Easy Mince Pies for Christmas

I love mince pies. But I don't tend to like shop-bought mince pies... just the home made ones. They taste so much better don't you think? And anyway, we need to make some for Santa!

Pic courtesy of Fine Art America

All you need for 12 mince pies:

• 1 sheet short crust pastry (frozen)
• 1 jar Robertson's mincemeat (fruit mincemeat obviously)
• 2 tablespoons milk and milk/pastry brush
• Icing sugar (for dusting at the end) 
• Some coarse brown sugar (for sprinkling)
• A shallow pie tin suited to 12 pies

1. Flour your surface and roll out your pastry. Make sure it is still cool to the touch - it makes it easier to work with if you've let it defrost a bit before rolling. You don't want it paper thin but you also don't want it too thick.

2. Use a cutter and cut out 12 round discs and then use a fork to make the edges of each disc look pretty :) then place each disc into your buttered tin.

Step 2

3. Add a generous teaspoon of fruit mincemeat to each base.

Step 3

4. Roll out your pastry again and this time, cut with a smaller cutter. You can use a fun Christmas shape instead of a traditional circle; I used a Christmas Tree cutter.

5. Coat the edge of your base disc with milk, then add your Christmas Tree pastry top, then coat that with milk too. Sprinkle with a little brown sugar - the best sugar to use is a coarse (crunchy) variety.

Step 5

6. Bake in the oven at for minutes and when browned, remove.

7. Dust with sieved icing sugar and then serve to a round of applause from your friends!

Step 7

Merry Christmas!!
Rebecca xx

Baking Elise's 4th Birthday Cake... A Number 4 Cake!

Elise is turning 4 this weekend and we are very excited! She's actually having two cakes this year - one for her classmates at play school and one at her party. Never before have I made two cakes for one birthday party... but I'm sure it won't be the last time.

For her play school she's asked if we can have an Ariel cake - from A Little Mermaid. Truthfully I didn't want to spend ages doing this cake as I know the second cake for her party is going to be challenging so I wanted to keep this one simple.

Princess Ariel from A Little Mermaid

The basic colours for Ariel are red and green - red for her hair and green for her tail... so I decided to stick to those colours and opt for an easy cake design: a numerical cake.

I used a basic chocolate cake recipe to bake the cake. Elise really enjoyed helping weigh the ingredients and watching them blend together. It's not every day I partner up with Queen Elsa of Arendelle either when I'm baking!

Queen Elsa is very handy in the kitchen!

I also made sure that the baking tin we used was about the size of an A4 sheet of paper so that the '4' that I had drawn and cut out, fit. 

I turned the cake out onto a chopping board (so it is actually upside down in the photo below) and placed my cut out number 4 on top (the number is also back to front). Next, I used a cocktail stick to draw tiny little dots around the number 4 so that I had a guideline to follow when cutting out the 4 shape:

A cocktail stick is a great way to draw a line on a cake

You can see the dots and '4' outline

Next, I cut out the number 4 shape with a knife. To get your number 4 the right way round, you need to place your serving tray over the cake (I used a big silver one) and swiftly turn the cake over.

Now you're ready to make icing! In all fairness, children only like licking the icing off cakes - have you noticed how they all just lick the icing off and have a little bite out of the cake before discarding it?!

Elise and I made a batch of buttercream icing and divided it in two. We coloured one with green colouring and the other with red. You can just use a spoon to blend the colours into the basic icing, but Elise enjoyed watching our blender at work again:

Mmmmm icing... can I have some mum? Can I? Can I?

So now comes the fun bit: icing the cake! Just using a simple flower shaped icing tip and plastic bag, I dotted lots of green stars onto the base of the cake, adding a few long strips that I thought looked a bit like seaweed retrospectively. If I'd thought of it sooner, I would have made those lines wiggly so they did resemble seaweed moving in the current... but I didn't and you can't have everything!

The green icing which I could have made look more like seaweed but never mind.

Then I added some red and four red dots, where the candles will go:

Tip: when using buttercream icing, you have to work super quickly. Because the base of the icing is made from butter, it melts very quickly and your stars will start looking more like splats.

But no fear. Just keep putting your icing bag back in the fridge for a few minutes (as well as the cake if you think it's melting too) and let it firm up before continuing.

If you want to find out how I made the cake decorations, click here.

And the final touches to make your cake even more special:

How to Make Scrummy Jaffa Cakes

Making Jaffa Cakes today with Elise, who is nearly 4, was a bit of a challenge. It's a bit fiddly, a bit gooey and it didn't help that she had a minor toddler-meltdown in the midst of cooking. But that's life living with a toddler. :)

Jaffa Cakes happen to be Ross' favourite. I personally am not a fan of the orange-chocolate combo (give me a Snickers any day of the week) but there you are. I'm sure he'll enjoy them! And so will Elise when she's finished having her wobbly.

Jaffa Cakes have three layers: a soft spongy cake base, orange jelly and a chocolate topping to add some much needed (additional) sugar. I used a recipe from the BBC Food website (by Simon Rimmer) so here's his process and this recipe will make 24 bite sized jaffa cakes:

For the jelly:

• 2 x 135g packet orange jelly (chop it up if it is solid)
• 2 tbsp orange marmalade
• 250ml boiling water (you don't need to use any cool water in this recipe)

For the cake base:

• 4 eggs
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g plain flour (sieved)

For the splendid choccie topping:

• 400g 70% cocoa best quality chocolate (I always use 'proper' Lindt chocolate, never 'cooking' chocolate as, quite frankly, it tastes disgusting)

Method:

1. Oven on at 180C.

2. Put the marmalade and jelly in a bowl. Add the hot water and stir for a few minutes until everything has dissolved.

3. Pour the hot jelly mixture into a thin baking tray. You want the jelly to be about 0.5cm thick. Let it cool on the side, then put it in the fridge to set.

Step 3

4. Now we are going to make the cake bases. You'll need a mini-muffin cake tin which you'll need to grease lightly.

5. Put a saucepan on the stove with 1 inch of boiling water inside. Turn the stove off and let the water simmer by itself. Put a big Pyrex bowl on top and add the eggs and sugar. Beat with a wooden spoon til light and fluffy.

Step 5

6. Ask your wonderful assistant to measure out the flour (the photo below was taken moments before Elise had her tantrum). Sieve the flour into the same bowl as the eggs/sugar and beat it all together.

Step 6

7. Take the bowl off the saucepan and fill a cookie gun with the batter - remember to put your finger over the end so the batter doesn't ooze out! (You can just use a spoon if you prefer but the batter is quite runny so you might find it harder with a spoon).

Step 7

8. Fill your muffin tin (directly into the tin) so that they are each about 1/2 full (see my comments at the bottom on this... I think 1/3 full is actually plenty). Bake for 15 minutes until risen. Stick a knife in them to check they are cooked - if it comes out clean the cakes are ready to come out. Let them cool.

Step 8

9. Once the bases are cool, transfer them to mini paper cupcake cases.

10. Use a knife to slice small discs of jelly and put one on top of each of your cooled cake bases.

Step 10

11. Pop the cake bases back into the mini muffin tin to help them keep their shape. In a bowl, break the chocolate into pieces and put the bowl in some very warm water to melt. Stir until smooth and glossy.

12. Drizzle the warm chocolate over the orange jelly discs - it makes quite an exquisite mess when your toddler is helping - and pop the tray in the fridge for your Jaffas to set.

Step 12

I'd love to have added a photo of Ross enjoying his jaffa cake... but he snaffled one when I was asleep and I never managed to get a photo.

He did come back with some (constructive) feedback though... apparently the cake bases were too thick. I tried one myself and agreed... so a big tip from today's cooking experiment: to fill only 1/3 of each muffin with cake batter, instead of 1/2. It will make for a lighter, more enjoyable Jaffa Cake!


Love and hugs
Rebecca and Elise xx

Making Scones - A British Treat for UN Day!

'Delicious' is the word. I LOVE scones with jam. :)

It is the UN Day Celebration tomorrow at playschool and so I've opted to make some scones. I had wanted to try and make Malt Loaf - another British treat - but hunting through the shops of Singapore, I couldn't find   malt extract ANYWHERE... so I gave up.

We followed Delia Smith's recipe for scones in her How to Cook 2 book. The recipe made 14 quite big scones.

Ingredients:

• 450g Self raising flour
• 80g Caster sugar
• 150g Butter (melted to room temp)
• Delia suggests a pinch of salt (I left this out)
• 2 eggs
• 6 tablespoons of milk
• Handful of raisins

What to do:

1. Oven on at 220C. Sieve flour into a big bowl and add the butter.

2. Rub the butter into the flour so that it resembles crumbs and then add the sugar.

Step 2

3. Whisk the eggs and milk together with a fork and then add to the flour mixture. Use a palette knife to mix the dough together. It if looks a bit dry just add a tiny bit more milk until you have a soft, but not sticky, dough. Delia uses buttermilk but to honest I don't know what the difference is... and just used skim milk. It works just as well.

4. Elise and I divided the mixture into two. We rolled out the first half of dough, to about 2cm thick, and then used a circular cutter to make a scone. Repeat until half the dough is done.

Step 4

5. With the second half, we added raisins. Why not? So now we will have 7 plain and 7 raisin scones :)

Step 5

6. Put all your scones on a non-stick baking sheet, baste with a little extra milk using a brush and bake for 25 minutes, on a high shelf, until golden brown.

7. Leave them to cool, cut them in half and serve with strawberry jam (and cream if you like cream)!

Here's Elise: the victor with her spoils:... YUM!

Happy UN Day!

Love and hugs
Rebecca and Elise x