Jaffa Cakes

I love baking, but mostly I stick to tried and tested recipes that I know will work.

However, last week, for no reason whatsoever, I decided I wanted to make Jaffa Cakes.

It took me a few days (due to laziness more than anything) to get all the ingredients and I started making them the other night. I used Good Food's recipe and it was pretty easy (to start with - read on...). They took a while to make, but not because they were difficult, simply because everything needs time to cool down (cakes) and set (jelly).

The batter is a little unfamiliar to me and probably needs a bit of work after my first attempt, but it was perfectly edible. For 12 cakes, you should place a bowl over a pan of simmering water and mix in 2 eggs, 2oz plain flour and 2oz caster sugar until you have a thick but light batter. This took around 5 minutes for me, but I need to do some research into this as maybe I should have stooped sooner or carried on for longer. As I said, the cakes weren't quite right.

Then, you simply grease a muffin tray and scoop the batter into the holes, leaving them in the oven for 8-10 minutes, before letting them cool.

While they're in the oven, you can make the yummy orange jelly using a normal sized pack of jelly as well as a tablespoon of orange marmalade and boiling water. According to Good Food's recipe, you need 125ml of water, however, I found that this wasn't enough to melt the jelly so added a bit more, as well as a bit more marmalade - it tasted good to me, but the consistency was a little wobblier than your usual Jaffa Cakes.

Then comes the waiting. The cakes need to cool and the jelly needs to set. Next time, I'd probably make the jelly the night before - save waiting around.

After everything is cool and set, you need to cut the jelly into 12 small circles, slightly smaller than the cakes themselves.


Then, came the mess. Oh the chocolatey messy mess.

In hindsight, simply placing a sheet of baking paper on the worktop before pouring the chocolate over the cakes, would have made life a lot easier. Ah well, I learnt my lesson.

They weren't pretty but boy they were good!

After chatting with colleagues about this mess, one of them came up with an amazing solution, something that should get these to look better. Next time I plan to set the jelly in a muffin tray, so that the jelly is already in 12 perfect circles. I also, plan to leave the cakes in the tin to cool, so that when I pour over the chocolate, I should hopefully get a better finish as the chocolate won't dribble down everywhere. Clever ay?


I haven't tried this yet though, so if you have any tips - let me know. I can't wait to have a go at them again.

Yummy mini sausage rolls

So, this weekend my Other Half asked me to make my homemade sausage rolls - one of his favourite snacks.

And I gladly spent a beautiful Sunday morning making my own pastry before making the sausage rolls - so tasty, even if I do say so myself.

Believe it nor not, I'm still using the pastry recipe from when I was 12 years old in cookery class in secondary school - and I honestly can't see myself ever using another recipe, or buying shop-bought, well unless I'm completely desperate for time!

This pastry recipe is quick, easy and doesn't require many ingredients - 200g of plain flour (plus extra for when you're rolling the pastry), 75g of lard, 75g of margarine, one egg and some cold water - straight from the tap.

Start off by placing the flour in a bowl. Mix the lard and margarine together and cut into four equal portions. Add the first portion to the flour and mix in with the tips of your fingers.

Now, add 8 tablespoons of cold water and use a knife to bring the mixture together - it should be sticky but easy enough to get of the bowl.

Place on a floured surface and roll out. Using the second portion of the lard/margarine mix, cut into small pieces and place over 2/3rd of the dough, fold the top 3rd into the middle, and he bottom third on top of that - this sounds so complicated, but it's actually very easy. There's no exact science to this - you just need layers!

Place the dough in the fridge for half an hour. Bring it out, roll again and do the same with the 3rd and 4th portions. And after using up all the lard/margarine, place the dough in the freezer for an hour - it won't freeze, it'll just become very cold.

At this point I normally make around 14 sausage rolls with half the dough, and leave the other half in the fridge or freezer for when I fancy making some eccles cakes - another of the Other Half's favourites.

Now, roll out the cold dough on a floured surface so that it's the thickness of a 50p piece, or thereabouts. Using a knife, score the dough so that you have around 14 (or 28 if using all the dough) strips. 

Brush some egg one one end of every strip and place a small ball of sausage meat on the other - you can add salt, pepper and thyme (or whatever you fancy!) at this point.

Then, fold one end of the strip over the other and, using your fingers, squish the dough together so that the meat is sealed inside.

After doing this to each strip, place in the fridge for another half an hour.

After half an hour, score the tops of each sausage roll with a knife and brush some egg over each one before placing in the oven for 30 minutes - or until they look oh so good and brown.

And finally, dig in - yum!

And these are the sausage rolls and eccles cakes from Christmas