Bread Baking Part 1

OK so I know bread isn't cake but I was contemplating what to bake today and thought I'd give bread a go.  It's been ages since I've baked a loaf of bread, like literally about 10 years, so thought I'd give myself a challenge.  And there's none of your fancy breadmakers being used here, just a bowl and lots of elbow grease!!

I thought I'd attempt a basic white loaf and my first task was to scour through a load of bread recipes and find the best one.  In the end I jumbled together the best bits from a range of them so here you go.......

Ingredients
500g strong white bread flour (plus extra for dusting)
1 tsp salt
1 sachet of fast action dried yeast (7g)
350ml warm milk
1 tbsp honey

You'll also need a large loaf tin.

First off combine the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl.

Boozy Cupcakes!

Another one of my weekend baking requests was to make some of my famed Chocolate Guinness cupcakes with Baileys buttercream for someones birthday.  I love this recipe mainly because it combines two of the best ingredients going, chocolate and booze!!  Even if you don't like Guinness (I'm not the biggest fan) I guarantee you'll still love these.  The Guinness complements the chocolate really well and gives it more more depth whilst keeping the cupcake moist.

And the Baileys buttercream (just add a couple of teaspoons of Baileys to your usual buttercream recipe) just tops them off nicely and as a bonus makes them look like tiny pints of Guinness.  They'd be great for St Patrick's Day.

The Chocolate Box Cake

The first of my weekend's cake challenges was to create a birthday cake for one of my boyfriend's work mates who wanted a cake for his wife's birthday onn Saturday.  I figured chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate could do no wrong and set about creating the chocolatiest cake I could manage.  This was the end result.

I started with my tried and tested top secret chocolate cake recipe which I then sandwiched and covered with dark chocolate ganache. I lined the outside of the cake with Cadbury's chocolate fingers, wrapped the cake in ribbon and to finish it off decorated the top of the cake with Thornton's Continentals.

It was lucky to leave my house in one piece :) 

All Baked Out!

Well I wasn't sure if this was possible but after a hectic weekend of baking I'm all baked out!!!  This is what I started with:

and after several hours I ended up with a chocolate box cake, some gourmet Guinness chocolate birthday cupcakes with Baileys frosting, a three tier 30^th birthday cake and chocolate 60 cupcakes.  Exhausted is not the word!!  Don’t worry though I’m sure I’ll be over it and back in the kitchen soon enough :)

Pictures and blog of them all to follow shortly.

Hello...........we like cake!

Title says it all really. Welcome to the We Bake Cake blog. Here I'll be chronicling my baking exploits and if you're really lucky I might divulge a few hints and tips (or tell you where I went wrong so you don't!)

So enjoy, bake away and feel free to get in touch.

Clare x