There's always time for Cake!

I bought "Tea & Cake London" by Zena Alkaya the other day. I'd eyed it up online before but wanted to have a flick through & double check my favourite cake shops were included in the extensive list (because to be quite honest, if they weren't it would be a pretty rubbish cake book!) Peggy Porschen's, Bea's of Bloomsbury & Hummingbird Bakery were all in there so I gave in & bought it, & how happy I am that I did! :)

With my impending post Birthday diet, it probably wasn't the wisest thing to buy as I now feel the need to eat my way around London's best cake shops. But I bought it, & it's mine & who am I to deny that poor little book it's life's purpose?!

So I opened it & started with ...

Konditor & Cook's original Waterloo branch is featured in Tea & Cake London but as we were in the area a friend & I popped into the Soho branch last weekend to kick off my final birthday celebration.
It was located in a random little cinema on Shaftesbury avenue & is open until 11pm (10:30pm on Sundays!) for late night cake emergencies, which I think everyone has once in a while & I'd have a whole lot more if I lived nearby!

We headed straight for the cake. I'd been told by a friend that the Carrot Cake & their renowned Curly Whirly cakes were amazing ... So I went for carrot, & a little mini cake off the counter that was some kind of chocolatey cherry heaven, my friend had the Almond St Clement which was this moist lemony, orangey gluten free almond cake & was delicious - They were all SO good, you definitely could not fault any of them!

To go with our amazingly good cakes we ordered a pot of tea, before noticing my next favourite thing about K&C which is the fact that they sell wine! ... Not enough places sell cake & give you the choice of washing it down with a glass of wine! So after the cake was devoured & the tea was drunk, wine was ordered & we were very happy.

I need to go back & try the Curly Whirly cake ... & the brownies are meant to be super good! There are 6 branches across London, in Soho, Waterloo, Borough Market, Chancery Lane, South Bank & The Gherkin ... all of which I now feel the need to visit! I'd like to go for lunch one day as the savoury food looked super tasty too - I'm really regretting not getting a spinach & parmesan muffin but after all the cake there definitely wasn't room!

So... a good start for my new cake bible! Where to next?!

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Cookies

I'm a total sucker for anything involving a combination of peanut butter & chocolate, so when I came across the recipe for peanut butter & chocolate cookies in my Hummingbird Bakery recipe book a few years back it was clearly going to be a winner. 

I think this is the first Hummingbird recipe I tried out & it's been used time & time again for all number of occasions, they're literally the best cookies i've ever tasted & everyone who's tried them has just fallen completely in love, they're soft & chewy, taste amazing and are amazingly simple! 

To make you will need :

225g unsalted butter at room temperature
200g caster sugar
200g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
240g crunchy peanut butter
340g plain flour
2 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
75g dark chocolate, chopped

Method :

Preheat the oven to 170C (325F) Gas 3.

Prepare two baking trays with baking parchment paper on.

Put the butter and sugars in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment and cream until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraping any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula after each addition. Turn the mixer down to a slow speed and beat in the vanilla extract and peanut butter.

Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well until a smooth dough is formed. Stir in the chocolate until evenly dispensed.

Arrange 6 equal amounts of cookie dough on each prepared baking tray. Make sure that the cookies are spaced apart to allow for spreading while baking.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes or until golden brown around the edges and quite flat. Leave the cookies to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely. The cookies should be soft and chewy.

They're very soft when they come out of the oven so the bit about leaving them to cool slightly on the baking tray is important as they firm up as they cool down.

I also always make half the batch with chocolate & half without as I find some people are fussy about the two mixed together (I'm still not sure why I'm friends with some of these people :p they're clearly insane but I do try to keep everyone happy!)

Enjoy! 

(I know you will!)

Mars Bar Rice Crispy Treats

With last weekend being Easter I thought I would relive my childhood and make the rice crispy treats I used to make every year with my Grandy. I'd totally forgotten quite how good they were, but beware...  they are definitely not for anyone watching their waistline!

You'll need:

8 mars bars
Butter (approx 100g)
300g chocolate (I used dark but it's up to you!)
Rice crispies (I used about 2/3 of a packet)
A roasting tin

Method:

Chop up the mars bars and melt in a bowl over boiling water with half the butter. It will curdle a bit at first but just keep stirring it until it goes nice and smooth and glossy, add more butter if you think it needs it.

Mix the melted mars bar mix with as many rice crispies as it will cover! ... Depends how chocolatey you want them as to how many you add.
Tip - mix in the warm bowl as it keeps the melted mixture soft and easier to stir, careful though it'll be hot!

Press the mixture into a greased roasting tin

Place 300g of chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water with the remainder of the butter and once melted pour over the layer of rice crispy mix

As it was Easter I put mini eggs on the top of my crispy treats as decoration but you don't have to do this, or could subsitute mini eggs for malteasers or minstrels or something else chocolatey and bad for you!

Place the baking tray in the fridge for a few hours or until the chocolate has set then slice up and devour!