I love home baking - particularly when someone else does it for me.

Delicious recipes for home baking

The young chef in our family has been experimenting in the kitchen - much to my delight - and with great success.

Here are some of her recent successes.

Hot Chocolate

The first is a simple but totally delicious hot chocolate - perfect for a cold winter's day. Based on the recipe in The Little Book of Chocolat by Joanne Harris - a magical must for the bookshelves of all chocolate lovers.

Hot Cross Buns

Next she rustled up some seriously good Hot Cross Buns. Based on a recipe by The Boy Who Bakes, Edd Kimber, in an old edition of the Waitrose Magazine.

Orange and Lavender Polenta Cake

Then she created this delicious, gluten free, Orange and Lavender Polenta Cake - using the amazing (an apparently simple) recipe from Susan Branch. The young photographer put the Beatrix Potter figures there because she knew Susan would love them.

Fresh baked spelt flour bread

Finally, today, the young chef knew her Dad kneaded (ha-ha get it - Dad joke) some good bread for lunch. So she created this delicious spelt loaf, using Sharpham Park spelt flour and the basic bread recipe from the River Cottage Bread Book (written by master baker Daniel Stevens).

The best things in life really are such simple, homely pleasures. 

Thank you to my fabulous daughter.

Chocolate cupcakes made with @JimJams_Spreads

If you like chocolate and hazelnuts and baking cupcakes, you'll love Jim Jams' Hazelnut Chocolate Spread.

For those of you who need to know such things, Jim Jams' spreads are gluten free, use reduced fat cocoa, have no added sugar and are friendly to diabetics and teeth.

For the rest of you, all you have to know is that they are pretty delicious and a handy ingredient when creating indulgent chocolate recipes.

Our young chef created these beauties. Here's how she did it, in her own words.

Hazelnut Chocolate Cupcakes

I’ve been wanting to make this recipe (from the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook) for a while now, but I don’t like most chocolate spreads. Then I tried this great Jim Jams hazelnut and chocolate spread, and it worked really well! 
I got the chocolate spread at the Big Onion food festival at Elveden.

To make 12 cupcakes, I used:

• 100g white flour
• 20g cocoa powder
• 140g caster sugar
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder.
• Pinch of salt
• 40g butter
• 120ml whole milk
• 1 egg
• 120g Jim Jams hazelnut chocolate spread.

I preheated the oven to 170 C. I then put the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a bowl and mixed them. I slowly added the milk and mixed, then added the egg and mixed some more. I put the mix in the paper cases and baked them for 20 minutes. When the cupcakes had cooled, I hollowed out a bit of each, and filled the holes with Jim Jams hazelnut chocolate spread. 

I also put frosting on 6 of the 12 cupcakes.

For the frosting, I used:

• 125g icing sugar
• 40g butter
• Whole milk – not quite sure how much, because the measuring jug isn’t that precise. Probably about 15ml.
• 40g Jim Jams hazelnut chocolate spread.

To make the frosting, I mixed the icing sugar and butter with an electric whisk, then slowly mixed in the milk. I stirred the chocolate spread in by hand. I then put frosting on six of the cupcakes.

Dad says: 
"They tasted as delicious as they looked - perfect with a large mug of coffee."

About Pyjamas in the Parsley

Why I'm posting here as well as elsewhere

This is my personal space - a place for musings and meanderings. There is no theme - no structure and no agenda. If you want more professional stuff, please see my other blogs - just Google if you don't know where to find them.

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Thank you

H

PS: This blog might break every rule of grammar - it is fast, fresh writing - there are no claims for accuracy, relevance or intelligence.

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