Kahlua chocolate cake

Dinner parties are one of my greatest pleasures, and a last week we had a few people over to our house for a night of delicious food and wine, and seriously bad youtube.

We started off with potato and leek soup, followed up by two baked pasta dishes - lasagna and cannelloni - and finished with kahlua chocolate cake.


A rich cake topped with kahlua cream cheese icing and two types of Lindt chocolate. Over indulgence in it's finest.


x CB

Vegan gingerbread with lemon icing

Sometimes there is nothing better than baking when it's awful out.
On Tuesday there were thunderstorms in the Springs, and I spent the afternoon in the kitchen baking a vegan version of a personal favourite - gingerbread.

I realised pretty early in that I don't have my cookie cutters at my flat as yet (have to track those down before my next cookie adventure, I think!) but despite not looking quite as amazing as the Post Punk Kitchen batch the recipe came from (I used golden syrup in place of molasses) these tasted delightful and went down a treat with a cup of tea post-Slammers workout.


The icing for these, a must know: juice of one lemon, icing sugar, and vanilla extract to taste. Tart but sweet, so perfect.

xx CB

Chaos Cakes: They hold the inside line

A few weeks ago the Alpha Beta Slammers' pinkest Scot, Mazzy Chaos, accepted an amazing job and headed back to her homeland.

Although sad to see her go (it's not every day you make friends with a pack-savvy blocker with a penchant for "eating the baby" and listening to the Go! Team, after all) we threw her quite the Boozy Tuesday leaving party, complete with spontaneous dress ups, plastic wine, and "Chaos Cakes".


For some reason the food colouring I used in the mixture caused the cupcakes to rise in funny directions, so they were a bit weight heavy on one side. No worries, however! Nothing a little frosting couldn't fix and, as aptly pointed out by Scheisse Minelli, these pink and yellow adorned creations look like they're "holding the line"!


Enough with the roller derby references, I'm off for a nap and some snacks.
Stay tuned for more frequent posting (I promise!) and some very exciting projects in the coming months.

xx CB

Treacle tarts and crown lynn delights

Hello sweet treaters,

It's certainly been a while!
Since I last updated I've been busy with assignments, skating, and eating (but not so much baking) delicious treats.

I also moved house, and now have the pleasure of being able to cook in a beautiful kitchen with a gas hub and oven. Even better than that, though, is that both of my flatmates are also crockery enthusiasts, so our kitchen is a mashup of Crown Lynn delights. More on that later.

For now, treacle tarts!
If by chance you managed to hide from all social networking and news media over the past fortnight and hadn't caught on, last night was Kate and Will's wedding. Apparently the wedding of our generation an incredible 2 billion odd tuned in to watch, and viewing parties popped up all over the place. I'm not usually one who buys into media hype or the royal family but I am most definitely a fan of British desserts, so when Amber from Code For Something invited me to her Royal Wedding TV Special I put on my best frock, some heels, and tried out Heston Blumenthal's treacle tart recipe for the occasion.


Heston Blumenthal is a freaking genius. Though I can't claim to have made the pastry cases myself (not enough hours in the day, it would seem) these turned out absolutely delicious. The recipe called for brown bread instead of white, and a considerable amount more golden syrup than other recipes I've found. I'm glad I ended up halving the recipe because even with half quantities I ended up with 12 mini tarts and 4 cupcake sized tarts (sans pastry).

Making a beurre noisette with the butter was absolutely worth it, and added both colour and a nutty flavour to the final product. I also sprinkled the pastry cases and cooked tarts with vanilla bean sugar, which is my new favourite thing. Yum!

Leftover tarts for my flatmates

Peak at the best kitchen ever!

xx CB

Multi-coloured icing.

The best thing about frosting, apart from the fact it is made mostly of butter and powdered sugar, is that you can make it in so many colours and pipe it into delicious patterns. Ruby sent me a website tutorial on making swirly, multi-coloured icing a few months ago and this weekend I finally got around to trying it out.

Lemon cupcakes with orange and vanilla frosting.

Unfortunately I have lost my camera battery charger, so I am having to rely on awful quality photo booth photos to document my baking adventures. But! These were delicious and (once I'd figured out the best technique) very fun to decorate. I burst a piping bag on my first attempt, so switched to my icing gun, which I think I've decided is my new favourite baking must-have. Whoever decided a contraption that presses cookies, pipes icing, and looks totally badass in the process would be a good idea was a genius. Go. Buy one. Don't let people catch you pulling sweet secret agent moves with it.

xxCB