Freckled Kirsty

Father Christmas clearly knows me well, as under the tree I had a new cake recipe book waiting; Fantasy Cakes by Angela Romeo and it is such a treat for the eyes to browse, and stomach for the wonderful cakes you could bake. It is a very clever book in that it has the standard cake recipes at the start which are used throughout the book. These so far have been so simple to throw together, which is very handy as I can leave the baby playing for 10 minutes to whip the cake up. You can order the book here , and I highly recommend it if you want to try some beautiful centre pieces or show stoppers. The first cake I tried is the After Eight minis, great as all the family were round to gobble up the end result.  This After Eight recipe took a while to assemble and create the individual elements however they can all be done in advance and individually rather than sitting down for a good couple of hours stretch. I had to alter the recipe slightly as I ran out of self raising flour,

There seems to be a bit of a trend at the moment for brownies with all kinds of sweets and biscuits added to the top to give an extra dimension to these absolute classic bakes. Doing the rounds on Instagram which caught my eye were Bourbon brownies, in particular Frances Quinn's version (Former GBBO winner). Her food imagination and photography is always beautiful and well worth checking out. I have used my own brownie recipe which combines cocoa and melted dark chocolate topped with neat rows of Bourbons, making a brownie which perfectly compliments a good cup of tea. Time to get dunking! Ingredients: 220g butter 180g caster sugar 150g light muscovado sugar 50g cocoa powder 50g dark chocolate (70%) 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 eggs 120g plain flour 1 packet of Bourbons - I used 13 ontop of my batter, but you can add more or less depending on how you want your brownies to look. Method: Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan assisted and line a brownie tin. In

Pastry week on the Great British Bake Off saw Paull Hollywood set custard tarts as the technical challenge and I thought I would give them a go, seeing as I have never attempted them before! I own Paul's cookbook which has the recipe in, and it can also be found on the GBBO website. These two recipes vary slightly - in the book Paul doesn't make the rough puff pastry but uses shop bought (which I would normally do.) This being a Bake Off challenge though I decided to use the recipe they followed in the tent. The result - delicious buttery pastry filled with golden creamy custard. I ate 3 in one sitting! The tarts are quite fiddly and leaving the pastry to cool between rolling is essential to get the decent lamination and signature swirl on the bottom, so you will need to set aside a good couple of hours in total. As a side note, I found that I had a lot of left over custard - either I didn't make my tarts big enough or the recipe is rather generous with the por

Breastfeeding is a topic which many people feel very passionately about, and when you are a new mother countless people offer advice, opinions and their own stories. This isn't always helpful though, and as a first time mum it can be slightly overwhelming, especially when advice is quite frequently contradictory or just doesn't fit your own situation. When you look at the statistics for breastfeeding in the UK you can see we as a country fall far behind the rest of the world (stats taken from Unicef 2010 survey): E xclusive breastfeeding at six weeks was 24% in England, a cross the UK, at three months, the number of mothers breastfeeding exclusively was 17% and at four months, it was 12%. However, exclusive breastfeeding at six months remains at around 1%. Rates of ‘any breastfeeding’ at six weeks was 55%, while at six months they were 34%. My daughter is just about to hit the six month mark, and I fall into the 'any breastfeeding' category. Pre-baby I was conv

With the start of September, Autumn is just round the corner meaning a return to cosy jumpers, richer foods and in baking terms warmer flavours. Apples, spices and autumn go hand in hand so today I have whipped up some spiced apple cupcakes. This is basically a two pot recipe and very quick to make, handy when you are having to fit baking around baby naps! Ingredients 135g dark muscovado sugar 65g caster sugar 115g melted butter 2 large eggs 80ml whole milk 1 tsp vanilla extract 200g plain flour 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp ground nutmeg 1 large apple peeled and chopped, I used a cooking apple which gives a slightly tart taste to offset the sweetness of the cakes 1 portion of caramel, either from the tin or home made. Method Preheat your oven to 180/ 170 degrees fan assisted. Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with cases and put aside. Mix together the butter and sugars until well combined. Whisk the eggs in, one at a time

Another get together with friends has prompted some more baking (whilst the baby is sleeping) and the salted caramel cover recipe from a BBC Good Food issue from a while back caught my eye. I have been storing this recipe waiting for a good excuse to bake it, and I can say (after scoffing a few), these brownies do not disappoint and will be made again. Brownies are very easy to make, the one stumbling point I often find is the temperature of the oven and the time they are baked for - as ovens vary vastly this is quite hard to write into a recipe, but I have a fan assisted fairly new over which bakes quite hot. They key for baking the brownies is checking after the stated time, and they should still be a little liquid in the middle if you want moist squishy squares. Leaving them to cool completely in the tin is also an essential, as if they are cut too early they may still be too liquid. Time to make batter - around 15 minutes Baking time - 35 minutes depending on your oven I