Home-made Oreos!

This month's TSR bake was chosen by Sarah over at Internet Gems! The recipe can be found Sugar Cooking. Though, I used Sarah's adaption because it was already in grams for me, so if you're the same you can find it here!

Home-Made Oreos
Ingredients (for the cookie, makes around 25-30)

160g plain flour

8tbsp cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

250g sugar

140g room-temperature butter

1 large egg

Method:

1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl, then, using an electric mixer, add the butter and the egg. 

2. Mix until the ingredients come together to form a dough. (Note: Mine wasn't combining at all, so I cracked another egg in there!)

3.Take a pinch of the dough, and roll into a ball. Place on baking paper and slightly flatten the ball. Space the balls at least two inches apart because they spread! (For lack of another baking tray, I did a load in a muffin pan which actually made the sizes quite uniform! So if you're wanting equal sized cookies I'd suggest that).

4. Bake for nine minutes at 190 degrees.

5. Remove from oven and leave to cool on tray for a few minutes before transferring to a wire tray to cool completely.

For the filling I used the vanilla buttercream I use for practically everything from Hummingbird which is very similar to the recipe here albeit more butter.

Ingredients for the filling:

115g butter

260g icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 tsp milk (if required)

1. Place butter in mixing bowl and beat with electric mixer at a low speed before gradually adding in the icing sugar and vanilla extract.

2. Turn the mixer to high and beat for 2-3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.

3. Take a teaspoon amount of the filling and place on the flat side of the cookie, before finding one of a similar size and sandwiching them together.

 

Wedding Cake.

Afraid there isn't an update this week as I was away at my brother's wedding this weekend and didn't get back until Tuesday. Monday is usually when I bake so I'll have something for you next week.

I'll leave you with a photo of my brother's wedding cake. It consisted of fruit cake, marble cake and plain sponge. It was absolutely delicious and looked lovely. I hear there's plenty of fruit cake left so I'm sure we'll be eating it at Christmas!

Red Velvet Cake!

 The last time I tried to make Red Velvet cake it turned out to be a little bit of a disaster. I'd preheated the oven, made the batter and lined the cases (I was doing cupcakes in this occasion). In my last flat the oven was pretty rubbish. It only seemed to get hot on one side so everything took far longer to cook than it should. Anyhow on this day, the oven had decided to die. I turned it off and on again, hoping to trick it into action. No luck. So I did the only thing I could do - I grilled 'em. 

My friend did take one and steam it, which was... interesting. He did do it again with sillicone cases that held the shape better but I'm going off track! So yeah, the grill. They came out okay and were edible but not how red velvet cake should taste. So now my oven is amazing, time for round two!

 

 Ingredients (makes one cake or 24 cupcakes)

120g unsalted butter at room temp

300g caster sugar

2 eggs

20g cocoa powder

40ml red food colouring

1 tsp vanilla extract

120ml buttermilk*

300g plain flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 tsp white wine vinegar

*If you can't find buttermilk (I don't think I've ever seen it!) then just add a tablespoon of lemon juice or white malted vinegar to the milk, stir and then leave for 5-10 minutes. It'll curdle due to the acidity but that's what you want so don't worry!

Note : When looking at my photo, I realised I only put one egg in my mix. The cake was still very moist though, so I doubt it did any real harm.

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees.

2. Beat together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly add the egg and beat until everything is well incorporated.

3. In a seperate bowl, mix together the cocoa powder, vanilla extract and red food colouring to make a thrick dark paste. Add to the butter mixture and mix thoroughly until well combined.

4. Add in half the buttermilk. Beat well. Add in half the flour. Beat well. Repeat with the rest of the buttermilk and flour.

5. Add the salt, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. Beat again until well combined.

6. Divide the mixture between two greased cake pans or sepearate into 24 paper cases. Bake for around 20-25 minutes for cupcakes and 35-40 minutes for the cake or until the sponge bounces back when touched.

7. Leave to cool in the pans slightly before turning out onto a wire cooling tray.

Mine had a little bit of a fight with the greaseproof paper!

The best frosting for this cake is Cream Cheese!

300g icing sugar

50g unsalted butter at room temp

125g cream cheese, cold

(makes enough to frost 12 cupcakes, double recipe for cake)

1.Beat together the icing sugar and butter (pref with an electric mixer) until the mixture comes together and is well mixed.

2. Add the cream cheese in one go and beat until it is completely incorporated. Continue beating until frosting is light and fluffy, around 5 minutes. Be careful not to overbeat though as frosting can become runny.

Recipes adapted from "The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook".