Strawberry tart

This is a strawberry tart I made yesterday afternoon. I found the recipe on the Good Housekeeping website. The shortcrust pastry was sweet and short, the creme patissiere was really nice, and the strawberries were sweet and worked well with the rest of the tart. However, the sides of the pastry fell down during blind baking, meaning the tart wasn't as tall as it should have been. Also, the edges of the tart wasn't very neat, so next time I will make sure I trim the pastry neater. Finally, I would slice the strawberries and arrange them that way, as they would have covered the whole top of the tart and looked more appealing. But everyone enjoyed it and it was all eaten the same day I had made it, which is always a good sign!

Happy birthday Chris!

I made this for my brother's birthday. It is a chocolate fudge cake cut in half and filled and covered with chocolate orange ganache. I had made this ganache before, but I made it to be chocolate orange flavour by substituting half of the milk chocolate for chocolate orange segments. Also, Chris loves Smarties, so I adapted this cake to turn it into a piñata cake. This was done by cutting a circle into the middle of both cake halves, and scooping out the cake. I then filled this with Smarties and placed the cakes together. After covering the cake with ganache I arranged some chocolate orange segments on the top of the cake, grated another segment and sprinkled this on top. I then scraped a fork around the edge of the cake to create the pattern you can see on it. Although I'm not a fan of chocolate cake, I did enjoy this, and I really liked the ganache. Luckily, everyone else did too, especially Chris - he said it was the best birthday cake he had ever had, and I have my work cut out trying to make a better one for next year ehe!

Mother's Day cake

For Mother's day I made my mum a carrot cake decorated to look like a butterfly. The cake and cream cheese frosting recipe I had used to make this was the same recipe I had used to make the cake that I have previously written about on my blog. I decorated this by cutting the cake in half, then into 1/3 and 2/3, and then arranged the slices to look a butterfly. I then outlined shaped using different coloured icing, and filled in these with jelly tots. The middle butterfly is a strawberry lace. I really like this cake recipe, and I think it looked good, and most importantly, my mum liked it! I got this idea from Pinterest, and I'm glad I tried it.



Hot cross buns

Yes, I know its not Easter yet but I was bored one afternoon and I fancied making some hot cross buns. I found this recipe online on the BBC good food website. I didn't let these prove for long enough so they didn't rise as much as they were supposed to. However, they still tasted really nice, especially when sliced open and spread with butter.

Apple pecan ring

My friend recently had a Pampered Chef party and made this apple pecan ring. I kept the recipe and made this a few days later. It is croissant dough, (which was brought from the shop like the recipe said to), wrapped around sliced apple, crushed pecans and cream cheese mixed with icing sugar. I'm not a huge fan of pecans and cooked apple, but I really enjoyed this. It was really sweet, and the combination of crispy and soft textures made the pudding taste evening better.