Chocolate Birthday Cake from 'A Passion For Baking'

I love Jo Wheatley, she's definitely up there with Nigella as my joint favourite family cook.

Jo's first book 'A Passion For Baking' permanently lives on my kitchen table as I use it so much. I have made the Chocolate Birthday Cake from the book at least fifteen times this year alone. It looks and tastes delicious and is really versatile. It is a big hit with family and friends who cannot get enough of the taste. The cake is moist and tasty and the chocolate ganache which I make with all milk chocolate rather than the mix of milk and dark is just to die for, I could just sit eating it with a spoon straight from the dish.

The cake above is from a family gathering and I made it as a last minute offering for the party. I chose this recipe as it has never let me down and I knew everyone would enjoy it. It went down a real treat and I had numerous requests for me to make other people their own individual cakes.

I imagine this particular cake will appear again in the near future (maybe with different decorations) as I make it so much.

Macaroni shepherd's pie

I made this dish a few weeks ago and it went down really well in my house - well who can resist a pasta bake? The dish is a combination of a meat sauce with a macaroni cheese topping. Even my nine year old who is not a fan of cheesy sauces enjoyed this - I think this is because the macaroni cheese and the mince sauce kind of meld into one another and become one especially when it is scooped out of the serving dish and put onto a plate.

The recipe is from the March issue of Good to know magazine however it also available online too, just click here for the recipe. I did make some slight changes to the macaroni cheese part of the recipe as it asks for 350g of Red Leicester cheese now as someone who is watching their weight I personally felt that this was far too much cheese to be using in one dish so I probably put in more like a 125g to 150g. Also the fact that I only had a 250g packet of grated Red Leicester in the house probably helped with this too. The recipe also called for more cheese to be sprinkled on at the end however I missed this part out as I felt it looked cheesy enough without it.I can honestly say that I don't think the dish suffered at all from this change, the macaroni cheese was still very cheesy and it still tasted great.

Here are some pictures of the dish being put together (please excuse some of the pictures as they were taken on my phone).

The mince mixture - I actually made this the night before to save on a bit of time.

The macaroni cheese mixture on top of the mince, ready to go in the oven.

Straight out of the oven.

Macaroni shepherds pie







Chocolate chip cupcakes with chocolate buttercream icing

I made these cupcakes for a trip to Blackpool zoo last week, I thought they would be a perfect edition to the picnic we were going to have. Now whenever I make cupcakes my "go to" recipe is Nigella's fairy cake one from How to be a domestic goddess, I always use this as my basic recipe and then add any additional flavours I need to, however it's also great as a vanilla cupcake recipe. The cupcakes are also moist and full of flavour and they have yet to let me down (I'm touching wood as I type this!!!)

Here's the  mixture waiting to be put into cupcake cases:

and here it is in the cases ready to go into the oven:

Out of the oven and cooling on the rack:

The cases were on the small side either though they were labelled as cupcake cases and in my opinion they were closer to fairy cakes but this did not make any difference to the finished product or the taste of it.

For the chocolate buttercream recipe I went for the one I frequently use from cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery . I do however change the chocolate I use from dark as stated in the book to milk, for some reason I just cannot get into using dark chocolate for cooking I would rather use a good quality milk chocolate. I think the reason I do this is because I am frightened of the dark chocolate being too overpowering and not sweet enough. Anyway here are the finished chocolate chip cupcakes with their chocolate buttercream icing on.

Chocolate chip cupcakes

(slightly adapted from 'fairy cakes' out of Nigella Lawson's How to be a domestic goddess page39)

Ingredients

I got 15 small cupcake size cakes from this recipe

125g unsalted butter

125g caster sugar

2 large eggs

125g self-raising flour

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

100g milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 200c/gas mark 6.

2. Cream the butter and sugar together with an electric hand mixer until light and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each egg is added. Then add the vanilla extract.

4. Sift the self raising flour into the bowl and then fold the flour into the mixture.

5. Add the milk to the mixture although if you feel the mixture looks wet enough you can leave this step out.

6. Add the milk chocolate chips to the bowl and fold in, trying to distribute the chocolate chips as evenly as you can.

7. Place the mixture into cupcake cases and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until the cakes are cooked through and golden on top.

Chocolate buttercream icing

(slighly adapted from cupcakes at the Primrose Bakery)

Enough to ice the 15 cupcakes from above

Ingredients

100g good quality milk chocolate

150g unsalted butter

1/2 to 1 tablespoon of milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

175g icing sugar

1. Melt the chocolate in a bowl in the microwave until it is smooth and has a pouring consistency. Keep your eye on the chocolate as it can burn so easily - I usually heat in thirty second intervals and check and stir after each thirty seconds.

2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter, milk, vanilla and icing sugar with a hand held electric mixer until smooth. Add the melted chocolate and beat again until thick and creamy. If the mixture looks too runny to ice your cupcakes, beat for a little longer and this should thicken it.

3. Ice your cupcakes however you would like to. I used a Wilton 1m nozzle to do the ones above.