Gingerbread Biscuits

I love gingerbread biscuits and they feel so christmassy and gingery!

You Will Need:

75g of Light Brown Sugar

3 tbsp of Golden Syrup

1 tbsp of Water

1 tsp of Ground Cinnamon

1 tsp of Ground Ginger

95g of Butter

1/2 tsp of Baking Powder

280g of Plain Flour

Mix the sugar, syrup, water, cinnamon and ginger together over a medium heat.

Add the butter and mix with a wooden spoon.

Take off the heat and add the baking powder, mix and then add flour gradually while mixing until it forms a non-sticky dough.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface and cut out using different Christmas themed cookie cutters.

 Place the cut out shapes onto lightly buttered baking trays and leave for 30 minutes to rest the dough.

Place in the oven for 10-15 minutes or too golden brown at 180c.

Take out of the oven and leave on the side to cool, you can decorate with icing if you want too.

Mince Pies

As its Christmas time I thought I would have to make mince pies, so here is how I made them!

You Will need:

350g of Mincemeat

200g of Plain Flour

40g of Caster Sugar

75g of Ground Almonds

125g of Unsalted butter

1 Egg

Milk (to glaze)

Mix the flour, sugar, almonds and butter together in a bowl, so they look like breadcrumbs!

Mix in the egg and bring the mixture together with your hands.

Roll out the dough on a floured work surface and cut the dough, using cookie cutters, so half of the circles are bigger then the other half.

Place the smaller circles in a lightly buttered cupcake tin.

Add the mincemeat to the cups using a teaspoon.

Put the larger circles on top, glaze the top with milk and then stab with a fork.

Put in a preheated oven for 20 minutes at 190c.

Take out the oven and leave to cool or eat warm!

Peanut Butter Fudge

I thought this recipe looked really nice and interesting so i thought i would give it go!

You Will Need:

125g of Butter

500g of Light Brown Sugar

120ml of Milk

250g of Crunchy Peanut Butter

3 tsps of Vanilla Extract

300g of Icing Sugar

Melt the butter in saucepan and heat, while stirring.

Stir in the brown sugar and milk and boil for 3 minutes without stirring.

Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter and vanilla extract.

Pour into a bowl with the icing sugar in and stir using a wooden spoon until smooth.

Pour into a square baking tray and leave in the fridge to cool, preferably overnight.

Take the fudge out of the fridge and cut into squares with a knife, its no ready to eat!!!

Birthday Cake!!!

Of course there are lots of different flavours, shapes, colours and a billion other things that can differ in a birthday cake, but they all have one thing in common and that's that they involve cake (hopefully anyway!) so here is how i made my brothers birthday cake, which was cricket themed!

You Will Need:

150g of Self-Raising Flour

150g of Caster Sugar

150g of Stork

3 Eggs

 4 tsp of Vanilla Extract

Beat the sugar and eggs together in a large bowl

 Sieve the flour into the bowl

 Add the stork into the bowl

 Add the vanilla extract and mix all the ingredients until smooth

 Cook for 30 minutes at about 180c

 Take out the oven when golden brown

 Leave to cool

 Spread jam over the top of one of the sponges and level the other one out using a serrated knife

Mix icing sugar, water and green icing sugar to make the icing and then spread it evenly over the top of the cake. To make it smooth on the top dip a knife into a bowl of hot water and spread it over the top of the icing to make it shiny and smooth 

Now this is where you can do what you want really, but i made a cricket pitch, i used white candy sticks for wickets and a gobstopper for the cricket ball!

Easy ZESTY Cake

This zesty orange and lemon drizzle cake will tingle your tastebuds and it doesn't take long to make either! Here's how:

You Will Need:

150g of Self-Raising Flour

150g of Caster Sugar

150g of Stork

3 Eggs

1 Lemon

3 tbsp of Orange Juice

1 tsp of Lemon Flavouring

1 tbsp of Icing Sugar

Some lemon and orange peel

Put the flour, sugar, stork, eggs, orange juice, lemon flavouring, the zest of the lemon and half of the juice in a big bowl and whisk.

Line a tin and put the mixture in.

Place the tin in the oven and cook at 170c for roughly 45mins.

After you take it out the oven, take it out of the tin and put the orange and lemon peel on the top, the rest of the lemon juice and the icing sugar.

Pineapple and Cherry Upside Down Cake

Here is how to make this old classic:

You Will Need:

150g of Stork

50g of Dark Brown Sugar

A Tin of Pineapple Rings

Glacé Cherries

100g of Caster Sugar

100g of Self-Raising Flour

1 tsp of Baking Powder

1 tsp of Vanilla Extract

2 Eggs

Firstly, mix 50gs of the stork and the brown sugar together.

 Spread over the base and a quarter of the way up the sides of a cake tin.

Arrange the pineapple rings and cherries on top of this base.

Now mix the rest of the stork, the self-raising flour, caster sugar, baking powder, eggs and vanilla extract in a large bowl.

Pour this mixture over the pineapple and cherries base and flatten the top.

Put the oven for roughly 35 minutes at 170c.

Once cooked thoroughly take out of the tin and serve warm! 

Bakewell Tart

This is a quick and easy recipe on how to make Bakewell Tart that tastes amazing!!!

You Will Need:

300g Shortcrust Pastry

1tbsp Raspberry Jam

125g Caster Sugar

125g Butter

125g Ground Almonds

1 Egg

1 tsp Almond Extract

Icing Sugar + Water

 Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface and place into a greased cake tin or flan tin and leave to firm in fridge.

Take it out of the fridge after 10 minutes and place some silver foil with beans on, onto the pastry to stop the pastry rising when cooked.

 Place in the oven for 15 minutes at 180c.

 Remove the silver foil and beans and place back in the oven for an extra 5 minutes.

 Once removed from the oven spread the base of the pastry with the raspberry jam (You don't need to wait for the pastry to be cool).

 Gently melt the butter in a pan.

Turn off the heat and stir in the sugar, then the ground almonds, egg and almond extract. Pour this into the tin.

Bake for 35 minutes at 180c. 

Make the icing using icing sugar and water and use it to decorate the top the Bakewell tart (i suggest decorating it after taking it out of the tin!).