My love for Collies, Cakes, Cooking, Eating Out & Days Out.
I recently visited Amy’s Place in Torrin on the Isle of Skye. A lovely little tea room with amazing views of Bla Bheinn. Whilst I was there I purchased a jar of Butterscotch Sauce from The Wee Dairy from the Isle of Gigha. So this week I decided to create a cake to compliment the sauce. Here is my recipe for White Chocolate and Butterscotch Cake.
The English Cherry season tends to end around mid-September but my local supermarket here on Skye had some in stock this week. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I grabbed myself a punnet and embarked on a cake recipe. It would be very easy to fall into the trap of rehashing a Black Forest style cake so I opted for something a little different. Fresh Cherry and Marzipan Cake, the marzipan gives the almond flavour a real boost!
Browsing through a few cookbooks last week searching for a recipe my husband stumbled across Louise Cake in Sweet by Ottolenghi. However after a bit of hunting around this wasn’t a traditional Louise Cake recipe, rather an adaptation. Louise Cake is a popular New Zealand bake which resembles more of a slice than a cake. The story goes it was named after Queen
Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise and arrived on New Zealand shores with British travellers at the time.
A few months ago I found a recipe for a Maple Syrup Cake which turned out to be a disaster. The quantities, nor the method seemed correct but I ploughed ahead and baked a dreadful dry and sunken cake. So after a bit of experimentation I now have a recipe I have created for a delicious Maple Syrup, Orange & Pecan Cake with an orange buttercream filling. Even better, you can always swap the Pecans for Walnuts and it will be just as tasty!
My recipes for Chocolate Bundt Cakes have proven to be very popular. However there has been many calls for a smaller version to be made in sandwich tins. I’ve re-written and tested the recipe so it fits into 2 x 20cm/8inch round cake tins. This version is a Chocolate Orange Cake but you could swap the orange for 120g of fresh raspberries and make a Chocolate Raspberry Cake.
To boost the flavour of the Chocolate Orange Cake I used a 100g bar of 
Fairtrade Dark Orange Chocolate from the Co-op topped up to 50g with Callebaut 54% Dark Chocolate Callets. This combination gives a rich chocolate flavour without being too bitter. I also used Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil but this can be substituted for any rapeseed, sunflower or vegetable oil.
Last weekend was my husband’s birthday so the cake I baked had to be a bit special. After much deliberation we chose to make a few adjustments to an existing recipe and baked Chocolate and Raspberry Bundt Cake. The recipe is very similar to the Chocolate Orange Bundt Cake I’ve made before. However this one is loaded with fresh raspberries and a top tip – how to make your own buttermilk.
So if you have a special occasion and want a tasty chocolate that will wow the crowds, then look no further. It is moist, rich and super chocolatey. My Chocolate and Raspberry Bundt Cake recipe is below.
Surprisingly I have never had a slice of Hummingbird Cake when I have been out for Coffee and Cake. Mainly because what was on offer had dessicated coconut in it and I’m not a lover of coconut. Most recipes I looked at for Hummingbird Cake didn’t include coconut anyway, so I’ve put that down to a personal preference on behalf of the baker. However they all included some
fabulous tropical fruits, mango, passion fruit, banana, orange and pineapple.
So here is my take on Hummingbird cake. It’s big, but totally worth it especially as we have all Bank Holiday weekend to enjoy it!
We were having a weekend away camping on the neighbouring island of Raasay. We needed a cake robust enough to survive the weekend and be carried in our rucksacks whilst out hiking. After a little bit of inspiration courtesy of my Gaelic tutor Weetabix Cake came out favourite.
Weetabix is fruity, tasty, packed full of energy and is nice and robust for rucksack lunches. Even better, it is very easy to make and I had all the ingredients in the pantry! I eat two weetabix and fresh fruit every day for breakfast so I really didn’t have to look very far!
I haven’t baked for a couple of weeks as we are busy refitting the kitchen.
However the new oven is all connected and our new hens have just started laying eggs so a cake was in order. I find that a lot of recipes for Lemon and Poppyseed Cakes turn out to be uninspiring loaf cakes. This recipe turns a run of the mill Lemon and Poppyseed Cake into an indulgent Lemon and Poppyseed Layer Cake!
But first a giggle – the recipe calls for 4 large eggs! Five of my girls lay medium eggs and one seems to lay enormous eggs. I picked two of the huge eggs and two medium ones thinking that would balance out to about 4 eggs. The first two huge eggs I cracked into 
the mixture were double yolkers! A fab surprise but not quite what I was looking for in my cake. I had enough yolk but probably not enough egg white, so I threw in one egg white and crossed my fingers. As you can see the cake worked out well, and is very yellow. My ladies are fairly free range and love a bit of corn every day so in turn we get very golden eggs!
Cake:
225g Stork
225g Self Raising Flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
100g Golden Caster Sugar
100g Light brown sugar
4 large eggs
zest of 2 lemons – finely grated
20g poppyseeds
Filling:
Half a jar of Lemon curd
75g softened butter
250g sifted icing sugar
splash of milk
Heat the oven to 160c fan.
Grease an line 2 x 18cm cake tins.
Put all the cake ingredients into a bowl and mix until smooth and creamy.
Divide the mix evenly between the two tins and cake for 20-25 minutes.
Remove from the oven when baked and left in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto cooling racks.
Whilst the cakes are cooling make the buttercream filling. Put the butter and icing sugar in a bowl and mix together, slowly add a splash of milk until the butter cream is soft and creamy.
When the cakes are completely cooled cut each one in half with a sharp knife. 
A very sharp bread knife is good and cut lengthways through from edge to edge. You should now have four circular thin sponge cakes.
Pick one to be the bottom and place onto a plate. Cover the top of this one generously with lemon curd.
Next sandwich the next sponge slice on top of the lemon curd. Smother the top of this one with a generous helping of buttercream.
Nestle the next sponge slice on top of the buttercream and cover this slice 
generously with lemon curd as you did earlier.
Finally add the top layer and cover it with the rest of the buttercream.
There you have it Lemon and Poppyseed Layer Cake.
For all you chocoholics out there, is there nothing better than a perfect
Chocolate Brownie? My Chocolate Brownie recipe is a hybrid of many recipes my husband went through when looking for a great Chocolate Brownie. After a few tweaks to a few recipes we hit the spot.
The standard recipe is for a great quality simple Chocolate Brownie but as it is Easter in a couple of weeks I have tweaked it again to make Easter Chocolate Brownies. Below is the original recipe and a few tweaks for other recipes…
