RECIPE: English Style Flapjacks

This is a very easy recipe to make. Flapjacks are great for a quick breakfast, or with a packed lunch. I got this recipe from Lorraine Pascale's "Baking Made Easy", you can check out this show on BBC2 in the UK on Mondays at 20.30.

Here's what you need:
175 g butter
175 g golden syrup
175 g of soft light brown sugar
350 g porridge oats
zest of half a lemon
pinch of ground ginger
What to do:
Preheat the oven at 150 degrees C.

Melt the butter on a medium heat, brush a lined baking tray with some of the butter.
Add the sugar and syrup and heat it through gently. (You can also do all this in the microwave, just keep heating it for a minute, stir and heat up again until everything is dissolved)

Remove from the heat when everything is dissolved into a caramel-like gloop. Mix in the oats, lemon and ginger. Make sure all the oats are coated.

Pack the mixture into a baking tray/tin and pack it down tightly.

Then bake for about 40 minutes, when it's done take it out to cool. Once cooled you can remove it from the tray and cut it into squares.

Enjoy!

RECIPE: Double Lemon Cookies

These cookies are delicious, buttery and crumbly with a sorbet style filling.
Their tangy sweetness will brighten up any gloomy January day, and they go great with a cup of Earl Grey tea.

Here's what you'll need to make the cookies:

225g of butter
50g of powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
Zest of 2 lemons
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
225g of flour
3 teaspoons of cornflour

and for the icing:

50g of butter
125g of caster sugar
Juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon according to taste.

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C.

Stir the butter, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest and juice together until you get a creamy (but not fluffy) mixture. then stir in the flour and cornflour.

Form little balls from the dough and press them slightly on to some baking paper. They should be about 4 to 5 centimetres in diameter. Try to keep them fairly even as you'll need to pair them up later.

These need to go in the oven for about 10 minutes. They will stay quite pale, so look for some browning around the edges to check if they're ready. Let them cool completely.

Meanwhile, you can make the icing. Mix the sugar, butter and lemon juice together. Add more sugar or lemon to taste.

When all that is done, dollop some of the icing onto the flat side of half of the cookies and stick the other halves, flat side down on top.

And voila! Super easy but very tasty homemade cookies.

RECIPE: Simple Cupcakes

These are the perfect, easy-to-make cupcakes. Just plain old vanilla sponge with a sweet butter-cream icing. Very simple to make and at this time of year, you'll find they go great with a hot cup of coffee (or tea)!

Here's what you need to make around 8 cupcakes (see below for the icing mixture):

125 grams of butter
125 grams of caster sugar
2 medium-sized eggs
125 grams of self-raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Bun cases

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees celcius before you start baking.

Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth and light. Next, add the eggs one at a time. To stop the mixture from curdling you can add a few tablespoons of flour.

Add the vanilla essence and fold in the flour.

Use a tablespoon to fill up the cases with a good dollop of the mixture, making sure to leave room for them to rise.

Bake for about 18 to 20 minutes.

While those are in the oven you can start on the icing. All that you need is:

125 grams of butter
250 grams of icing sugar

Just cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. If the butter is still too hard, it helps to get your (clean) hands in to soften it up.

Add the food colouring of your choice for a personal touch.

Make sure your cupcakes are cooled before you spread on the icing, or it'll melt. Then decorate however you like. Enjoy!

RECIPE: Halloween Cookies

Easy Rolled Sugar Cookies

This recipe is for cookies you can make with cookie-cutters. It's quite simple, and you get absolutely loads (the orginal recipe yields about 60) of nice plain cookies perfect for decorating. Might be fun to save some to decorate with friends!
I got this recipe from allrecipes.com. They've also got a really fun Halloween page with loads of recipes, decorating tricks and party tips, which you can find here (http://allrecipes.com/Features/Holidays/Halloween/default.aspx)



Here's what you'll need for the cookies:

340 g butter, softened
400 g white sugar
4 eggs
5 ml vanilla extract
625 g all-purpose flour
9 g baking powder
6 g salt

Here's what you need to do:

-Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

-Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

-Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt.

-Then cover the dough and let it chill for at least an hour, or overnight. Make sure that after it's chilled you don't handle the dough too much or it will go soft again and make it hard to cut out the shapes you want.

-Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C, or 400 degrees F.

-Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 1/4 or 1/2 inch thick. (about 1 cm) And then cut out whatever shapes you've picked.

-Bake your cookies for about 6 to 8 minutes and let them cool completely before decorating.

I used store bought chocolate icing and little decorating tubes with different icing colours to draw on the details. Have fun being creative!

RECIPE: Capuccino Cupcakes

Cappucino Cupcakes An easy recipe for breakfast or afternoon cupcakes that even non-coffee drinkers should enjoy. These cupcakes can be kept if refrigerated for around 4 days, and take around an hour to make.


These cappucino cupcakes are so good! They’re pretty easy to make and look and taste very professional. The coffee flavoured sponge is very nice, but with the white chocolate icing they’re absolutely delicious, definitely one of my favourite recipes I’ve tried. I got this recipe from Nigella Lawson's excellent iPhone recipe app, but changed it quite a bit. When I made it I found that there was too much icing - a shame to waste all that chocolate! Anyway, pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees Celcius and here’s what you need (makes about 12 cupcakes):

Ingredients:

125 g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
125 g soft butter
125 g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tsp instant espresso
2-3 tbspns milk

You can do this in a foodprocessor or by hand, like I did, mix everything together but the milk. When it’s all done, add the milk. (That’s it! Much easier than doing it in stages and it’s perfectly fine.)

For the icing:

80 g white chocolate
30 g butter
60 g sour cream
130 g icing sugar
½ tsp cocoa powder or cinnamon

Melt the chocolate and butter in the microwave or in a pan above hot water.

Stir in the cream when it’s cooled and gradually beat in the icing sugar.

You can add more water if it’s too thick, or more sugar if it’s too runny.

Apply the icing all over your cupcakes and sprinkle over the cocoa powder or cinnamon.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!