Danish apple cake

I'm not sleeping well at the moment and this morning woke up at 3am, completely unable to get back to sleep. My recipe for insomnia? Baking of course! So I found myself in the wee small hours peeling apples to make a version of a Danish apple cake. Traditionally this would be made with ground almonds, but I didn't have any and couldn't pop to the shop at that time of night (or morning) so used ground walnuts instead. Either works well I think. Again I used some gorgeous jewel-like crimson raisins (I recently used them in my spiced rum, raisin and dark chocolate cookies) but normal raisins or sultanas would work just as well. I'm not sure it's traditional to soak them first either, but I always like raisins so much better when they've been soaked in something so they plump up and become lovely and juicy. My only tip with this would be to make sure you really test it for done-ness before taking it out of the oven - it's easy to underbake it because of the thick layers of fruit on top of the cake batter. Delicious for breakfast any time of the day or night!

Salted caramel chocolate brownies

I made these for a night in with friends to which we all had to bring nice cheeses and cold meats, and of course lots of wine. These were amazing served warm with vanilla ice cream, when the salted caramel centre oozes out of the brownies - but I discovered they are almost better the next day somehow (or it could be that they're just the right combination of saltiness and chocolateyness to be a perfect hangover cure!)  They were extra easy to make because I cheated and used a tin of Carnation caramel rather than making my own - although if you want to, a recipe for homemade salted caramel is included in this post for my salted caramel chocolate tart.

Spiced rum, crimson raisin and dark chocolate cookies

This is my take on that classic flavour combination, rum and raisin. The addition of allspice to the dough plus some big chunks of Bourneville dark chocolate makes this taste like Old Jamaica chocolate - it would be lovely to use that with this recipe too. It'd also be nice with dried cranberries, but the crimson raisins I used have an equally jewel-like red colour. These are deliciously Christmassy and indulgent and morish!

Chocolate Smarties cookies

The shops are filling up with Christmas chocolates. Unable to resist, I bought a big tube of Smarties the other day, and decided to use them to make a batch of cookies. These are also irresistable!

OBAMA rocks! cakes

What an amazing US election result last night! To celebrate Obama's second term in office, I decided to make something with ingredients that spelled out OBAMA (a habit I've got into what with my ABC cake (Apple, Blueberry and Cinnamon), BMW bread (Banana, Mango and Walnut), and more recent BANG cake (Banana, Amaretto, Nut and Ginger)...). These started life as cookies but I soon realised that they tasted just like the rock cakes my mum used to make with us on Sunday afternoons as kids. So rather than flattening small scoops of the dough into cookie shapes, I instead dolloped big scoops onto the baking tray and left them to come out as rock cakes. I made one dough but split it into two batches before adding the different OBAMA fruit and nuts. The first batch contained Oats, Blueberries, Apple, Macadamia and Almonds. The second batch contained Oats, Banana, Apricot, Mango and Almonds. The result: OBAMA rocks! [cakes]

Rolo mini muffins

The other treat I made to take away with us to Cornwall this weekend are these chocolate mini muffins (based on the same recipe using sour cream as my fabulous Oreo mini muffins) - but these each contain a Nestle rolo. It was a complete experiment to see how these turned out, but they worked really well - the rolo mostly melts, adding a rich caramel centre to the muffins. Yummy!

Nutty ginger beer cookies

We're off to Cornwall this weekend to stay in a country house with some old friends. I decided to make some ginger nut biscuits (these contain ground almonds, walnuts and are each topped with a whole pecan) but in a moment of madness/ inspiration I added a good glug of Crabbie's alcoholic ginger beer. It worked brilliantly, adding to the light, soft texture and adding extra oomph to the gingeriness, along with chopped crystallised ginger.

Spiced toffee apple cake

Continuing my recent bonfire night baking theme, this is an adapted version of a BBC Good Food recipe for spiced toffee apple cake. The cake is made from a base of date purée, then before baking is topped with rows of sliced red apples. Once it comes out of the oven, you sprinkle it with icing sugar and then drizzle a toffee sauce over the top.  Serve cut into squares like brownies!