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!

Simple Double Chocolate Vanilla Marble Cake

Well, that break wasn't really expected - life sometimes gets in the way of blogging and I think a combination of post-Christmas readjusting to work and general busy-ness meant that January sped past before I knew what had happened. I'm sorry to have missed out on participating in all of the blog challenges I usually enter, but hopefully I'll be a bit more active this month.

To ease myself back into baking mode I decided to make something quick and easy, requiring no decoration but that also looked reasonably impressive. Marble cake fulfils all of these requirements and because I'm a chocolate fiend I decided to double up the chocolate goodness of the cake by adding chocolate chunks to the chocolate portion of the batter.

Double Chocolate Vanilla Marble Cake

Ingredients

175g butter, softened

175g white caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

50g full fat greek yogurt

3 eggs

175g self raising flour

100g chopped chocolate (I used 60% cocoa solids)

15g cocoa powder (approx...)

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square cake tin with baking parchment.

- Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

- Add the vanilla, greek yogurt, eggs and flour and beat well to combine.

- Blob about half of the mixture into the tin in separated blobs.

- Add the cocoa powder and chocolate chunks to the remaining mixture in the mixing bowl. Beat to combine.

- Blob the chocolate batter into the spaces between the vanilla batter until the batter is all used up.

- Swirl the handle of a knife/fork/spoon through the mixture until it appears marbled (don't forget the corners!)

- Bake for about 40 minutes until risen, golden and springy and a cake tester comes out clean.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack before enjoying!

I do enjoy making marble cakes, they have the advantage of not really needing frosting/icing and this was a good one - the marbling went well and having the added chocolate chunks in the mixture made a nice contrast of texture and certainly enhanced the chocolate appeal of the cake! I use the handle of one of my soup spoons because it is wide enough to marble effectively - feel free to use your implement of choice. Not too taxing for a quick after-work midweek bake.  

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream

The theme for this month's Teatime Treats is Chocolate. A pretty wide theme really, so I'm sure there will be lots and lots of delicious submissions to browse when the round up is published. There are lots of chocolate-y things that I've made that I could share for this event, but it seems rather appropriate to share this one. The recipe for the chocolate cake came from Karen at Lavender and Lovage  (one of the co-hosts for TTT which is being hosted this month by Kate at What Kate Baked) and has become one of my favourite chocolate cake recipes. 

It's quick and easy to make and the only ingredient that you might not already have around is the creme fraiche. I've made this cake twice already - once as little cupcakes (quicker than waiting for larger cakes to bake) and once as a two layer cake. Both times were very successful and I think the cakes look very pretty too.

Karen gives the recipe as an all-in-one recipe but I often find that my butter isn't soft enough for an all in one method using a Kitchenaid stand mixer (although it is usually ok with an electric hand mixer) so I have adapted the method slightly. The recipe is reproduced with Karen's permission:

Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream
Ingredients
140g creme fraiche (I used a French style one, it's very thick, solid in fact)
125g unsalted butter
200g light muscovado sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
170g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder (I think mine was fairly generous)

Method

- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas4 . If making a large cake, grease and line two 8"/20cm shallow round cake tins. If making cupcakes, place liners in muffin tins (I made 18 using this recipe).

- Cream together the butter and sugar until the mixture has changed colour and is light and fluffy.

- Add the creme fraiche and continue to mix.

- Add the vanilla, eggs, flour, cocoa powder and baking powder and mix, starting slowly to prevent a cloud of flour enveloping your kitchen.

- When fully mixed divide between the prepared tins/muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes for small cakes and 30-40 minutes for larger cakes.

- Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Vanilla buttercream
90g butter
200g icing sugar (plus extra to get desired consistency)
1 tsp vanilla extract

- Beat the butter until very soft (using electric mixers unless you particularly feel in need of a work out) and then add half of the sugar. Starting slowly, beat it until well combined. Add the rest of the sugar and the vanilla extract (or more to taste) and continue to beat until very soft and fluffy. You may need to add a little milk or do as I do and add a little warm water from a boiled kettle.

- Spread or pipe your buttercream as desired.

I love this cake, and the vanilla buttercream complements is beautifully. It isn't that often that I make one recipe twice in close succession but this is a fab recipe and may become my go-to chocolate cake recipe. Yes, it needs creme fraiche, but it isn't a hardship to have creme fraiche in the fridge - it has a long shelf life and if you don't end up using it for chocolate cake it has a multitude of other uses (or a spoon may suffice, perhaps with a chopped banana to assuage lack-of-fruit-and-vitamins thoughts....). It's moist, light and chocolate-y and is very easy to throw together at the last minute. Thanks for a great recipe Karen!

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!

Raspberry, Apricot and Vanilla Flower Cake

I simply can't resist fresh summer fruits - all the berries and currants, the apricots, nectarines and peaches and as well as eating them raw in their natural form I especially love baking with them. This was a cake I made a few weeks ago when I had all that lovely fresh summer fruit just begging to be used. Now the weather has turned to autumn I am glad of my freezer and the ability to find little pieces of cake to remind me of the joy of fresh fruit in summer.

A simple recipe was necessary to allow my fruits to shine and I wanted to use my new cake tin. I shouldn't be allowed near Lakeland - it's far too dangerous for my bank account. Whenever I go in there they always ask when you are purchasing your goodies whether you are 'up to date with our current catalogues'. I never accept the offer of catalogues - I would spend far too much time and money just browsing through them. It's amazing what you can find that you never knew you needed....

Raspberry, Apricot and Vanilla Flower Cake
Ingredients
125g softened butter
130g caster sugar (it was meant to be 125g but my hand slipped...)
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla extract
150g self raising flour
3 fresh apricots, chopped fairly small (just normal sized ones - not tiny, not huge - I forgot to weigh them)
about half a punnet of raspberries - 100g or so

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease your cake tin very well. If you don't have a fancy tin, an 8"/20cm tin will be fine I think.

- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

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

- Fold in half of the apricot and raspberries and spread into the tin - it will be quite stiff.

- Scatter over the remaining raspberries and apricots and press them in a bit.

- Bake for 45-50 minutes until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. You may need to cover the cake with foil if it is browning too quickly. I covered mine after 35 minutes.

- Allow to cool slightly in the tin and then invert onto a wire rack to cool completely.

I was very pleased that the cake tin released well - I greased it generously with butter and despite some of the fruit sinking to the bottom of the cake, there wasn't a problem with releasing the cake from the tin. It also neatly divides the cake into ten portions for serving!

I do think that of all the fruits that I bake with, apricots and raspberries are particularly successful. The texture of both fruits suits baking perfectly - neither are too watery (strawberries aren't as good - they tend to collapse on baking, leaving little holes in your cake) and they both have a slightly tart flavour in comparison to the sweet cake. A thoroughly delicious experiment and a reminder of summer on an autumn day.

Treacle and Greengage Muscovado Muffins

When I saw that Dan Lepard's column in the Guardian a few weeks ago was all about baking with treacle I quickly investigated further - I love treacle and baking with it. So far from being a slightly 'weird' ingredient as Dan proposes, I was keen to see what he was suggesting we could use this gorgeously sticky substance for now. Both recipes appealed, but the Treacle and Caraway Apple muffins sounded amazing. Unfortunately I discovered fairly recently that I'm not really a fan of the flavour of caraway in baked goods. Perhaps it's something I'll come to appreciate more (as I get older, or should that be wiser?) but at the moment, caraway is no-go. Easy enough to leave out though. I also had a glut of greengages and decided to use those instead of the specified apples - there will be time enough for apples later in the autumn and I wanted to make the most of the last of the seasonal fruit available now. I changed the proportion of flours too, and have noted my changes here.

Treacle and Greengage Muscovado Muffins
Ingredients (for method, follow the link highlighted in the text above to Dan's recipe in the Guardian)
100g butter, melted
40g sunflower oil
50g black treacle
175g light muscovado sugar
3 eggs
2tsp vanilla extract
200g plain flour
100g wholemeal spelt flour
2tsp baking powder
around 6 small(ish) greengages, chopped into about 8 each
Oats to scatter

Since the recipe specifies scattering the muffins with flaked almonds before baking I racked my brains for a suitable alternative and came up with oats - not quite as crunchy (in fact not nearly as crunchy) but provided a little visual appeal to the finished article and a bit of a contrast of textures. I think next time I'd be a little more generous with the oats. I also made 18 muffins out of this mixture, which was perfect for me - 12 would have made very large muffins for my requirements.

These were immensely popular at work, and rightly so. The combination of flavours - the treacle, vanilla and then the soft delicate plum were great together. They were beautifully moist and the greengages worked superbly in place of apples, becoming deliciously soft and squashy. I'm sure that any soft plum would work well (although I'm not sure about those ones that are bullet hard and available year round). The treacle flavour was definitely there, adding depth and background, but if you're not a treacle fan, it wasn't overwhelming. I gave my version of the recipe to an interested colleague. I hope she enjoys them as much as the rest of us did. I'll definitely make these again and would recommend you make them too! 

Fig and Vanilla Demerara Crunch Cake

Soft vanilla cake punctuated with jammy figs

Fairly short post for this one - life and blogging are pretty incompatible at the moment. Thank goodness I have delicious cake to make it all a bit easier. I haven't ever had fresh figs before (well, not to my knowledge), so when the One Ingredient challenge was announced this month (hosted this month by Laura of How to Cook Good Food and cohosted by Nazima of Working London Mummy) I decided that now was the time to try baking them into a cake - they just look so plump and inviting.

Because figs are also right in season now, I am also entering this into 'Simple and in Season' hosted this month by Katie of Feeding Boys and a Firefighter and founded by Ren of Fabulicious Food. 

I think this worked really well - the figs looked really attractive on the top of the cake, happily not sinking too much and the cake below was wonderfully soft and moist - full of vanilla and muscovado flavour. The figs were crunchy and chewy, as is also the way of the dried version of the fruit, which I am really rather partial to. I think this would make a great family dessert served warm with custard.

Jammy figs

 I think I ought to try fresh figs in another way too though, perhaps raw to get a better appreciation of their subtle flavour. Have you got a favourite way of enjoying fresh figs? Do let me know!

Before baking

Fig and Vanilla Demerara Crunch Cake
Ingredients
150g butter, softened
75g light muscovado sugar
75g caster sugar
50g plain flour
150g self raising flour
3 medium eggs (55g each)
2tsp vanilla extract
3 fat figs, cut into 6 pieces each
demerara sugar for sprinkling

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8"/20cm square tin with parchment paper.

- Cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy.

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

- Spoon into the prepared tin and level out, then place the figs onto the mixture. You can do rows like I did, or scatter randomly.

- Scatter demerara sugar over the surface.

- Bake for 50 minutes to an hour until a cake tester inserted comes out clean.

- Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool, or alternatively, enjoy warm with a puddle of custard for a lovely autumnal dessert. 

Fresh Peach and Vanilla Cake

I love baking with fresh summer fruit and finding myself with a few peaches to spare I decided to bake them into a cake. One of the nice things about baking with fruit is that it doesn't have to be perfectly ripe to make an excellent cake. I think these peaches were fairly ripe, but I have used fairly hard fruit in the past and it has still worked very well.

Fresh Peach and Vanilla Cake
Ingredients
115g butter, softened
60g light muscovado sugar
60g caster sugar
2 eggs
125g self raising flour
1tsp vanilla extract
2 peaches, chopped into decent size pieces

Method

- Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C and line a 7"/18cm round tin with baking parchment. I would suggest not a loose based tin because otherwise your fruit is likely to leak a little juice into the oven. I actually used my Lakeland Pushpan, which although loose based is perfectly sealed (I am not on commission, just impressed by the product!)

- Cream the butter and two sugars together until light and fluffy.

- Add the eggs, flour and vanilla and continue beating until well combined.

- Scatter the peach pieces over the base of the tin and then add the cake batter on top, being careful not to dislodge the peaches too much.

- Bake for 35-40 minutes until risen and golden and a cake tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool for a while in the tin before inverting onto your serving plate.

This would be perfect served with some cream or a blob of creme fraiche for a light summer dessert, perhaps with some more chopped peaches alongside. However, it also makes a perfect teatime cake too. The freshness of the peaches is delicious and the addition of some light muscovado sugar gives the cake a caramelly depth of flavour and a gorgeous pale brown hue.

I am submitting this to Calendar Cakes run by Rachel of Dolly Bakes and Laura of Laura Loves Cakes. The theme this month is summertime, and nothing is more summery than fresh peaches!

I am also submitting it to Nazima at Working London Mummy for her 'One Ingredient' challenge this month, the theme of which is peaches or nectarines. Her co-host is Laura of How to Cook Good Food.

Lastly I am submitting it to Simply Food's 'Let's Cook with Fruit' event - because that's exactly what I've done, cook with fruit!

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?