Still in pursuit of the perfect chocolate brownie, then, I made these while my children were out making giant… erm.. appendages out of snow.  I would show you a video but they’re all disgusting and their grandparents might see.  I don’t know where they get it from.

These brownies are utterly lush and slightly more ‘grown up’ than the version I usually make (George’s chocolate brownies) but the recipe is mostly the same.  I think they benefit from being served warm as the ‘oranginess’ comes out more.

You will need:

200g dark chocolate (as dark as you dare – see below)

170g salted butter (MUST be salted – or add a pinch if using unsalted)

3 tablespoons marmalade (I used rindless for a smooth result)

3 eggs

200g soft brown sugar (caster is fine if you don’t have any)

110g plain flour

Preheat the oven to gas 4/180 degrees.

Melt the butter, chocolate and marmalade in a bain-marie (you know the drill… bowl over a saucepan of just-simmering water – don’t let the bottom of the bowl come into contact with water).  Don’t use the microwave – I’ve no idea why but melting chocolate in the microwave REALLY offends me.  Turn the water off when it’s just bubbling and stir the mixture gently until it’s combined.  Take it off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and frothy, then pour in the cooled chocolate/butter mixture, stir well, then add in the flour.  Stir briefly until the flour disappears.

Pour into a well-lined baking tin (I use a lasagne tin, but a square cake tin will do).  Bake for about 30 minutes or until the top is cracked and shiny.  The centre should still be slightly soft.  Serve warm or allow to cool and place in an airtight container

For the orangettes, choose a really dark chocolate – try Green & Black’s or Montezuma’s do a brilliant, rich Ecuador 70% dark chocolate that I’m just slightly addicted to.  Melt two or three squares in a tiny jug and just dip small pieces of Orangette into them.  If you have any trouble buying the orangettes (basically, candied orange peel – I got mine in my Good Fork hamper), you can make your own, or try Amazon (believe it or not).

These would be beautiful served at the end of a dinner party with the dark chocolate orangettes, little cups of very strong espresso coffee and maybe some freezing cold shot glasses of Cointreau too.

(Best get rid of the snow willies on the front lawn first, though).

So the weekend was somewhat traumatic.  I won’t fill you in on all the events, but needless to say being trapped in a packed train carriage all the way from Shepherds Bush while the three teenagers I was escorting serenaded their fellow commuters with loud renditions of My Horse is Amazing (seriously – don’t bother watching it, it’s that bad) and then being politely told that we were, in fact, accidentally in the first class carriage, shall remain with me for a long time and was one of the lesser traumatising events of the weekend.  Read out of that what you will.

Anyhoo.  In other news, I’m still on the lookout for a lovely breakfasty-type recipe that’s also quite healthy (I know, I know… giving up alcohol and vowing to eat healthily for the whole of January was a BIG HUGE MISTAKE – I have learned both that I could never be teetotal, and that I can’t live without cake) still, it’s nearly over now).  Yesterday I came across possibly one of the prettiest blogs I’ve ever seen: Eat Yourself Skinny.  It turns out that not only is the blog pretty, but the writer, Kelly, is ridiculously pretty as well.

So I thought, well.  If I eat what she eats, surely I’ll wake up looking exactly like her.

Right?

Oh.

Anyhoo, on to the trial and error.  I noticed that lovely Kelly’s blueberry and lemon bread was adapted from  Joy of Baking, so I went back to the original recipe to have a look.  Here’s my version.  I had to change it all from cups, and I decided to use rapeseed oil instead of butter (similar calories, just much better for you).  The result was yummy, although the inside of the cake was a bit too stodgy, presumably because beating the butter and sugar together introduces air into the mixture.  So I say stick with butter (the calories are the same).  I will say, though, that cutting it into the recommended 12 portions proved to be too much of a challenge.  Still, if you do manage it, you’ll be pleased to know that it’s just 159 calories a slice (might be better to cut it into 6 slices, then cut each in half). I also used a sugar substitute to keep the calories down (I know, I know, but honestly you can’t taste the difference).  Lastly, I used a whole punnet of blueberries which is a bit too much.  Stick to 150g.

You will need:

80g butter

6 tbsp granulated sugar substitute (try the new Truvia one – I haven’t been able to get hold of it yet)

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Zest of 1 lemon

225g self raising flour

125ml milk

So preheat the oven to 180/gas 4 and spray a loaf tin with cake release (or butter it very lightly).

Beat the butter in a mixer (or by hand if you’re feeling butch), then add the sugar and beat until the mixture’s really light and fluffy.  Add the eggs, beating between each addition, and then the vanilla extract and lemon zest.

Stir in the flour and then the milk.  Finally, stir in the blueberries

Pop the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for about 50 minutes.  Pop a knife tip into the centre to check that it’s done, otherwise leave for a bit longer.

Allow it to cool before slicing into your minute portions.  It really is surprisingly lush though – and the blueberries make it quite jammy and sticky too.  Top tip: freeze your slices (with a piece of greaseproof paper between each one). Then they’re easy to pop into the toaster for a quick and healthy breakfast.

Moving swiftly on from healthy eating, then, we must remember there are those of us at English Towers (the gangly, floppy haired ones and the skatery types) that still want a little something after school or dinner and demand treats, preferably piled up in an ungainly, chocolatey tower when doing A level revision.

This, and I don’t say this lightly, is my best chocolate brownie recipe ever.  I make it such a lot that I know it off by heart.  Oh yes, it’s been tweaked and added to (pistachios, chopped up Cadbury Fudge bars, rum-soaked raisins), but the plain old dark chocolate version is the one we love.  I also have to make this whenever the Death Wish Dude’s lovely mate, George, comes to visit as he’s a bit of a fan.  You’ll need:

200g dark chocolate (I swear by Bournville – already in a handy 200g size, dark but not too bitter)

170g salted butter (MUST be salted – or add a pinch if using unsalted)

3 eggs

200g soft brown sugar (caster is fine if you don’t have any)

110g plain flour

Preheat the oven to gas 4/180 degrees.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a bain-marie (you know the drill… bowl over a saucepan of just-simmering water – don’t let the bottom of the bowl come into contact with water).  Turn the water off when it’s just bubbling and stir the mixture gently until it’s combined.  Take it off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until light and frothy, then pour in the cooled chocolate/butter mixture, stir well, then add in the flour and any extras you’re adding (nuts… raisins… smarties… whatever).  Stir briefly until the flour disappears.

Pour into a well-lined baking tin (I use a lasagne tin, but a square cake tin will do).  Bake for about 30 minutes or until the top is cracked and shiny.  The centre should still be slightly soft.  Serve warm with ice cream (or if you’re serving as a dessert, whisk some cream with a bit of icing sugar and a slug of booze) or allow to cool and place in an airtight container

One word of warning: cut them small.  They won’t last long.

Okay so not exactly science… just baking jiggery pokery really.

First, can I say that I’m not a fan of processed low-fat ANYTHING.  If I’m going to spread butter on my bread it’s going to be butter (Yeo Valley out of preference), and nothing remotely low-fatty or weirdly whipped with water.

Still, it’s the New Year and while I love my cakey buns, I’m determined to shed a few Christmas pounds, and when you’re healthy eating, sometimes the worst thing to get over is a craving for something sweet.  A banana or handful of raisins will often do the trick, but let’s face it, you can’t beat cake.  The worst thing about cake is, well, everything really – fat, sugar and refined white flour are possibly the things that most of us are trying to avoid.

Enter stage left, the well-loved but often under-appreciated Mr Muffin.  He’s smaller, more portable and, in lower-fat baking terms, easier to keep moist.  Bless him.

So what’s the difference between a muffin and a cupcake (or fairy cake)?  Well, I’d say a muffin is more breakfasty and bready, and a cupcake is more, well, cakey.  Also I find that muffin recipes tend to contain oil, while cupcakes are more buttery, and more often than not are iced too.  But hey, a cake is a cake is a cake, right?  HOWEVER.  There are substitutes you can make in baking, and it IS possible to make a healthier version.  So let’s attack these babies one at a time, shall we?

FAT

Fat plays an important part in a cake recipe.  Butter, for a start, adds flavour, but more than that (and without getting too technical) it’s essential for lightness, as it plays a part in holding the air bubbles you’ve produced (by whisking the eggs and adding stuff like baking powder) and keeps the cake soft by ‘wrapping’ itself around the protein in the flour.

So. You can’t get rid of it completely, therefore use it wisely and make sure the fat you do use is good for you.  Rapeseed oil is excellent (I’ve talked about it before here).  You can, however, cut it down and replace some of it with other moist ingredients like fruit (apple purée or mashed banana, prunes, squished peaches…) or low-fat dairy like yoghurt and creme fraiche.  Yes, you’ll reduce the lightness a little bit, but you can get away with it.

SUGAR

Sugar obviously adds flavour (and again, without getting too technical, it inhibits gluten development, which, when allowed to run rampant can make cakes and biscuits a bit hard) and it also helps with browning.  If you’re using fruit as a substitute fat, this can help with sweetness too, and it can help with browning as cutting down sugar can sometimes make cakes look a bit insipid.  Honey can help here as it’s much better for us and has natural sweetness.

REFINED FLOUR

If you’re reducing fat and sugar, you’re going to give yourself the problem of toughness (remember the protein ‘wrapping’ and gluten development I mentioned above?  This is why an awful lot of low-fat foods have TONS of sugar in – it’s not just flavour, it’s about a tender end result as well).  So what else can we do?  Well, we can reduce the gluten in the first place, by replacing some of it with things like oats, which are much lower in gluten-producing proteins.  You can also experiment with low-gluten flours like rye flour.  Wholemeal flour is obviously a healthier option too and should contain less gluten (although I’m being cautious here, as this isn’t always the case).

Other tips for low-fat baking:

So now I’ve bored you to death with all this talk of gluten and ‘wrapping’, here are a couple of other things to consider:

Experiment.  You might love a recipe made with peach purée but hate mashed banana.  You might find that a recipe is too tough, but taking away a little flour and adding another handful of oats can make a terrific difference.  Have a play.  The only thing you’ll lose is the odd cake or batch of muffins (which will probably still be nice enough to eat anyway).

Try just cutting the fat down on a normal recipe.  You can often eliminate a third or even half the amount of butter without doing that much damage to the finished cake (trust me).

Lessen cooking times to retain moisture – with lower fat baking, you might find your cakes need less time in the oven.  This is often why muffins are better than cakes – they require much less oven time.

Remember the GMR.  The Golden Muffin Rule is most applicable when healthy baking – stir ONLY as much as necessary.  Working the mixture will develop the gluten and toughen up your end result.

If you find your recipe is a bit dense, try beating the egg whites and folding them into the mixture.

And finally, DON’T ever bother cooking with low-fat butter or margarine type thingies.  They are the spawn of the devil and should be avoided at all costs. Bleurgh.

So here’s my recipe for healthier muffins.  They’re not sweet, delicate little cupcakes, but for a healthy breakfast, they’re pretty unbeatable.  Try stirring through a handful of blueberries or some raisins too:

Banana, oat and honey healthy muffins

So…preheat your oven to gas 4/180.  Pop paper cases into a 12 hole muffin tin.

First combine your wet ingredients:

1 large egg

120g low fat yoghurt

120g milk

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 large or 2 small bananas, mashed

1 or 2 tbsp honey

Then get all the dry ingredients ready in another bowl:

50g porridge oats

100g golden caster sugar

60g wholemeal flour

150g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp baking powder

Now, bung the wet into the dry and quickly combine with a fork (remember the GMR – don’t worry if there’s the odd bit of flour left).  Pop a tablespoon of mixture into each muffin case and get them into the oven quickly.

Bake for 15 – 20 minutes (remember, the moister the better).  They won’t keep more than a day or two (in an airtight tin), but they’re a great healthy breakfast or sweet treat to keep you on the straight and narrow, or to shut the kids up when they’re after cakeage and you don’t want them rolling around like fat little barrels.  Oops, a bit non-PC there. Sorry.

A word of warning here, though, if you eat all 12 with three cups of tea, then possibly the ‘healthy’ tag doesn’t apply.

Just saying.

So you’re going to love this. No, really, it’s a winner.

How about…

Home made jaffa cakes? Wait… wait…

In the shape of Christmas trees!

I know, right?

If, like me, you’re now wild with excitement (or even if you’re not) do have a go at making these little beauties. They taste absolutely fab and can be made in normal paper fairy cake wrappers if you’re not imbued with quite as much Christmas spirit as me.

On to the ressup, then. You will need:

115g butter

115g golden caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

125g self raising flour

To decorate:

Rindless marmalade

100g dark chocolate

So make the sponge in the normal way: beat the butter and sugar until really light and creamy, then beat in the eggs a dribble at a time and then the vanilla. Finally, stir in the sifted flour.

If you’re using one of these silicone moulds (I got mine in John Lewis), give it a spray with some cake release (mine’s Dr Oetker and is incredibly good) to stop the little suckers sticking. Plop a scant dessertspoon of cake mixture in each ‘tree’, and bake at 180/gas4 for 10 – 15 minutes until just golden.

Allow the cakes to cool and then turn them out. If they’re a little rounded on the top, you might need to just cut off the very top (which will actually be the bottom, if you see what I mean) so they sit right.

Now, take a spoonful of the marmalade and pop it onto a board. You should then be able to cut little slivers off this blob to pop on top of each tree. Melt the chocolate in a bain marie (bowl over just –simmering water, but you knew that, right?) and spoon over each blob of jelly.

And there you have it. Chocolatey, orangey AND Christmassy. I’m LOVING that.

I’ve entered these into Choclette’s ‘We Should Cocoa’ chocolate challenge, the theme of which this month, unsurprisingly is… orange!

Okay so last time we saw your Christmas cake it was stashed somewhere wrapped in parchment or foil and being occasionally sloshed with a bit of booze.  Now it’s time for the final push… the decoration!

Making your own marzipan (or almond paste) is really easy. There are recipes everywhere so I won’t bore you with that bit.  You can also pick up a block of marzipan at your local supermarket.  Easy.

Firstly, then… you need something sticky to adhere the marzipan to your cake.  Traditionally, apricot jam is used, but frankly I find it a pain as it’s often lumpy and my Christmas spirit doesn’t run to pushing jam through a sieve.  I use rindless marmalade, which is kind of like jelly so it’s much easier.  Plus the flavour echoes the orange in the cake.  So just put two or three spoonfuls of whatever sticky stuff you’re using and pop them into a saucepan.  Again, tradition says that you should ‘boil’ your jam, but really you just need to melt it.  As far as I can work out there’s no actual benefit from boiling it, plus it spits everywhere, makes a mess and HURTS (I’m speaking from experience here) if it splashes you.

So splodge your warm jam or jelly liberally all over your cake:

… then just roll out your marzipan (it’s helpful if you squish it into a rough circular shape before you start – use a dusting of icing sugar instead of flour) until it’s big enough to flop over the cake.  Then, take a breath… roll the marzipan up on to the rolling pin, and gently unroll it over the cake, smoothing it down over the sides:

Now just cut round it, tucking it in a bit underneath the cake and you’re done.  It will need to dry out now, so put it back in the tin for at least a few days (you’ve still got time!).

When it’s dry, it’s time for the fondant icing.  You can buy this in packs, and I think ready rolled as well.  I was really tempted by a hot pink colour in my local cake decorating shop, but resisted the urge and went for traditional white!

So now just repeat the process of shaping and rolling out your block of icing.  Give the marzipan a wash over with some boiling water to give the icing a ‘key’ to stick to, then just roll the icing onto the rolling pin and unroll over the cake, smoothing it down as before.  My cake wasn’t perfectly flat on top, but hey, I’m a home cook and I can’t stand the thought of cutting the cake to make it straight.  Feel free if you want to though.

Now for the fun bit! Go wild with your decoration.  I cut out stars from leftover icing (sticking them on with a dab of boiling water) and got these gorgeous glittery little chaps from Dr Oetker who really have excelled themselves recently with their Christmas bits and bobs, but if you want to stick with just the stars, or even just leave it plain, that’s fine too – hey, it’s your cake!

Pop your beauty back into the tin until you leave it.  If you want to leave out the marzipan layer, it’s best to do the fondant as soon as possible before you intend to eat it, as the cake tends to stain the icing without a marzipan layer.

And that’s it.  Give yourself a pat on the back and possibly a gin.  You deserve it.

So this weekend is the big X Factor final.  As you know I work with Yeo Valley and I’ve really enjoyed their ads this year – their ‘boy band’, The Churned, has frankly been better than a lot of the actual acts!

If you missed it (or just love The Churned), the advert will be playing during the X Factor ad break this Saturday.  And on Sunday, the winner of the Yeo Valley singalong competition is going to be announced (it better be me or there’ll be trouble) during the ad break too.

Anyhoo, aside from creating boy bands for the X Factor, Yeo Valley are actually quite good at making yogurt as well (who knew?).  Their most recent creation, the rather lovely and very seasonal Spiced Apple, is utterly gorgeous.  I used it to very good effect in this simple yoghurt cake.  You don’t have to use a posh bundt tin like this, but I think you’ll agree it does look rather nice and Christmassy.  It would also be rather lush with one of their other flavours – they’ve got a new pear and butterscotch one too.  Mmmmmmm.

To make the cake, you’ll need:

3 eggs

125ml rapeseed oil

450g self raising flour

300g golden caster sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

250g Yeo Valley Spiced Apple yogurt

For the yogurt frosting:

4 tbsp Yeo Valley Spiced Apple yogurt

100g white chocolate

So to make the cake, just give the eggs a quick whisk.  Add in the rapeseed oil and whisk again until combined.  Then add in all the dry ingredients and finally stir in the yogurt.

If you’re using a bundt tin, make sure you give it a good spritz of cake release spray (Dr Oetker is very good) to make sure you can get it out afterwards.  If you’re using a normal cake tin, just give the tin a quick rub with some oil.

Bake for around half an hour at gas 4/180 degrees.

To make the frosting, just melt the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of barely simmering water, then just take it off the heat and mix in the yogurt.  Pour all over the cake and stuff into face.

I’ve written at length (and ad nauseum, probably) about Christmas cake before.  There are all sorts of Christmas cake recipes out there – those ones that have been handed down from grandparents and great grandparents, and others from Delia or Nigella that people swear by.

As I’ve said before, I’ve got a bit of an aversion to food snobbery, and a healthy addiction to the ‘bung it all in and see what happens’ technique.  Basically, as long as you keep the basic proportions right, it will come out okay.  And don’t put stuff in just because it says so in the recipe.  If you don’t like peel (bleurgh), leave it out and add a bit more of something else. It’s your cake.   Some people soak their dried fruit for days (or weeks) beforehand, but I’m afraid I’m lacking in the required patience.  If you fancy the fruit soaking version though, I’d heartily recommend the recipe on Ruth’s website, The Pink Whisk.

So here’s the cake(s) that I made this year.  For ingredient notes and aternatives, please skip to the end of this recipe.

The Personalised Christmas Cake

800g dried fruit (I used 350g sultanas, 200g dried cranberries, 100g dried apricots, 100g ready to eat dried prunes, 50g glacé cherries)

175ml good quality rapeseed oil or 200g butter

200g dark brown sugar

2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp black treacle

120ml Pedro Ximenez sherry

120ml orange juice (or two fresh oranges, juiced)

About 2tsp spice (I used cinnamon, ginger and a grating of nutmeg)

3 eggs

200g self raising flour (or 300g flour and omit ground almonds).

100g ground almonds

Before you start:

Sort everything out: preheat the oven to gas 2/150 C and double line the bottom of your cake tin/tins with parchment paper, and up the sides too (tiger stripe pattern optional).  Weigh all your stuff, crack the eggs into a bowl and mix them… just get yourself completely ready.

Step one:

Pop the dried fruit into a large saucepan along with the butter, sugar, honey, booze, fruit juice and spices.  Stir gently over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar is completely dissolved.  You can bring it up to a gentle bubble, but don’t let it boil vigorously as your alcohol will disappear.

Now leave it to cool.  If you add the eggs straight in, they’ll be scrambled.  You can leave it overnight to steep if you like.  Oh, and at this stage, have a taste!  If it doesn’t taste sweet enough, add something else sweet (this is often the case if you’ve used brandy or whisky which doesn’t have much natural sweetness, as opposed to, say, a liqueur – Nigella suggests a tablespoon of marmalade, which I think is a great idea – or maybe cranberry sauce?).  If it’s overpoweringly, cloyingly sweet, then a squeeze of lemon, maybe?  It’s your cake – do it how you like it.

Step two: 

When cooled, stir in the eggs, flour and ground almonds.  Pile into your one large springform tin, or two smaller ones and bake for about an hour and a half for the two small ones, or up to two hours for the large.

Test by pushing a skewer into the centre of the cake.  It should come out clean.

And that’s it! Congratulations, you’ve made a Christmas cake (or two).

Cover the cake(s) in foil while they cool to stop the tops going hard.  Then, when completely cool, wrap up the cake in parchment paper and then foil, and stash somewhere until you need it, occasionally unwrapping your gorgeous present to stab it with a cocktail stick and slosh with a couple of tablespoons of your chosen booze.  Or just eat straight away.

You can do all that fancy pants marzipan and icing stuff, but for god’s sake don’t look to me for inspiration.  I have the artistic ability of a small pickled onion.

Make sure you write your recipe down.  You just created a family heirloom!

NOTES ON INGREDIENTS:

Dried Fruit

One rule here: choose what you like.  As I mentioned above, I hate peel with a vengeance so I leave it out.  Other people use glacé fruits, snipped into little pieces.  I used a 300g luxury pack of mixed raisins, apricots and cranberries which I saw in a nice foodie place and bought, then topped it up with random half packs of leftover cranberries, prunes (chopped into pieces), dried apricots and sultanas.  Pick what suits you, bin the rest.

Butter vs Oil

Generally if you need lightness in a cake, butter helps as you can beat in air and it holds it well, but I’m finding I’m using more and more oil, (you can whisk it with the eggs and get a similar airy effect), especially Rapeseed, which adds a subtle nutty flavour and, being rich in vitamin E, high in Omega 3 and half the saturated fat of olive oil is obviously a healthy option.  In this recipe you want the moistness, etc, but not the air, so use oil if you like.  I made this cake with local P E Mead rapeseed oil, which is my absolute favourite and it turned out perfectly.  There’s obviously a bit of water content in butter, so if you’re substituting oil use slightly less.  Having said that, don’t kill yourself (you know me, I don’t do adding up): 100g of butter will be about 90 – 100ml oil.

Sugar

Again, use what you’ve got – the darker the sugar, the more treacly the taste.  I used Muscovado.  You’re melting it, so it doesn’t matter how big the granulation is.

Honey

The honey here gives moistness and sweetness, but you could substitute golden syrup if you don’t like (or are allergic to) honey.  I used Rowse Supahoney with lemon, because I absolutely love its taste (I’m a bit into Manuka honey) and use it all the time so I had a pot open.  You could also use black treacle which gives a lovely dark toffee taste, or mix the two.

The Booze

No rules here.  I’ve used Morgan’s Spiced Rum which has a gorgeous vanilla flavour but not much sweetness, cherry brandy, which not only has that lovely sweet cherry taste, but gives an almondy hit too and plain brandy as well.  Use whatever you like/whatever you have.  Again, taste your mixture and adjust sweetness accordingly.  If you don’t want to use alcohol, just double up on the fruit juice.

Fruit Juice

I used cranberry juice, because I thought it would go nicely with the dried cranberries, but you can use freshly squeezed orange juice (bung in the zest too for an extra zing), or juice out of a carton.  It honestly doesn’t matter.

Spice

I make a lot of curries so my spice turnover is quite high.  All I would say is, if the jar of ‘Mixed Spice’ in your cupboard was purchased in the 1940s it’s not going to add much to your cake.  I used 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger and a good grating of nutmeg, but use what you have: mixed spice/ginger/cinnamon/ground nutmeg (not too much, it can be overpowering).  Just make sure it’s fresh.

So it’s National Baking Week (17th to  23rd October) and to celebrate, lovely Asda sent me a big, mahoosive parcel packed with all sorts of lovely baking kits.  There were chocolate tray bakes, white chocolate chip cookies, toffee cookies, vanilla tray bakes and blueberry muffins and iced cookies (I hid the cheesecake brownie kit – that’s obviously just for grown ups).

When the slaves -sorry, cough, of course I mean children – came home from school, I set them to work in the kitchen  to make me some cookies while I lolled around on the sofa drinking gin.

Here are the results.  Impressive.

Look at his little face.

Slovenly motherhood result!  Now they’ve proved they can cook, I am herewith giving up all my motherly duties to spend more time concentrating on gin consumption and sofa lolling.

Hic.

So it’s English Grandma’s birthday, and I really wanted to take some time and make her some absolutely beautiful cupcakes. I love pistachio (and, more importantly, I know she does too!), plus it has the added bonus of making the sponge a delicate green colour. This pistachio recipe is adapted from Xanthe Milton’s amazing Eat Me recipe book.

For the white chocolate and lime ganache, I’ve done it a little differently.  Usually I would just melt the chocolate, then whisk the cream in until I get the texture I need, but I wanted the lime zest to infuse into the cream, so I heated the cream, then stirred in the white chocolate. You’ll need to chill it down, then whip it to get a lovely texture for piping.

For the cupcakes:

140g butter
250g golden caster sugar
120ml Greek yoghurt
170g self raising flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
50g pistachios, ground or whizzed (plus a few extra for decoration)

So preheat the oven to 180 degrees/gas 4 and pop some cupcake papers in a 12 hole muffin tin.

Beat the butter and sugar in the food processor or with an electric hand whisk.

In a different bowl, beat the eggs then beat in the yoghurt.

Set the beater going again and beat the yoghurt mixture into the butter mixture.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture, then add the pistachios and stir it all until just combined.

Plop a tablespoon of the mixture into each cupcake paper, then bake for about 15-20 minutes.  As with all cupcakes, take them out when they’re only just done, as they’ll continue to cook a little bit when you take them out of the oven.  As soon as the sponge springs up again when you press it, whip them out.

Allow the cupcakes to cool, then pipe on the white chocolate and lime ganache:

200g white chocolate

100ml double cream

Zest of 1 unwaxed lime

So as above, just warm the cream in a saucepan with the lime zest.  Pop in the white chocolate then allow to cool.  Chill very well in the fridge, then when properly chilled, whisk until light and fluffy and pipe or spread onto the cooled cupcakes.

Happy birthday, Mum!