Recipe of the week - Strawberry Cake {Gluten Free & Dairy Free}

It is a well known fact in our house that there is one boy who just does not enjoy eating fruits. At a push he will eat an apple but that's about it. While we all enjoy lovely fresh berries in the summer he refuses to eat any. He won't eat dried fruit either.

 

However, he will eat this cake. Even if he does pick the strawberry decoration off the top of his slice!

 

It's such a lovely summery looking cake to make and the strawberries give the sponge a nice natural pink colour.

 

It is a great cake for in the summer when berries are in such abundance, but equally good just now when berries are no longer as sweet for eating on their own. And for when the clocks have gone back and you want just one more wee reminder of summer.

To make this with 'normal' non-allergy-free ingredients you don't need to adjust any of the quantities.

You will need:

for the cakes:

about 125g fresh strawberries

225g sugar

210g Doves Farm Wheat-Free Self Raising Flour

1 tsp baking powder

25g cornflour

225g dairy free margarine

4 eggs

for the butter-icing:

100g dairy free margarine

300g icing sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

~Put the strawberries in a food processor and blitz until you have quite small chunks. Not quite a smooth purée.

~Now simply add all of the other cake ingredients into a food mixer and beat well until everything is combined and it looks nice and light.

~Spoon into 3 greased and base lined 8 inch sandwich tins and bake at 180C for about 20-25 minutes.

~ To make the icing just add the icing ingredients to your mixer and beat well until you have a smooth icing. You might need to add a splash or two of your dairy free milk of choice to help it come together.

~When the cakes are cool, spread or pipe on some vanilla butter icing then decorate as you wish.

Speaking of summer memories.......

 

I'm a big fan of autumn and winter but this summer will be hard to beat!

 

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Happy 1st Birthday Sweet Boy

Yesterday we celebrated Fraser's first birthday

The boys were so excited about it being his birthday. Alasdair (5) was especially so.

The night before, Alasdair asked me if Fraser would be much bigger on his birthday. I asked him if he was much bigger on his birthdays and he said he wasn't really. Then he thought for a bit and said that he hoped that Fraser would still have the same cute face when he was one.

Yesterday morning as I woke Alasdair I asked him what day it was.

'Um, Diluain?' he answered sleepily. He was only a day out. Diluain is the Gaelic for Monday.

I told him it was actually Dimairt (Tuesday) and asked if he remembered what special day it was.

He sat upright, so excited, and said to Fraser, 'it's your birthday today and you get an age now!'

The birthday boy enjoyed ripping the wrapping off his presents.

Fraser has never had cake before. He still doesn't like lumpy foods. I made a cake that would be suitable for him so he could try some anyway. Just in case it was the day of a breakthrough. It wasn't, but we all enjoyed the cake. There is still some left to try him again tomorrow. Just in case.

Although his brothers that have egg allergies are able to eat egg fine in cakes & biscuits, I didn't want to test out whether this was the case with Fraser on his birthday and so I made the cake wheat free, dairy free, soya free, nut free and egg free.

It was my first time adapting a cake to be egg free and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out!

James (14) was determined that we should do a cake smash for Fraser. I wasn't concerned about the mess as much as the state the eczema on Fraser's hands would be like afterwards. It doesn't matter what he gets on his hands it will make them itch. If any of his food goes on them he will start to scratch and nearly every dinner time ends with him clawing away at his hands. Fortunately by the time he gets upstairs to his bath he has forgotten about the itch.

Since he wasn't getting a cake smash, James did let Fraser stick his fingers in the icing of his cake, as he was the one in charge of looking after Fraser while dad and I were on the other side of the table taking photos! As usual his hands were sore and itchy after his little bit of fun, but as usual his bath soon stopped the scratching.

And to finish with, as I always do with a birthday post, here is the cake and the singing of Happy Birthday.

May this be the first of many happy birthdays for our delightful, sweet natured littlest boy.

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Make it Monday - Crochet & Cakes

Now doesn't that sound like a lovely way to spend an afternoon or an evening?

The crochet and cakes don't come together though, rather they are two (actually three) separate makes from last week.

Firstly the crochet.

I was on a bit of a roll with the granny squares this week. In order to get the baby blanket finished as quickly as I could (there are just under 2 weeks left now until our official D-Day, although like I've probably said 100 times before, I have always gone over and expect to do so again), I decided to stick to a basic Granny Square and not do the one with the little sunflower-like shape in the middle like I did for Alasdair's blanket.

Boy did I notice a difference in the speed these ones worked up! I started last Monday and finished it on Saturday, and had just enough of the wool from Alasdair's blanket left over to make it.

Obviously the fact that it is about a quarter of the size of Alasdair's helped me finish it quicker but even so, by my calculations it would take me a month to make a blanket the size of Alasdair's using these types of squares, not the three months it took me to make his.

Here are the two blankets side by side for size comparisons.

Now, onto the cake(s).

Last week our little crofter turned 11. He was supremely chuffed to get a tweed jacket as one of his presents!

He was also very happy that my mum and dad were down for a very brief visit during the week as my dad had some meetings to attend in Edinburgh, which meant that Granny could come to his birthday tea. Shen was unfortunately too busy with his meetings that night. 

I baked the cake, in my giant cupcake mould, for the birthday tea and then largely left the decor up to James (13) and David (7). The result was this rather space age looking cake, which Calum loved.

Then, as is often the tradition with the older boys on the weekend before or after their birthdays, Calum had his best friend round for a sleepover on Friday night. Of course we had to have a cake for him coming too!

At his point, being almost 38 weeks pregnant, I did wish for a moment that we could just nip out to the supermarket and buy a cake for him, but of course no supermarkets do Gluten & Dairy Free decorated birthday cakes so it wasn't an option.

Thankfully I have a 13 year old who loves to decorate cakes and wanted to make it. All I had to do was bake the basic cake and then the rest was up to him. He asked me to bake a square cake and then he carved it into the shape and decorated it. He even coloured the icing black himself, which took some time and left his hands rather stained!

The cake he decided to make was a camera cake, as Calum still loves photography.

The only trouble with all that black icing was that it turned a few tongues black!

Calum has been busy taking some really good autumnal photos with the camera he got last year for his birthday but they need a post of their own so I'll share them with you all tomorrow. 

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Recipe of the Week - Secret Heart Cake (Gluten & Dairy Free)

If the way to a man's heart is truly through his stomach, then making him this cake for Valentine's Day is definitely a step in the right direction!

I saw an idea for a similar cake online at Christmas time, with a Christmas shape running through it, and thought that any other shape would work just as well. Valentines day seemed like a good excuse to try it out, using a love heart shape.

I'm more than a little pleased with how it turned out!

You will need to set aside a couple of hours to make this cake, although it isn't really all that labour intensive. A lot of the time is taken up with the cake baking in the oven so you can go ahead and do something else.

You could make this up using any loaf cake recipe, like a Madeira Cake, but I used my Lemon Loaf recipe, which is what I'm going to share with you here.

You need to make double the amount of mix that you would make for your usual loaf cake recipe, so if you are wanting to make just the one Lemon Loaf rather than the heart cake, then simply half the amounts below.

You will need:

8oz dairy free margarine

10oz sugar

2 eggs

1 cup of soya milk (or other dairy free milk)

16oz Doves Farm Gluten Free Self Raising Flour

rind of a lemon

pink food colouring

for the topping:

juice of the lemon

3-4 tbsp sugar

you will also need a lined loaf tin and a heart shaped cutter.

Part One

~Beat the margarine and sugar well in a mixer, or with a hand held mixer, until it looks light and fluffy.

~ Meanwhile beat the eggs & the milk together then mix the flour & the lemon rind together.

~Add a little of the egg mix to the butter/sugar mix, beat well and then add a little of the flour mix, beating well again.

~Keep alternating a little of each of the two mixes until everything is mixed together.

~Take about half of the finished mix and add to another bowl.

~You now have two equal bowls of lemon loaf mix.

~To one of these bowls add the pink food colouring and mix well.

~ Pour your pink mix into your lined loaf tin and bake at about 190C for around an hour. You might want to check it after about 50 minutes though, depending on your oven. When it's ready, allow to cool on a wire rack for about half an hour or so.

Part Two

~Once your pink mix is cooled enough to handle, slice it up as though you were going to serve it. 

~Take your heart shaped cutter and cut a heart out of the middle of each slice.

~Re-line your loaf tin and add a small layer of the plain coloured loaf mix to the bottom.

~One by one, add the hearts, standing upright on their points, in a line until the tin is full.

~Use the rest of your plain mix and fill in the gaps down the side of the tin and then cover the top too.

~Put back in the oven, this time for about 30-40 minutes. It will be nice and golden on the top and a skewer stuck in the side (not in the middle because remember the middle bit is already cooked!) will come out clean.

~When you take the cake out of the oven, mix together the topping ingredients and drizzle over the top of the warm cake.

~Cool down again on a wire rack.

~Best served with a nice cup of tea and your true love!

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Cookbooks

Did I mention that I got some new cookbooks for my birthday?

I did? Several times?

Well, ok, yes I did. These are the books....

I do love a good cookbook, reading through it and taking notes about what I want to make next.

The bottom left book is where I got the inspiration for last week's Recipe of the Week (see here if you missed it)

With the top book in the photo, I think I might just start at the beginning and try out every single recipe. They all look so good! It's all about breads, which is something I'm not so used to making. My homemade bread comes courtesy of the bread maker - sacrilege to Mr Hollywood, I fear! Using his fine book though, I feel sure to conquer the challenge. It's full of step by step guides, plenty of photos and loads of advice.

I've not been the only one enjoying the books. The birthday boy, a huge British Bakeoff fan, loves looking through them.

This is how I found him the other day.....

Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way I can adapt those two breads he is looking at to make them gluten and dairy free so that he can try them!

 

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Recipe of the week - Chequerboard Cake (Gluten & Dairy Free)

Well, after far too long an absence it's time to return to the Recipe of the Week again. And what a fancy looking recipe to return with, although not at all tricky to make!

My brother got a new job last week and it seemed the perfect excuse to try out this cake. It's very much a congratulations-on-your-new-job type of cake. Or any other sort of reason to celebrate sort of cake. 

The fun part of the cake is that it looks like an ordinary chocolate cake until you slice it open and reveal...

..a real 'ta-da' moment inside. 

Doesn't that look fancy? Like it took you hours to make? Not at all though.

The idea came from one of my new birthday cookbooks, the new Great British Bake-off book (How to turn your everyday bakes into a showstopper, or something similar) Anyone else loving the new series? It's not just me though, the boys are big fans too!

Anyway, I saw this cake in there but of course wanted to make it gluten and dairy free so I used my trusty old Victoria Sponge recipe. But doubled.

Here's how you do it.....

You will need;

12oz sugar

12oz dairy free margarine

12oz Doves Farm (or own choice) Gluten Free Self Raising Flour

6 eggs

about 4 tbsp soya milk

2oz cocoa powder

3, 8 inch round sandwich cake tins, greased and base lined

chocolate buttercream icing 

~ Put the sugar, margarine, flour and eggs into a free standing mixer and beat well until it is light and fluffy. Add the milk and then mix again until it is all mixed together.

~Once you have mixed up your basic sponge, put half of the mix into a different bowl. To this bowl you add the cocoa powder.

~Now put the chocolate mix into one piping bag and the plain mix into another. I use disposable piping bags and just snipped the end off them both but didn't add a piping nozzle. I didn't have two nozzles the same size you see!

~Pipe a circle of chocolate mix around the outside of one of the tins. Now pipe a circle of the plain mix just inside this. Follow this with another chocolate one and finish with a blob of plain in the middle. I don't have a photo of the uncooked version, but here is what you are aiming for. The circles don't have to be perfectly neat, as you can see!

~In the other two tins do the opposite pattern, so start with the plain mix in them.

~Bake at about 180C for around 20 minutes, then leave to cool.

~Once the cakes are cool it's time to layer them together. I had planned to make up a batch of chocolate buttercream (which you can find here in my very first ever post!) but we were due for dinner at my brother's house about 10 minutes before and so I just used a tub and a half of good old Betty Crocker icing that I keep in the cupboard for just such an emergency. (Betty Crocker is gluten and dairy free)

~Make sure that the cake you put on the bottom is one of the ones that you have two of. In my case, the one with the plain mix on the outside. Cover with a thinish layer of chocolate icing, add the middle layer (the one with the chocolate on the outside) and cover with another layer of icing and then add the top layer.

~Cover the whole of your cake, sides and all, with chocolate icing so as not to give away the surprise. My sister in law was under the belief that it was a plain old chocolate cake (no bad thing) until the boys all came through to the kitchen after dinner saying 'we want to see the cake being sliced!'

~To add a wee celebratory touch, we finished off the decor with some gold coloured sugar sprinkles.

In case you are wondering how many slices it gives? We got 13 that night. Four adult sized ones and 7 boy sized ones. Not a crumb left over.

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The Birthday Boy

Although we were all sick last week, I was so thankful that the bug hit us when it did and not a few days earlier.

Had it done so, then this little man,

or should I say big man, as he is sure he has grown a few inches since turning six, wouldn't have had such a fun birthday!

He loved the bike. 

It's a touch on the big side for him. I told him it will be the perfect size for him by the time proper cycling weather comes round again, but he is determined it is the proper size for him right now and whenever the weather suits he is out in the back garden trying to master it! 

That pretty much sums up his character.

He loved all of his presents in fact.

This game below is so much fun. I would definitely recommend it if anyone is looking for a game that suits all ages. 

It's the Playdough Potato Head game. 

You have to get your potato, made out of playdough, round the board without getting chopped/sliced up/turned into chips (fries)/crisps (chips).

If you land on one of the squares in the machine, you have to wait nervously and hope that no-one else spins the square that destroys you. Meanwhile everyone else is hoping that they do get that square - well, that's how it goes in out house anyway!

James was my kitchen assistant for the cake. 

He did a marvelous job of colouring the white fondant icing green and then rolling it out. He also piped on the icing, although stopped before doing the name, and added the footballers.

He's a big fan of Ace of Cakes.

To celebrate David's birthday we went with the cousins to Soft Play, out for dinner to the Carvery Restaurant, then back here for cake and another game of Potato Head.

Here are the boys and their cousins with the birthday boy. He is wearing the Scotland football top that he got from his cousins.He loves it so much that he would sleep in it if he could. I almost have to wrestle it off him to get it in the wash!

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