Tag: cake

05Dec

Whisky and caramel cake bites

I will very rarely admit defeat when it comes to recipes. In the last few months I have developed a couple of cake recipes, baked them and failed them. Eventually I got the ingredients and methods rights but that meant a few flat, mushy attempts had to be foiled up and sent to the cake morgue, a.k.a. my bottom freezer drawer. The morgue was getting really packed and this was causing marital tensions. My husband is a minimalist when it comes to storage of any kind. So what’s a girl to do with all this cake? Cake pops, naturally.  Bad idea. I watched dozens of videos, researched what was the best brand of candy melts and was the biggest visitor to Bakerella’s site last month. And yet they were a complete failure. I wanted to make something special for my nephews birthday and it went catastrophically bad, to the point I was covered in yellow candy melt, ferociously throwing away all of the jelly tots cut out in the shape of pooh’s ears. And the question remained…what to do with all this cake? Cake pops’s closest (and low maintenance) relative, cake bites. And a grown up one at that.Maybe good
2 mins read
1141 Views
27Sep

Chocolate yoghurt cake

It has been more than a month since my last post. It was not planned – I said I was going to do a whole month of Brazilian food to celebrate the Olympics – but it did not turned out that way.  After a break in Cornwall and then a string of family members coming over to stay, it felt like I left life up in the air, and when I arrived back home it all came crashing down. You know, piles of unopened letters, cleaning to do, I couldn’t even start to think about recipes for the blog. In fact this has been the first week in a whole month that I have opened my computer. Then I don’t know why but amidst the chaos I decided to make one of my least favourite baking recipes: cake. I am cake’s biggest fan, just have a look at my Pinterest page and you will see beautiful cakes, frosted like a sculpture, with the perfect rise and colour. I dream of emulating that, however this is rare as I am by nature a chaotic cook. But baking cakes is almost like a science, you need to do things by the book.
3 mins read
931 Views
06May

Applesauce banana loaf [Dairy Free]

I am sitting here trying to describe how I have been feeling in these last few days. Tired is the first adjective that comes to mind. At first I thought the word was so salient in my mind because of how the physical side of my job had left me sore in my legs and arms, with 5 am starts thrown in the mix too.  The first course of action for me to counteract this was to dive into a diet of spirulina smoothies and sugar free snacks. The food has given me an energy boost, but on my days off I can’t shake off the wanna-be-in-bed-all-day feeling, so I had to think a little harder about what else I was be doing wrong. Thinking being the key word here, I was in my head too much. I have an emotional job, where you make decisions about people’s lives, and that is something that can be highly rewarding at times, but on the other hands it makes me over analyse every decision I make. It leads to a very judgemental cycle in my head and by the time i get home I am in this deep emotional pit, no one can rescue
3 mins read
898 Views
22Mar

Coconut and pineapple easter cakes in egg shells

I always make an effort to make something special when big holidays are coming. Something to make the table shine and people smile. We just bought a new house so we’re going through a happy but stressful moment. My husband is working crazy hours, going straight to the new house to do renovations after a full days work in the office. This left me feeling like a single mum (I respect those women so much), meaning that I have had to deal with a lot on my own: work, son, shopping, housework, the dog…here’s hoping this lonesome juggling won’t last much longer. This means our quality time together over the Easter holiday will be brief, so I want to make an extra effort to make the house and the food feel special. I thought that cakes that are hatching out of eggs fit the bill, right?! And thank goodness the weather has officially transitioned to spring, the warmer days inspired me to go for a pineapple and coconut flavour mixture. We are big egg consumers around here so it was easy to collect the shells, but if 20 sounds like too much, halving the recipe works well too. Coconut and
3 mins read
829 Views
17Aug

Cassava cake {sugar free, dairy free, gluten free}

  I can’t really explain why I have felt so nostalgic of happy childhood days these past few weeks. I have been re-living those moments through food. So this is what this recipe is about. I am sure this recipe has also featured in Mariana’s childhood as it it is typical from where we come from. Cassava has already featured on quite a few of our recipes (pão de queijo, chips, tapioca ice lollies…) and I never tire to use it in recipes, I love the flavour and most importantly, it is an essential ingredient of the Paleo diet! Recipes made with cassava always have an interesting sticky consistency. So when you make this cake don’t expect for it to be airy and soft, it will be dense. Think brownie consistency. The recipe I am sharing is something I developed based on two family recipes, and it does not contain sugar, dairy or gluten. Cassava cake 4 eggs 200ml coconut milk 500g cassava Pinch of salt 150ml maple syrup or honey 2 tbsp of ghee or coconut oil, melted Fennel seeds Method: 1.Preheat the oven to 180C. Cut off the ends of the cassava, peel and grate it. Using a
2 mins read
1203 Views
07May

Upside down rhubarb and Earl Grey cake {dairy free, sugar free, gluten free – paleo}

A few weeks ago I got a package from Mariana, inside was the latest ingredient to feature in our Anglo-German food exchange. It was Earl Grey tea, is there anything more British than that? The package also contained a note from Mariana saying that she chose said ingredient to make my life easier. I did get a bit nervous because although Mariana wanted to make my culinary journey a little easier all I could think about after I got the tea was cake, which is a hard task for me at the moment as I am following the Paleo diet consequently any cake I eat needs to contain no flour, milk or sugar. So it was now beyond a simple culinary exchange, it was a full on challenge to whip up a paleo cake. Milk is not actually an issue, I haven’t used milk for years in my kitchen and I can now find so many great substitutions. But what about flour and sugar? This challenge entailed a lot of scientific research on Pinterest. I studied and tested a few recipes made by others at first in order to get used to ingredients, before trying one that was 100% mine.
3 mins read
814 Views