Chocolate cake with Malted buttercream

A very straightforward cake recipe... And i thought the malted buttercream made a really nice alternative to using coffee or chocolate (so did Superman!)

  

Ingredients

Chocolate cake

Stork 175g

Caster sugar 175g

Self raising flour 150g

Cocoa powder 25g

Eggs 3

Baking powder 1tsp

Vanilla essense 1/2 tsp

Malted buttercream

Softened butter 100g

Icing sugar 200g

Hot water 20ml

Ovaltine 2tsp

Method

1) Cream together Stork and caster sugar until light and fluffy

2) Add other cake ingredients and mix until well combined

3) Divide mixture between 2 tins and bake for 30mins on 170C

4) For the buttercream, beat butter until soft

5) Gradually beat in the icing sugar

6) Dissolve Ovaltine in the hot water and add until buttercream is of the desired consistency

7) Use the buttercream to sandwich the cake together and to cover

8) Add desired topping (cherries are Superman's favourites apparently!)

9) Next time i make this i think i will be adding cherry jam to the middle :-)

  

Chunky choc chip cookies

This recipe is very quick to do and makes 15-20 cookies depending on how big you want them. The picture only shows 3 because my husband and son wouldnt stop eating them!!

Ingredients
Margarine 100g
Soft light brown sugar 50g
Dark brown soft sugar 25g
Syrup 2tbsp
Self raising flour 175g
Mixed chocolate chunks 100g
Milk 2tbsp

1) Pre heat oven to 180C and grease 2 baking trays
2) Cream sugars together with margarine until fluffy
3) Add syrup, flour, milk and mix until mixture comes together
4) Gently mix in chocolate chunks
5) Put spoonfuls of mixture on the tray, making sure you spread them out
6) Bake for 10mins
7) Transfer to wire rack immediately
8) Enjoy!

Jubilee Flag Cake 2012

This was my first attempt at a multi-layered cake and I was really happy with the outcome - it was really simple to do; here's how...

Ingredients

Cake

175g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
175g margarine
3 large eggs
1-2 tbsp milk
1 tsp baking powder

Buttercream

300g icing sugar
125g margarine
2.5tbsp coconut milk
Gel food colouring in 2 colours

You'll also need

Fondant icing in white and 4 other colours

Method

1) Heat oven to 180C

2) Grease and line baking trays. The ones I used were 20cm x 28cm and for this recipe you need 4 of them. I only have 2, so baked in 2 batches

3) Cream together the sugar and margarine

4) Add flour, eggs and enough milk to get a silky smooth mixture

5) Weigh the mixture and split evenly into 4. I found each needed to weigh 178g. You could do this by eye instead but I wanted to get the layers as identical as possible.

6) Spread a portion of the mixture into each of the baking trays and bake for about 15 minutes

7) Once baked, turn the cakes out onto cooling racks

8) Now make the buttercream by mixing the icing sugar, stork and coconut milk together

9) Split the mixture in 2 and add the colourings

10) When the cake layers have cooled cut them in half

11) Spread buttercream over each layer and pile them up, alternating the colours. Trim sides if necessary

12) Also cover the sides and top with buttercream, then cover the cake with white fondant

The next bit was by far the most time consuming. I really should have looked for a union jack cutter beforehand but hey ho!..

13) Draw a union jack on to baking paper and cut out the pieces to use as a template. Roll out each of the colours in turn and cut out all the pieces

14) Using water applied with a small brush, stick the fondant pieces to the cake

All done. Now simply cut and eat :-)