Birthday Cake to Me! Coconut Lime Mini Cake (Wheat Free)

Here is the written recipe for the recipe featured in the first episode of "Sweetie Pie Bakes Stuff" 2018 series.

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DIFFICULTY

Each step is simple, but there are a lot of steps

TIME

About 2 hours

RECIPE RATING

Intermediate

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INGREDIMENTS

For one 10 centimetre round cake

30 grammes (1 ounce) unsalted butter, soft
30 grammes (1 ounce) sunflower oil
85 grammes (3 ounces) caster sugar
1 medium egg
85 grammes (3 ounces) plain white spelt flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
30 grammes (1 ounces) desiccated coconut
60 millilitres (2 fluid ounces) light coconut milk

For the icing
115 grammes (4 ounces) white chocolate, in small pieces
40 grammes (1⅓ ounces) unsalted butter
55 grammes (2 ounces) caster sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lime, mixed with water to measure 60 millilitres (2 fluid ounces)

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FREE FROM

Wheat, yeast, nuts

CONTAINS

Eggs, spelt, dairy (dairy free option in italics), refined sugar

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Coco-Lime Cream Soda (Naturally Free From)

You can't have a party without something to drink, and when party food is usually sugary and fatty, you want something nice and refreshing. Enter in this Thai inspired soft drink: the Coco-Lime Soda! A zingy lime syrup, mixed with rich yet light coconut milk, and topped off with sparkling water. The coconut milk and sparkling water create a wonderfully spooky frothy head...

This would appeal more to adults than children, especially if you decided to take this Thai delight to the West Indies and add in some white rum!

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DIFFICULTY

Requires mixing and using a microwave

TIME

Under an hour

RECIPE RATING

Easy!

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INGREDIMENTS

Makes roughly half a pint (285 millilitres) of lime syrup

6 fluid ounces (170 grammes) fresh lime juice, roughly 6 or 8 limes

Rind of 2 limes, peeled into strips with a vegetable peeler

6 ounces (170 grammes) caster sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Green food colouring

Pinch of salt

To serve

Light coconut milk, in a can (about 20-25% coconut), or full fat coconut milk if you're feeling decadent

Sparkling water

Green sugar
Optional: white or spiced rum

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FREE FROM

Dairy, nuts, gluten, eggs, yeast

CONTAINS

Refined sugar

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METHOD

• In a microwave safe jug, place the lime juice, zest, sugar, and salt. Microwave for about 20 minutes, stirring half-way through. Allow to cool completely.
• Strain the syrup into a bottle; discard the zest. Chill completely before assembling the drinks.

To serve

• To mix a drink, wet the rim of a highball glass and dip in green sugar. Add 1 part lime syrup, 2 parts chilled coconut milk, and 3 parts sparkling water. If you pour the water from a height, you will get plenty of foam.
• Serve with a straw. If you like, you can put ice in the glasses first.
• Alternatively, you can make the drink in a punch bowl, rather than mixing individual drinks.
• To make an alcoholic drink, mix 1 part lime syrup, 2 parts coconut milk, 2 parts rum, and 2 parts sparkling water.

Pi Day Special: Key Lime Pie (Wheat- and Egg Free)

Happy Pi Day, everyone! In celebration of this joyous affair, I am providing many pies, and today is the first of my three offerings: Key Lime Pie!

March the 14th is Pi Day, because in the American date system it's 3/14, and Pi is 3.14 (totes nerdy), and people on this day like to eat pie. In America also, pie tends to refer to dessert rather than dinner, whereas here in Ireland and the UK we tend to think of pie as something meaty.

I did a key lime pie a few years ago for Pi day, but I wasn't a big fan of the no bake version: I found the texture lacking. I've been researching online different ways of doing a key lime pie, and there are a few versions that are baked. Some include eggs, and others don't: in fact, the simplest version is just lime juice and zest mixed with condensed milk.

This version uses good old fashioned chemistry to set itself. If you mix something acidic with something dairy, it will curdle and thicken, which is how the no bake one works: you mix lime juice with condensed milk and boom you have something that's slightly custardy.

However, if you slightly heat the mixture it will set into something a little more curd-like. In the UK, there is a traditional dessert called posset, where heated cream is mixed with sugar and lemon juice to make something that sets kind of like panna cotta. In a key lime pie, the heating is done not on the stovetop, but in the oven.

The brief trip in the oven changes the texture into something much firmer and cut-able than a simply mixing the ingredients together and bunging them in the fridge.

This recipe I mixed condensed milk together with whipping cream to make it much less sweet, but if you like you can use all condensed milk.

INGREDIMENTS

For the crust

• 8 ounces (225 grammes) ginger biscuits or digestives, regular or gluten free
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) butter, at room temperature
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) caster sugar

For the filling

• One 14 ounce (397 gramme) can of condensed milk
• 6 fluid ounces (180 millilitres) whipping cream (about 30% fat)
• 4 fluid ounces (120 millilitres) lime or lemon juice
• Zest of one lime
• 2 teaspoons (10 millilitres) vanilla essence
• Good pinch of salt

To decorate,

• Whipped cream
• White chocolate, melted
• Sprinkles, crushed biscuits, or coloured sugar

HOW-TO

First, prepare the crust

• Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4), and find an 8 or 9 inch (20 or 22 centimetre) pie dish.
• Crush the biscuits into a fine sand using a food processor, or by rolling over the biscuits in a sandwich bag.
• Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan and add in the biscuits, sugar, and salt. Mix until thoroughly combined.
• Press the crumbs into the base and sides of the dish, packing tightly, and bake in the oven for about 5 to 8 minutes.
• If the crust loses its shape during cooking, you can reshape it with a flat bottomed glass while it's still hot.
• Allow to cool completely before filling, which should take about half an hour

Then make the filling

• In a large bowl, mix together all the filling ingredients except the juice until completely combined and smooth.
• Add in the juice and mix thoroughly: the mixture will thicken rapidly as you mix in the acidic lime juice.
• Pour the filling mixture into the cooled crust and shake to level the top. Tap a few times on the work surface to release any bubbles.
• Return the pie to the oven at 180°C (350°F, Gas Mk.4) and bake for 15 minutes, or until the filling it set.
• Allow to cool to room temperature, then chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight.

Now, assemble the masterpiece

• Cut out a small square of baking paper and stick it to a flat board with cellotape. Melt the white chocolate and draw out a Pi shape. While the chocolate is still wet, coat with sprinkles or another decoration. Allow to set completely, which will take about an hour.
• Decorate the top of the pie with whipped cream and the Pi symbol. Serve cold.

No blogs this time in previous years.

Chocolate Lime Cupcakes (Wheat Free)

Behold! This wonderful green confection: chocolate lime cupcakes!

While I was in England, I got a lovely tube of rainbow coloured fairy cake cases: a 300 pack of proper Wilton paper liners. As such, I've got a real bug for making fairy cakes recently, and I like to try and come up with unusual flavour combinations, inspired by other desserts or sweeties.

I looked at the cake liners for a while, jotting down ideas in my sketchbook, and the green liners were really singing to me. At first I thought of mint, but unfortunately my peppermint essence has lost its flavour over time (it's an organic on in carrier oil, which now tastes only of the carrier oil), so I thought what else is green and goes with chocolate?

This called to mind a sweetie that I used to enjoy greatly as a kid: chocolate limes. Essentially, they are neon green boiled sweets flavoured with nasty fake lime flavour, filled with a chocolate creamy thing. They're naff, but they're delicious.

Source: http://sweetsfortreats.com/boiled/chocolate-limes/

The great thing, though, with making your own sweets and cakes is you know exactly what you're putting in. As such, I opted to use real limes, which don't give that characteristic 'candy' lime taste, but are easier to get here and are probably better for you.

So, I decided to make a nice light and fluffy chocolate fairy cake, with mountains of lime buttercream, and a little smattering of chocolate glaze.

FREE FROM

☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat
☑ Nuts

CONTAINS
☒ Eggs
☒ Dairy (dairy substitutes can be found in italics)
☒ Gluten
☒ Refined sugar products

INGREDIMENTS


For 12 standard fairy cakes

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) white spelt flour
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) cocoa powder
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 2 medium eggs
• 4 ounces (115 grammes) caster sugar
• 2 ounce (55 grammes) sunflower oil
• 2 fluid ounces (30 millilitres) warm water
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) vanilla essence

For the icing:

• 3 ounces (85 grammes) butter, softened or margarine
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) block vegetable fat, softened
• 12 ounces (340 grammes) icing sugar, sifted
• Zest of 3 limes
• Juice of 1 lime
• 1 teaspoon (5 millilitres) vanilla essence
• Green and yellow food colouring

To make the chocolate glaze,

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) dark chocolate
• 1 tablespoon (15 millilitres) sunflower oil

HOW-TO

• Make the cake mixture according to this recipe, using a 12 hole muffin tin lined with green cake liners (or white, if you can't get green). Divide the mixture between all the cases, and bake at 180ºC (350ºF/Gas Mk. 4) for about 20 minutes. Once cooked, transfer the cakes to a wire rack and cool completely.
• To make the glaze, melt the chocolate and oil together in a cup or small bowl, either in the microwave in 30 second increments, or over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool.
• To make the icing, beat the butter and fat together with an electric beater, or with a wooden spoon and a lot of elbow grease, until light and fluffy and well combined.
• Add in the lime zest and juice, vanilla essence, and half the icing sugar and beat again until fully combined.
• Add the rest of the icing and continue to beat until you get a nice smooth and creamy icing. Mix in green and yellow food colouring, a drop at a time, until you get a nice and suitable vivid green colour.
• Fit a piping bag with a medium or large star nozzle, and pipe swirls on top of each cake. I start in the centre of the cake, swirl around the edge, then continue to swirl upwards to have two layers and a peak on top.
• Drizzle each cake with some glaze. You could also put sprinkles or a sweet on the cake if you like. Allow the glaze to set for about 30 minutes before serving.

This time in 2015: Danish Pastries: Dinosaur Paws (Wheat Free with Dairy Free Option)

This time in 2014: Lessons in Chocolate Dipping and Edible Anniversary Gifts

This time in 2013: Homemade Box of Chocolates = WIN

Lime and Coconut Cake Truffles

In her last dying throes, my oven produced a batch of completely spread out, flat as a pancake, and pale vanilla fairy cakes. Until recently, the recipe I used for the cakes would have worked perfectly every single time, but this time they were a disaster. It was then that I decided to pack up all my baking equipment and move it to my mother's house until such time as the oven could be fixed, or replaced.

But the question remained: what do I do with the leftover disastercakes? Do I throw them out? Feed them to the ducks? Or, recycle them? That's when the concept of using them to make something else sprung to mind...

I decided to have another go at the good old favourite of the 50s American housewife: cake truffles. These may be more known to people as cake pops, which are simply cake truffles mounted on sticks. These are a good way to use up any failed/slightly stale/grand once you pick the mould off (not really, obviously) cakes that you have lying around.

INGREDIMENTS
Makes 20 small truffles

For the truffles,

• 9 ounces (250 grammes) crumbled vanilla sponge cake
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) thick coconut milk
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) desiccated coconut
• Zest of 1 lime
• Juice of half a lime

For the glaze,

• 1½ ounces (40 grammes) icing sugar
• Juice of half a lime
• 3½ ounces (100 grammes) white chocolate, chopped into pieces
• Sprinkles of your choice

HOW-TO

• In a mixing bowl, mix all of the truffle ingredients until it becomes a soft paste. You may need to use your hands. Divide into 20 equally sized pieces and roll into balls. Refridgerate for about 10 minutes.
• Line a baking tray with non-stick paper, or better, a silicone mat.
• To make the glaze, mix the lime juice with water to make 2 tablespoons (30 millilitres) worth of liquid. Put the diluted lime juice, icing sugar, and broken white chocolate together in a heatproof bowl and set over a pot of simmering water. Stir continuously until melted. Don't be tempted to do this in the microwave: your chocolate will seize.
• Take the cooled truffles and dip them in the glaze, rolling around until completely coated. Gently scoop up with a fork, tapping the fork on the bowl to let the excess glaze drip off. Put the glazed truffle on the lined tray. Sprinkle with whatever decorations you like while the glaze is still wet.
• Put the truffles in the fridge to set for about an hour, then move them to little paper cases for serving.

These are nice and zingy, with a subtle hit of coconutty richness, and the unexpected lime flavour in the glaze worked quite well: it seemed to be the favourite aspect of those who tried them out...

March Afternoon Tea Party: St. Patrick's Day

I'm back! But only for a this one blog. Right after my film project (which unfortunately we'll have to extend due to a camera hiccough) my mother got ill and I've had to take on a few of her responsibilities, meaning I'm not at home half the time at the moment.

So on Saturday we had this month's afternoon tea party at the community centre, and we themed it obviously around St. Patrick's Day, meaning lots of green.

I have very fond memories on St. Patrick's Day. My older brother is called Patrick, and every year as children we'd sort in a way treat is like his second birthday: my mother would dye her usual daily bread loaf green, and make green biscuits, and we used to put green dye in lemonade; my Dad even put green dye in his lager. And to this day, even at my ripe old age of 482, I make green cakes and things for St. Patrick's Day.

Coincidentally, this month's tea party fell on the same day as Pi day, so I made a no bake key lime pie with the symbol Pi on it for added nerd factor. I also made some minty chocolate chip cookies, decorated with milk chocolate drizzle and green homemade sprinkles.

To make the key lime pie, I used the recipe available on the BBC Good Food website. However, I halved the filling quantity because I used a smaller tin, but used the same amount of biscuit base so I could make a biscuit base with sides; I also replaced digestives with gingernuts for the green-white-and-gold vibe. I decorated the top with a Pi symbol made up of green Jelly Tots.

Sorry that the photographs aren't great, and that my blog posts are sporadic at the moment, but work is work! Hopefully I'll be back to my baking self soon.

Coconut Lime Mini Cheesecakes (Wheat-Free)

Seeing as my Millionaire's Cheesecake recipe is my blog's most popular post, accruing over 100 views as of this day, I kinda gathered that people like cheesecake. So, I thought I'd share with you another delicious, Caribbean inspired recipe, Coconut and Lime Mini Cheesecakes!

I've always loved the combination of coconut and lime, sometimes with ginger and sometimes with rum and brown sugar, but the richness of the coconut and the freshness of the lime go so well together. In fact, outside the world of sweets, it's a fabulous combination for flavouring white rice as a side dish for marinaded chicken recipes, such as jerk chicken or barbecue chicken.

But back to sweets, which is why you're all here. I have long experimented with different kinds of baked cheesecake recipes, but I think I've come across a method that makes cheesecakes with a fantastic texture. The idea came to me when I was watching a fellow YouTube cook's channel, Ania's Kitchen, where she makes a vanilla cheesecake (sernik waniliowy) by whipping the egg whites separately and folding into the rest of the mixture.

I tried this out in my go-to baked cheesecake recipe, which I've been using for ages now, and it worked amazingly! The resulting dessert was so light and fluffy, and in no way dense or heavy liked baked cheesecakes can sometimes be. I thought it was a massive improvement. However, it made the mixture much more voluminous and as such it made about 50% more cakes than I was expecting: my original batch made 18 mini cakes!

So, without further ado, let's get on with the recipe! This has been amended to make a more realistic batch of 12 mini cakes.

FREE FROM
☑ Soya (check for soya lecithin)
☑ Yeast
☑ Wheat
☑ Nuts

CONTAINS
☒ Gluten
☒ Refined sugar products
☒ Dairy
☒ Eggs


 INGREDIMENTS

For the base:

• 4 ounces (115 grammes) rolled oats
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) wholegrain spelt flour
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) dessicated coconut
• 2 ounces (55 grammes) brown sugar
• 2 fluid ounces (60 millilitres) sunflower oil
• 2 tablespoon (30 millilitres) water
• ½ teaspoon (3 millilitres) ground ginger
• Pinch of salt

For the cheesecake mixture:

• 10½ ounces (300 grammes) cream cheese, room temperature
• 5½ ounces (150 grammes) coconut cream (What's this? See notes below)
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) caster sugar
• Zest and juice of 1 lime
• 2 medium eggs
• Pinch of salt

HOW-TO
To make the biscuit base:

• Preheat your oven to 150°C (300°F, Gas Mk.2, or very moderate). Line a 12 indent muffin tin with large cake cases (muffin cases).
• Mix all the ingredients for the base together in a mixing bowl very thoroughly until fully blended. It'll take a while, but you want a moist, loose and consistent mixture. It's sort of like a crumble.
• Put a rounded tablespoon (about 20 millilitres) of crumble into each case. Press it down with the spoon, spreading some up the sides a little.
• Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the oven while you prepare your filling.

For the cheesecake:

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, set coconut milk and salt until light and smooth. Beat in the sugar until creamy. Fold in the lime juice and zest.
• Separate the eggs, putting the yolks in with the cream cheese mix and putting the whites in a separate mixing bowl. Beat in the yolks.
• Using clean beaters on an electric mixer, whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks.
• Fold a third of the whipped whites into the cream cheese until half mixed. Add the remaining whipped whites and gently fold in until completely incorporated.
• Remove the bases from the oven and divide the mixture between the cases. Shake the tray lightly to smooth out the tops of the cakes, and give it two or three firm taps off the counter.
• Return to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. When the cooking time it elapsed, turn off the oven, crack the oven door, and allow the cakes to cool in the oven.
• Once cooled, chill for at least 4 hours; I find it's best to leave them overnight.

NOTE

What is coconut cream, I hear you ask (or imagine hearing you because this is a computer)? Sometimes when you leave a can of coconut milk sitting in the press for ages it separates into coconut cream and coconut water. When you open the can, the solid cream has risen to the top and set, and when you scoop it out, the water it sitting at the bottom. This separation usually happens when coconut milk hasn't been tampered with and pumped full of nasty preservatives or gums to lengthen its shelf life.

For this recipe, you'll need to scoop out the cream; you can discard the coconut water if you like, but it's good for your skin, hair and nails if you drink it.

And there you are! It's a little fiddly, and probably NOT a beginner's recipe, but my Lordy are they delicious. I brought some to a friend's house and they were demolished; her 2 year old ate about 3 of them...

There was no recipe this time last year.

You are a Pirate!

If asked the ultimate question 'Pirate or Ninja', I would always go for ninja. Jussayin'. I'd also go as far as to make a guilty confession that when the day comes that I am to be married I will not budge over my wish to have a fancy dress wedding where I would be dressed as a pirate. I was a kid when I saw 'The Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl' in the cinema, and I was converted there and then... (although I did go out with a ninja; pirates are in short supply these days).

Okay, I have a confession: I'm a sucker for all things cute. I love cute things, small things, tacky things, kitch things; you name it, if it's ridiculous I'll probably like it. As for what that has to do with baking, well, let me tell you. I was in my local neighbourhood Dealz and I found a kit for making pirate cakes: it came with 24 pirate cake cases, and 24 little Jolly Roger cake decorations. Before I knew it, I had bought them... as if by magic.

I then began to ponder, what does a pirate cake taste like? What do pirates eat, or what kind of flavours would one associate with a pirate? I did a little brainstorm: pirates -> boats -> sunny places -> Caribbean -> bananas -> coconuts -> limes -> rum -> cane sugar -> spices. So much to work with!

In all honesty, I don't like bananas; I like banana bread, but that's about it, so bananas were off the list. I had made coconut and lime fairy cakes in the past, inspired by a cookery book I was given by an acquaintance for Christmas two or three years ago, and that was a delicious combination; but I didn't have the ingredients to make coconut cakes or icing. After some thought, I settled on rum and brown sugar cakes with lime buttercream icing, and they were the shizz.

(I apologise for the quality of the photos: I didn't have my trusty blur-banishing tripod with me, so I had to rely on my shaky hands.)

Following the same technique as outlined in my basic sponge cake post, I used this recipe:

• 3 ounces (85 grammes) spelt flour
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) cornflour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 medium eggs, at room temperature
• 3 ounces (85 grammes) soft brown sugar instead of caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon rum essence (available from the Home Baking aisle of the supermarket) instead of vanilla essence
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) butter or block margarine
• 1 ounce (30 grammes) sunflower oil

I also made a basic buttercream using this recipe:

• 2 ounces (55 grammes) butter, at room temperature
• 6 ounces (170 grammes) icing sugar, sifted
• Rind of 1 whole lime
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 - 2 drops each of green and yellow food colouring (I used the liquid kind)

As you can see, it's a normal sponge but I replaced all the caster sugar with soft, dark brown sugar, and added a teaspoon of rum essence with the vanilla essence. This was a little bit of an experimental guess, and although the cakes where quite nice, I wouldn't choose to make them again. The icing was the best bit, being made with shed-loads of lime juice and lime rind; in the process of beating the icing together, the green colour from the rind mildly coloured the buttercream. It didn't colour it enough for me, though: I added a few drops of green and a few drops of yellow to get the perfect limey green.

But my adventures with the pirate cases didn't stop there. A friend was visiting from Roscommon (of all places) and as an afternoon activity we made some pirate cakes for my brother, who was feeling ill. These were just vanilla cakes with raspberry icing, but in true Mr Freeze style I coloured the raspberry icing luminous blue. Why are raspberry flavoured sweets and lollies always coloured blue, I wonder...?

The dragon-smiley faced one in the middle was designed by my visiting friend. It's definitely the coolest one there.

And have a gratuitous shot of the inside of the cake... just for me to show off my fantastic taste in butter-flavoured sandwich spread, and whatever that is next to it on the work surface.

Hopefully the next time I get an inch for pirate cakes, I'll have the right ingredients to make coconut cakes and lime buttercream. Trust me, it's one of the nicest combinations there is for a cake. Don't forget to toast a handful of desiccated coconut in a frying pan or wok to sprinkle on top, because it's very yummy.

Here's some trivia for the day: desiccated coconut in German is kokosraspel. Lidl has taught me something today; and I'm not sponsored by Lidl, I promise.