Top 5 Recipes of 2014

I'm wishing you all – especially the 44,000 of you that will click on Lemon Drizzle cake next year
– A Happy New Year! What makes the Lemon cake so special for you? Yes it's delicious and delivers results but I seem to get the most ever clicks on that recipe over everything else? You lot need to look at something else. Here: take a look at these: My year's best bites!

1) I found the holy grail of Brownies: These will be my signature Brownies – the slight crust on the outside and soft and chocolate-y on the inside!

2) I liked this recipe as it was simple to do but elegant at the same time. Great for entertaining without the fuss: Thin Pear Tart

3) Here's one I made (10 times) earlier. This recipe was on repeat for about a month. I did like mine with Hazlenuts: Perfect Flapjacks

4) And I found a plain sponge that 'just works': Nigella's Victoria Sponge

5) Last but not least, I need to hurry up and post these: Pecan Pie Bars. Coming soon, I promise!

3 Quick Ways to Soften Butter

So. You're in the mood for baking and you're mind is on cake. It's like your lucky day as all the right ingredients are ready and waiting! You get your measuring scales ready and start on your first ingredient only to read: "160g butter, softened". Darn, you only just removed that butter from the fridge, so it's stone cold!

Believe me, I've been there. Sometimes, I just want to bake something spontaneously and waiting for butter to soften at room temperature is not on my mind. So, it's only fair I share a few ways I go to get that butter the right temperature.

1. Dice the butter into squares and put into a bowl of warm water. Carefully remove the butter after ten minutes, by which time it should be soft. This is my favourite method as it gets good results all the time. 


2. Use a rolling pin and bash the butter on a hard surface like a chopping board until flat and squidgy.


3. If you trust your microwave, evenly dice your butter then slowly heat in the microwave on a 'warm' or 'defrost' setting for a few seconds, but do keep an eye on it.

Ultimately, if you can reach the gold standard of forward thinking and remove your butter from the fridge hours before, then do so and happy days to you! I always find a post-it note seen early in the morning is a great reminder!

5 tips for perfect banana cake

Look on the internet and you're sure to find plenty of recipes for banana cake. It's probably one of the easiest cakes to make with satisfying results. It's pretty much my go-to recipe and was the very first cake featured on this blog back in 2012! So I must have got better at making it since 2012, so here's what makes a perfect recipe for me:

1– Get that butter out of the fridge early enough. Your butter should be nice and soft at room temperature so that it creams well with your sugar. I tend to measure the required amount out first and cube it into smaller pieces so that it doesn't take all day to soften.

2– Speaking of sugar, leave the caster sugar alone. Use soft brown sugar instead. I find it produces more of a rich flavour that goes well with banana.

3– Blend the bananas! If you can blend your bananas instead of mashing with a fork the taste of the banana is spread uniform throughout the cake.

4– Make it pretty. Loaf cakes can look fashionably rustic or just down right dull. Decorate with some walnut pieces to really finish off.

115g unsalted butter, softened
140g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
230g self-raising flour, sieved
4 ripe bananas
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
handful of walnuts to decorate

24x10x6 cm loaf tin


Pre-heat your oven to 170°C/ 340°F.

Cream together the softened butter and sugar. Whisk your eggs in a separate bowl and then add to the mixture. With a hand blender puree your bananas into a consistent pulp and then stir into the mixture until well combined.

Sieve the self-raising flour into a separate bowl, followed by the cinnamon and nutmeg. Add these dry ingredients to the mixture and combine well.

Spoon your mixture into a pre-greased 24x10x6 cm loaf tin. Once done, scatter your walnut pieces over the top of the mixture. Bake for 40 minutes at 170°C, then reduce the temperature to 150°C and bake for another 35 minutes.

Leave the banana cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Serve in thick slices.

Result: Yum.