Coffee + sesame cakes

Long time, no bake!

I know there’s been quite a long hiatus since my last post. At that time I felt quite creatively blocked- I was putting myself under so much pressure to come up with original recipes and I wasn’t happy with anything I created.

Yesterday I felt an urge to bake and got inspired by the sesame seeds I had in my cupboard. I’d seen a lot of people on Instagram use them in desserts, particularly paired with chocolate. Although it’s a relatively new trend to Western baking, many Asian countries have used sesame in desserts for decades.

Sesame has a sweet, nutty flavour that I wanted to experiment with. I personally can’t tolerate much cocoa due to a medical condition, but I love coffee flavoured desserts. Coffee and chocolate have similar qualities, with deep, roasted flavour notes. So why not coffee and sesame?

I can assure you, this combination really works. The sesame adds a sophisticated depth of flavour to the cake (and makes it seem much fancier than it is). I also added a spoonful of treacle to the batter- I was aiming for a slightly sticky cake, and the deep molasses works well with the other strong flavours. I used golden caster sugar for this recipe, but it would be interesting to see the results with a darker sugar.

The cake is soft and moist, with a little bit of texture from the seeds flecked through. My boyfriend described the flavours as a rollercoaster; first sesame, then coffee, then sesame again to finish. A little squiggle of chocolate on the top finishes these cakes off, and it works brilliantly with the rest of the flavours. This is one of my new favourite flavour combinations, and I can’t wait to experiment with it more!

Coffee + Sesame cakes

170g gluten-free self-raising flour

115g golden caster sugar

170g butter or dairy-free spread

1 tbs treacle

1 tbs coffee extract

30g sesame seeds

3 eggs

Chocolate and more sesame seeds for the top

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan.
Prepare whatever tin you’re using. This would make a lovely traybake, cupcakes, or possibly a loaf cake. I used my silicone tin with 12 small rectangular holes.
Mix the flour, sugar, butter/spread, treacle, coffee extract, sesame seeds and eggs together thoroughly in a bowl.
When the mixture is smooth and well-combined, place it into your tin and bake for about 15 minutes (depending upon the shape and size of your tin, this is how long mine took). I believe that you can smell when a cake’s ready, but you can always use a toothpick if you don’t trust your nose (an inserted toothpick should come out clean).
When the cake/s are ready, bring them out and allow them to cool in the tray. When cool, drizzle them with a little melted milk or dark chocolate (make sure the chocolate isn’t too hot or runny, allowing it to cool a little will make it easier to pipe) and sprinkle a few more seeds on the top to finish. Enjoy!

Easter Rocky Road

When I was a child, we had an Easter tradition. Every year we would crush Shredded Wheat, mix it with melted chocolate and form it into nests. They were finished off with mini chocolate eggs and taken into primary school, where they were always received well.

Now, sadly, I can’t eat cocoa or wheat (shredded or otherwise). I can, however, eat white chocolate, and I think the colour looks so bright and springlike.

The textures of this rocky road are provided by crispy puffed rice, chunks of crumbly shortbread, and cubes of hot cross bun. If you’re disappointed by the lack of marshmallows in this recipe, then by all means put some into yours.

This recipe is definitely for those with a sweet tooth, so I’d recommend cutting it into dainty cubes. This would be a nice project to do with children; they’ll be entranced by the melted chocolate, and they’ll love the mixing and decorating.

To decorate, I used pastel sugar sprinkles and white chocolate eggs. Feel free to deviate! The shops are full with so many gorgeous Easter treats to use.

This quick, no-bake treat is also suitable for freezing! Why not make some this weekend and freeze them, ready for the big day (If you can wait that long!)

Easter Rocky Road

1 gluten-free hot cross bun

100g gluten-free shortbread

15g gluten-free puffed rice

405g white chocolate

Decorations

Cut the hot cross bun into small cubes and set aside.
Cut the shortbread into big chunks.
Measure out the rice and set aside.
Break all the chocolate. Place two thirds of it into a bowl set over a pot of water. Gnetly heat the pot to melt the chocolate, making sure to stir and watch it carefully.
Once the chocolate’s melted, add in the shortbread, rice and bun pieces. Stir to combine then press into a 20cm square pan (lined with baking paper).
Melt the final third of the chocolate. This will be poured over the top of the rocky road to make the surface smoother.
Once the chocolate has been poured and spread on top, the surface of the rocky road should look even and ready for decorating. Place your decorations on before the chocolate sets. When you’re happy, place in the fridge and leave to chill for about an hour.
Once it’s set, cut into small chunks and enjoy!

Banana + pecan cake with treacle frosting

I really hope you readers like this recipe. I hope you like all my recipes, of course, or most of them. But I really hope that some of you like this one, because this has been by far my most contentious bake.

My darling mum, the woman who taught me to bake, was driven to distraction this morning. The sight of the baking equipment next to three oven-blackened bananas…the scene was set, and she didn’t like it one bit.

“But I don’t like bananas!” she mock-sobbed.

Unfortunately for her, I love bananas, and I’d been planning to bake with them for a while. I can’t always stick to ingredients that she likes, as I reminded her.

“I always make stuff you like!” Mum pouted.

This I couldn’t deny. Every birthday without fail my sister and I would choose some enormous multicoloured challenge from a kid’s birthday cake book (which we still have) and she would do it, without complaint.

This particular cake isn’t an enormous challenge, and it isn’t multicoloured either: it’s a festival of brown. Brown doesn’t necessarily mean boring, in fact right now it’s THE colour to wear. Match your cake to your outfit, and thank me later.

What this cake lacks in colour it makes up for in flavour and texture. Banana gives a cake a tender springy texture, and I think it’s ideal for gluten-free baking. The crunchy pecans throughout add interest, but for me the star is the treacle ‘frosting’. Treacle is added to cream cheese and very lightly sweetened. It makes for a creamy result, and the lactic sourness of the cream cheese really lifts the rich treacle.

Mum won’t go near this cake, but I’m happy with the result. And I hope, reader, that you are too.

Banana + pecan cake with treacle frosting

For the cake:

170g gluten-free self-raising flour

3 bananas

90g light brown sugar

110g butter

55g coconut oil

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Dash of milk

100g pecans

For the frosting:

180g cream cheese

1 tbsp treacle

75g icing sugar

If your bananas aren’t ripe, preheat your oven to 160 degrees and line a tray with baking paper. Place the whole bananas on the tray and cook for about fifteen minutes or until the bananas are completely black. Remove them from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes before handling.
Chop the pecans and reserve a few for decoration.
Place all the cake ingredients in a bowl and mix until combined.
Pour into a loaf tin (I used a silicone one, if yours isn’t silicone you may want to grease and/or line it) and bake at 160 for about 40 minutes.
Loaf cakes take a long time to cook and a long time to cool down, so be patient. While you leave your cake to cool make the frosting by combining the ingredients until smooth. The consistency of the frosting is spreadable, not pipeable. Place it into the fridge to chill while your cake cools completely.
When the cake is cool, spread the chilled frosting on the top and decorate. You can use more chopped pecans, chocolate, or any sort of sprinkle. Enjoy!

Mini jam + coconut sponges

I like to think of this bake as an exercise in simplicity. In the interests of simplicity, I’ll keep this post short and sweet (just like these cakes!). I saw a picture of a full-sized jam and coconut sponge on instagram recently and it took me back to my school days. Tender golden sponge, a thin layer of jam, and dessicated coconut on top. That’s it. It’s simple but comforting. I’ve made my version here, gluten free and in miniature. Enjoy!

Mini jam + coconut sponges

170g gluten-free self-raising flour

170g butter

110g caster sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

Your favourite jam (red berry jams are traditional, but any seedless jam will work)

Dessicated coconut

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and prepare your baking tray. I used cardboard loaf cases which I bought from my local supermarket, but you could also make these as cupcakes.
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.
Add in the eggs, vanilla extract and flour and mix to combine.
Distribute the mix evenly between the cases and bake for 12-15 minutes until the cakes are golden and springy to the touch.
Place the cakes on a cooling rack and warm up some jam in a saucepan. This shouldn’t take long, you just want to loosen it up. Add a thin layer of jam to each cake and sprinkle over the coconut. Et voila!

‘Death By Gin’ Mother’s day cake

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get a bit fed up with the cutesy mother’s day stuff. It all seems a bit too pink and schmaltzy. A bit impersonal. All too often, our gratitude towards our mothers is boiled down to a bunch of flowers, or a cake that looks like a bunch of flowers.

Don’t get me wrong, I love flowers (and so does my mum), and flowery cakes are lovely, but I wanted to personalise my cake to her. The spirit of the moment – gin- has always been my mum’s favourite (and, thankfully, not her ruin). This fact is so well known that she received three or four separate bottles for Christmas, much to her embarrassment (and delight).

Gin is a flavoursome and versatile spirit which is being increasingly used in baking. When coming up with my idea for this cake I researched popular gin botanicals. The possibilities are almost endless, but I decided to pick a few to create a sophisticated and harmonious flavour palate.

The cake itself is almond-based, which gives it a soft texture and subtle sweet flavour. To this I added a little gin and some cinnamon for some warmth. The cake was then soaked in a citrus-cardamom syrup (with some gin and tonic added) and topped with a gin icing and homemade candied citrus peels. I also got some gin gummy sweets from Lakeland, I popped one right in the centre of the cake.

I’d never candied anything before, but the process was fairly easy! The resulting peel tastes fresher and looks more vibrant than any that you buy at the shop, and can be used in so many ways. I candied limes, lemons, grapefruit and oranges. Limes worked well in slices, round or cut into halves. I hoped to create slices of the other fruits too, but that didn’t quite work out. I found that the orange slices didn’t dry out well, the flesh of the lemon slices disintegrated in the candying process, and the pith of the grapefruit was too large. I kept the peel of these three, however, and used it. You can keep it in a ring, cut it into strips, or cut it small to create a confetti effect.

I did two rounds of candying. After the first round I had a citrus-infused syrup left over, a light amber colour and slightly jellied from the pectin of the fruits. I decided to use this syrup again for my second round of candying, after which it was even more intense. I saved the syrup again and, after a few additions, it was the perfect thing to drizzle over the cake. In retrospect, I was so enthusiastic about this syrup that the cake ended up a bit soggy.

The final result is a cake which feels grown up. There’s enough sugar to balance out the bitterness from the gin and the citrus, there’s sharpness and a bit of spice from the cinnamon and cardamom. This is definitely a must-bake for any gin lovers out there.

‘Death By Gin’ Mother’s day cake

For the candied peel:

250g caster sugar

1 lime

1 grapefruit (I used one with a pale green skin)

1 lemon

1 orange

For the cake:

140g ground almonds

85g gluten-free self-raising flour

170g caster sugar

225g butter

4 eggs

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp gin

For the syrup:

125ml tonic water

60ml gin

6 cardamom pods

For the icing:

200g icing sugar

Gin

First, make the candied fruit. This should be done a day in advance to allow the peel to dry out fully, but you can also dry the fruit in an oven on a low temperature. Wash and slice the fruit into thin slices.
Combine the caster sugar with 250ml of water and heat until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is bubbling. Drop in half the fruit and lower the heat to a simmer.
Gently stir and turn the fruit every so often, cooking for 20-30 minutes or until the fruit is tender and translucent. If any slices fall apart you can still use the peel.
Bring the fruit out of the pot and place it on a cooling rack to drain. Reserve the syrup. You can either dry it out like this overnight or you can place them on a baking sheet and cook them at a low temperature (I used 75 degrees) for about half an hour. I used a combination of both methods.
Candy the other half of the fruit in the same manner and reserve the syrup. Once the peel is dry dust it lightly with more caster sugar.
To make the cake, preheat your oven to 180 degrees. I used a medium-sized round spring-form tin for this cake. I greased the sides and placed baking paper at the bottom.
Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Add to the tin and bake for about forty minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. My cake browned a lot so I put some tin foil over it halfway through cooking.
Whilst the cake is cooking prepare the syrup. Add the candying syrup to a pot along with the gin, tonic, and the seeds from the cardamom pods. Heat and stir to combine. Allow the syrup to bubble and reduce for about ten minutes, then turn off the heat and strain the syrup into a jug.
Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool slightly. Use a toothpick to poke holes in the cake and pour in some of the syrup. You won’t need all of the syrup, but the rest can be reserved for any number of uses.
Leave the cake to cool completely. Once it has, make a thick icing from the icing sugar and some gin. Pour it over the cake, and arrange your candied fruit as desired.

Cinnamon + blueberry mini cakes

I first started experimenting with this particular flavour trio (blueberry, cinnamon and white chocolate) when I was young. I remember buying waffles from the supermarket and covering them with a fresh blueberry compote spiked with cinnamon, and then drizzling molten white chocolate over the top. I called them ‘midnight waffles’.

Years later I’ve decided to reunite the trio in cake form. The result is a toothsome cinnamon sponge (I don’t like to go small with spices) with fresh, bursting blueberries and white chocolate grated on top. I think this looks sweet, you may think it looks like toenail clippings. You could always drizzle melted chocolate instead, or even put chocolate chunks into the sponge along with the blueberries.

Cinnamon + blueberry mini cakes

110g Gluten free self-raising flour

110g softened butter

2 eggs

55g light brown sugar

One handful fresh blueberries

3 tsps ground cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 bar white chocolate

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then add the other ingredients (except the blueberries) and mix to combine.
Gently fold the blueberries into the mix.
Distribute the mixture and bake for around 12 minutes (times may vary depending on your tin).
Extract your cakes from the tin whilst they are warm but not hot, and grate the chocolate over them (if desired). If the cakes become too cool the chocolate will not stick to their surface.

Lemon + raspberry layer cake

February is the shortest month of the year, and for me it’s often the busiest. All the members of my family (except me) have birthdays within two weeks of February, so I spend quite a bit of time planning and making birthday treats.

The thing that truly gets us through February, however, is the promise that it will end soon and spring will appear. My mum feels this very strongly. When I was a child I used to scoff a bit as she waxed lyrical about the blossoming trees on the way to school, and a houseful of daffodils at Christmas time is not to everyone’s taste. I’m sorry for chuckling, mum (I know you’re reading this).

At the risk of sounding like an episode of Call The Midwife, there’s a real joy in the promise of a new year. Waking up to find sunlight on the other side of your curtains instead of darkness- that’s progress. The possibility of eating and drinking outside, even if you’re swaddled in a blanket as you do it. I appreciate all the seasons in their own way, but there’s something particularly nice about spring.

This is why I decided to celebrate the (hopefully imminent) arrival of spring in my mum’s birthday cake this year, using some of her favourite flavours. She loves the freshness of lemons and raspberries, and I think they’re both tart enough to pair nicely in a sweet layer cake with buttercream icing. The colours are also gorgeous and bold.

I decorated the cake with wafer daisies, fresh strawberries cut into fans, and macarons sandwiched with lemon curd. The macarons didn’t turn out exactly as I intended- I didn’t give them enough drying time so they cracked in the oven and didn’t form pieds (the frills on the bottom of the macaron). I decided to use them anyway, because they taste perfectly fine, and once they were dusted with a bit of icing sugar they looked quite nice.

Lemon + raspberry layer cake

170g Gluten free self-raising flour

55g ground almonds

225g softened butter

170g white caster sugar

4 eggs

Zest of one lemon

Filling

One punnet of raspberries (around 225g)

250g softened butter

Icing sugar

Lemon curd (about 2 tbsp)

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees fan. Grease two sandwich cake tins and line the base with a circle of baking paper.
Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the rest of the cake ingredients and stir to combine.
Divide the cake batter evenly between the two tins and bake for about fifteen minutes until golden, and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Remove the sponges and leave to cool.
I don’t tend to weigh icing sugar when making buttercream icing, I judge it by eye and taste. First cream the butter, then add the sugar gradually until the icing tastes sweet enough for you. You can add other flavours, like vanilla, or leave it plain.
Place the icing into a piping bag with a round nozzle tip. Gently wash and dry the raspberries. Pipe a blob of icing and place a raspberry next to it. Continue around the perimeter of the cake and then work inwards, doing concentric circles of alternate raspberries and icing blobs.
When that layer is complete, spread some lemon curd on the other sponge and flip it on top of the bottom layer.
Decorate your sponge as you like!

Apricot and Ginger surprise cake (dairy + gluten free)

I think it’s best to start this post by wishing you all a happy new year! I know that for most of us our new year’s celebrations were held two weeks ago (been there, drank the fizz, got the hangover) but this year I’m celebrating new year twice: I’m celebrating Chinese new year for the first time!

My boyfriend’s family is from Hong Kong, and it just so happens that his aunt’s birthday coincides with Chinese new year this time (February 5th). It’s a big birthday too. When my boyfriend’s mum suggested that I might like to make a cake, naturally I leapt at the chance.

When I first met her, the aunt in question kindly gave me a money packet. As soon as I started dreaming up this cake I knew that I would incorporate some element of the money packet design as decoration. Then I got another idea. I’d seen surprise cakes online- a cavity is made in the cake which is filled with treats- but I’d never made one. Since money is traditionally given at Chinese new year, why not fill the cake with chocolate coins? Luckily they’re still in the shops (and available online) after Christmas, and heavily discounted!

In terms of flavours, I knew that this aunt liked Victoria sponge, but I wanted to play with the flavours a bit more. I had a new bottle of ginger extract which I was dying to try, and I decided that apricot jam would be a good pairing. Thus, the whole cake was formed in my head: the flavours (plain sponge, sandwiched with apricot jam and ginger buttercream), the decoration (buttercream flowers, inspired by the money packet) and the surprise (chocolate coins hidden inside).

I learnt how to do the buttercream flowers from a few different YouTube videos- Cupcake Savvy’s Kitchen, Greggy Soriano from Greggy’s Digest, and Joni Kwan from How to Cake it Step by Step. I used a set of plastic palette knives which I found from my local art shop, but I’m sure you can find similar ones online. I love the effect, I think it’s very beautiful and soft, and I can’t wait to play around with it more in the future!

What you see in this post is the trial of this cake, and it involved a lot of techniques which I had never done before. This meant that the assembly and decoration of this cake was a long and messy process. It was definitely worth it when I cut into that first slice and saw the coins spilling out just as I’d hoped.

The texture of this sponge is so light and fluffy, as well as the icing. The ginger extract gives a sweet heat to it and compliments the apricot nicely. This is definitely an interesting take on the Victoria sponge, and it’s worth trying out even if you’re a purist. Now all that’s left for me is to do it all again- hopefully with less mess this time. Wish me luck!

Apricot and Ginger Surprise cake: (gluten free + dairy free)

340g plain flour

225g caster sugar

340g dairy-free spread

6 eggs

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla

For the decoration:

450g dairy-free spread

260g icing sugar

2 tsp ginger extract

Food colourings

300g apricot jam

About 15 chocolate coins

Tube of black writing icing/sprinkles/edible pearls (for the middle of the flowers)

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line two sandwich cake tins.
NOTE: The ingredients which I have listed are enough for the four individual cakes which make up this whole cake. I made these in two batches of two as I only have two sandwich cake tins.
Cream the spread with the sugar until pale and fluffy, then add the other ingredients and combine well.
Divide the mixture between the tins and bake for fifteen minutes or until the cakes shrink from the edges of the tin. They should be a light golden brown and an inserted toothpick should emerge clean.
Leave the cakes to cool.
Once you have baked all your cakes and they are all cool, start making your icing. To do this, simply combine the icing sugar with the spread and the ginger extract until pale and fluffy.
Divide your buttercream equally into bowls and colour them as you desire, reserving some white icing to cover the whole cake.
Place your first layer of cake down and cover it with first a layer of apricot jam, then some coloured buttercream.
Use something round (I used a large round biscuit cutter) to cut a hole from the middle of two of the sponges (You can reserve these to make a small cake later).
Place one of these sponges on top of the first layer you decorated. Add jam and buttercream, then place the other ring cake on top (So far your creation has a complete layer on the bottom, with the two ‘ring’ layers stacked on top, with jam and coloured buttercream between each layer).
Take your chocolate coins, still in foil, and place them vertically into the hollow in the middle of your cake. Once you have enough in there they should stand up on their own.
Place your final, complete layer on top of your cake, then cover the whole thing lightly in white buttercream.
Use your palette knives and your coloured buttercream to create flowers on top. I used black writing icing to create dots in the centres of the flowers, but you could use sprinkles or edible pearls. I used the last scraps of coloured icing to create a watercolour effect around the sides of the cake.

Hazelnut and Orange Blossom cakes

Hello all. I hope you’re well! I know that I haven’t shown any signs of life since Christmas (have any of us?) but I’m here today with a recipe and a hope- that this blog won’t wilt and die like the few houseplants I’ve owned.

I do feel more positive about this enterprise though. I’m always going to bake, and so I might as well carry on with the blog! It pushes me to go that bit further (this sometimes leads to existential baking crises in Lakeland, but it’s all in good fun! I’m happy!). It also justified me buying a new tin today, which really makes me happy, even though I have absolutely no space left anywhere and far too many tins to begin with.

This tin is silicone with a wire edge which gives it a bit of stability (hallelujah!). I think I’m definitely going to invest in more silicone tins, and I’ll tell you for why (if you care to read). I find that gluten free cakes are often a bit more delicate than their wheaty cousins, and the thin top layer of cake in particular is very liable to peel or flake off, and to be left stuck on metal tins no matter how well you grease them. With silicone tins, these cakes popped out as neat as you please, fully intact. I’m sold!

These cakes also happen to be dairy free as well as gluten free thanks to the fact that we had some dairy-free spread left in the fridge. The sponge has blitzed roasted hazelnuts taking the place of some of the flour, orange zest, and a little orange blossom extract. The sponge is light and moist, with crunchy pieces of hazelnut. I realised upon trying the batter that the way I had put this cake together resembles the composition of a perfume: the hazelnuts provide the rich, deep base note, the orange zest is a middle tone, and the orange blossom water offers a floral, zingy finish.

I absolutely love using marbled icing in bakes and I feel it’s worked well here! Please try it and use whichever colours you like, although I do feel that greens can give the impression that the cake is slightly mouldy. That said, do as you feel. I tend to choose my colours to represent the flavours that are in the cake; pink for rose, orange for orange blossom etc etc.

This recipe is fab if you’ve got posh friends you want to impress, or you want something that’s delicate but packs a punch in both flavour and texture. Naturally, you could make these as regular cupcakes, but if you’re an avid baker then maybe get a rectangular tin. I can’t wait to use mine again.

Hazelnut and Orange Blossom Cakes: makes 12 (gluten free, dairy free)

170g dairy-free spread (or butter, if you wish)

110g light brown sugar

110g plain gluten free flour

1 teaspoon baking powder (ensure it’s gluten free)

75g blanched hazelnuts (get chopped if you can)

3 eggs

1 orange

Orange blossom water

200g icing sugar

Food colouring

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Cream the dairy-free spread or butter with the sugar using an electric mixer.
If your hazelnuts are not chopped, chop them in a food processor until you have very small chunks.
Add the chopped nuts, flour, baking powder, eggs, one teaspoon of orange blossom water, and the zest of an orange to the butter mixture and combine using an electric mixer.
Distribute the mixture equally between the sections of the pan.
Bake for 15 minutes.
After a few minutes, pop the cakes out and leave to cool.
To make the icing, combine the icing sugar with two teaspoons or orange blossom water and a little fresh water until you have a thick, runny consistency. The icing should be opaque white.
Leaving the icing in the bowl, add around four dots of pure food colouring. Don’t mix it in! Use a teaspoon to dollop some icing on top of the cake. As you move the icing to cover the cake, the colouring will stretch into the white icing and you will see a marbling pattern. Some cakes will have more marbling than others, and they will all look different.
I had some hazelnuts left over so I finished each cake with a single hazelnut on the side. I think it looks fancy.

Kintsugi-inspired gingerbread buns

Every baker knows that things don’t always go to plan. This might be through fault of our own, the recipe which we were following, or from any other number of factors. In recent days I’ve been thinking about this blog and how-so far- nothing has seemed to go too wrong. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I would pull something from my oven that I wasn’t entirely happy with.

I am an amateur baker, and although I want to provide helpful, tasty recipes, I also want to show what happens when things don’t turn out as you expected, or hoped. Sometimes you come out with something that’s completely inedible. I’ve been baking for years and this still happens to me. Sometimes, however, you come out with something which could be great, with a bit of inspiration.

I’d been struggling with deciding what to make today and eventually decided to make some gingerbread buns. I pictured plump, even, golden brown buns which I would decorate with pretty white icing swirls. Instead the cakes turned out with craggy surfaces and hard lumps of muscovado sugar.

As I sat in front of the oven watching the buns bake I questioned putting them on this blog. I thought that they were too imperfect. I didn’t go out into the rain to get more ingredients for a fresh batch (I couldn’t have done that anyway as I have to work) and I scolded myself for being lazy. I have this idea in my head that other baking bloggers work weeks perfecting their recipes instead of making it once and hoping for the best (I don’t know if this is true or not).

Then I realised- this could be a teaching opportunity. I could take these perfectly good cakes and turn them into something unique. I knew that I couldn’t cover the crags with icing, so I decided instead to enhance them. This choice was inspired by the Japanese art of kintsugi, in which broken crockery is repaired with molten gold. Instead of disposing of a broken bowl or plate, it is made even more beautiful than it was before. I love the way the gold icing makes delicate patterns on these buns as it flows through the cracks.

The buns themselves are spicy, with little chewy nuggets of stem ginger and a deep background flavour of treacle. I made the icing with a little fresh lemon juice and some almond extract- water alone would be fine if you prefer a plain icing but I think the sharp lemon flavour with the rich almond is delicious.

Gluten free Gingerbread Buns: (makes 12)

170g gluten free self-raising flour

170g butter

3 eggs

55g dark brown sugar (fresh is best to avoid lumps)

55g treacle

Stem ginger in syrup (I used 4 balls, chopped finely)

1 tsp each of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and allspice

For the icing:

100g icing sugar

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp almond extract

Edible gold dust

Place paper cases into a 12-hole tin and preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Cream the butter with the sugar, treacle and spices. To make measuring the treacle easier, first measure your sugar in your measuring bowl and then add the treacle on top of the sugar. When you pour the two into your mixing bowl then the treacle will slide right off on the sugar instead of sticking to the bowl.
Add the flour and eggs to the butter mixture and combine. Lastly, fold in the chopped stem ginger.
Fill the paper cases evenly and bake the cakes for roughly 12 minutes. The tops of the cakes will be firm to touch and an inserted toothpick will emerge clean.
Whilst the cakes cool. combine your icing ingredients with a very small amount of water until you have an icing which is suitably golden and not too runny. Add the liquids slowly until you are happy with the texture.
I then cut the end off a piping bag to make it smaller and filled the piping bag with the icing. I cut the very end off the piping bag in order to make a very small hole to pipe through.
Pipe the icing into the cracks on your cakes.