Salaric Cooking

Ingredients:

3 really ripe bananas (if you do not have ripe bananas freeze unripe ones and then defrost them – they will turn brown)

150 g/5 oz of soya or veg oil marg/spread

150 g/5 oz of sugar

175 g/6 oz of self raising flour

1 teaspoon of vanillia essence

1/4 of a cup of frozen red currents

Method:

Pre-heat oven to gas mark 4/180 degrees C/350 degrees F, mush the bananas up in a bowl, combine them with the flour, sugar and marg until creamy smooth. Add in the frozen red currents – if they are not frozen they will just squish into the mix turing it pink.

Put in cake cases, filling them to a third and place in the oven for half and hour/30 minutes.

Remove and place on a cooling rack.

If you wish you can make up a sugar icing to poor on the top or use red current juice mixed with sugar and leave to dry giving a crunchy topping.

I have just hosted my second ever Creativi Tea – an event were people come to our house for a day of creative pursuits – we make things, bake things, and create things. I was a little out of practice with cakes but made some lemon rose cakes, plant pot cakes which were plain vanillia with flower toppers and last but not least my improvised mini banana bread with red currents, in berry cases from Lakeland – these were the vegan option.

I put out my one remaining butterfly food tray with crisps and did my standard plates of sandwiches – a couple of people have asked if we can do cake decorating at the next Creativi Tea which might be fun 🙂

This red nose day I baked red nose cake pops. These are the basic cake pop recipe you get with machine covered in red fondant icing. These were incredibly popular.

I made gluten free vegan rice and banana scones.

Some without icing!

Same recipe was used for the dinosaur cakes – this year red noses were nose-a-saurs so I thought dinosaur cakes would work well.

Recipe will be in a later post. I also made basic cupcakes in red cases.

On the actual Friday I went along to Centre Arts in Cheltenham were they had their own Red Nose Day stuff going on!

This giant cupcake red nose day cake was auctioned for £45 and was made by Vanilla Pod Bakery.

And this fun giant red nose was made by a lady at the centre. With fresh orange juice soaked cherries!

I adapted a minni cupcake recipe from the Hamlyn book 200 mini cupcake recipes. Their recipe is great and involves lemon liqueur mine does not! There’s are also not tennis balls 🙂

I used for the cakes:

250 g of softened goats butter

250 g of caster sugar

250 g of self raising flour

4 eggs

3 table spoons of lemon juice

The rinds of 4 lemons

I blended these all together and put a dollop of cake mix into each cup cake case and placed them onto the middle tray of my preheated over – gas mark 4 for 18 minutes. The mix did 24 cakes which I cooked in two batches after an initially collapsing failure from trying to do multiple batches in the oven like I do when baking biscuits :/

I then popped them onto a cooling rack.

Whilst the first batch was cooling and the second batch was cooking I made the icing.

200 g of softened goats butter

5 table spoons of lemon curd

2 table spoons of lemon juice

I mixed these together and just kept adding icing sugar until in was a nice spreadable consistency.

I put a splotch on the top of each cake and spread it.

I then added bright yellow sugar crystals to the top (I bought these in Sainsbury’s).

I then mixed a little more icing sugar into the left over icing so that it would be a bit stiffer for pipping. I snipped the tip off of a disposable icing bag and filled it with the mix. I then pipped two curves on each cake to represent the white lines on a tennis ball.

The cakes were mistaken as part of the art display 🙂

I made these cake pops for a competition in the hope of winning some Lakeland goodies but also as a practice as I want to hold a Creativi-Tea which will be a little garden party with knitting and poetry and the like. The cake cases came from Lakeland and are silicon and therefore re-usable though I would actually like to get hold of some paper cases shaped like this made out of the thicker stuff.

My husband baked the cake pops using the vanilla sponge recipe but he put goat butter and milk in instead of cow. I mixed up some royal icing adding green food colouring – I made the icing relatively thick and dipped the cake pops and then put them on the sticks. I then twizzeled them around against the side of the icing bowl to get rid of excess icing. I then began placing the little sugar flowers onto them – these were from a Barbie cake decorating shaker.

I used a damp cloth to whip any icing dripples off of the stick.

The plant pot cup cases I baked a chocolate orange sponge in and left to cool whilst the icing on the cake pops hardened. Once the cakes had cooled I pushed the cake pop sticks into them and added the bow.

It was only a thin shell of royal icing – be aware that it can be very tough on teeth in thicker amounts but as the cake pops are sort of lolly pops anyway I just wanted to see how it worked.