Having Fun With Simple Cake Pops !

I've got a lot of blog catching up to do !

The last few weeks have been really tough with a horrendous work load, but finally the new website at www.siliconemoulds.com is live. It went online yesterday afternoon.

Though not yet complete, it's functional and up and running with a lot of new features. I need to continue to work on it, so missing images etc will be appearing over the course of the next week or so as I get them all added. Once it's completed, I can then start to add some more new stuff which I might decide to tease you all with on the blog first.

Well - I decided to have a play at some cake pops a few weeks ago. Actually - I couldn't have told you HOW long ago it was until I took a look at the youtube upload date - so I can only guess it was around 3rd March.

I used this silicone bakeware mould - our 15 cell semi sphere which is only £4.25 and will easily roll up and store in a kitchen drawer.

My intention had been to made a standard sponge mix ( 175g each of butter, self raising flour, sugar and 3 whole eggs), but I'd made macarons a day or so before and had 5 yolks sitting in the fridge. Instead, I used 1 whole egg  plus 5 yolks and some milk to loosen it up a bit.

Worked really well and made a really rich cake.

Typically, it was a project I STARTED at almost 3am, and also created a dodgy YouTube video of the process which you can view further down.

Just the thing for two little friends on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Oliver and Zach adored these ones with coloured chocolate beans. I'd taken a plain coated cake pop and stuck the beans on with little dots of extra candy melt. Made for enormous cake pops and took them an eternity to pick (and eat) all those chocolate beans !

A very late night making cake pops at an unsociable hour made every minute worthwhile when these two got their hands on the goodies. There was a lot of excitement and shrieking !

Hmm - you get the idea. It worked really well, but the lighting was dire with these low energy lightbulbs and videoing yourself never works very well ....

Sarah-Jane Nash - www.siliconemoulds.com

Haggis Bon Bons - Party Food / Canapes

Thought I'd share some of the party food from today with you all.

These are Haggis Bon Bons. Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish made from sheep offal mixed with spices, oatmeal and onion. It's really really tasty - but due to being made from offal, many people write it off before tasting for some reason.

Haggis can be pretty hard to get hold of here in England - though it is starting to appear in the shops from about now until January (when Scots celebrate Robert Burns who was a very well known poet of bygone years). I didn't actually buy haggis on this occassion, I received a massive box from my dad earlier in the week containing black pudding, lorne sausage and haggis. Most of it is now in the freezer.

Haggis Bon Bons are ideal party finger food and very easy to make.

Take some uncooked haggis and roll into approx 1" diameter balls.

Roll the balls in flour and then in beaten egg before coating in breadcrumbs.

I make my own bread crumbs with the halogen oven by cooking slices of bread at a low temperature for quite some time to dry it out but also keep it pale. After cooling, I then blitz this with my Bamix into fine crumbs.

After making the balls, refridgerate until required. Shortly before you need them, heat some oil about 1/3 deep in a pan. Drop in the balls and fry until golden (about 5 mins)

If you want to make these several hours in advance to save messing around with oil later - you can deep fry and then set aside.  Pop on the baking tray into your halogen oven on top rack at about 200deg C for about 5 mins to reheat. They'll take at least 10mins plus preheating in a normal fan oven.

They freeze well too after coating with the breadcrumbs - so easy preprepared party food !