Banana and Blackcurrant Cupcakes

I wanted to say Banana and Blackcurrant Buns because that's how I think of these (and who doesn't love a bit of alliteration!) but then I wondered if the wider world would be confused by the use of 'bun' to describe a small cake. So I went with cupcakes. But if I start referring to buns, that's what I mean.

Anyway, enough musing on descriptions. I had ripe bananas. Quite a lot of them so I knew that I needed to use some to bake with. I quite fancied a simple little recipe, with the addition of banana and after a little searching came up with this BBC Good Food recipe for Dotty Banana Fairy Cakes. And then I wondered how I could make them more interesting. A while ago I bought some 'Fruit Flakes' which seem to be marketed to the parents of small children as a lunchbox addition. At least that's the way it seems to me. I don't think these are a particularly wholesome treat, in that they're fairly highly processed, but there's nothing too spooky (the usual sugar, thickeners, flavour, colour....) on the ingredients list either. I forget why I ended up buying them. I had some blackcurrant ones and decided to add them to my recipe too, to see whether they'd work or not.

Banana and Blackcurrant Cupcakes
Ingredients
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
150g self raising flour
1 very ripe banana, mashed
50g fat free yogurt
2 packets of blackcurrant 'Fruit Flakes'
For the icing
65g blackcurrant jam (I used Bonne Maman)
130g icing sugar

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Place 11-12 cupcake liners into a muffin tin. I got 11 from this mixture, but you could make 12 slightly smaller ones.

- Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the eggs, flour and mashed banana and beat again.

- At this stage my mixture looked quite dry so I decided to add 50g fat free yogurt.

- Fold in the fruit flakes and divide between the cases.

- Bake for 25-30 minutes until risen and golden.

- Allow to cool.

For the icing, mix the jam and icing sugar and very, very carefully and slowly add water to your desired consistency. Dollop the icing onto the cakes and spread it around. It will slowly spread on its own too....

I had lots and lots of positive feedback about these from colleagues, one of whom said these definitely ranked among the best cakes I have made. I thought they were good, but perhaps not quite that good! The icing worked really well - the blackcurrant jam (although sweet) meant that the icing wasn't sickly sweet as the blackcurrant bursts were slightly sharp (I love blackcurrant jam, I can eat it off the spoon...) and the cake was good too, light and moist. The banana flavour was in the background and the fruit flakes worked well. Because they're processed, the flavour is concentrated and therefore not lost on baking. They didn't melt away during baking and provided a nice burst of blackcurrant flavour in the cake. I have also (ages ago and haven't got round to blogging the experiment) tried the strawberry fruit flakes the same way and they're equally successful. According to their website the available flavours are strawberry, blackcurrant, orange, tropical and raspberry. I've seen the orange locally but would be interested to find the raspberry (not that I've made a particular effort to find them!).

Unadorned strawberry version

This is not a sponsored post, I bought this random stuff myself!

Christmas Chai Inspired Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

One of the best things about festive baking is using all of the warming spices that just seem to fit in so beautifully at this time of the year. I love using mixed spice, ginger, cinnamon and allspice to create that heady Christmassy aroma but this time I wanted to combine them in a light cupcake recipe with chocolate .

I had seen a recipe for chai cupcakes in the BBC Good Food magazine (October 2011) by Edd Kimber that used chai teabags to give the flavour but as I didn't want to use teabags I decided to adapt the recipe. I think I've not really used chai spices at all, simply my own mix using what I know I enjoy (and what was available in my baking stores!) but I'm going to stick with the name anyway. I think you'd need to use cardamom and perhaps a pinch of cloves to make them more authentically chai.

If you look really hard you can just about make out my Christmas tree cupcake cases....

Chai Inspired Spiced Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream
Ingredients
225g butter
225g light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
225g self raising flour
110g buttermilk
1 1/2tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice

Chocolate Buttercream ***makes tonnes, far more than you need - see below***
200g butter
200g icing sugar
150g milk chocolate
50g dark chocolate
1/2tsp vanilla extract

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Line at least 18 muffin holes with paper cases - see comment below.

- Melt the chocolate (either in the microwave or over a bowl of hot water) and set aside to cool to room temperature.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the eggs, flour and spices and beat until well combined.

- Add the buttermilk and beat again until the mixture is uniform.

- Divide between the cases. Bake for 20-25 minutes until well risen and golden.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack. 

- Cream the butter until very soft and fluffy. Add the (cooled) chocolate and half of the icing sugar and keep creaming. Add the remaining icing sugar and vanilla extract and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Add a little milk or (boiled) water if necessary to make the frosting softer.

- Pipe or spread onto your cupcakes. Decorate as desired.

Notes:

- There was too much mixture for 18 cases (I was using cupcake rather than muffin size cases - i.e. bigger than fairy cases but smaller than muffin cases - if you used muffin cases I guess it would have been ok). I ended up using three silicon cases too to take the excess. Which worked fine.

- There was far, far too much buttercream. If I'd been piping it there probably wouldn't have been quite such an excess - making swirls always takes more buttercream than you think - but if you're just spreading them like in my photos I think half the amount of buttercream would be ample.

Rudolph makes a festive appearance...

These were lovely - the spicing was quite delicate and the chocolate buttercream worked well with the cakes. The original recipe specified soured cream but I didn't have that - the buttermilk substitute worked very well in my opinion and gave lovely, soft, moist cakes. A winner, just that the quantities were a little off!

Since this recipe contains both chocolate and cinnamon, I am going to submit it to We Should Cocoa, founded by Choclette of Choc Log Blog (this month's host) and Chele of Chocolate Teapot. The theme for December is, of course, cinnamon. Yum.

As a Christmas-scented recipe I'm also submitting this to Calendar Cakes hosted by Rachel at Dolly Bakes and Laura at Laura Loves Cakes. The theme this month is (unsurprisingly!) Christmas!

Little Maple Banana Cakes

Each year at least one of the magazines that I subscribe to (yes, I subscribe because I'd only end up buying them each month, and so it works out much cheaper this way!) has a freebie calendar, which is usually really useful. I don't actually use a calendar on the wall that much any more, preferring an electronic means of keeping track of where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing, but I still like to have the calendar on the wall. (I think this harks back to my childhood, where all events were meticulously recorded on the calendar lest we forgot something...)

This year, the calendar is from the BBC Good Food magazine, and it's a good one. I have sometimes found that when the calendars are sponsored by certain companies every single recipe contains their ingredient. This is fine if they've got a reasonable range to choose from, but it gets a bit old to have 'X-brand' cheese in every single recipe. Anyway, this year the sponsor is Dr Oetker, but happily almost none of the recipes have a sponsored ingredient in them, they're just good BBC Good Food recipes.

Anyway, this is leading somewhere, I promise. I have spent most of the year walking past this calendar and seeing the recipes each month (January - Frosty yogurt orange cake, February - Passion fruit cupcakes, March - Sultana tea loaf) and haven't made any of them yet. Until now. Turning over the page just over a month ago I was greeted by Little banana cakes with maple pecan frosting. So far so unexciting. Not really a recipe for me as I can't eat pecans. But then I realised that adapting this recipe would be perfect for some of the ingredients I had around needing using up. Maple syrup and a very ripe banana (just the one lonely one - not helpful for the majority of recipes, which require many very ripe bananas; I'm sure I'm not the only one out there to only get one small ripe banana left over...) called my name.

An adapted recipe ensued:

Little Maple Banana Cakes
Ingredients
50g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
80g light muscovado sugar
105g self raising flour
40g maple syrup
1 large egg
1 very overripe banana, mashed (mine weighed 70g after removing the skin)
30g raisins

Frosting

Usual method for making buttercream, if you want (i.e. about half butter to sugar - I'd be tempted to use about 40-50g butter for six cakes and therefore about 100-140g icing sugar)

Flavourings as desired (orange, lemon, maple syrup etc)

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease a 6 hole muffin tin well with butter (or, obviously, use 6 holes of a 12 hole tin...)

- Cream the butter and muscovado sugar (if you don't want to do this step separately then either use a hand mixer, NOT a stand mixer or make sure your butter is super, super soft - I thought mine was, but clearly not - the butter wouldn't mix into the rest of the ingredients using a stand mixer and I ended up decanting into a different bowl and blitzing with a hand mixer).

- Add the rest of the ingredients except the raisins and beat well until combined.

- Stir in the raisins and divide between the prepared tins.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes.

- Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool.

If topping with buttercream, make up as usual (beat butter until soft, add icing sugar in a couple of batches, beating until well combined, light and fluffy - I usually add a splash of water to make the mixture easier to beat) and add flavourings as desired. Maple syrup might be good here.

I love, love, loved these. They aren't too sweet, they aren't too banana-ry and the flavour of the maple syrup doesn't come through strongly. That makes them sound a failure doesn't it, none of the constituent flavours being readily identifiable. But in fact, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The cakes are moist and deliciously dense, sweet but not overly so, and the maple syrup adds undertones and is subtle. The raisins are plump and juicy and really add to the overall cake by providing a contrasting chewy texture. They develop a delicious sticky top after a day or so and soften slightly around the edges, really, really good. So successful in fact that I have made second and third batches for myself already. In the second batch I added about 50g dark chocolate, and this was one of those occasions were the chocolate was an intrusion, unwarranted and detracted from the deliciousness of the cakes as they were. Needless to say, the third batch didn't contain chocolate and was much the better for it.

Parsnip, Maple Syrup and Pear Cake

Well, this month is the first birthday of the Tea Time Treats challenge, hosted by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Kate of What Kate Baked. So to celebrate, Karen is hosting this month with the theme of Cake. What could be more appropriate for a birthday celebration than cake? I knew when she announced it exactly which cake I was going to make... 

A few years ago BBC Good Food magazine was celebrating its 20th birthday and ran a competition to create a recipe for a suitably celebratory cake. There were lots of entries and the winners and runners up in various categories were chosen (and all look delicious). This Parsnip and Maple Syrup Cake was in the magazine (November 2009) as a finalist but ended up as the winner, and deservedly so. The other two finalist's cakes were a Coffee Crunch Cake and a Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake. Yum!

I've actually made this cake before, a couple of years ago and never got round to blogging it, so this was a great excuse to make it again and remind myself of just how delicious it really is. My colleagues are generally open minded when it comes to trying the various different cakes that land on the tea-room table (they don't get a say - I bake what I want and they can choose to eat it if they want, or ignore it if they want) but I did wonder whether they would draw the line at parsnip in a cake. So it went on the tea-room table as 'Mystery Cake - can you guess the ingredients?'. It was good fun - all through the day I had people coming up to me with random suggestions of what was in the cake - some correct answers and some slightly wild suggestions which amused me greatly. 

I did change the recipe slightly. I can't use pecans so I omitted those, I used a small pear rather than an eating apple and I omitted the zest and juice of the orange specified. I'm struggling to remember whether I replaced it with lemon, but I don't think I did. This is a cake that is more than the sum of its parts - perfectly balanced in flavours. There isn't a parsnip taste at all (in the same way that carrot cake doesn't taste of carrot) but oddly, there isn't a maple syrup flavour either. Quite a bit of syrup is used in the cake, and I'm sure that it contributes to the overall effect but it is the one ingredient that none of my colleagues picked up (quite a few said cinnamon - which is in the mixed spice) and a number suggested citrus - lemon or lime (which I don't think I used) but perhaps they were foxed by the strips of grated pear skin which was green and after suggesting various vegetables (the texture gives it away) some people said parsnip. I used a vanilla buttercream for the centre of the cake (50g butter, about 150g icing sugar and a tsp vanilla extract, made in the usual way). The texture of the cake is outstanding though - really moist and quite close, yet light too. I think this is quite a common feature of vegetable cakes - the moistness but without accompanying heaviness. The cakes are quite delicate when baked, so be careful when turning them out.

Great minds think alike though, as Suelle at Mainly Baking has already blogged this cake as her entry to TTT. However, because I think it's such a lovely cake and definitely deserves to be promoted and made by more people I'm blogging it as my entry too. So I guess I could sum up this entire post in one short sentence: Make and eat this cake, you won't regret it!

Apple and Nutmeg Scones

With all of the strange weather we've had here in the UK over the growing season many crops have been early, late or just downright confused as to what they should be doing and when. One of the sad things is that this year's apple harvest is very poor and there may be shortages later on in the season. I love apples and I'm very much hoping that they will still be available for a good while yet, but I guess that some years are always going to be worse than others. It's very odd though - round here (Northwest England) other crops have been difficult - my mum's friend has a tree that is usually groaning under the weight of plums - the branches dip to the ground and have to be supported, yet this year she barely had a single plum.

Anyway, whatever happens later in the season, the new apples are here for now and I intend to make the most of them while they are around. Perfectly in season and all of the chilly weather recently (and the dark mornings closing in - I hate getting up in the dark) has put me in mind of warming autumnal flavours, and for me, that means spice.

Apples take to spicing so well, and I decided to use a combination of mixed spice and then give it a little spin with a bit of nutmeg. This is one of my less used spices simply because I'm a little lazy and nutmeg needs grating just before you use it for the best flavour. The whole nutmegs keep for years, but the fragrance and beautiful aroma of this spice is lost quickly after grating.

Apple and Nutmeg Scones
Ingredients
250g ricotta cheese
a little milk (or water)
60g caster sugar
50g light muscovado sugar
280g self raising flour
70g butter
1/4tsp mixed spice
about 1/4 of a small nutmeg, grated
2 small coxes apples, cored but not peeled, cut into small cubes
demerara sugar to sprinkle

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6/200C. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet.

- Place the ricotta in a small bowl, beat in the 60g of caster sugar and set aside.

- Place the flour in a large bowl and rub in the butter (I used fridge cold butter here)

- Add the muscovado sugar and the spices to the flour and mix well, breaking up any lumps of sugar.

- Add the apples to the flour mixture.

- Add the ricotta mixture to the flour mixture and bring together as a dough. You will probably need a little extra liquid - I found my mixture quite dry and as I don't usually have milk around, I used a little water to moisten it. I didn't measure it but probably about 4tbsp.

- Tip the dough onto a work surface and knead briefly - more just turning the dough over to bring it together. Pat out into a large square about 1 1/2" or 3cm thick.

- Cut into 16 pieces and transfer to the baking sheet. Scatter with demerara sugar.

- Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden.

- Remove and allow to cool on a wire rack.

It has to be said that these weren't the lightest scones I've ever made, but I'm still enjoying them very much - the warm autumnal spicing, with the unusual addition of nutmeg along with the juicy chunks of apple make a very good combination for a snack time treat or would be great served with some chunks of tasty cheese for a more substantial snack.

I am entering these into alphabakes, hosted this month by Ros of The More than Occasional Baker (cohosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes). The letter this month is N for nutmeg.

I am also entering them into Simple and in Season, founded by Ren of Fabulicious Food and hosted this month by Nazima of Franglais Kitchen

International Scone Week - Blueberry Vanilla Ricotta Scones

It's International Scone Week - hop over to Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for a bit more of an explanation! Scones are popping up all over the place Joanna has some interesting looking experimental Kombucha scones, Misky has made Celia's lemonade scones, and Heidi is making lots of scones. So as a confirmed scone lover I'm wading in with my offering this time. 

You can find all of my previous scone blog posts by clicking here.

Other scones I'd like to try from around the web...
Dan Lepard's Ginger Beer Scones 
Dan Lepard's Vanilla Almond Scones (I'll miss off the almonds!)
A savoury alternative to sandwiches Mediterranean Scones
Some with strong flour Fig and Date Scones
Celia's Lemonade Scones
A Frying Pan Pizza with a scone-like base

Blueberry Vanilla Ricotta Scones (adapted from BBC Good Food)
Ingredients
250g ricotta
120g golden caster sugar
280g self raising flour
70g butter
100g fresh blueberries
1tsp vanilla extract (or a little more)

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 5 1/2/190C. Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet.

- Place the ricotta in a bowl, beat in 60g sugar and the vanilla extract and set aside.

- Place the flour in a large bowl and rub in the butter (I used fridge cold butter here).

- Mix the remaining sugar into the flour/butter mix.

- Add the ricotta mixture to the flour mixture and bring together almost into a dough. When it has nearly combined, add the blueberries and continue to mix.

- Tip onto a floured surface and briefly knead to bring together. (Well, not really knead, just bring it together - by squashing it a bit really)

- Pat out into a large square about 1 1/2" or 3cm thick (it's a bit vague - it sort of depends on how deep you want your scones).

- Cut into 16 pieces (the dough will be fairly dry) and transfer to the baking sheet, spacing apart a bit, as they expand during baking.

- Bake for around 25 minutes until risen and golden. I returned the centre four of my scones to the oven for an extra 5 minutes because they didn't seem quite as done.

- Cool on a wire rack.

This has to be one of my absolute favourite scone recipes, and it has made an appearance on the blog before, but I make no apologies for bringing it out again in a different guise, because until you've tried these you really don't know what you're missing. They're moist and full of vanilla flavour and juicy goodness of the blueberries and don't really even need any butter, although a good dollop of blueberry jam (Bonne Maman do one I'm particularly fond of) wouldn't go amiss.

What's your favourite scone recipe? What am I missing that I should really try?

Blueberry, Raspberry and Lemon Butter Cake

Even though summer hasn't arrived here yet (I am obviously being optimistic here, that summer will eventually arrive and the sun currently hiding behind the omnipresent grey clouds will once again show its face) the summer fruit is making its way into the supermarkets and I am once again tempted to buy it to bake with. I love baking cakes with fresh fruit in them - it's such a lovely combination of soft sweet cake punctuated by zesty fruity bites.

For this cake I decided to use a recipe I have used before and found to be an excellent partner for juicy fruits. You can find the original Apricot Butter Cake on the BBC Good Food website. I didn't want to make a 9" round cake and having done the calculations reckoned that 2/3 of the mixture would be right for an 8"(20cm) round cake. I followed the instructions as given on the website, but used the ingredients listed below.

Blueberry, Raspberry and Lemon Butter Cake
Ingredients
100ml milk
zest 1 lemon
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
235g self raising flour
135g butter, melted
approximately 60-70g each blueberries and raspberries

Method

I used the method as given in the original recipe but folded through lemon zest instead of adding vanilla and then at the end I folded through my washed and dried soft fruit. I think I would add a little more fruit next time though, just because it was so lovely to bite into fruit!

I decided, having prepared my 8" tin (which was admittedly only shallow rather than deep) that all of the mixture wouldn't fit and at the last minute, used some of the mixture to make 4 cupcakes too. This is where having a half size (i.e. only 6 holes rather than 12) muffin tin comes in very useful, as it will sit alongside an 8" round tin in my oven quite happily.

I can't quite remember how long the cake took to bake, but probably around 45 minutes, with the cupcakes taking about 30 I guess.

I decided to leave the cake undecorated, but cupcakes always look so sad when undecorated so I quickly made up some glace icing (icing sugar plus water or lemon juice) and poured it over and then added a decorative blueberry to finish them off!

I loved this cake - the moist buttery sponge is set off perfectly by the juicy bursting blueberries and raspberries and the lemon zest adds interest to the body of the cake itself. You could easily use vanilla if you're not keen on lemon though. Both the cupcakes with their icing and the cake alone worked well.

I am entering this into this month's Teatime Treats challenge, where Karen of Lavender and Lovage has set the challenge as berries. Her cohost is Kate of What Kate Baked.

Creme Fraiche Bundt Cake

As I looked in my fridge the other day I realised that the pot of creme fraiche earmarked for mushroom stroganoff and rapidly approaching its use-by date wasn't destined to end up on my dinner plate paired with mushrooms, rice and all manner of other delicious things. No mushrooms for a start.... Time for a rethink, and a visit to BBC Good Food for some quick inspiration.

I didn't find inspiration to use my pot of creme fraiche as it was, but did find a recipe for a sour cream bundt cake. Well, by my logic, both soured cream and creme fraiche are dairy products with an acidic tang and since I had half fat creme fraiche it was a similar fat content to the stipulated soured cream too. The substitution seemed reasonable to me.

I followed the recipe pretty much as given and used my bundt tin that when full to the brim holds 2 litres of water. For the method I creamed butter and sugar as specified but then just added the rest of the ingredients in one go - seems to work fine! My ingredient modifications were to use self raising flour as I wanted more of a rise than I thought plain flour plus the specified tsp of baking powder would give, and I also used a different glaze. The glaze specified in the recipe is a butter one and it just seems to look a little odd from the photo - sort of grainy and split and not very attractive. Instead I decided to use a plain glace icing - 125g (or so, it's always a little vague when making glace icing) plus a little splash of vanilla extract (this gave a rather attractive golden hue to the icing) and some hot water. Judicious addition of the water will give you a glaze that is thin enough to spoon onto the cake, but thick enough to run down the sides attractively.

A very tasty cake - the crumb is quite close and dense in a good way. It was a richly buttery and moist cake, perfect for a slice with a cup of something hot in the middle of the afternoon. The vanilla flavour of the cake was good, but adding vanilla to the icing too really helped with the flavour - the sweetness of the icing was obvious, but the subtle hint of vanilla worked really well.

As this has vanilla in both cake and icing I am submitting it to Alphabakes this month, where the letter is 'V'. Vanilla isn't the most original submission admittedly, but I don't often use vanilla in glace icing - I will be doing in the future though as it worked really well. Alphabakes is hosted this month by Ros at The More than Occasional Baker and cohosted by Caroline of Caroline Makes.

Chocolate Gingerbread Bundt Cake

Well turned out

Well, it turns out that the naff, wet weather we've been having recently has fooled my brain into wanting warming wintery cakes (that and chocolate, but the chocolate's pretty much a given around here...). What does this mean for me? Well, soft and spicy is often the way to go. These ginger and treacle scones have been keeping me going in the ginger stakes, but I really wanted something more cake-y than scones too. (And there might be an update to the scone recipe appearing soon - I remade them with a few tweaks that I want to record).

See the little bits of ginger trying to hide?

Enter this recipe from the ever reliable (and oh-so-easy-to-search) BBC Good Food website. It looks the part and the promise of rich deep flavour from the combination of spices, dark chocolate and stout was a winner. Except I don't generally have 100ml Guiness or stout just hanging around waiting to be used in a cake recipe. No fear, milk will make an adequate substitute, giving a different but equally satisfactory result.

The tin specified by the recipe is a 2 litre bundt tin. I poured water into mine and it held exactly 2 litres. Good result you would think! But actually, I didn't want to run the risk of the cake overflowing the edges of the tin and giving me cause to scrape remains from the base of the oven so I scaled the recipe back to 2/3 of that specified. I've given my quantities below. From past experience of this type of gingerbread, the batter goes in rather runny and even though I can never imagine it becoming coherent cake, it magically does, and usually rises well too. Hence the caution with the tin. I think (with hindsight) that the tin would have contained the full amount of batter, but as expected, the cake did rise quite well too, so I wasn't upset with having chosen to scale back the recipe.

Soft and moist and utterly luscious

Chocolate Gingerbread Bundt Cake
Ingredients (scaled to 2/3 of original recipe)
100g unsalted butter
66g golden syrup
50g treacle
115g dark muscovado sugar
90g dark chocolate (should have been 115g but 90g is what I had!)
2 balls stem ginger, chopped
65ml milk (I used semi skimmed)
1/2 tsp bicarb (scant)
135g plain flour
scant tsp baking powder
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
2 eggs

In step two you add the bicarbonate of soda with the instruction that it will foam and froth up. I added my bicarb and for a couple of moments wondered if it was somehow past its best (yet still being well within its best before date) but then lo and behold, the foaming started. It wasn't uncontrollable, but it was a really weird mixture! Just don't be alarmed! I have to say that the technique of mixing the liquid into the dry works far, far better than adding the flour to the liquid ingredients. I have tried the dry into wet method before (as specified by Nigella for her gingerbread recipe) and inevitably end up with lumps of dry flour in the mixture, even if I sift the flour. From now on wet gradually into dry is the way forward.

Spot the pieces of ginger - yum!

I managed to leave my cake a full 4 days before cutting it (wrapped in clingfilm) and was rewarded with a deliciously moist, spicy cake full of flavour and a hint of chocolate, adding to the rich aromas and flavours of the cake. The cake wasn't overwhelmingly gingery or spicy but the spices all complemented each other well, being more than the sum of their parts, with the chocolate adding to this effect. The little chunks of stem ginger were really lovely too, and happily didn't all sink to the bottom as can sometimes be the case with gingerbreads. Can you tell I really, really love gingerbread? I'd thoroughly recommend this recipe, definitely a keeper.

Chocolate Ricotta Scones - We Should Cocoa

Chocolate and Cheese - mmm, yes please?! This months We Should Cocoa challenge, set by Choclette of Choc Log Blog is to make something both chocolate-y and cheesey. And not cheesey as in just-a-bit-naff kind of cheesey. My first thought was chocolate cheesecake - yum! but I decided I was in a contrary mood and didn't want to go for something obvious.

My next thought was my rather lovely book Adventures with Chocolate by Paul A. Young. I really, really must start making things out of this book, because there are so many interesting recipes in there - really different too. Quite a few would have worked for this month's challenge too - Savoury sandwich ganache, Goat's cheese and lemon ganache, Sweet chocolate pesto or Dark chocolate and chilli gnocchi, with mascarpone and pecorino. I wish I were more adventurous!!!

However, I am delighted to present you with these rather gorgeous scones instead. They are based on my favourite recipe (original can be found here) and I have made them over and over again in a number of forms. This one obviously contains chocolate! My chocolate of choice here is something rather bitter - an 85% (I usually use Lindt) because it contrasts so well with the sweet sugar topping of the scone and the moist interior. I love biting down on a little piece of chocolate heaven.

An added bonus is that these are pretty easy and fairly quick to make, which is perfect when you're running out of time....

Chocolate Ricotta Scones
Ingredients
175g ricotta
100g caster sugar
200g self raising flour
50g butter
1-2tbsp milk
40g 85% cocoa solid chocolate, chopped
demerara sugar to sprinkle
I sometimes add a little vanilla extract too if I remember, which is always good.

I use the method detailed here so won't reproduce it again. However, when it comes to shaping the scones, I make a long rectangle, and mark into 10 scones because this suits my purposes better.

Perhaps not the most ground breaking introduction to the cheese and chocolate combo, but because these scones are just so delicious I keep on coming back to them again and again - soft, moist, crunchy with sugar and those little nuggets of bitter chocolate hiding from you in the midst of it all. Bliss is a chocolate ricotta scone!

White Chocolate Easter Cake

A sweet and simple cake to fill you and your family with sweetness and light this Easter.

The recipe comes from BBC Good Food and can be found here. It was originally intended to be a charity baking recipe to raise money for BBC Children in Need in 2010. I modified it only slightly by adding 140g chopped chocolate to the cake batter before baking, and then iced it with a different frosting.

White Chocolate Icing
150g white chocolate (I used Lindt)
40g unsalted butter
vanilla - see below

- Melt the chocolate and butter together over a pan of hot (or simmering) water. Do not allow to overheat.

- Allow to cool to spreading consistency, and spread over the cake.
- Decorate with mini eggs. Cadbury's are my all time favourite.

The frosting wasn't really a particular success - there wasn't quite enough to go around and I had to leave part of the cake bare. I'd use 200g at least in the future. Or use the recipe supplied by BBC Good Food!!! I added a little vanilla to the melted chocolate and butter mix, but I don't recommend this because it caused the previously smooth mixture to seize and go grainy. It still tasted good, but didn't look great. I used it anyway.

Chocolate mostly at the bottom of the cake....

Quick and easy (well, if you've remembered to soften your butter sufficiently, I hadn't really!) and therefore perfect to whip up at the last minute to feed a houseful of visitors over this Easter weekend. It will be much appreciated by the small, sweet loving people in your life. This is a lot of white chocolate and is therefore really quite sweet! Moist, light and chocolatey this was appreciated by my colleagues as a pre-Easter treat. Expect to find most of the chocolate at the bottom of the cake (annoying!). I had to very carefully prise the cake off its parchment lining and still lost a fair amount of the chocolate on the way.

Happy Easter everyone, I hope you have a peaceful time with family and friends, celebrating and eating chocolate.

I'm entering this cake into TeaTime Treats, run by Kate of What Kate Baked (this month's host) and Karen of Lavender and Lovage.