Sticky Glazed Cinnamon Scrolls

Being an apprentice baker I thought it was about time I made something from a dough! Immediately I thought of warm delicious sticky glazed cinnamon scrolls. Straight from the oven these make the perfect afternoon tea snack.

Making dough can be tricky business, but as long as you mix it until its soft and leave it to rest you should be right. Using a bench mixer with a dough hook is the best way to go. If you don't have one, you are probably better off kneading the dough by hand.

Sticky Glazed Cinnamon Scrolls

What you need

300g plain flour
3g salt
30g sugar
20ml oil
20g yeast
150ml water
10g butter, melted
¼ cup cinnamon
¼ cup sugar
½ cup icing sugar
1tbsp hot water

What you need to do

Place flour, salt, sugar, oil and yeast into a mixing bowl. Add the water and using a dough hook mix on slow for a minute or until ingredients are just combined. Increase the speed and mix for about 5 minutes. Mixing time will vary so after the 5 minutes check your dough, it should be soft and pliable without being sticky. When you are happy with the consistency remove the dough and roll into a ball. Place back into the mixing bowl and cover with plastic. Leave to sit until dough doubles in size.

Punch down the dough in the bowl and place on a floured surface. Using a rolling pin roll the dough into a rectangle shape approximately .5-1cm thick. Brush the melted butter onto the dough. Sprinkle the cinnamon and sugar evenly over the dough. Roll the dough tightly from the long side to form a log shape. Pinch the seam so the dough does not unwrap. Cut the roll into approximately 4cm thick pieces. Turn the pieces on their side and squash down with your hand. Place pieces on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Set the tray in a warm place and cover with a tea towel for approximately 30minutes. The dough needs to prove and increase in size. Preheat the oven to 200*C. Bake for 15minutes or until golden on top. Remove from oven and place on cooling rack.

Make up the icing glaze by mixing the icing sugar and hot water together until smooth. Spoon icing over scrolls. Serve warm.

Banoffee Pie

In my opinion, the best fruit and sweet combination ever goes to banana and caramel! It wins over strawberries and chocolate, peaches and cream and fruit salad and ice cream every time. There is just something amazing about when that sweet gooey caramel blends with the smooth banana, I don't know how or why but it is just pure magic in my mouth.

I decided to make these delicious Banoffee Pies after seeing the recipe on Taste.com as the recipe of the day. It looked way too good to pass up so this weekend was to be Banoffee weekend! Instead of making one large pie, I made four small ones, only for the fact that I don't own a large pie tin. They were perfectly sized for one hungry person. 

In hindsight I would put more caramel and more banana into the pies, or just less crust and cream. The ratio was not quite right for my liking, but in saying that they were still super delicious! The addition of the chocolate bars on top just add another layer of flavour and texture to the pies and really top it off.

Banoffee Pie

(shamelessly stolen from taste.com)

What you will need

• 1 packet milk arrowroot biscuits

• 125g butter, melted

• 1 tin caramel top n fill

• 1 banana

• 300ml pure cream

• 1 flake bar

• 1 picnic bar

• 1 boost bar

What you will need to do

• Crush the biscuits in a food processor and then mix in a bowl with the melted butter. Divide mixture between 4 small pie tins. Press the mixture into the sides and bottom of tins to create the crust and leave in fridge to set for an hour.

• Empty the tin of caramel into a bowl and stir until smooth. Divide the caramel between the 4 pies and smooth out. Cut the banana into slices and arrange on top of the caramel. 

• Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Spoon or pipe on top of the pies.

• Roughly chop all the chocolate bars and sprinkle on top of the cream. Put pies in fridge for an hour to set.

Mississippi Mud Cake

Father's day was a couple of weeks ago now, but I made this cake for my Dad when my parents came and visited. It is a Mississippi Mud Cake (the BEST chocolate mud cake EVER) with chocolate ganache and white chocolate decorations. I've been meaning to practice making decorations with chocolate and as you can see, more practice is still needed!

Mississippi Mud Cake is so rich and beautiful, the depth of flavour is amazing. My theory is this, when you want to make something chocolate you add cocoa or chocolate, if you want it to be richer you add coffee, if you want it to be extra intense and deeply delicious you add rum or whisky. This cake has chocolate, coffee AND rum = rich, intense and deeply delicious chocolate!

For Mississippi Mud Cake 

Taken from Taste.com

What you will need

• 250g butter
• 200g dark chocolate
• 250ml fresh brewed coffee
• 430g caster sugar
• 60ml rum
• 300g plain flour
• 2tsp baking powder
• 150g milk chocolate
• 30lml cream
• melted white chocolate for decoration

What you will need to do

• Preheat oven to 160*C and grease or line a large spring form cake tin.
• Place butter, chocolate, sugar and coffee in a saucepan over low heat until chocolate has melted. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly.
• Add rum and egg to chocolate mixture and whisk immediately until well combined. Add flour and baking powder and whisk until all lumps are removed.
• Pour mixture into prepared tin and cook for 1 1/4 hours or until cooked through. To tell if the cake is cooked, when you insert a skewer into the middle, crumbs should cling to the skewer. Remove from oven and cool in tin. When it is cool turn out onto wire rack.
• To make the ganache, boil the cream and then pour it over the milk chocolate in a bowl and mix until smooth. This is a fairly thick ganache, so it was a bit hard to spread, but I found if I poured it onto the middle of the cake, it spread itself out and I just had to help it around the edges. Oh and there was a lot that cascaded off the cake too! 

• For the chocolate decoration, I experimented with smoothing out the melted chocolate onto strips of baking paper and putting in the fridge to set. I tried adding texture to some by drizzling more chocolate onto some of the strips and added some silver cachous for a bit of sparkle. 
• I also did some on smaller strips of paper and then when they were starting to set I curled them inside a cardboard tube and put them in the fridge to set hard. 
• Other things I tried were cooling a thin slab of chocolate and then scraping at it with a metal scraper to get some shavings. 
• I also added some maltesers for some contrast on the top of the cake :)

Triple Choc Mini Muffins

It was midweek and I had promised to bring in something special to work and I had planned to make macarons. I decided to try a new macaron recipe and would you believe it, they failed massively! So in a last minute panic I did a quick survey of the pantry and found chocolate melts, SCORE! Muffins aren't usually the first thing that comes to mind when I have chocolate to work with but I was feeling inspired and so triple choc mini muffins it was.

I've never had much success with muffins turning out nice and looking professional, but these babies were pretty perfect. I found a great recipe at food.com and then tweaked it to suit what ingredients I had in my pantry. Originally I was going to leave them plain on top but had some left over white chocolate so put a bit on each, I'm glad I did, they look much better.

For the Triple Choc Mini Muffins

What you will need

• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 cup melted butter
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 3/4 cups self raising flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate melts, chopped
• 1/2 cup white chocolate melts, chopped
• Extra white chocolate, melted

What you will need to do

• Preheat oven to 200*C and line up muffin cases on a baking tray.
• In a bowl mix together eggs, oil, butter, milk and vanilla.
• Add flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and chocolate melts to the bowl.
• Mix together using a wooden spoon until all ingredients are just combined.
• Spoon mixture into muffin cases, filling to just over 2/3 of the muffin case.
• Bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes (time may vary depending on your oven).
• Remove from oven and place muffins on a wire rack to cool.
• Once cool, place a teaspoon of melted white chocolate onto each muffin.