Oreo Upside Down Cake

This just takes cookies and cream that one step further. Oreo upside down cake! I made this as a birthday cake for another colleague, and I had it in my head that I needed make a cookies and cream cake, with fresh cream. I thought that with the thick layer of cream in the middle, covering the whole thing in buttercream too would be just a bit too much (if there is such a thing), so to make the top look a little more interesting, I decided to try making an upside down cake with whole Oreos. It's not as tidy as I was hoping, as the cake batter got under some of the cookies, but it still looks, and smells, pretty good!

Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes

Last week was a hard week. There are so many changes are happening at the moment, both good and bad, and I've lost myself a little bit along the way. I needed something simple and comforting, which is why these cakes came about on Friday. Fresh strawberries and whipped double cream make the perfect and impressive summery topping for these simple vanilla cupcakes.

Fruit Scones - Two Ways

 

As I mentioned before, it was my Grandad’s birthday recently, and he is seriously the hardest person to buy presents for! I mean, what do you buy someone who already has everything they need?! After a lot of thinking and fruitless shopping trips, I finally decided to make him up a hamper of fancy tea, posh jams, clotted cream and some homemade scones - an ‘Afternoon Tea’ Hamper if you will. I knew he loves fruit scones, but I couldn’t decide whether to make them with raisins or glacier cherries, so I ended up doing both. These are super easy to make, and the end result is very light scones, studded with lots of fruity goodness! I soaked the raisins in whiskey for an hour before adding them to the dough, for an added kick.

Wholemeal Pancakes

Our neighbours daughter lives in Canada and after a recent trip to visit, they gave us a tin of proper maple syrup - I think we must have mentioned our love of it to them at some point - and as soon as we heard my Dad shout to say that we’d just been given some, both my Mum and I turned to look at each other and said ‘pancakes!’. We were patient enough to wait for Sunday morning to come around, and while Mum was out walking the dogs, I made our pancakes for breakfast. These pancakes are great – they’re so easy to make, and as they’re thick and fluffy, it’s a million times easier to flip them than the thin crepe like pancakes we eat on Shrove Tuesday. If you’re not a fan of maple syrup, try topping them with crispy bacon and a knob of butter, or fresh fruit and a dusting of icing sugar – what ever takes your fancy. And here’s a tip – make the batter in a jug. It’s a lot easier to pour small round pancakes with the spout of a jug than it is with a ladle! To give you an idea of serving size, I made 15 pancakes with this batter, and we had 5 each in a stack.

Banoffee Cake

 

It’s my Grandad’s 65^th birthday today, so we had a big family BBQ last night to celebrate. After a lot of umming and ahhing, I decided to try making a banoffee cake for his birthday cake and I’m glad I did, because everyone loved it! The whole thing was demolished within about 10 minutes, even after everyone said that they were too full on BBQ food to eat anything else! So, of course, I had to share the recipe!