Spiced Festive Cupcakes

It’s the season where I add cinnamon and ginger and cloves to EVERYTHING. I have a little jar of spices I mixed together just for the wintery bakes (of course I do) and it comes in handy at times like this.

For the spice mix, I add together something roughly like 6 tbsp ground cinnamon, 2 tbsp ground cloves, 2 tsp ground nutmeg, 1 tbsp ground ginger, 2 bits of star anise, cinnamon bark and 6 cardamom pods into a small kilner jar. Then I mix it all together and use it throughout my Christmas bakes!

Whatever  you decide to use, these cupcakes are supremely delicious and you’re all welcome for this gorgeous recipe. I decided to ice them in a very festive way, with little wreaths and trees which are ridiculously simple to pipe (it’s just little splodges in shapes) and look (in my humble opinion) really cute!

Peppermint Creams

These are like After Eights on steroids. Creamy, sweet and minty, with a crunchy chocolate shell. I all at once love them and am a little intimidated by the sugar content. Definitely need to be eaten in moderation!

For me, the best Christmas flavours are chocolate and mint, and these fit nicely on my festive table alongside After Eights, Thorntons mint collection and mint Matchmakers!

These aren’t the simplest to make, I initially made the error of trying to cut several at once, and when I went back to the first ones I had cut, to move them to the tray, they were already too sticky to move.  You’ll need a lot of icing sugar to cut them out easily. If you’re still struggling, pop the rolled out dough in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up.

They are TOTALLY worth the effort!

Orange and Almond Cake

So, I was making candied orange peel. As you do. Because it’s the season of oranges and cinnamon and sweet things to help us through the short days.

..And I had lots of orange syrup left over from the boiling of the peel with sugar, so I wanted to use it to make a lovely moist festive orange cake. The nutty almonds, sweet syrup and zesty zest work together to make this the ultimate tea-time cake.

And another welcome use for this cake is after a Christmas dinner - I don't like Christmas pudding but this one can be rigged up (depending on how fancy your cake tins are) to look just like one and (for me) it tastes so much better!

I used a little fancy cake tin and though it was more difficult to extricate the cake (it required heavy greasing beforehand and careful handling after!) it gave it a fancy finish that I really loved.

Candied Orange Peel

It’s definitely time for autumnal and Christmas flavours  to start shining through!

I have never made candied peel, so I thought I should give it a whirl, seeing as these citrus-y sweet little nuggets can adorn any festive bake – mince pies, stollen, chocolate marzipan.. And then you’ve got the non-seasonal applications like cannoli.

What’s left of the simple syrup which has been deliciously infused with orange can also be re-used, I am planning to use it to make a deliciously moist orange drizzle cake. Waste not, want not!

Anyway, this is easy and it made my house smell delicious. What more do you want?

Cannoli

Oh, this is a little treat. I think of baking as my hobby, and as with most hobbies, sometimes you get stuck in a rut. I think brownies are my rut – I’ve been known to make brownies and only brownies for weeks. They’re easy, delicious and altogether pleasing. But sometimes you want to get out of the rut. You gotta make something new, and something a little tricky.

Enter, cannoli.

I have enjoyed these little crunchy sweet morsels a lot in the last few years, I’ve gotten them from bakeries, markets and Italian delis. And Italy. So delicious. And too hard to make at home, or so I thought. The hardest bit was sourcing ingredients - I couldn't find any traditional (sweet) marsala wine, so I just used regular white wine and they tasted legit!

Like with most hobbies, you need equipment sometimes. I did have to buy these cannoli rings to enable me to make them, but they cost £7 and arrived via next day delivery. That’s the price of 2 costa coffees or one medium-fancy gin – well worth it because I’ll get my money’s worth. They will  be added to my niche kitchen equipment collection which includes donut pans and a sugar thermometer. Very useful gear.

I learned a lot by doing this. You need to roll the dough as thin as you can, with a second roll once you’ve cut it out. And then when sealing the ends together, seal the entirety of the dough where the two ends meet or else it’ll open up. Learn by my example!

Vegan Coconutty Oaty Cookies

I am always up for a baking challenge, and I fancied taking on the challenge of feeding my vegan colleagues at work! I feel bad leaving them out when I bring in my baked goods, so I put my mind to finding some easy vegan recipes. There are a ton of dairy free spreads out there, so that isn’t hard, but eggs are somewhat ubiquitious in baking, and therein lay the difficulty.

Countless google searches and I found an interesting recipe to build on. But I admit, I was sceptical. I didn’t think it was possible to get such chewy and amazingly light cookies without eggs being involved somehow. But these are a damn revelation. Perfect chewiness, easy to make, taste amazing. Win win win.

You know how Phoebe brags that she makes the best oatmeal raisin cookies in the world (but she doesn't make them very often because she doesn't think it's fair to the other cookies!) - well these are those cookies. They look unassuming but they pack a punch!

Makes just over a dozen chunky cookies

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cheesecake

This is pretty much a big Reece’s cup you can serve up as a dessert. The sour quality of the cream cheese cuts nicely through the richness of the chocolate and peanut butter, and I am LOVING the nutty base. I think the base would be lovely with even a normal vanilla cheesecake topping.

It’s a little bit fiddly to cover the filing with the topping without cracking the surface, but even if it goes slightly wrong, it will still marble a bit and taste delicious!