Maxibon Bundt Cake

I'd never even heard of Maxibon bars. You all know I love a bundt shaped challenge, but when my friend Wayne suggested an ice cream bar themed birthday cake, I had to do a bit of research. This involved a trip to my local Tesco, purchasing a box, and eating two in my lab coat (read pyjamas) to check for flavour, consistency and aesthetic. I saw my challenge, and accepted it.

It comprises of rich vanilla ice cream with chocolate chips, half drenched in chocolate with hazelnuts, the other half with Maxibon biscuits. Easy gig. The melted ice cream bar will help transform your cake from a vanilla sponge, to actually tasting like the genuine article, so don't skip this. This is bundt alchemy, bakers. Embrace it, Snape would be so proud.

Needless to say that this cake got a bit of a laugh as well as destroyed. Mission accomplished!

Ingredients:

• 225g butter
• 450g golden caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 350g Homepride plain flour
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200ml vanilla yoghurt 
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 200g chocolate chips
• Two Maxibon bars, biscuits removed and ice cream melted

To decorate:

• 1 jar chocolate spread (not Hazelnut)
• 100g finely chopped hazelnuts
• Biscuits from your melted Maxibons (I used more...)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to gas 3/160 c
2. Prepare a regular sized bundt tin - 2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch with Cake Release spray/melted butter, and dust with flour. 
3. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
5. In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and chocolate chips.
6. Pour the yoghurt and vanilla extract into a jug.
7. Sift in a third of the flour mix followed by half the yoghurt. Repeat this until everything is combined.
8. Tip in the chocolate chips which are now covered in flour, which will stop them from sinking like stones!
9. Stir in the melted Maxibons.
10. Give everything a quick mix on a low speed for about 10 seconds.
11. Tip your batter into your prepared bundt tin.
12. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 
13. Leave the cake to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin.
14. When the cake is fully cool, melt your chocolate spread in the microwave until it's quite runny.
15. Stir in the chopped hazelnuts.
16. Tip over the cake.
17. Decorate with your Maxibon biscuits, and bits of the box if you so please!

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and basic recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page.

Wedding Bundt Cake

When the going gets tough, some people turn out to be utter angels and restore your faith in humanity. Enter Nicola. I barely know her, yet her kind words have been a real comfort to me when I felt at my lowest. She's a little firecracker whose positivity is truly infectious. She reminded me that choosing happiness really is the best way, and that negativity has no place in my life.

Well she was getting hitched. There was only one thing for it. Nicola is a designer, a lover of hip hop, uses words I don't understand, and is generally down with the kids in every fashion. It had to be the naffest of all wedding inspired cakes; I'm talking feathers, fake rings, pearls, glitter, silver balls, a garter, and those God-awful kitsch decorations that can still be sourced in 70s friendly cake decorating shops. Unfortunately, most folk through it was pretty! Oh, and it was made using her favourite beer. Obvs.

I hatched a plan with my pals Katey and Rick to surprise little Noo on her last day in work before the big day. Needless to say she was over the moon with her cake, which made me a happy little bundt baker. Bundts happen to good people...

Pics shamelessly stolen from Instagram @Noo_Law

Ingredients

• 225g unsalted butter
• 100g of vegetable fat 
• 550g golden caster sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 6 medium eggs
• 450g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 250ml Heart and Soul Session IPA (or lemonade, or anything else fizzy for that matter)
• Still tropical water (not essential, but will bring out the tropical flavours in the hops)
• 300g icing sugar
• The naffest of sprinkles and decorations.

Method

1. Grease and flour a regular sized bundt tin (2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch). 
2. Soften the butter and vegetable fat and then cream in the sugar in stages.
3. Add the eggs one at a time on a slow setting.
4. Add all the remaining dry ingredients to a large bowl.
5. Sift in 1/3 of the dry ingredients, followed by 1/2 of the liquid. Repeat until all the flour and liquid is used up. Fold it in gently...
6. Tip: at this stage it will look a horror. Do not worry... 
7. Give the whole thing a quick mix for about 10 seconds or until well combined. Tah dah!
8. Spoon the mix into the tin.
9. Bake at gas 3/160 C for about an hour and a half. Just turn it after about an hour.
10. It should be shrinking from the sides and a skewer should come out clean.
11. Let it cool in the tin for ten minutes then turn it out. 
12. Allow to cool fully before icing. 
13. Mix the icing sugar with the flavoured water, so that it's a thick, yet pourable texture. 
14. Tip it over the cake with the same frivolity as tossing a bouquet! Same goes - try not to hit anyone.
15. Sprinkle with as much naffness as you can get your hands on.

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and basic recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page.

Amaretto and Lemon Birthday Bundt

The more posts I write about my friends, the more I realise that none of us are a full shilling, as my grandad would say.

Understated, shy, quiet, beige... said nobody ever about Anna. She's my kind of odd lad; she has lilac hair, a plethora of brightly coloured tattoos, and she's probably the most enthusiastic Zumba teacher you will ever meet. Oh, and I really like the way she says fluf-eee in a Swedish accent. She's actually Swedish, not a weirdo. Well, she is a weirdo, but for totally different reasons.

It was her birthday recently. She's been a bloody diamond with me recently, and always seems to know the appropriate action to take; sometimes it's an emergency kitten GIF at 11:30pm, or a slab of cake delivered to my desk, with no words, just a look*.

Partial to a splash of Amaretto, I decided to do an almond and lemon flavoured cake, laced with Anna's favourite tipple. Any cake where you add ground almonds ends up being moist and slightly heavy in weight, yet strangely light in texture. I needed something a bit sturdy to hold the weight of all the glittery, sugary stuff I topped it with!

Not cutting the cake at work made Anna the most unpopular person since the fool who 'parked in the god damn barrier' incident of 2015. Does Anna strike you as someone who cares? Absolutely not. She skipped out of that office, and even managed not to get the kids drunk off icing. Winning.

Stole this right of her Facebook, I did.

Ingredients:

• 225g butter
• 450g golden caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 330g Homepride plain flour
• 25g ground almonds
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200ml lemon yoghurt 
• 2 tbsp vanilla extract
• 5 tbsp Amaretto

To decorate:

• Everything.

Method:

• Preheat the oven to gas 3/160 c
• Prepare a regular sized bundt tin - 2.4l, 10 cup, 10 inch with Cake Release spray/melted butter, and dust with flour. 
• Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. 
• In a separate bowl, measure out the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
• Pour the yoghurt, vanilla extract and Amaretto into a jug.
• Sift in a third of the flour mix followed by half the yoghurt. Repeat this until everything is combined.
• Give everything a quick mix on a low speed for about 10 seconds.
• Tip your batter into your prepared bundt tin.
• Bake in the centre of the oven for about 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 
• Leave the cake to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin.
• When the cake is fully cool, decorate however pleases you. I made my icing out of icing sugar mixed with Amaretto, and threw the party aisle of Tesco at it... 

* The look meaning, I couldn't give three shits about your gym plan, you need cake. Eat it. Now.

Bloggers: Please respect the fact I am sharing my own ideas and basic recipe. Blood, sweat and many tears have gone into getting this right, so you may enjoy a perfect bundt. If you wish to re-blog a recipe from these variations, please credit my blog and link to this original post rather than pasting the recipe on your own page.