All That I'm Eating

Recipe ideas for budget meals, everyday cooking and a little indulgence. Travel inspiration and restaurant reviews too.

Sticky Toffee and Date Cake from Baked In

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sticky toffee and date cake with toffee sauce and cream
Back in July I was at a food festival and got talking to a company called Baked In. They sell the dried ingredients you need to make a cake, all pre-weighed and ready to go. They asked me if I’d like to give one of their mixes a try, the sticky toffee and date was calling out to me so I grabbed a bag and headed off looking forward to putting on my apron. Since then we have had some very lovely hot weather and baking on a hot day wasn’t appealing to me; I’d much rather be outside in the sun. Last week however there was a rainy day last week which was the perfect time to get baking!

Ingredients

You will need (for one finished cake):

  • 1 sticky toffee and date cake mix
  • 1 egg
  • 125g unsalted butter
  • 175ml boiling water

Method

The instructions were really easy to follow and the kit contained everything including a butter measurer, a skewer to test doneness and baking paper. It smells lovely when you open the bag too thanks to the fresh vanilla in the sugar.

You start by greasing and lining a 20cm x 20cm tin and preheating the oven. The pre-weighed dates are mixed with boiling water to soften them. The sugar is mixed with butter before the flour is added. The egg and date mix is added after that. I’ve not made a cake with that method before but it worked a treat and was really easy to mix up. This goes into the oven for around 30 minutes. read more

An Autumn Picnic 3 of 3: Caramelised Pears with Crumbled Parkin

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A picnic must always have something sweet to round it off; a jam tart or two, some chocolate biscuits or even a slice of cake. This being an autumn picnic meant that the sweet must have a seasonal feel. Pears were an obvious choice but you can’t finish a picnic with just a pear that would be akin to having a carrot instead of a birthday cake. No, these pears needed some warmth and caramelised pears seemed just the ticket. 

Parkin is a traditional cake eaten on Bonfire Night so I made some a few days before the picnic as I had heard it is a cake better left before eating. This would be the perfect accompaniment to the warm gooey pears. read more

Orange and Caraway Cake

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I didn’t mean to make this cake. I was sat there minding my own business and my mind started to wander. It wandered into realms of freshly baked things, delicious wafting scents and warm moist sponge. My imagination ran away with me and before I knew it my hands and arms were creeping in to the fridge and searching for butter and eggs.

There have been many times where I’ve fancied something in particular and invariably I never have what I need to fulfil my requirements. But this time I did. I was having one of those days where I just needed a bit of warm cake; a spontaneous bake if you will. It was also one of those days where a plain sponge just wouldn’t do; I wanted some spice in my life and so this orange and caraway cake was born. read more

Redcurrant and White Chocolate Muffins (or Cupcakes)

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Redcurrant and White Chocolate Muffins - on plate
I was terribly excited about making muffins. If you had asked me how much I was looking forward to making muffins I would have responded so enthusiastically that you might have thought you’d asked me the wrong question. The reason for my eagerness was twofold; firstly I had never made muffins before and secondly I had some succulent redcurrants at my disposal.

It was all going so well until I realised I had no muffin cases. Not to worry though as I had cupcake cases coming out of my ears. I was under the impression that the two weren’t too dissimilar but the sides of the cupcake cases would not come up high enough in the muffin tin. I could have gone out to get some muffin cases but frankly I couldn’t be bothered and I wanted to sink my teeth into freshly baked cake as soon as possible. Fortunately I had some silicone cases I could use.

You will need:
1 punnet redcurrants
50g white chocolate
2 eggs, beaten
75g caster sugar
225ml milk
100g butter, melted
275g self raising flour
(muffin cases) read more

Miniature Elderflower Cakes made with Elderflower Sugar

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Iced elderflower cupcakes
I had grand visions of picking great swarms of elderflowers and returning home to concoct some floral cordial. My imaginings were interrupted with the first (and now unrelenting) rain and my great plan was no more. I had heard that elderflower is not to be picked on a rainy day and I wasn’t about to don my wellingtons and test that theory. So instead of making gallons of cordial I baked some elderflower in to my life.

These little cakes I suppose pay homage to the great elder tree; a plant that doesn’t look like much until it is burgeoning with white flowers and then, if you manage to resist the flowers, festoons itself with beautiful berries. I needed both fresh elderflowers and some cordial for these cakes but try as I might I could not get hold of local elderflower cordial. The elderflowers were relatively easily obtainable, once you’ve negotiated your way through the many cobwebs that is. 

You will need:
1 egg
Butter
Elderflower Sugar (see below)
Self raising flour
Elderflower cordial
Icing Sugar read more

Victoria Sponge with Balsamic Strawberry Jam

By 28 Comments

Balsamic Strawberry Jam close up
I love a good cake and they don’t get much better than a classic Victoria sponge. It’s got all you need in a cake; light, sweet, buttery sponge with fruity, slightly sharp jam sticking it all together. It is debated which jam is the best; strawberry, raspberry or even blackcurrant. Strawberry would always win for me and when I saw a lonely punnet of English strawberries at the greengrocer’s I had to buy it. After debating what to make with my edible purchase I set about putting a twist on this traditional cake.  

It goes without saying that your sponge must be magnificent but I think the jam is just as important as both the literal and metaphorical glue that holds this cake together. As much as I like the fruitiness and sweetness of strawberry jam I enjoy the faint acidity that comes with it. To increase the tang in my jam I wanted to incorporate some balsamic vinegar.

You will need:
3 eggs, beaten
Butter, at room temperature
Sugar
Self raising flour
Vanilla extract
1 punnet of ripe strawberries
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Strawberry jam read more

Lemon Drizzle Cake

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Zesting the lemons
There have been cakes in my past which I tried either when I was too young to appreciate them or they were a mass produced poor version of what is actually a beautiful cake. An example of this is carrot cake. What I thought carrot cake tasted like was nothing compared to when I made one for myself; it wasn’t dry it was moist, it wasn’t boring it was luscious and the icing is by far my favourite of all icing.  Another cake I had always ignored was lemon drizzle cake. Ones that I had tried were too sticky, not lemony or had so much icing you could have waded through it. This was my unshakable opinion and I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole, until I made it myself.

This turned out to be one of my favourite cakes to bake as it makes your kitchen smell so good. The classic cake baking aromas are wafting around with a bit of lemon thrown in for good measure. This is another recipe from my Granny. Some recipes make the cake in two tins and put lemon curd or butter icing between the cakes, I made one cake for optimum drizzle potential. 

To make the sponge, butter and line a nice deep cake tin. Beat together 175g each of butter and caster sugar until pale and fluffy. Part of the reason I like making cakes is because I feel the beating, whisking and subsequent reduction in circumference of my arms more than compensates for the rather large slice I’ll help myself to once complete. 
Gradually add in three beaten eggs. Sift 175g self raising flour and a teeny bit of baking powder and fold this into the mixture. Grate in the zest of two lemons and mix. Place in a preheated oven at 180C for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Mine took about 55 minutes in the end. read more

Carrot Cake

By 11 Comments

Carrot Cake with orange zest icing

After spending my Sunday trying to resist everything I clapped my searching eyes on at my local farmers market, I ended up buying hundreds of carrots. How could I say no to a bunch just picked and two for £1 purple cauliflower? Either way I am now inundated with these sweet orange roots and so I consulted several recipe books and decided a carrot cake was the order of the day. They all asked for different things so I picked out what I thought were the best bits and tried it out.

Ingredients

What you will need:
3 eggs
275g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
200ml mild olive oil
75g dark muscavado sugar
175g light muscavado sugar
150g carrots
juice of one small orange read more

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