12 days of Christmas: Day 2, The Christmas Bake

Love Christmas but not a fan of the Christmas pud? No problem. These no-bake Oreo cake pops are just the thing you need to tingle those taste-buds! Because Christmas is a time where we all have the lowest bank balance, with just two ingredients, these scrummy cake pops won't break the bank either. AND because Christmas is also a busy time for all of us, these cake pops are one of my quickest 'bakes' yet - ruling out the chill time, they take less than 30 minutes.

ALTERNATIVES:
If you don't have the cake pop moulds, sticks, or holders, don't worry, you can leave them as they are for the perfect Christmas party finger food. There are other alternatives for this recipe too - I usually make them with cream cheese but as these were for dessert for my boyfriend and I - and as Adam doesn't like cheese (who doesn't like cheese?) - I substituted the cream cheese with double cream. Another alternative is that I separated the Oreo biscuit from the cream in an attempt to make it a little less messy - it's not totally necessary if you don't have the time. Finally - you can put the Oreos in a food processor or blender - but for me 'it was my moms in the eighties' and the noise it makes terrifies me.

Here are the photos from this weeks bake:

Separate the cookies from the cream (optional)

Bash the cookies into crumbs

Add the crumbs to the Oreo cream before adding the double cream or cream cheese

 Mix into a paste

WARNING: It gets MESSY

Tah-dah!

RECIPE:
Ingredients:
24 Oreos 
100ml of double cream (or about half a pack of cream cheese)

Icing sugar
Water

Method:
1. Separate the Oreo biscuit from the cream. Place the biscuit in a strong clear bag - like a freezer bag - and seal (or in the blender). Put the cream into a mixing bowl for later.
2. Using something solid - I used a rolling pin - bash the biscuits up into fine crumbs (or blend into fine crumbs).
3. Pour the crumbs into the mixing bowl with the Oreo cream and add the double cream or cream cheese.
4. Roll the mixture into small balls and place in the fridge to chill - if your balls are too big they will fall off the cake pop!. They should chill for a minimum of two hours but probably best to do this overnight.
5. Once they have cooled, use the icing to replicate a Christmas pudding - for the holly leaves I cheated and used Regal Icing - you can make your own or similar to my blood-filled Halloween cakes - use an inedible decoration.

Halloween Bake on a Budget: Blood-filled Cupcakes

Having a Halloween party tonight? Don't worry, there's still a little time for a last minute bake! Taking inspiration from Tanya Burr's chocolate cupcakes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49WvunWX7mc) I decided to try my very own blood-filled bake and have written it down which will hopefully make it easy for you to follow. Having done pretty bank-breaking-bakes previously, I tried to make this as cheap as possible and have also added a few 'cheats' for a quicker process and less washing up...smiles all round! Disclaimer: The spider is not edible. 

Here are the photos from this weeks bake:

 The finished product! The spiders are from Hobby Craft and are £1 for 50.

 CHEAT! for less washing up, use an apple corer for your 'blood'.

 Oops... Maybe there was more washing up than I first thought!

Ingredients:
Cakes:
225 g butter (softened)
225 g brown caster sugar
225 g plain flour
4 eggs
2 caps vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk

Filling:
12 tsp Raspberry Jam

Icing:
200 g butter (softened)
400 g icing sugar
2 caps marshmallow flavouring
1 pea sized scoop of orange food colouring

Method: 
Cakes:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C (170 C fan oven). Place cupcake cases into tin.
2. Stir together the butter and sugar to create a soft mixture. Add the flour and the eggs.
3. Mix in the vanilla extract and milk and stir out any lumps leftover.
4. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes.
5. Leave to cool for about an hour.
6. (This is the cheaty bit) Following the pictures above, take an apple corer and 'de-core' your cake - be careful not to hit the bottom or the blood will fall out the other end! Spoon some blood (raspberry jam) into the hole and place the top back on to hide the spook-tacular surprise! Alternatively, if you don't have an apple corer, place the jam in a piping bag and pipe the jam inside the cakes.

Icing: 
1. Place the butter in a bowl and stir until smooth. 
2. Sift the icing sugar into the bowl and mix together. If you're adapting the recipe in any way, make sure you always have twice as much icing sugar than butter - this will keep the shape when it comes to piping!
3. Add the food colouring and stir until evenly covered and a smooth texture.
3. Pipe on your icing in a circular motion and top with spooky decoration!

Trying this recipe yourself? Don't forget to tag me in your photos! Happy Halloween.

Blueberry and Lemon Cheese-less Cheesecake

Whilst looking for vegan recipes on Pinterest last week, I came across a blueberry and lemon cheesecake on call-me-cupcake.blogpsot.co.uk. However, after using around £22 worth of coconut oil alone last week in my Peta Great Vegan Bake Off entry (see blog archives) I thought it was probably best for both my weighing scales AND my bank account if I just took the post as pinspiration (see what I did there?) and improvised a non-vegan option. Having never made cheesecake before and with no internet access while walking round my local Tesco, I decided to 'wing it' with the ingredients... only to come home and discover cheesecakes contain ACTUAL cheese (who knew?) which obviously leads to the 'cheese-less' part of this week's bake.

As you can probably tell, I don't make a lot of 'no-bake' bakes, this is just my second- after my own take on my mum's 'special' tiffin - which I'm sure you will see in a future post. Although the no-bake experience began with a cheese-less disaster, I will 100% be making more of these in the future because they're SO quick to make - and if it wasn't for the mess I created bashing up the biscuits, (above) this recipe also creates very little washing up - BONUS! Does Blueberry and Lemon cheesecake sound like your thing? Try it for yourself and tag me in your photos!













   















Ingredients:
250g digestive biscuits
100ml butter
375ml condensed milk
350ml double cream
250g blueberries
2 lemons

Method:
1. Place the biscuits in a bag and crush them into fine crumbs.
2. Melt the butter and add the biscuits, mix together.
3. Press the biscuit mixture into the tin and place in the ridge to set.
4. Whisk together the condensed milk and double cream, adding the blueberries a handful at a time. Grate and juice the lemon and add the rind and juice to the cream mixture.
5. Pour the mixture onto the biscuit base and spread evenly. 
6. Place in the fridge for 2/3 hours to set. Eat up!

For extra baking photos and videos add me on snapchat: oh_annah.

PETA: The Great Vegan Bake Off - Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookie Jars

Peta are running the Great Vegan Bake Off for the third consecutive year and after succeeding in making my own recipe for Orange and Cranberry crinkle cookies (see this month's posts) I decided to try it again to demonstrate my support for the radical animal rights charity! 

As an avid chocolate lover, plain chocolate was the first thing I could think of when pondering vegan foods and after finding Lindt Coconut Excellence on the chocolate aisle, I decided to base my recipe around the little bar of lusciousness. To further emphasise the coconut flavour, I added coconut oil as a substitute for butter - I even made my own flour by putting oats in a food processor my parents received for their wedding 25 years ago (can you believe it still works???)

I chose to make the cookie jars individually as in a rush of excitement I bought (non-oven-proof) glass jars... oops! So to check that the glass wouldn't explode in the heat, I made them one by one. If you want to try them for yourself, the recipe below provides ingredients per jar so if you want to make one for an evening snack you can... or if you want to make 50 for a party you can just multipy the measurements by 50.

Ingredients (to make one jar):
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tbsp. caster sugar
45g ground almonds
85g oats
2 tbsp. coconut oil
40g lindt excellence dark chocolate coconut squares

Method:
1. Mix together the baking powder, caster sugar and ground almonds.

2. Weigh the oats and pour them into a food processor to grind into a flour consistency and add it to the mixture.

3. Stir in the coconut oil to make into a sticky dough and add the chocolate.

4. Put the mixture into oven-proof jars or make into teaspoon size cookies (optional).

5. Bake in the oven at 160 C for 20 minutes. Eat up!

                  

Orange & Cranberry Crinkle Cookies

'Lemon Crinkle Cookies' aren't really my thing but when I came across a recipe for them on cookingclassy.com they sounded too delicious to ignore... so I switched a few of the ingredients and made my own version - Orange and Cranberry Crinkle Cookies.

Aside from the obvious changes to the recipe (lemon = orange and cranberry) I also switched from granulated sugar to brown caster sugar. This is mainly down to personal preference - but I'm going on holiday in 3 days and will be wearing a bikini most of the time so brown sugar > white sugar (every little helps).

This was the first time I have ever used 'cups' as a form of measurement - it didn't go as badly as I first imagined... but a little bit of the ingredients were lost each time you transferred containers and I used the same 'cup' each time so I had to clean it each time I added something - it was a lot of faffing basically! For this reason, I think I'll stick to more precise measurements and a weighing scale in the future - or maybe purchase some proper weighing cups so I don't have to keep washing up? Mason Cash have some really cute ones, hmm...

Here are a few snaps from this week's bake - add me on snapchat to see more baking blunders: oh_annah.

I made sure I took a photo before they went into the oven because my 'cookies' always turn into 'cookie pie'. 

As well as turning into a cookie pie... this time the 'pie' also went a little crispy round the edges -  so I attempted to save the soft centre while still making them look pretty with a heart shaped cutter.

Ta-dah! Despite the many dramas, while baking, these cookies made the whole house smell like Christmas (the cranberries were coated in cinnamon). 

Give them a try for yourself... do you know how to keep your cookies 'cookies' and not 'cookie pie'?  I have translated the measurements from cups to grams to hopefully make it easier for you to follow.

Ingredients:

160 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

150 g unsalted butter

250 g caster sugar

5 tsp orange extract

2 eggs

1/2 vanilla extract

10 g cranberries (approximate)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (160 C fan oven) and lightly coat your pan with low-fat butter

2. Separating the 'wet' and 'dry' ingredients: in one bowl mix together the plain flour, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl mix together the butter, sugar and orange extract until the mixture becomes pale and smooth.

3. To avoid curdling - add one egg to the 'wet' ingredients, and one to the 'dry' ingredients before stirring the two mixtures together. Add the cranberries.

4. Using a teaspoon, scoop the mixture onto the baking tray to make little cookie dough balls. Bake at 180 C for 20 minutes until golden. Eat up!

'Skinny' Cookies & Cream Brownies

'Skinny' isn't something you often see in the same phrase as 'brownies'  - so when I came across this recipe on Pinterest - I had to put them to the pintertest. A lot of the ingredients are 'reduced fat' or 'non-fat' which is what makes them so low in calories - personally, I stuck strictly to the recipe, with a beach holiday on the horizon - but for a cheaper and 'fatter' option you can also go for full fat alternatives!

Although I'm not completely convinced at the 'skinny' claim, I was genuinely surprised with how well these mini treats turned out. Usually my baking tastes pretty gurrrd (if I do say so myself!) but it comes out the oven looking like a tiny monster has stomped all over it. My mum was the first to comment on the better presentation of my cookies & cream brownies, noting the shiny glaze on top. Seeing as this recipe has just 1/4 of the sugar I usually use, I think the glaze is from the natural yoghurt -  I'm not quite sure - but I'll be sure to incorporate more yoghurt into my baking in the future for sparkly treats all round!

Give these brownies a try yourself and tag me in your photos. Let me know what you think.

To make 15 scrumptious brownies you will need:

90g plain flour
60g cocoa powder
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
28g unsalted butter (melted)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
96g granulated sugar
60g non-fat greek yoghurt
90ml non-fat milk
9 reduced-fat oreos

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160 C (140 C fan oven) and lightly coat your pan with non-stick cooking spray or low-fat butter

2. Separating the 'wet' and dry ingredients: whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together butter, eggs and vanilla. Stir in the sugar before adding the greek yoghurt and milk. Stir until smooth. Add the dry mixture and stir before folding in two thirds of the crumbled oreos.

3. Spread the batter into the pan and gently press the remaining oreo pieces into the top. Bake at 160 C for 15-20 minutes. Carefully cut your brownies into squares and leave them to cool on a cooling rack. Eat up!