Rum and browned butter mince pinwheels

We had friends to stay this weekend so I made some pastries for Saturday afternoon tea and Sunday morning coffee. I still had a jar of mincemeat left over from Christmas and decided to spruce it up with some spiced rum and browned butter.

No-churn Christmas pudding ice cream

In my opinion, the best thing about Christmas pudding is turning it into ice cream! This is a really easy way to do that without an ice cream machine or the faff of making your own egg custard (although if you want to do that, here's how I used to do it - before discovering this no-churn method!). The whole point is to be able to whip it up in 5 minutes and forget about it until the next day.

Three-tier wedding carrot cake

I made this three-tier carrot cake for the wedding of our friends Becky and Luke. It was a really moist and flavoursome cake, given texture with a mixture of plain and wholemeal flour and ground almonds, chopped pecans and rum-soaked raisins, and spiced with cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. I topped it with a classic cream cheese icing, and decorated it with a colourful array of fruit to go with the rainbow colour theme of the wedding. 

Banana, date and rum loaf cake - wheat-free, sugar-free and fat-free!

Our new year's resolution is to try to get healthy. We've started going to the gym (I know, I can hardly believe it myself) and watching the calorie counter on the cycling machines tell you that you've sweated for 10 minutes and only burned about five crisps is slightly soul-destroying, not least as it's made me feel guilty about eating cake.  One of the greatest pleasures in life!  So I have to find a way to make guilt-free cakes. This is my first attempt - it is a fat-free, sugar-free and wheat-free cake - and amazingly, it still tastes delicious!  Made with puréed dates, dried apricots and mashed banana, it's lovely and sweet without the need to add any extra sugar.  Instead of flour it uses a bit of cornmeal (or you could try polenta) to bind it together, and is full of pecans, dried cranberries and sultanas, and finished off with a good glug of dark rum (we all need a little naughtiness...).  As good as any fruit cake, and no guilt attached!

Pecan pie

To go with our American cornbread and chilli today, I made another classic American dish for dessert – pecan pie.  This was delicious and lasted well for days.  In fact, I think it got better over time, as the filling solidified more.  I’ll definitely be making this again – even if I’m not so convinced by the concept of cornbread!

Rhubarb, rum and walnut pie

This was a quick after-work invention for a pud. In the shop on the way home, I picked up some ready-made pastry for £1, and a few stalks of rhubarb.  Within 20 mins of getting home, this was in the oven, filling the house with delicious smells.  If you wanted to make the pastry from scratch – it is very easy to do – I’ve a recipe for it in the post about my Spiced Apple, Rum and Pecan Pie.

Carrot, orange and almond cake (flourless)

This is another test recipe for Ellie and Ru’s wedding cake in Sark in June – carrot cake is Ru’s favourite so one of the tiers has to be carrot!  I thought as well as a vegan tier (my vegan lemon cake) I’d try to make a gluten-free cake for any coeliacs at the party.  Today we had a sunny bank holiday lunch on the waterfront in Cardiff Bay for my sister’s birthday (who is also a coeliac) so I decided to give it a whirl and we had it in our garden afterwards.  This is a version of a Venetian carrot cake based on a Nigella Lawson recipe, but I’m using orange instead of lemon, and almonds instead of pine nuts.  

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!

Spiced apple, rum and pecan pie

It's been a few weeks since I last posted anything here, partly because we've been away on a lovely Greek island holiday, to Symi. I have also had a couple of baking disasters since being back - a cake inspired by the holiday made with Greek yoghurt, olive oil and figs turned out just too gooey inside, and another made using a tin of mango purée tasted great but had a really rubbery texture. I was beginning to worry I'd lost my baking mojo - but then I made a fantastic chocolate sponge cake when I had an almighty hangover - I was just too hungover to remember to photograph or blog it! So here we are - I'm back with this deep dish apple pie, gently spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, full of chopped pecans and a dark rum and brown sugar filling. Baking mojo is well and truly back!

Chocolate, rum and ginger cupcakes

We've just come back from spending a brilliant weekend on a canal barge in Bradford on Avon for my friend Cath's hen party.  As it was pirate themed and I made these rum cupcakes with chocolate and ginger, and made skull-and-cross-bones flags on cocktail sticks to decorate them.  These went very well with copious rum and ginger cocktails!

Pomegranate, ginger and Old Jamaica muffins

Tomorrow night we're off to an engagement party for our friends Ben and Matt. Since it's Valentine's Day next week, I thought I'd make some heart-shaped muffins using my new silicone heart muffin mould (I found a John Lewis one in a discount store for £2!).

The recipe I created used half a bar of Cadbury's Bourneville Old Jamaica rum and raisin chocolate and a couple of packs of pomegranate seeds.  (If you're using whole pomegranates, the best way to remove the seeds is to score the fruit into quarters, and pull it apart in a bowl of cold water - the seeds will sink to the bottom and the flesh will float so you can scoop it out.)  A bit of grated orange zest and some crystalised ginger minced in a mini blender, and hey presto - UNBELIEVABLY delicious Valentine's muffins!

I decorated them by dipping them into melted Bouneville plain chocolate and sprinkling them with pomegranate seeds and diced crystallized ginger.  They may just be the prettiest muffins I've ever made...

Chestnut chocolate truffle torte

This is my adaptation of a fantastic Delia Smith recipe which I've done several times before - this time though, I've added some chestnut  purée to make it more Christmassy!  It's the ultimate decadent chocolate dessert, so I'm rounding off Christmas dinner with it (accompanied by my summer fruit terrine and a spiced Christmas panna cotta).

Christmas panna cotta

This is my first attempt at making panna cotta - I've used a recipe by the Hairy Bikers which is so Christmassy I couldn't resist making it for Christmas dinner dessert to go with my summer fruit terrine.

Rum and raisin mince pies

It's beginning to feel even more like Christmas...  The rum-and-raisin mincemeat was too good to wait until it's even Christmassier to use, so I made some mince pies.  I used the same pastry recipe as the one I used for my recent pecan, rum and chocolate chunk pie - it's so easy I'm not going back to shop-bought pastry!

Pecan, rum and chocolate chunk pie

I've made this for a weekend away with old friends from uni.  What better way to spend hallowe'en than eating scrumptious pud made of rum and chocolate!  This is best served warm when the chocolate is slightly melted and deliciously gooey.

Amaretti baked peaches

Simple but unbeatably delicious!

Rum and raspberry black forest gateau

Based on the classic Delia recipe, this is my version using a creme fraiche chocolate ganache instead of whipped cream, dark rum instead of Kirsch, and raspberries instead of morello cherries.  We love this so much we had a three tier, triple layer version for our wedding cake, covered with summer fruits (thanks to our lovely friend K)!