Daring Baker's Chocolate Covered Marshmallows

I've wanted to make these for such a long time after seeing them on Tartelette . They were also one of the Daring Baker's challenges, but I'm always up for a challenge! It took me a bit of researching before-hand though. The marshmallows require corn syrup, which you don't seem to be able to buy in England (although I did recently see they sell it in the American food section at Selfridges for a ridiculous price!) After a while of trawling through the internet, it turns out you can substitute light corn syrup for liquid glucose, like for like, so I used that instead and it worked perfectly. Like Helene, I also made some square ones with peanut butter which turned out to be a big hit with my non-peanut butter eating boyfriend!

I'm so pleased with the way they turned out, I'm going to try making regular marshmallows next to go with some home-made hot chocolate, yum! I'm also going to try out a recipe which doesn't call for egg whites and compare the consistensy.

Lemon and White Chocolate Cupcakes

If you haven't had the pleasure of getting to know the god of all zesters; the microplane zester, I urge you to rectify that when you next need to strip a citrus fruit! Before I found out about the microplane, I used to do everything on the zesting section of the cheese grater. Not only does doing this take up far too much time of your life which could be spent eating cake, but half of the zest gets stuck in the grater and refuses to move no matter how much scraping and banging on the side of a bowl. It gets pretty tedious, let me tell you.

However with the microplane, you can zest a whole lemon in 10 seconds flat. No scraping, no banging. It will change your life...sort of.

Cranberry and Clementine Oaties

This recipe is so versatile, the dough is a great base for adding whatever ingredients you may have in the cupboard (in my case I had half a packet of cranberries that needed finishing!) I love cranberry and orange together. What ever happened to those cranberry and orange ice lollies?? They were so good! I think they were from delmonte....anyone? No? Ahhh well I will have to make some when it starts to warm up.

I digress! I decided to add clementine zest to these instead of orange, just to mix things up a bit, and it worked nicely. I wanted to carry the citrus-y flavour through the icing aswell, so I just made a simple 'drizzle' icing of powdered/icing sugar mixed with fresh lemon juice.

There are unlimited variations of flavours you could use in this dough. You could add other spices like ground cardamon, nutmeg or allspice, dried fruits, peanut butter, chocolate, nuts and seeds, the list goes on. Happy Experimenting!

Adapted from Food Network's Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

Ingredients (makes 25)

Dough
1/2 cup softened butter
3/8 cup granulated sugar
3/8 cup light muscavado sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup cranberries
zest of 1 clementine (2 if you want to up the flavour)

Icing
Juice of one small lemon
about 6 heaped tablespoons of icing sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 180c. and line two baking sheets. Cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat well. In a separate bowl mix together the dry ingredients, then add to wet mix and beat to combine. Add the cranberries and clementine zest and mix until evenly dispersed. Drop tablespoons of dough onto the lined baking sheets, slightly apart. Bake for 10- 12mins until just golden brown on top. Cool on a wire rack. While biscuits are cooling, mix together the lemon juice and icing sugar to make a 'drizzly' icing. If the icing is too wet, add more sugar a tablepoon at a time. If too thick, add more lemon juice until you get the right consistency.

The Wedding Season

Last weekend my brother got married. It was a beautiful, home-made wedding and one of my jobs was to make 120 mini blueberry cheesecakes and 120 rose cupcakes. I was so pleased with the outcome of these and it was mainly up to the type of piping nozzle I used.

If you want to create this effect, the nozzle you use is really important. If the 'grooves' aren't long/deep enough it won't make the large swirls needed to give the petal-like shape. The nozzle I used is the Wilton 1M, and it's great for creating that signature cupcake swirl aswell.

Something for the Autumn

There's something about the look of toffee apples (or candy apples for you Americans) that just calls out to you. They're so shiny and enticing, promising to be the best thing you've bitten in to in a long time, yet I can't help but feel it's always a bit of an anti-climax.

The coating is insanely sweet, although I guess the name should give that away really, and I always end up thinking I should have just gone for an average joe apple instead.

However, they are just so beautiful and after seeing Adam's Scary Apples over on Matt Bites blog I had to give them a try. I love the twigs in place of lollypop sticks, but I coloured mine more of a cherry red. I must point out here that his are a hundred times more elegant than mine, however as I've said before- there's nothing wrong with the word rustic!

http://mattbites.com/2009/10/13/adams-scary-apples/

Macarons- To Be or Not To Be

Macarons are notoriously tricky little things, but these were the results from my first attempt which really suprised me. They were a little too chewy inside but I was chuffed with the outcome. A while after I made these I did some work experience at 'Belle Epoque' a lovely patisserie in London. The head chef was having an experimenting day, trying out new flavour combinations for the shop and he taught me to make and pipe the ganache filling.

Pierre Herme is the king of Macarons, however I think Helene Dujardin of Tartelette is definately the queen. She creates the most amazing flavour combinations and is definately the one to tell you how to make them. So here's a link for you if you fancy a challenge...

http://www.mytartelette.com/2009/05/recipe-powdered-strawberry-macarons.html

Less is More

Simple decorations are often the most effective, so for these mini toffee cupcakes I decided to try marbling some chocolate. Somehow, whilst melting my dark chocolate in the microwave, I tempered it. I melted it in bursts of about 30 seconds, pulling it out and stirring in between. The resulting chocolate had a good snap and shine to it which was exactly what I wanted.

To create the marbled effect, I drizzled melted white chocolate all over a piece of acetate, then spread some dark chocolate over the top and left to set. This would be fine for decorations that are going to lie flat, however next time I do this I'm going to drizzle and spread some more white chocolate on top of the dark chocolate and put another piece of acetate on top, so that the marbled effect will be on both sides of the chocolate.

The white wire cake stand was a birthday gift from my best friend...she knows me so well!