Guest-starring... Jaffa Cake Muffins.

So, I'm currently a little laid-up after an operation on my knees...so I've called upon the services of my dear boyfriend to provide me with a guest-post (read: he wanted to make muffins. I gave him a recipe. They turned out well. I preyed upon his love of Jaffa Cakes and muffins and bullied him from 10,000 kilometres away to give me a guest-post). Anyway, here we go!

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It’s a great honour to be invited to make a *guest post* on Alia’s food blog; the only logical next step is running a three Michelin-starred eatery in the Lake District, surely. 

Please be forewarned; I am not a very good cook. I’m not completely useless; if I had to sum up my culinary ability, it’d be “ham handed” (the joke is that Alia doesn’t eat ham DO YOU SEE). If Alia and I ever embark on a joint cooking project, I’ll usually be relegated to “De-shell these pistachios” or “Put this wine in this glass”; it’s humiliating, but ultimately it’s for the best. 

As such, I shall be presenting a recipe which has a very favourable risk-reward ratio. In other words, it’s foolproof (me being said fool). We’re making JAFFA CAKE MUFFINS HELL YEAH!

If you want to follow in my stumbling, incompetent footsteps, you’ll need the following:

·         125ml vegetable oil
·         Two eggs
·         Two 35g pots of chocolate mousse (I’m pretty confident that you could use chocolate custard instead, if that floats your boat)
·         250g of plain flour
·         Two teaspoons of baking powder
·         150g of caster sugar
·         75g of light brown sugar
·         One orange
·         JAFFA CAKES

                 Oh god, I should have emptied that grease tray before taking this photo. My grease is my shame.

Dump the “dry” ingredients (flour, both kinds of sugar and the baking powder) in a mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, oil and chocolate mousse.

                                                                           Appetising

Cut the orange in half and force-choke the juice out of that mofo.

                                                                          RAAAAARGH

Grate the skin of the orange to get your zest (previous, harsh words/beatings from Alia reminded me to STOP AT THE WHITE BIT), and add that to your bowl.

Now, attack it with a fork until it’s smooth, then pour the contents into your mixing bowl.

At this point, Alia would tell you to “fold” the wet ingredients into the dry ones. I’ll let you into a Kitchen Secret – I think that’s just a fancy way of saying “mix”. Together we will BREAK DOWN THE WALLS OF OPPRESSIVE COOKING JARGON, comrades.

Ok, now grab your jaffa cakes!

                                   PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE HALF-EATEN JAFFA CAKE BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Take your knife and let those tiny cakes Know True Suffering. It’s not exactly a precise science to work out how many jaffa cakes you’re going to want in your mixture as a whole (retrieve your jaws from the floor, dear readers), but I ended up using about seven. There was definitely room for more, though, so your mileage may vary. 

Anyway, get your jaffabits (patent pending) in your mixture, and baptise them in your Holy Batter (I don’t know; shut up).

From here, just spoon the mixture into muffin cases and whack them into your muffin tray. If you’re concerned that there isn’t enough sugar in this recipe (there is), feel free to sprinkle some light brown sugar on top. I won’t stop you, but your arteries might.

Bung it in the oven. At 200°C in a fan-assisted oven, they should take around twenty minutes. 

OMG THEY ROSE! YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN! Sure, one of them was clearly overfilled and spilled over the edge of the muffin tray, but rudimentary, delicious cosmetic surgery sorted it out.

So yeah, that’s it. Easy but rewarding stuff. The muffins were soft, with visible jaffabits inside; finding little bits of orange jelly inside brought tears of joy to my pathetic, engorged face. There’s obviously massive scope for varying this recipe, and with that in mind I’m currently drawing up a mental list of alternative fillings (early frontrunners: “Boost” bar, Jammy Dodgers, Malteasers, haggis).

If you’ve honestly learned something about baking from this post, consider me incredibly flattered. If you haven’t, congratulations: you’re a competent cook!

EPILOGUE: I’d totally forgotten that Jaffa Cake Muffins already exist!

Faced with almost certain copyright infringement (trust me, I’m a lawyer), I did what I would advise a client to do in the same circumstances: DESTROY THE EVIDENCE.

...No, not really – in actual fact I’d left the bowl on the hob and my flatmate’s girlfriend accidentally melted it. My story’s better, though.

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So there you go! Give the muffins a go and hope you enjoy them  :) 

Cheesecake Confession...

So, I decided to make an Oreo Cheesecake. After work. After a long day at work. I might have screwed it up. A little. Kind of. Hmmm.

I've actually never made a set cheesecake, but I figured "How hard can it be?" Apparently it can be pretty damn difficult when you're tired, misread the recipe and dissolve your gelatine in 5 times more water than you're meant to... Ahem.

However, I discovered that my triage skills are actually pretty good (and I'm now convinced that mascarpone has the power to fix everything and anything). Thankfully, despite my rather colossal slip up, it was nothing that a little extra gelatine powder and whopping great dollop of mascarpone couldn't fix.

In fact, it actually turned out pretty well. I was using a recipe which I'd found in a copy of The Australian Women's Weekly which my mum had lying around the house. It caught my eye thanks to the advertised feature of 'Our Best-ever Cheesecakes', so I felt fairly confident that the recipe should be pretty good. However, I liked the way my would-be mistake turned out, so I've adapted the recipe very slightly to incorporate my weirdly successful quick-fix methods and a couple of edits I made when I realised I happened to not have enough caster sugar... 

250g plain chocolate biscuits
130g melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoons of gelatine
1/4 cup (60ml) of water
200g softened cream cheese
150g thickened cream
250g mascarpone
250g good-quality white chocolate
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
50g caster sugar
60g light brown sugar (I did this as I didn't have quite enough caster sugar, but if you do then 110g caster sugar would be fine. However, I thought that the brown sugar ended up adding a nice flavour to the mix and stopped it from being too sweet)
150g cream-filled chocolate biscuits (Oreos), broken into rough pieces
50g melted dark chocolate for decorating


First, grease and line the base and sides of a 22cm springform cake pan, then place the pan in the fridge to chill. I always do this whenever I'm making a cake or tart that has a 'base' (either pastry or biscuit crumb) as I find that keeping your tin chilled helps to make sure that once your tart is finished, it will come out of the tin easily (particularly when you're in a hot, humid country like I am).

Process the plain chocolate biscuits into a fine crumb, then stir in the melted butter until it is evenly mixed through. Press the biscuit mixture evenly over the base of your pre-greased tin, then press it evenly halfway up the side of the tin. Place the tin back into the refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

Sprinkle your gelatine over the water in a small heatproof jug or small saucepan, then place the jug or saucepan over a larger saucepan of simmering water. Stir the mixture until the gelatine fully dissolves, then let it cool for about 5 minutes.

Beat the cream cheese in a bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Then add the cream, mascarpone, vanilla, and sugar until combined. Once everything has been fully incorporated, add the gelatine mixture and continue beating until just combined. Fold in your melted and cooled white chocolate, then gently fold in your biscuits.

                                        Reason Why You Need to Make This #1: The left-over Oreos that you need to eat...

Once the biscuits have been folded into the mixture, pour the filling into the biscuit base in the pan. Place in the refrigerator until set, which should take at least 3 hours.

Just before serving, place your melted dark chocolate into a piping bag and drizzle the chocolate across the top to decorate (or, if you're like me, realise that your piping bag is pretty terrible and settle for odd-looking splodge-swirls...).

                                                            Strange splodge-swirls. Like so.

And voila! It's really rather easy (yes, I know I shouldn't say this when I was a total genius and screwed it up really... But it is), and you don't need to worry about baking it in a water-bath or anything. Just bung it in the fridge. And remember, you may find that you're left with extra Oreos, which you will have to eat immediately since you don't have an air-tight container to store them in...and you wouldn't want to waste them. So you should definitely eat them while patiently waiting for your cheesecake to set in the fridge.

Fruity Tart...

Hello!

Just a quick little update for you, with a quick little recipe to go with it - a simple fruit tart. The main component of the tart that might be a little tricky is the creme patissiere, or pastry cream, which you do need to keep an eye on.

For the actual tart case, use a portion of the pate brisee from the blueberry pie recipe (first post on this blog). That should give you more than enough pastry to line one tart tin, and I found that I actually had a bit left over. Quick note - do try to roll the pastry out as thin as you can manage, to make sure you have a really nice crisp pastry case (to leave space for oodles of pastry cream filling). Remember to bake the pastry case all the way through since you won't be baking it again after you've filled it.

The recipe stated below is for the creme patissiere.

4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
25g plain flour, sifted
1 vanilla pod (scored down the side), or 1 teaspoon of good-quality vanilla extract
350ml full cream milk


In a bowl, whisk together your egg yolks and sugar until the mixture becomes thickened and pale. Stir in your flour until well combined.

If using a vanilla pod, place it in a saucepan with the milk and bring it slowly just up to the boil. Remove the vanilla pod and pour the hot milk over the egg mixture, whisking the entire time. It's important that you keep whisking throughout the process, to prevent lumps of cooked eggs forming and to let the mixture incorporate properly.

Once the mixture has fully mixed together, return it to the saucepan and stir over a low-medium heat until it comes up to a gentle boil. Be careful not to let the bottom of the mixture burn. It must boil in order to thicken.

Continue to cook the mixture for a further few minutes, stirring continuously until it has thickened and any lumps have disappeared. If it does appear lumpy, whisk until the lumps break up. You can also pass it through the sieve if the mixture goes too lumpy during the cooking process. If using vanilla essence instead of the vanilla pod, stir it in now.

Cover and place aside until the creme patissiere has cooled.


Now, once it has cooled properly, you could use it as a base filling for a simple fruit tart (which is what I did).

Just take your fully cooled and cooked through pastry case and fill it with your creme patissiere. Then grab some soft fruits to layer over the top.

I chose blueberries...  

And strawberries... 

To be honest, you can pretty much do this whatever way you like. Pile them up on top, or slice and arrange them. I'm usually a fan of just 'artfully' piling things into a heap, but decided to change things up and slice them. What can I say? Sometimes I just like to be a bit mental like that.

So yeah, in a moment of total madness, I halved the strawberries and then dotted the blueberries around...

 

And there you go. Tart. Oooeerr. The creme patissiere really doesn't take long to make, you do just have to keep an eye on it as I, ahem, might have learned the hard way. Nothing a quick passing through a sieve couldn't fix, thankfully, but a lesson learned!