though, as I wanted the cake to cook more quickly and I also didn't bother with the lemon, and substituted blueberries for raspberries. 

You can find the original recipe here. I defrosted the blueberries in the fridge overnight, and they were only just defrosted which probably helped because the cake batter was incredibly stiff, really, really thick and I didn't think I'd actually get the blueberries to mix through, but managed eventually. I ended up using Total 0% fat greek yogurt rather than the specified wholemilk yogurt and used 1tsp vanilla instead of the lemon. I used 25g extra flour instead of the almonds for allergy reasons and didn't do the topping, but aside from all these changes (!) followed the recipe!!!

My cake took about 70 minutes to bake in an 8" round tin and although I had been concerned that it might be a little dry as the batter was so stiff I was pleased to find it was soft and moist with lovely blueberry hits throughout the cake. The stiff mixture prevented the berries all sinking to the bottom, giving a good distribution through the cake. Next time I think I'd take the time to add the lemon because I think the cake would definitely benefit from that added flavour lift. I finished with a dusting of icing sugar (the cake hadn't quite cooled by the time I needed to take it to work so I didn't want a fancy topping). A very successful cake and one I'd make again.

This month's No Waste Food Challenge, started by Kate at Turquoise Lemons is being hosted by Elizabeth of Elizabeth's Kitchen and is titled 'Freezer Stash'. This cake made great use of some of my many blueberries and is my submission.

Rhubarb Cupcakes

I keep seeing rhubarb in the shops at the moment and decided to buy some to bake with. The only way I've ever really had rhubarb in the past is in crumble and not for years and years. For some reason I can't recall, I had convinced myself that I didn't really like it very much. It seems that's not really true! 

The rhubarb I bought is the outdoor variety (the forced kind having gone out of season months ago) so the colour is more towards green rather than the pretty bright pink kind you see in the winter/spring months, but the flavour is still good.

Reduced rhubarb syrup - pretty in pink

I decided to make rhubarb cupcakes from one of my less-used baking books, The Primrose Bakery Book, which is the second from the Primrose Bakery (yes, I do have the first one too, and have actually made quite a lot out of it!). I can't find a legitimate copy of the recipe on the internet, but it involves chopping and stewing the rhubarb first to cook it and then draining the cooking syrup. This is then reduced to make a thick sticky syrup to add to the buttercream. The stewed rhubarb is added to the cupcake mixture. The only change I made to the recipe was to omit the 1tsp ground ginger called for and replace it with 1tsp vanilla extract. I found that after the specified 25 minutes the cakes were pretty much cooked but because I'd been a numpty and set my oven too low they weren't coloured at all (note to self: check oven temp) so I turned the oven up and left them a bit longer to colour. This meant that I was a little concerned they'd be dry and so used some of the reduced rhubarb syrup as a glaze.

Glazed cupcakes before buttercream

The buttercream recipe wasn't my most successful attempt. The recipe in the book calls for 110g butter and 500g icing sugar, along with the reduced rhubarb juice from stewing the rhubarb. I thought this sounded unbearably sweet and started out with 110g butter and about 200g icing sugar. Unfortunately the buttercream split slightly when I added the rhubarb juice and a little warm water to slacken the mixture, I'm not quite sure why. 

Buttercream in the making

I ended up trying to rescue it by adding more sugar (to about 300g total), whisking like mad and I also added about 30g melted white chocolate (as the chocolate is supposed to stabilise the fat/sugar emulsion). It worked out in the end and the buttercream didn't split again but it was too sweet for my tastes. I think I'll add more white chocolate and less sugar next time. Because the rhubarb syrup is added to the buttercream you get a natural, very pale pink colour. 

These were ok, not the best thing I've ever made - the cakes were on the moist/heavy side and as above the buttercream wasn't my favourite. I also found I couldn't really taste the rhubarb but I did discover that I like the smell of rhubarb cooking, which is a good thing!

Since these are an 'R' bake I'm going to enter them into Alphabakes, hosted this month by Ros of The More than Occasional Baker and cohosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes. I haven't managed many challenges over the past few months, but I'm off to an early start here!

Funny Face Jam and Cream Sandwich Biscuits (Cookies)

I often wish that I had stronger willpower when it comes to resisting things I see that I could use to bake with. I'm sure I'd be a lot better off without some of the things I buy, but it'd also be a lot more boring! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. 

Anyway, I recently saw some biscuit (cookie) cutters in Lakeland and couldn't resist buying them. I  then made the leap from buying them to actually using them (this happens less often than it should!). Having seen Ros of the More than Occasional Baker using them very successfully I decided I would use her simple sugar cookie recipe for my own attempts. You probably wouldn't guess from the content of this blog, but I actually eat more biscuits than cake, it's just that I don't make them very often. I have a tendency to burn biscuits and they just never seem very successful so it was with some trepidation I set out to make these biscuits.

I needn't have worried though, the recipe was easy to use, and along with Ros's tip about chilling the dough they were very successful, thanks Ros!

Bulging slightly!

Vanilla Sugar Cookies

Ingredients

125g butter

125g white caster sugar

1 egg

2tsp vanilla extract

250g plain flour

To fill

50g butter

70g icing sugar

30g white chocolate, melted and cooled

Method

- Preheat the oven to 175C/Gas 4. Line baking trays with parchment paper.

- Cream together the butter and sugar until light.

- Add the egg and vanilla and beat again.

- Add the flour and fold in. Divide the mixture into two flat discs and refrigerate for around 30 minutes.

- Roll out to your desired thickness (a few mm is fine) and cut out your cookies. Place on a parchment lined baking tray.

- Return to the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

- Bake for around 10 minutes, until going light brown. Mine took a few minutes longer, but watch like a hawk because they'll overcook quite suddenly.

- Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

When cold sandwich together with white chocolate buttercream (50g butter, creamed with 70g icing sugar and then 30g cooled melted white chocolate added) and the jam of your choice - I used blackcurrant.

Generously filled

These were great - I'll definitely have to make my own biscuits more often. They were a lot easier than I was expecting and the dough was really easy to work with too. It was easier when still chilled though, and when it warmed up and started to soften it became more difficult to work with. 

They went really well at work - the crisp biscuit worked well with the soft, sweet buttercream and the slightly sharp jam. In essence, very posh jammy dodgers! Some of my colleagues were greatly amused to find that when bitten into jam oozed out of the eyes of the biscuits - what can I say, I have colleagues with a slightly twisted sense of humour.... (They were right though, the eyes do tend to bulge a bit!)

I'm entering these into Teatime Treats, the theme this month being biscuits/cookies hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage, cohosted by Kate of What Kate Baked.

I'm also entering them into Jac's Bookmarked Recipes - I was pleased to have made these quite quickly after bookmarking them and even more pleased that I got round to using my shiny new biscuit (cookie) cutters!

Nigella's Buttermilk Birthday Cake - A Sunrise

I've seen quite a few brightly coloured cakes around recently, on the Pink Whisk and then BBC Good Food published their recipe for a Rainbow Cake too. Dan Lepard has been in on the act with his Rainbow Cupcakes too. I decided that I didn't want to go the whole hog and do a six or seven layered cake and decided instead to stick to three layers. I decided to go for red, orange and yellow - a sunrise. I know this isn't the best set of photos ever but I really had to mess around with the white balance to even get this far!

I wanted a reliable cake recipe and I've made Nigella's buttermilk birthday cake recipe quite a few times (the original recipe has three eggs and I can see from the scribbles in my book that I've scaled it to two and four egg versions) and it's a good recipe for adapting to different tin sizes.

Batter divided with food colouring added

I made the recipe just as stated (there's a copy from the Guardian as a PDF here, which I assume is reproduced with permission so I will link to it) and then divided the mixture into three (I handily remembered to weigh my mixing bowl before adding the ingredients so it was easy to divide the mixture exactly). I added the food colouring and mixed well before dividing between tins and baking for around 20-25 minutes (although I can't remember exactly how long). Although I have far too many 8"(20cm) round tins, I have two sets of two which are the same within the set but annoyingly don't match each other. So I baked two whilst one set of batter waited and then baked the final cake.

The cakes were quite thin, but this was perfect because three full thickness cakes wouldn't have given a very good cake: buttercream ratio. 

After letting them cool I made a white chocolate buttercream, sandwiched the cakes together with some of it and then spread the rest over the top and sides of the cake so as to hide the interior colour. A scattering of pearlescent hundreds and thousands (very pretty, stocked by Waitrose) finished the cake in style.

Pearlescent hundreds and thousands

All round very successful - it was very well received at work and this is a great cake mixture to work with. I was pleased with how it turned out but next time will be braver with the food colouring because my colours were a little on the subtle side.

I'm entering this into the Forever Nigella challenge, founded by Maison Cupcake. The theme this month is 'Colourful' and is being hosted by Elizabeth of A Girl in her Kitchen. I think this fulfils the brief!

Apple and Banana Muscovado Cakes

These little cakes are a Cake, Crumbs and Cooking original, inspired by the random selection of ingredients that I found myself with a few days ago....

I had an over-ripe banana (a common occurence in my house), some eggs that needed using up quickly, and some apples that were not particularly great for eating. It's the end of apple season (by a considerable margin...) and at the moment the quality is a bit mixed. These ones were ok, but some of them had been bruised and I thought baking with them would allow me to lose any soft bits when I chopped them up.

There isn't as much butter in this recipe as I would normally use for this quantity of eggs and flour, but that's because I took one 250g pack out of the fridge to soften, used 175g for a different recipe and the remaining 75g for these cakes. They didn't suffer for the lack of butter, there were plenty of other flavours going on and the banana added moisture too.

A simple glace icing topping was required to let the cakes shine, but then I thought it looked too plain so I scattered across some butterscotch chips I had, guessing that both banana, apple and muscovado would go with butterscotch. I'm pleased to say I wasn't wrong!

These were lovely and received very positive feedback at work too, which is always nice. Soft cake with a good muscovado and spice flavour, the banana adding moisture and the apples added a good crunch to the cakes as they were quite a crisp eating apple and didn't soften all that much during the cooking. A successful experiment.

Apple and Banana Muscovado Cakes
Ingredients
75g unsalted butter, softened
150g light muscovado sugar
1 ripe banana, mashed (about 100g mashed)
225g self raising flour
2 apples, chopped (unpeeled) mine weighed 240g before coring
3 medium eggs
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
generous 1/2 tsp mixed spice

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Line a muffin tin with 14 cases (I have a 12 and 6 hole tin combination that will fit onto one layer in my oven)

- Cream the butter and sugar. It won't really go light and fluffy because there's not that much butter in there.

- Add the mashed banana, self raising flour, bicarb, mixed spice and eggs and beat well to combine.

- Fold in the chopped apple and divide between your cases.

- Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

For the icing: a simple glace icing made with about 200g icing sugar and water

I'm entering these into a number of blogging challenges:

Alphabakes, hosted this month by Ros at the More Than Occasional Baker (cohosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes) where the letter is A for Apple.

Kate of What Kate Baked is hosting Tea Time Treats this month (cohosted by Karen of Lavendar and Lovage) with a theme of cupcakes and muffins.

I'm entering them into the no-waste food challenge at Turquoise Lemons where this months theme is fruit (I was relieved to be rid of my apples and banana!) hosted by Elizabeth of Elizabeth's Kitchen.

I'm also entering them into Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Fab Food 4 All (and Fuss Free Flavours) as I was using up eggs, apples and a banana that would otherwise have been wasted and this recipe is mercifully light on the expensive butter.

(Not) Hot Cross Buns

Last year's buns with crosses and glaze - very pretty

A little late I know, but I did actually make these on time (i.e. before Good Friday) this year. I decided not to do the traditional crosses, making them into Not Cross Buns and therefore perfect for any time of the year, because these little beauties should definitely not be confined to the celebration of Easter!

I used the same recipe as last year, which can be found here: No Knead Mini Hot Cross Buns. The minor changes I made were to use all raisins rather than a mixture of raisins and cranberries, to use whole milk rather than semi skimmed (2%) and to use normal bread flour instead of extra strong. I got 17 50g balls of dough from the recipe.

This year's buns - not so pretty but equally delicious

It's perfect as far as I'm concerned - a little forethought for the soaking of the raisins to make them beautifully plump and juicy, no kneading of the sticky dough, minimal intervention on my part, and the loveliest soft, juicy buns at the end of the process. The only thing it requires is time really - I find sweet (enriched) yeasted doughs take much longer than you think to rise and I know this is where I've made mistakes in the past - not letting the dough rise enough has led to bullet like buns. The spices also retard the action of the yeast, so here patience is a virtue. I also like to arrange my buns to proove so that they batch together, maximising the softness.

Soft crumb with juicy raisins

I am the first to admit that these are not the most picture-perfect round, glazed hot cross buns but oh wow do they make up for that in taste and texture. J was chief taste tester for these and her first comment after finishing one (interspersed by comments such as 'Ooh, these are really good') was 'Have you brought any more for me....?' Make them, you won't regret it!

I'm entering these not cross buns into Calendar Cakes, where the theme this month is Easter Extravaganza. The host this month is Laura of Laura Loves Cakes, and the challenge is also hosted by Rachel of Dolly Bakes.   

Dan Lepard's Chocolate Lamingtons

Lamingtons with successful glaze - mark 2

Well, sort of. Last year, Dan's recipe for double chocolate lamingtons was published in the Guardian, ahead of ANZAC day. I made them at the time, and used the glaze that he recommended for coating them. However, since I avoid coconut (as one of those things to which I might be allergic but don't fancy finding out about) I didn't want to actually coat the lamingtons and dip them in desiccated coconut, I just wanted to glaze the cakes. 

Lamingtons the first time round - with a rather runny glaze used in the middle and on the top

I rather fancied Suelle's take on the cake, which you can find here Chocolate and Coconut Layer Cake. She had the rather brilliant idea of halving the coating quantities and splitting the cake in half, sandwiching it together with the glaze and spreading it across the top. I decided to go for this too but unfortunately I was in a bit of a hurry to get the cake iced and my glaze was steadfastly refusing to thicken, which as a coating I think you'd probably expect. My lamingtons were good, but rather messy to eat and the glaze wasn't really what I wanted. I think I possibly used a different chocolate to Suelle and that's why my glaze took so long to set. I refrigerated a little of it and it did eventually thicken up. 

As with many cakes I make that end up turning out not quite right, I intended to remake the cake (very successful) and ice it with a different icing. But as usual, time slides and I didn't get round to remaking the cake. Then as part of the step-by-step baking series that Dan is now doing for the Guardian, he published a more conventional lamington recipe recently, for Australia Day (26th January) and also a twist on this recipe,  Macadamia Ginger cake with lamington icing. These two recipes reminded me of how successful the chocolate lamington cake had been and how I had intended to give it another go. And so I did.

I used the double chocolate lamington cake recipe, as stated here and then taking inspiration from the macadamia ginger cake with lamington icing, used an approximation of the lamington icing from that cake to ice mine with. As with my first attempt, the cake was successful. I did note that it took longer to bake than stated (about 10-15 minutes longer) and the top surface seemed a little darker than I would have liked. However, once the icing was on not only was this not noticeable, there was no hint in the taste of the cake that it had caught at all, so the dark surface was obviously just in my mind.

Dan states for the lamington icing that you need a half batch of the lamington icing, plus 75g dark chocolate. I used the quantities stated below (which are approximately 1/3 of the amount stated, plus 30g dark chocolate) , which gave a generous covering for an 8" (20cm) square cake, as you can see in the pictures. 

Lamington icing
130g dark chocolate (I used G&B 72% cooking chocolate)
10g cocoa powder
100g caster sugar
65ml milk

Method

- Bring the milk, caster sugar and cocoa powder to the boil in a small pan, whisking.

- Add the chocolate, stir until melted, allow to thicken if necessary and then use to spread over your cake.

* I found that it was difficult to beat all of the small lumps of cocoa out of the icing, therefore I would recommend sifting it first. I also ended up transferring the sugar/cocoa/milk mixture to a small bowl to try and beat some of the lumps out of it before adding the chocolate. The mixture thickened quickly when I added the chocolate and was easily spreadable - I could happily spread the mixture right to the edge of the cake without fear that it was going to run off.

The actual cake was lighter than I expected and as you might expect from the ingredients, really quite sweet. I'm not sure why, but the top 1/3 of the cake seemed to be more aerated than the lower portion - you can see this in the picture above. The icing was very successful - it was less sweet than I was expecting and I would definitely use it again (I'm not that keen on super sweet icings as a rule). The icing doesn't dry to a gloss, but to a matt finish. I also decorated my cake with hundreds and thousands, and these needed to be added quickly while the icing was still wet enough to hold them, otherwise they just rolled off....

I'm entering this into We Should Cocoa, the monthly chocolate blogging challenge set up by Choclette of Choc Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Teapot. The host this month is Lucy of The Kitchen Maid and she has chosen 'Fame' as the theme. Lamingtons are a famous Antipodean treat and Dan Lepard is a famous baker so I think these qualify!

Golden Syrup Banana Cake

I frequently pick up the recipe cards that are available in the supermarkets. I think I must have picked up over a hundred over the years, and due to my squirrelling tendencies they don't tend to get culled very often. In my defence, however, occasionally, I will recall a recipe card with something I thought looked particularly good, but for whatever reason didn't get made at the time of picking up the card. That's the case with this recipe.

It was on a card from Waitrose (who do tend to have particularly interesting looking recipes - to my mind at least) and was for 'Sticky honey, almond and banana cake'. There was the immediate problem of having to substitute for the almonds - both ground in the cake and flaked on the top, but that was easily solved by substituting plain flour for the almonds and leaving off the topping.

You can find the original recipe here on the Waitrose website, and apparently I've been meaning to make it for a year now, having first seen the recipe in March last year. I also thought that since I was already adapting the recipe I'd make it cheaper by using golden syrup instead of honey (and for bonus points my golden syrup was on offer when I bought it!). I decided to use an 8" square tin (20cm square), which is about 15% smaller than the stated tin size, so I was prepared to give it a little longer in the oven than the stated 30-45 minutes.

So here is my adapted version...

Golden Syrup Banana Cake
Ingredients
125g self raising flour
50g plain flour
100g butter
100g light muscovado sugar (or light brown soft sugar)
100g golden syrup
1 very ripe banana, mashed
2 medium eggs, beaten

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with parchment paper.
- Melt the butter, sugar and syrup. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly (I didn't leave mine very long at all).
- Mix together the flours in a bowl and add the melted mixture followed by the mashed banana and beaten eggs.
- Beat well (I did this by hand) to give a smooth mixture (well, smooth aside from the lumps of banana...) and pour into the prepared tin.
- Bake for around 35-40 minutes until risen and golden and a cake tester comes out clean.
- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

I served mine cut into 12 fingers.

This is a really useful recipe for when you need to use up just one banana that is well past it's eating best (in my opinion at least). Although it doesn't look anything special the cake was good - fairly moist (although it doesn't really look it) and with a subtle banana flavour. I didn't really get much flavour from the syrup, I'm sure the combination of honey and almond would have been much more flavoursome, but I did enjoy the cake as it was. I'll make it again, but now I know that the syrup flavour isn't particularly strong I think I'll add some spice next time - perhaps mixed spice, nutmeg or ground cardamom.

A very quick and easy bake, and I bet children would love to help with this one!

I'm going to send this to Credit Crunch Munch. It helpfully uses up that last overripe banana in the fruit bowl attracting fruit flies, uses syrup instead of expensive honey and is quick and easy to make. Credit Crunch Munch is hosted by Helen of Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla of Fab Food for All. The host this month is Helen.

I'd enter it into Dom's Random recipes too as the theme this month is cuttings, memories and clippings and I guess recipe cards would count. But I be lying if I said that the selection was random - I needed to use up the banana!

Ginger Chocolate Chewy Cookies

Also known as third time lucky! And also phew-just-in-time! When Choclette published a recipe for chewy apricot cookies back in December I immediately decided I needed to bake them. They looked delicious and pretty much my idea of a perfect cookie. And then I pretty much went off the idea of baking altogether. (Yep, it's been a bit like that round here recently).

But when I decided that I needed cookies I remembered Choclette's recipe and how good it had looked and decided to make some. Please don't ask what happened to the first batch, and then whilst making the second batch I completely forgot to add the baking powder. So although they turned out ok, they were rather more chewy than I was expecting and I decided that third time's the charm and had another go. I halved the recipe and these went perfectly well.

I'm going to give the recipe here as this is how I made them after adapting the recipe slightly. You can find Choclette's original recipe here.

Ginger Chocolate Chewy Cookies
Ingredients
50g butter, softened
50g light muscovado sugar
15g honey (I used a floral New Zealand honey.... airmiles *cough*)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
75g plain flour
scant 1/2 tsp baking powder
30g crystallised stem ginger, chopped
30g 70% cocoa solids chocolate, chopped

Method

- Preheat the oven to 175C/Gas4 (ish). Line a baking tray with parchment paper.

- Cream the butter, sugar and honey together until well combined.

- Add the vanilla extract, flour and baking powder and continue to mix. The mixture will seem very dry.

- Add the chopped ginger and chocolate and work the mixture together. I used the back of a spatula for this and then ended up squashing it together with my hands.

- Divide into approximately equal balls, I got twelve from my mixture.

- Squash the balls slightly, place well apart (although I only used one tray here and they didn't merge) and bake for 10-15 minutes. I found mine took 16 minutes.

I can see these becoming a favourite around here - they were really quick to put together and to bake and are deliciously soft and chewy. The ginger and chocolate work really well together and the honey is delicious too although the fairly mild honey I used doesn't come through strongly. As they don't have an egg in them it's really easy to halve the recipe too - always a bonus.

I am entering these into this month's We Should Cocoa challenge, hosted by Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes and co-hosted by Choclette of Choc Log Blog and Chele of Chocolate Teapot. The theme this month is ginger and I absolutely adore chocolate, ginger and the combination of the two!

I'm also entering them into Jac's bookmarked recipes challenge as I had noted the recipe on Choclette's blog ages ago and have finally got round to making them.