Quick and Easy Honeycomb

Who does not love honeycomb, (or cinder toffee, whatever your preference is)? I love it, crumbled into yogurt, on ice cream, on brownies, and so much more!

This recipe is a simple five minute recipe, that needs 3 ingredients, (of which most people will have in their possession) and tastes delightful. Oh, and keeps, for ages (if it can last that long!)

This is a Nigella Lawson recipe, and I have to share it with you. I use this all the time.

Ingredients
100g caster sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda.

Now, you need to grease some foil, or use some greaseproof paper. You may find it easy to line a tin so the mixture cannot escape once poured out, especially since we are talking about melted sugar, or LAVA as I like to call it!

Pop all of your ingredients in the pan. Before you turn the heat on, mix your ingredients. You do not mix these ingredients while the heat is on, so now is your chance to.

Now, turn the heat on, and wait (without stirring) until your mixture is fully melted and is bubbling away nicely. This takes around 3 minutes. It should be this colour:

Now for the bit that I think is truly magical, adding the bicarbonate of soda.  Take the mixture off the heat, mix in the bicarb of soda, which turns the mixture light and airy and lovely, and then turn straight out into your greased foil/baking paper.

Now leave to set. I like to leave mine out for 10-15 minutes then put it in the fridge for an hour or so, but this is up to you.

When it has completely set, simply peel from the lining, bash it with a rolling pin, and either eat straight away, or put in an airtight container.

Enjoy making this, I know I do, every single time!

Red Velvet Cake with Simple Rose Buttercream

The Red Velvet Cake. This cake is a very, very simple cake to make. You can half the recipe to make approx. 10 cupcakes, but I think of the Red Velvet as a cake.

Now, this is my beautiful cousin Hollie in the picture here. She has recently graduated from a University in London, and so has missed out on a huge number of cake opportunities which my family are very much used to (you would think they would be sick of cake by now to be honest!). I have promised her a cake since April, and I finally got round to making one this week for her.

Now, normally when I make a cake, I do like to make it the day before, crumb coat and then finish and serve the following day. I had no such luxury when making this cake as I simply did not have the time. I had two hours from start to finish. I also whipped up a thai red curry and chicken satay sticks from scratch while this beauty was in the oven, I feel like I should have won an award! If I had more time, I would have crumb coated, and took more time over the piping to make it symmetrical, but the point of this blog post is to show you how to make a pleasing and very tasty cake in a small time frame.

Also, you will notice I used vanilla buttercream for this cake. This is because I think it tastes better. I find cream cheese frostings work best with fruit based cakes, like blueberry cupcakes, and cheesecake cupcakes (see previous recipes). But you can use a cream cheese frosting if you prefer.

Ingredients
 130g unsalted butter, at room temperature
300g caster sugar
2 eggs
25g cocoa powder
1 big blob (1tsp heaped) of a red food colour paste (I used sugarflair, available from here).
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
300ml buttercream (or full fat milk with 2 tbsp. white wine vinegar, leave to stand for five minutes and stir before pouring)
300g plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
3 teaspoons white wine vinegar

Buttercream
500g unsalted butter, room temperature
1000g icing sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract (no more, this is a red velvet cake, we just want a hint of vanilla)
3 tablespoons full fat milk

Method

First thing is first, line the bottom of 3 x 7" cake tins with greaseproof paper and butter the sides of your tins.  Now turn your oven to 170 degrees c, 150 fan or Gas Mark 3.

Using bowl and whisk, electric whisk or freestanding mixer (this can be done any way) cream together the butter and sugar until it becomes pale and fluffy, now add your eggs in 1 at a time, and mix.

Now add your cocoa, vanilla and red food colouring and mix again. You will now see the red come through. Now all you need to do is add your buttermilk and flour, adding a bit of each and mixing inbetween until it is all incorporated and evenly combined.

Now add your salt, followed by the bicarb of soda, and then the vinegar and stir. The mixture makes a slight fizz when the vinegar goes in, as it should!

You will now hopefully have a mixture that looks like this:

Now just pour the batter into the cake tins, as evenly as you can and bake for 30 minutes or until the sponge bounces back when lightly pressed. Take out and leave to cool slightly for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack and leaving to cool completely.

While these cool, you can set about making your buttercream.

My top tip, using your room temperature butter (leave out for 24 hours if possible) you want to beat this until it is as pale as you can get it. The better quality the butter, the paler it will go, but whatever your butter is, try to get this nice and pale. I use my freestanding whisk for this and beat the butter for about five minutes. This will make your buttercream much more white.

Simply beat your butter until pale, add your vanilla and then your icing sugar, a little bit at a time, loosening with the milk, which you also add bit by bit (you may feel like you do not need to use as much, it is up to you).

Now to make your cake.

I always put a little butter cream on the bottom of the cake board so that the sponge won't move.

Pop your first sponge on the cakeboard, and then, using a spatula or palette knife, spread a nice thing but even layer of butter cream. Follow this with your second sponge, another thin layer, and then your third sponge on top. Like so:

Sorry for the awful picture, I was in a bit of a rush!

Now for piping the roses. These are so easy to do, and they look so beautiful. A little bit of practice and you will have them down to a T. And what a perfect thing to practice on!

You will need an open star nozzle and piping bag. You can find these all on my website, here.

Now, fill your piping bag. You can keep topping it up, so do not worry about putting all your buttercream in here.

I use a tilted turn table to make my piping easier, but it isn't necessary. Starting from the bottom of the second layer of sponge, you need to pipe your first rose.  You start from the inside out. Simply start piping and turn your nozzle around clockwise keeping an even pressure, and then gently pull the piping nozzle away when you have made your final swirl.

 

Do this all over the sides of the cake and then do the top. Do not worry if you have any gaps, I had plenty. At the end just go over and fill these with the leftover buttercream in the bag.
 
Now, time to impress your guests