Recipe: Nutella and Salted Caramel Stuffed Cookies

When you've been with someone for nearly 3 years, it isn't often that you get any more 'firsts'. However on Saturday afternoon, Matt and I made cookies together for the first time. It was really fun to share something I love doing with him and I thought cookies would be an easy thing to start off with. These are packed with two of our favourite things: Nutella (yum) and salted caramel (double yum). 

We used this recipe that I've had pinned for ages - the only thing we changed was omitting the chocolate chips, purely because we didn't have any in the house and didn't fancy popping to the shops. The recipe gives you a lovely squidgy cookie with a melt in the middle surprise center and the sprinkle of salt on top brings everything together. The recipe is Nordic so the measurements are in cups rather than grams.

Ingredients

* 1/2 cup of butter

*1 1/2 cup of light brown sugar

* 1/2 cup of cocoa powder

* 2 eggs

* 1/4 tsp salt

* 3/4 tsp baking powder

* 2 cups of plain flower

* sea salt for sprinkling

* Nutella

* Salted Caramel (we used a ready made pot but you can make your own)

Method

001. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (fan) and line two baking trays with baking parchment.

002. Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Take it off the heat as soon as it is melted so it doesn't brown or burn. In a separate bowl mix together the eggs and sugar. Mix in the melted butter until well combined.

003. Add the cocoa, salt and baking powder and stir until well combined.

004. Sift in the flour and mix well.
005. Take a tablespoon size amount of mixture and drop onto your tray. Make an indent in the middle large enough to fit a teaspoon of Nutella and a teaspoon of the salted caramel in.
006. Layer the Nutella and salted caramel on top of each other in the indent. Cover the filling with more cookie dough, making sure to seal all the edges.
007. Sprinkle the top of each cookie with a little salt.
008. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
009. Leave to cool on the trays for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling off.
010. Dust with icing sugar (optional!)

Let me know if you try this recipe by tweeting me! xxx

Recipe: Homemade Summer Berry Ice Pops

For ages I have stashed away lots of recipes for ice lollies on pinterest, waiting for the moment that we get a tiny bit of sun to not only try out the recipes but also use my Laura Ashley moulds that I got in the sale a year ago! The last couple of weeks have been amazing so I have been making these refreshing and super tasty ice lollies quite regularly. You can find the original recipe here but I have tweaked it a little bit to suit our tastes and also to fit around what we had in our fridge at the time, which of course you are free to do as well. I know ice pops are really easy to make but these take a little more effort and the taste and look of them are definitely worth it.

Ingredients (makes around 8 lollies)

* 1/2 cup of raspberries

* 1/2 cup of blueberries

* 1 cup of sliced strawberries

* 1 cup of frozen summer berries

* 1/3 cup of sugar

* 1/3 cup of water

* 2 tablespoons lemon juice

* 2 tablespoons finely chopped mint

Method

1. Combine all the fruit in a bowl and mash them up with the back of a wooden spoon to release the juices.

2. Add the lemon juice and mint, then stir will to combine everything.

3. Leave to rest in the fridge for about an hour to let the flavours infuse, I sometimes leave mine for longer.

4. After the fruit has rested for the right amount of time, put your sugar and water into a small saucepan and heat gently until all the sugar is dissolved. Do not allow to boil. It is useful to use a saucepan with a lip so you can pour the sugar solution more easily.

5. Leave the syrup to cool for a few minutes and then pour into the fruit mixture. Combine well with the wooden spoon.

5. Using a jug with a lip or spoon, carefully administer equal parts of fruit and syrup into the moulds, making sure not to fill all the way to the top as it will expand when frozen and you need to fit the sticks on top.

6. Put your sticks into the lolly mixture and leave to freeze for at least 6 hours.

And that is all you need to do for a very simple but delicious recipe which should see you through the summer! 

I hope you enjoy it and please let me know if you try this recipe xxx

Smarties Rainbow Cookies

For some reason, the majority of all my recipes seem to involve chocolate...but in my opinion these are always the best types of recipes! Yesterday I baked my second batch of cookies ever and they turned out so yummy I couldn't wait to type up this post. After experimenting with a Mary Berry basic cookie recipe the first time (I love her) I tweaked the recipe a tiny bit and think this batch is even better. The best thing about this recipe is that you can keep the base mixture the same but add whatever you want to it for different flavours and textures. The addition of smarties in this case was an amazing idea as they taste so good! You could also do plain chocolate chips, or another idea for my next batch which is to add rolos. They are also really easy to make so perfect for novice bakers and children. Makes around 15-20 cookies depending on your sizing.

Ingredients

* 100g softened butter

* 75g caster sugar

* 50g light muscovado sugar

* 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

* 1 large egg

* 150g self-raising flour

* 100g smarties

You will also need: 3 baking trays

Method

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5. I prefer fan because it means the heat is distributed evenly throughout the oven. Lightly butter your baking trays. The reason for no reusing just the one is because you want the tray to be a normal temperature to put your batter on so that they cook evenly and at the same rate.#

2. Beat both types of sugar and the butter in a bowl until smooth, evenly blended and pale. The addition of the light muscovado sugar gives the cookies a lovely caramel taste.

3. Add the vanilla. Beat the egg and add a little at the time to the mixture while beating until completely mixed. 

4. Stir in all the flour until the  mixture is thick and smooth, with all pockets of flour mixed in. 

5. Finally, add the smarties to your bowl and mix well until they are distributed evenly throughout the mixture.

6. Use a teaspoon to measure out large teaspoon sized balls of batter onto your baking trays, making sure to leave gaps for the cookies to spread. Bake for 8-10 mins, one baking tray at a time, on the top shelf until golden and slightly chewy. I found the best way was to cook for 8 minutes, check on them, then turn the baking tray round for the last two minutes to make sure they brown evenly.

7. Cool on the trays for a few minutes before transferring them with a palette knife onto a cooling rack. Once completely cool, store in an air tight tin for up to a week.

Let me know if you try the recipe and tweet/instagram me a picture - my links are in the side bar and my Contact tab xxx

Simple Summer Smoothie

Hey guys, I haven't done a recipe post in ages so thought I would ease myself back with something healthy, easy and delicious. My favourite way to have my five a day is in smoothies as they are yummy and it means I can eat more fruit in one go that way - does anyone else find that? When it comes to smoothies I'm normally quite slap dash and throw in whatever, but this particular combination was delicious so I thought I'd share it with you. If you like sweet things this will be right up your street.

Ingredients

* 1 banana

* handful of ice

* handful of strawberries (5-6)

* 1 peach 

* 1 cup of almond milk

* chia seeds (optional)

Put the ice in the blender first followed by your chopped banana. Hull the strawberries and half them and remove the stone from the peach then quarter. Add all of them to the blender. Finally add a generous glug of almond milk. Blend it all thoroughly and add more almond milk if its a bit too thick. Pour into a glass and top with Chia seeds if you would like. 

      

      

See, I told you it was easy! Let me know if you try this out by tweeting me or commenting. What is your favourite summer drink? xxx

Easter Chocolate Nest Cake

After my last post, I was hoping to have loads of new stuff up, however, now I have the time to write posts, the battery on my laptop decided to completely die. Therefore, all the pictures I had taken are lost for now and I haven't been able to write about the things I really want to, which is so frustrating and just typical! I'm down in Exeter now for Easter so am borrowing Matt's laptop and am having to take new photos.

This week I decided to get back to baking, at Uni I don't have the time or appliances, so it has been really nice getting back to doing something I really enjoy. I decided on a chocolate cake because everyone loves chocolate and decided to put an Easter twist on it as something to take to Exeter. It is quite simple but effective and is a good one to make with kids. The nest is made of shredded wheat and chocolate so if you have any left over you can make mini nest cakes too.

Ingredients

* 150g caster sugar

* 150g margarine

* 3 eggs

* 110g self raising flour

* 40g cocoa powder

For the icing:

* 125g unsalted butter

* 2 tablespoons milk

* 200g icing sugar

* 50g cocoa powder

For the nest:

* 3 weetabix biscuits

* Nob of butter

* 100g dark chocolate

* 100g milk chocolate

* 1 tablespoon golden syrup

* 1 pack of Mini eggs

Method

1. Grease and line two sandwich tins and preheat the oven to 190 degrees (fan).

2. Cream together the margarine and caster sugar until pale and fluffy.

3. Sift together the flour and cocoa powder into a bowl. Add an egg at a time to the margarine and caster sugar mix. In between each egg, add a little of the flour into the mixture to stop it from curdling.

4. Mix in the rest of the flour and cocoa powder.

5. Half the mixture evenly into the two tins and smooth the surface with the back of a spoon. Cook for 15-20 minutes until light and springy to the touch.

6. Leave to cool in the tins for around ten minutes then turn out onto a cooling rack until completely cool.

7. Now is time to make the icing. Make sure your butter is cut into small cubes and softened, you can do this  with a quick blast in the microwave if you need to. Sieve in the icing sugar and cocoa powder a little at a time while beating the mixture, then add the milk and beat this in too.

8. Once really smooth and soft, using a palette knife spread half the icing onto one half of the cake. Sandwich the other half on top and smooth the rest of the icing on top.

9. Snap or cut the chocolate into small pieces and melt over a ban marie or in the microwave with the butter until smooth and glossy. You can use just milk chocolate or dark chocolate if you prefer but I like a mix of both.

10. Crumble around 3 biscuits of shredded wheat into the chocolate mixture and stir in thoroughly so all of it is covered. Add in the golden syrup and mix it in thoroughly.

11. Trace around one of the sandwich tins to get an idea of how big your nest should be. Arrange the shredded wheat and chocolate mixture inside this stencil, leaving a hollow in the middle. It doesn't have to be exact or perfect as it will look more realistic. 

12. Once you have finished this, place into the fridge to chill for a few hours.

13. Once chilled, you can add the nest to the top of the cake. Fill in the middle with mini eggs and you are done!

As a word of advice I would cut the nest into pieces and then slice the cake separately as the nest can be pretty tough to cut! There is only one slice left after being down in Exeter for two days so this recipe has gone down pretty well. Let me know if you make this over Easter weekend by tweeting or instagramming me (lilmisslifestyle) :) Hope you all have a lovely weekend and get lots of chocolate! xxx

Oreo Overload Cupcakes

Another month, another birthday! This time it was one of my best friend's 20th. Every time a birthday comes around it has become somewhat of a tradition that I make a little something to take along to the party. For this occasion I decided on something I'd never made before and was a bit indulgent and settled on Oreo cupcakes. Oreos + chocolate + cake = delish! I will apologise in advance for the quality of the 'after' pictures once they were made, as I only had the opportunity to try and picture them at the party! I also normally always include a picture of all the ingredients at the beginning but it seems to have got lost somewhere :\

Ingredients

* 150g margarine 

* 150g caster sugar

* 3 eggs

* 125g of self-raising flour

* 25g of cocoa powder

* 3 packs of Oreos

* 1 tub of Betty Crocker chocolate fudge icing (I don't normally like using this and like to make my own icing but my dad bought it on offer and so had to use it up!)

Method

* Preheat the oven to 190 degrees and line your cupcake tins with paper cases. Place an Oreo at the bottom of each case.

* Cream together the caster sugar and margarine until pale and fluffy.

* Beat in the eggs one at a time until fully mixed. Be careful not to over do it and curdle the mixture.

* Sieve the cocoa powder and self-raising flour together. Fold into the mixture a bit at a time.

* Using a food processor blitz a packet of Oreos until fine and crumbly. Fold all of it into the mixture until evenly distributed.

* Spoon even amounts of the mixture over each cookie and then place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until springy to the touch.

* Once cooked, leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin then transfer to a wire cooling rack until completely cooled.

* Once cooled you can now ice them. You can do this by pipeing or with a palette knife, your choice :) top the icing with another Oreo.

 Can you spot the ginger bread stars from my recent recipe post?

And here is some pictures of my friends tucking in!

These went down a treat with my family too, so would be great to make for chocolate lovers or for something a bit more special than chocolate fairy cakes. Let me know if you make them and remember to tweet me a picture! @LilMisLifestyle xxx

Chocolate Nemesis

I have wanted to make this recipe for a really long time now and finally got the opportunity yesterday. It comes from a  book by the owner of the renowned chocolate shop Rococo so I knew it would be a good quality recipe and totally scrummy. I am a big fan of this book as both the pictures and the recipes are divine, although many of the recipes seem to cater for a higher standard of cooking, so if you are a bit of a beginner I wouldn't recommend it. Some of the best things about this recipe is that it is one of the simple ones and requires no flour so it is quite light, although it is very rich, so only a little bit at a time is recommended - preferably with creme fraiche, or my personal favourite, clotted cream :) Before we go onto the method, just a quick note - I didn't have the right size tin (note to self: go to john lewis!!) so had to split it into two different tins which I wouldn't recommend and so didn't turn out as thick in height as I would like. It did however still taste yummy!

Ingredients

* 100g Icing sugar

* 250g Real dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped

* 150g butter, cut into small pieces + more for greasing

* 4 eggs, separated

* pinch of salt

*1 tsp cider vinegar

* creme fraiche/clotted cream to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees/Gas 4 and line the base of a 20cm round cake tin (not springform) about 5cm deep with greaseproof paper, then butter that.

Put 2/3 of the sugar in a heavy-based pan with 5 table spoons of water. Heat until the sugar has completely dissolved then, over a low heat, add the chocolate and stir until it has melted. Finally, stir in the butter. You should have a thick, glossy mixture. Remove from the heat.

Heating the sugar

 
 
 

Whisk the remaining sugar with the egg white and salt and vinegar (this helps to thicken them) until they have reached meringue/soft peak consistency. Beat the egg yolks into the lukewarm chocolate mixture and add this mixture to your meringue bit by bit, folding it in gently to not let any air out.

Bring a large kettleful of water to the boil and pour in a baking tray large enough to hold the cake tin to make a bain-marie. Pour the batter into the prepared mould and place it in the baking tray filled with hot water. It is important that the water comes up to the rim of the tin.

Bake for 30 mins, or until set, which you can test with your hand or with a skewer - it should be set like a firm jelly.

Allow to cool out of the water bath before unmoulding. Serve cold with whatever you fancy! Let me know if you tried the recipe and how it went - you could even tweet me a picture of yours! @LilMisLifestyle xxx

White Chocolate Valentine's Gateau

Hey guys,

Today I baked a cake for one of my best friend's leaving party to celebrate her going away to Australia to study abroad for a year :'( Because I knew this was a special occasion, I wanted to make something I hadn't baked before but also something that wasn't too difficult or time consuming, as I had less than a day to make it! I looked through a few of my recipe books and decided on a White Chocolate Valentine's Gateau from a  book I received in my Christmas stocking a few years ago called 1 Mix, 50 Cakes because its more special than a bog standard round vanilla sponge. Of course I had to decorate it with edible glitter as I'm glitter obsessed, which made it even more special! You can buy the book here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/50-Mix-Cakes-Love-Food/dp/1407564374/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339234095&sr=1-1

I made a few changes to the recipe by adding double the amount of white grated chocolate to the mixture to make it extra chocolatey, used stork margarine instead of unsalted butter and substituted the plain white flour and baking powder for the same amount of self-raising. A good tip is also to take your fridge ingredients out an hour or so before i.e. eggs, butter etc so they can warm up to room temperature.

Ingredients
* oil or butter for greasing
* 175g/6 oz plain white flour
* 1 tbsp baking powder
* 175g/ 6oz unsalted butter, softened
* 175g/ 6oz caster sugar
* 3 eggs, beaten
* 1 tsp vanilla extract
* 55g/2 oz white chocolate, grated
* 2 tbsp white rum (optional) I used:

Frosting
* 200g/7 oz white chocolate, broken into pieces
* 2 tbsp milk
* 200ml/7 fl oz double cream

Method
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees/325 Fahrenheit/Gas Mark 3. I would recommend using the fan setting on the oven to circulate the warm air and ensure the cake is cooked evenly.

The book says to sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl (or just the self-raising) and add the butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth, then stir in the grated chocolate. I did this in a different order as my method for this differs. First I cream the margerine (butter) and sugar together until pale.

Then I beat the eggs in one at a time.

Lastly, I stir in the flour a bit at a time with the vanilla extract. This way you will make sure all the ingredients are well combined and have a light, fluffy cake.

The little lumps are pieces of chocolate :)

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface with a palette knife or back of your spoon. I used a silicone mold from John Lewis, which you can buy here.

Bake in the preheated oven for 45-55 mins, or until risen, firm and golden brown. Mine was done in 45 mins, so make sure you check through the oven door (don't open the door too many times as the cake will deflate). You can also put a skewer through the middle - if it comes out clean the cake is ready and it should feel springy to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for around 10 mins so that it doesn't lose it's shape and break, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. You can take this time to lick your utensils before washing them up like I did :p

Meanwhile for the frosting, melt the chocolate with the milk in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Remove from the heat and stir until smooth, then leave for 10 minutes.

Whip the cream until it holds soft peaks, then fold into the cooled chocolate mixture. It is essential that you let the chocolate cool enough otherwise it will become sloppy and maybe curdle. If your mixture isn't the texture you would like, try adding more whipped cream or leaving it to chill in the fridge to stiffen up.

Sprinkle the cake with the rum, if using then spread the frosting over the top and sides of the cake with a palette knife. Leave plain or decorate as you wish.

I got some really good feedback and everyone had seconds - success!!

Me at the party with my (partly squished) cake!

Loving her cake!

Let me know what you think of the recipe and how your cake turns out! xxx

P.S. my friend has just set up her very own fashion website - check it out! www.prettylittlewardrobe.com