Red Velvet Valentine's Cookies

Yeah Valentine's Day is over commercialised, slightly sickening and eye wateringly expensive if you really buy into it. But it's also an excellent excuse to bake some treats for you, your significant other, your friends - anyone really. Last year I shared some baking inspiration but this year I've got my very own recipe to share with you - Red Velvet Cookies!

 
The traditional red velvet cake is rich and dense, so to me that translates perfectly into a cookie. Of course, red velvet wouldn't be red velvet without tangy cream cheese frosting, and is there anything more decadent than an iced cookie? I think not. So the cookies are topped with beautiful layer of icing, and there's also some white chocolate chips hidden within the cookie. Because a cookie isn't a cookie without some chocolate chips.

Red Velvet Cookies

Cookies

290g Plain Flour

45g Icing Sugar

2tsp Corn Flour

170g Butter

200g Caster Sugar

1 Egg + 1 Egg White

1tsp Lemon Juice

Red Food Colouring

100g White Chocolate (chopped)

Cream Cheese Icing

60g Butter

115g Cream Cheese

320g Icing Sugar

1tsp Vanilla Extract

1. Beat the butter and the sugar together (on high if you're using a mixer) until light and fluffy

2. Whilst beating (on medium), add the egg, egg white, lemon juice and food colouring

3. Turn the mixer down to slow and add the flour and corn flour

4. Finally mix in the chopped white chocolate

5. Wrap in cling film and chill for at least two hours (this really matters!!)

6. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease and line a tray

7. Place your heart shaped cookie cutter on the tray and press a ball of cookie dough into the shape

8. When it's flattened, press it out and flip it over, so the flat side is on top

9.  Alternatively, you can just put little mounds of the cookie dough on the tray

10. Bake for 9 minutes, leave to cool on the tray for a minute and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely

11. For the icing, whip the butter and cream cheese together until light and fluffy

12. Add the icing sugar and the vanilla extract and mix until smooth.

13. Pipe the icing onto the cookies once they are completely cool

Cake Trails #3: Ginger and Rose Cake

Last week Eve and I visited Lovecrumbs, which markets itself as Edinburgh's only cake-only cake shop. You can read all about our visit here and if you look carefully in one of the pictures you can see on the menu the inspiration for this cake, "Rose and Ginger Cake, £3.20" (you can also see me standing awkwardly in the mirror). I think you can see their version in one of the snaps too, with pink icing and crystallised ginger on top.

Inspired by their menu, I decided to make use of the jar of edible rose petals that have been loitering in the kitchen cupboard for a while and whip up my own Ginger and Rose Cake. This bake coincided nicely with my Mum's birthday, and she was delighted to be presented with such a pretty cake.

Ginger and Rose Cake

Cake
225g Unsalted Butter
50g Soft Light Brown Sugar175g Caster Sugar4 Eggs285g Self-raising Flour3tbsp Stem Ginger Syrup3tsp Ground Ginger

Icing
300g Icing Sugar
90g Butter
3tbsp Rose Syrup
Edible Rose Petals (to decorate, optional)

1. Grease and line two 10" cake tins and preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5
2. Mix the butter until light and fluffy (as an aside, this is hard without a mixer and a crushed right hand - so the mixer I used for this cake is more commonly known as Dad!)
3. Mix in the sugar and then add the eggs one at a time, alternating with the flour and the ginger.
4. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden on top and a knife comes out clean.
5. Leave it out to cool, and then mix all the icing ingredients together. Pipe half the icing on top of one of the cakes and then put the other cake on top, then top with the rest of the icing. When I'm piping in the middle, I like to do a circle around the outer edge of the cake and then fill the middle in. It makes it nice and neat to look at from the outside.
6. Position the rose petals however you fancy.

Nobody Likes You When You're 23

Yesterday I turned 23. I baked myself a pink ombre layer cake and covered it in sprinkles - because who doesn't want pink and sprinkles on their birthday? Nobody, that's who. I sat in bed and sleepily opened presents and then wandered down to the West End to tuck into some sushi from Sushiya - somewhere I highly recommend if you get that sort of craving whilst in Edinburgh. 

I decorated my flat with paper pompoms and filled it with tasty treats for all of my friends. In return, they topped my cake with candles and sang to me. Some of them went to the enormous effort of making me a cake too, and I will be forever grateful for the effort - they are not kitchen types usually! They also put up with my project for the evening, which was snapping a photo of everyone with the Polaroid camera Ben got me for Christmas that I hadn't had chance to use yet. I now have a pleasing pile of polaroids waiting to find a home. It's such a change to have physical photographs.

 

It was a wonderful evening after a really lovely day, and I really wanted to write a quick post about it to give me a chance to reflect on how lucky I am. (I'm fairly sure despite the warning from Blink-182 my friends do still like me now I'm 23.) Do you sometimes find that when you sit down to blog about something it gives you reflection time that you wouldn't otherwise take? 

Cake Trails #2 Caramel Banana Bundt Cake

Week Two of our Cake Trail took us to Cuckoo's Bakery, who bake possibly the best cupcakes in Edinburgh. One of their cupcakes even won them an award! I encourage you to read all about our visit here on Eve's blog, but the short version is, these are really really good cupcakes. As in, I took a box home.

In there though, I chose a banana and caramel cupcake, and I gave it a strong 2/3 (cake, filling and icing making up the three). The cake was a delicious banana bread type cupcake, and you could really taste the banana coming through. The middle of the cupcake was filled with salted caramel, another absolute winner. But for me, the icing was a bit of a let down - it was really really sweet and it tasted like what banana *should* taste like, rather than what it actually tastes like - do you know what I mean?

So for this weeks inspired by bake, I stuck with the banana cake and and the caramel sauce, but I changed the icing to a tangy cream cheese icing. I also opted for one big bundt cake, rather than cupcakes. There are two reasons for this. 1) I did cupcakes last post, and 2) I got a bundt tin for Christmas off Ben's parents and hadn't played with it yet. Good, strong reasoning I think. 

This cake was an absolute hit with my friends, and I'm really pleased because although in my head the cream cheese icing was going to work with the banana bread and caramel, I wasn't 100% convinced it was going to come off in reality. 

Caramel Banana Bundt Cake

Cake

270g Light Brown Sugar

2 Eggs
200g Ripe Bananas, Mashed
280g Plain Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
1tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
140g Melted Unsalted Butter

Caramel Sauce

200g Sugar
90g Salted Butter
120ml of Double Cream

Cream Cheese Icing

225g FULL FAT (this matters) Cream Cheese

85g Unsalted Butter

300g Icing Sugar

1tsp Vanilla Extract (optional, but coming from a not big vanilla fan, it's nice in this)

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC and grease your bundt tin
2. Beat the sugars and the eggs together until light and airy
3. Mix in the mashed bananas
4. Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda together, then gently fold in to the wet ingredients
5. Finally add the melted butter and pour into your prepared tin
7. Bake for around 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean

8. Whilst the cake is baking, make your caramel.

9. Heat the sugar in a pan, stirring all the time until it forms clumps, then melts down into an amber liquid.
10. As soon as you have the liquid, add the butter - it'll splash everywhere, so watch out!
11. Once the butter melts, add the double cream, stirring alllll the time. Once again, watch out, because there will be lots of bubbling.
12. Let it bubble for about a minute, then remove from the heat and allow to cool.

13. Once the caramel and the cake are both completely cool, make the cream cheese icing by mixing the butter with the cream cheese and vanilla then gradually adding the icing sugar. 

14. Pipe the cream cheese icing onto the cake and then follow by piping the caramel.

Cake Trails #1: Mango and Coconut Cupcakes

Well it's been a little quiet around here recently hasn't it? I'd love to say I've just been so busy working hard on my real life that I haven't had time to blog, but really I've spent a lot of time under a duvet (seeing as there's no sand to stick my head in).

Luckily I've got a really nice project that has just started, and I am so excited to share it with you. My friend Eve over at Sam Loves Cake had the great idea of starting an Edinburgh Cake Trail. We are tirelessly hunting down the best cake the city has to offer. Eventually we'll have a little map for you to take a quick look at to help you work out where to get your next cake fix. Until we get a few under our belt though, Eve is telling you all about our visit, whilst I am baking about it instead. For every venue we visit, I'll be whipping up a treat inspired by something we ate, or something that caught our eye.

This week it's Mango and Coconut Cupcakes, inspired by the decadent Mango and Coconut Cheesecake Eve tucked into at Mimi's Bakehouse in Leith.

Whilst we plough through this wintery January, a bite of these cupcakes is like a much longed for visit from a tropical breeze. Vanilla sponge with a mango centre topped off with coconut cream buttercream and another splodge of mango on top for good measure. They may look like fried eggs, but they are assuredly more decadent. Whipping them up couldn't be easier, and the coconut cream buttercream is a nice change from your usual buttercream.

Mango and Coconut Cupcakes

185g Sugar
90g Unsalted Butter
1 Egg & 1 Egg White
1tsp Vanilla Extract
200g Plain Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
125ml Milk

300g Frozen Mango

120g Butter
310g Icing Sugar
Half a Tin of Coconut Milk*

*This is a bit of a faff. You need to put the tin in the fridge over night, or for 8 hours before you want to make the icing, then open the tin from the bottom not the top. Drain off the thin coconut water (save it for a smoothie or something) then weigh out the remaining thick white coconut cream. You'll need half of the white coconut cream. Alternatively, I think in some places you can just buy coconut cream, but not in the tiny convenience shop by my flat!

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
2. Add the egg, egg white and vanilla extract.
3. Alternate folding in the flour and baking powder and mixing in the milk. I go flour, milk, flour, milk, last bit of flour.
4. Fill your cupcake cases and bake at 180oC for 18-20 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
5. Leave to cool.
6. Defrost the mango and blitz until smooth in a food processor.
7. Core the cupcakes, either with a cupcake corer or just with a knife, and fill with around a teaspoon of mango, then replace the top of the cupcake.
8. Whip the coconut cream, then add the butter and the icing sugar. You might need a bit more icing sugar to thicken the icing if you're working in a particularly warm kitchen.
9. Pipe the icing onto the cupcakes or just use a palette knife, and then top with another dollop of the mango.
10. These cupcakes are definitely best eaten right away, but if you're saving them I recommend you keep them in the fridge or a very cool place, because the icing can get runny.

The Boiler Shop Steamer - Newcastle

Hidden in an enormous warehouse behind the train station in Newcastle is an amazing feast for the senses, called The Boilershop Steamer. It pops up the first weekend of every month and is filled with bands, bars and, most importantly, food!

It's free entry before 6pm on a Saturday, otherwise there's a small entry fee, I think £4 or £5, I can't remember. You then buy tokens, one token is £2, and this is how you pay for your food. Dishes range from 1 to 3 tokens, and overall I found it really excellent value for money.

After doing a quick loop to check out the options, we first visited Cellini's, a stall from the popular Newcastle Italian. It was a difficult choice, but we went for the Deep Fried Shin Beef Calzone, and my god it was amazing. It looked innocent enough from the outside, like a little deep fried samosa, but when it was opened up it was stuffed full of flavourful, melt in the mouth tomatoey beef.

We followed it with a spicy chicken wrap from a Lebanese stall, and I feel terrible because I can't remember the name of the stall! It was really delicious though, and it was much easier to eat than the first because it was wrapped in a paper plate as well as foil (note how I don't have it all down me in the photo below. If only you could have seen me trying to eat the calzone...). Also, top points for you being able to choose how spicy you want your wrap - the meat was set with a medium to low spice, and then you could pick your toppings and sauce. 

I think really we should have stopped there, but could I resist raclette (potatoes smothered in melted cheese)? No, I could not. They had a whole half a cheese that they were melting layer by layer and then pouring over the potatoes. I loved it - Ben thought it was dull. 

We finished up with crepes, which were absolutely delicious, but pretty standard. Churros were the other sweet option, and although all good, I felt like the whole thing could bonus from more sweet options. I have a sweet tooth though, so I'm biased, and the stalls that are there switch up every month, so I'd be curious to go back and see what's there other weeks.

I'll definitely be going back another week - something I didn't try this time was the gin bar because I had an early morning the next day, and gin plus an early morning are not friends!

There's some more information about The Boiler Shop Steamer on their website, right here.

Weeks Fifty One and Fifty Two

This is it - the last photo a day post! I really can't believe it's been a whole year since I started. Even more, bar September, I can't believe I managed it. I'm really thankful to everyone who has taken the time to look at the posts (so many of you!) and especially to those of you who commented or got in touch about it.

So for the last time, here are the photos of the last week and a bit, the last gasp of 2014!

Monday - Christmas Cake finished

Tuesday - I got my fringe cut back in! And I pulled a sickening pose-y face - hurrah for the selfie. 

Wednesday - Gingerbread making on Christmas Eve

Thursday - Christmas Day!! Extra presents under the tree this year because Ben joined my family for Christmas.

Friday - A blurry picture of the snow outside my front door - I live in Narnia you know?

Saturday - Two cuties keeping us company on the long drive to the Alps.

 Sunday - Ski time

Monday - The amazing view from our chalet. 

Tuesday - I mean, I like skiing, but skiing would be nothing without the apres would it?

Wednesday - It wouldn't be right if the last photo of the year wasn't of a cake, would it? The mousse cake I picked up from a patisserie for us to enjoy on New Years Eve.