Vegan Chocolate Brownies

With one vegan sister, and one lactose intolerant friend, dairy/egg free cooking is something I definitely wanted to get to grips with. As I flew home to Belfast to celebrate Debbies birthday I decided to make her some nice dairy free treats.


It was a really simple recipe, substituting butter and milk for soya butter and milk, and using no eggs (oil instead) its actually turned out as something I will definitely be cooking again.

It was quite nice cooking at home as we have a much bigger kitchen than I have in manchester, plus a nicer oven, and a little visitor to keep me company....

The recipe and frosting is completely vegan, but I wanted to kitch it up a little as they were birthday brownies, unfortunately its so hard to get good vegan sweets so the final version were only dairy free, but I kept a few vegan...

I also added a few chunks of good quality dark chocolate, a bit of luxury which is needed when there is no butter.

And that was it! They actually turned out really well, not quite as fudgy or squidgy as I would normally like a brownie to be, but as a vegan alternative they are great, hope the birthday girl enjoyed them!

Quick post bbq treat

We had an impromptu bbq at our house this evening, such is the way of British weather that you need to make haste to enjoy a tiny bit of sun when you can.
 

I made a speedy coulis by stewing half of the strawberries with some sugar and a splash of water.

And I will not patronise by explaining what else I did, Eton Mess is so simple but unbelievably good.

 

 It was a good excuse to use my little dessert glasses that I bought on a day trip to Formby, love them.

Best enjoyed in the sun!

Sophie x

Tablet Fudge

When I was growing up we went to Scotland a lot, it's so close to Northern Ireland that it was a staple long weekend away, getting the ferry over and driving to different little towns etc. One of my favourite things was always Scottish tablet fudge. Luckily there was a little shop on Abbey Street in Bangor that also sold homemade tablet so my addiction could be supported at home too.

I was never allowed to try and make it myself when I was younger, I have a bit of a reputation for burning myself (most severe resulted in me ending up in A+E and with a big bear paw bandage for several weeks) so now that I am a proper grown up n'all I decided to give it a go.

Its quite a simple recipe, but a good un,

Simply one tin of condensed milk, 1kg of sugar and 100g of butter, and a bit of milk to "damp" the sugar as you bring it to the boil. Also a good splash of quality vanilla. (or you could use vanilla sugar)

1kg of sugar looks like a hell of a lot, and it is, but this recipe makes a hell of a lot of fudge, so I guess it works out ok?!

You basically bring all the ingredients to the boil, and simmer for around 20mins, you really need to constantly stir the mixture or the sugar will caramelise and the fudge will have little flecks of caramel/burnt sugar through it. This can be a bit of a pain to be honest, it is not a recipe to do if you are impatient.

 One of the easiest ways to check its done is to work a little bit of the mixture on a cool plate, if it starts to harden and crystalise its ready.

Alternatively you can use a sugar thermometer and get it to 118-120 degrees, which I like to do purely cause it makes me feel a bit like a mad scientist.

Once up to temperature you need to beat it really vigourously until the texture starts to feel grainy and a bit stiffer, hard to describe but you can really tell the difference. This is strenuous, which was a good excuse not to go to the gym tonight. Logic?

Once ready just pour it into a buttered tin and let it set, usually overnight. And then just cut it into pieces.

And thats it, pretty simple but does take a bit of work. It really makes loads though, we now have a tin full of it in the kitchen and I've posted some off to my Dad for fathers day this weekend.

Sophie x

Angel food cake with lemon curd cream

I have a tradition that all of my friends get a home made birthday cake, so for my friend Rosies birthday I decided to do something rose related. I hate rose water, cannot stand anything rose flavoured, so it was going to have to be rose related in decoration only!

Having never made sugar flowers before I decided I should give it a go and they turned out ok. I didn't have any petal cutters or tools so they weren't perfect and the petals could be thinner but i'm happy enough for a first try.

 I used a powdered food colouring for tinting the pink roses which is great as it doesn't add liquid to the icing so it stays really workable and sets hard, for the leaves though I used a gel colour and it didn't really work as well, the colour wasn't great and it made the icing so sticky and it didn't set- need to invest in more powdered food colourings!

For the cake I decided to try a new recipe, I've always loved the look of american Angel food cakes, they always look so light and fluffy, with an added bonus of being relatively low fat as they are made from predominantly egg whites, no butter or yolks in sight (just a lot of sugar, but still). Not that cake being low fat is ever a concern for me.

I didn't realise how much cake the recipe would make, even in two cake tins it was overflowing, I never thought i'd be hoping for a cake to collapse a bit.

Due to the high egg white content the cake is really meringue like in texture, so its really important to let it cool gradually in the tin, which was difficult cause I was impatient to see what it was like. But it turned out nicely.

For the frosting I wanted to make something pretty rich due to the lack of butter in the cake itself, so decided on a whipped cream frosting. I made some lemon curd (so much nicer than shop bought and surprisingly easy) and then simply folded this into the cream- simple but tasted so good.

And so here is the finished product! I knew I had to carry the cake into town so didn't bother spending time smoothing the cream down etc.

I didn't taste the cake as I brought it to Rosies house and was too interested in red wine than cake, but hopefully it tasted good, I made some pancakes this morning and had the leftover lemon curd with them which made a good hangover breakfast though. Happy Birthday Rosebot. x



Marshmallow wedding favours

So when one of my very best friends told me she was getting married I knew I wanted to do something for it, and so I offered to make the wedding favours for the table. I had a lot of different thoughts on what I should make, but wanted it to be something a little bit different, something I could make myself and something that would keep so that I didn't have to spend the day before the wedding in a baking frenzy. And so I came up with marshmallows.

I had always assumed that marshmallows would be really difficult to make, but quite the contrary! I did a test run, got the bride and groom to taste test and it was a winner. I made the marshmallows the weekend before the wedding, I was assured that they would keep for a few weeks in an airtight container which was a massive bonus.

From a sugar syrup to Marshmallows

 

                                                                                     

 So I had to make a massive 312 marshmallows, so doubled up on the recipe and did this 3 times, I was covered in syrup, there was icing sugar everywhere, but they were made!

Foolishly I thought that this was going to be the main bulk of the work, but then I realised I had to pack these marshmallows into 104 individual cellophane bags, and then tie a bow on each one.

And so it began!

I had to make a little funnel to get the marshmallows into the bags as otherwise the sides were covered in icing sugar and looked a bit crap.

Once in, it was time to tie the bows, i'm a bit of a perfectionist so started out making sure each bow was the perfect size and that the printed side of the ribbon was showing, after spending hours tying bows and only being half way through my total this perfectionism gave way to practicalism and they definitely became a little less perfect, but I guess home made should look home made!

And they were finished, all 104 of them. It was a really fun thing to do and I was really pleased with how they turned out. Also they taste so much better than shop bought marshmallows.

Most importantly, the (most beautiful) bride gave them the seal of approval. It was the best day and I couldn't be happier for two of my favourite people being married. Congratulations Annie and Bryan. x

1st Post!

Hello,

I'm Sophie. I cook and bake constantly so I thought as a way to document what I do I would start this blog! Its mostly going to be pictures of things that I bake, more sweet than savoury, but I guess I might post on anything, food related anyway.

On New Years Day I decided not to make any resolutions, but instead to make "cookolutions" (ha), that is I wrote a list of things that I wanted to cook/perfect this year, with an added task of making something new every week. I've pretty much been able to stick to it, I've have been much more creative and not just made the same things I always do, which has been really fun and I have made some of my best cakes/meals!

The title of this blog comes from when I was about 14, my friends and I bunked off school and spent the whole day running around our home town with a video camera, trying to hide from teachers/parents etc, we walked on the beach, ran into one of our friends grandmas in the market, and then got bored of hiding so on the way back to my house to camp out we ended up in a shop and bought loads of treats- frosted wheats and sweets to be exact. And the phrase Wheats and Sweets was born.

Sophie
x