Quick and Easy Carrot Cakes - Recipe and Video Tutorial from SiliconeMoulds.com

I'm not going to kid you on. This is a recipe I have made many many times before. I've even blogged it before (back in 2010). Sometimes I make these little carrot cakes as muffins and other times I make it as one big cake and just cook for a bit longer.

It's moist, tasty and delicious. Not overly sweet - until you smother them with lashings of cool cream cheese frosting. Then you know you've died and gone to heaven....

Generally I try not to repeat recipes on the blog ....... but fact is that we bake favorite recipes on a regular basis. Not everything has to be "new" and I've no shame in reposting this recipe.

However, I DO have something new to share, and that is the new little carrot silicone bakeware mould I've designed. 

You may be asking yourself why on earth I'd want to make a mould that makes it fast and easy to make sugarpaste and chocolate carrots - but these really do look wonderful on top of carrot cakes. 

Hopefully you will also like my Youtube Tutorial showing how to use these. These moulds are a brand new product release and can be found HERE on our website at www.siliconemoulds.com , currently priced at £3.25

Recipe

10oz / 280g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

100ml of fresh orange juice (preferably with "bits")

2 tablespoons honey

5oz / 140g of caster sugar

6oz / 165g carrot finely grated

6oz / 165g carrot coarse grated

100ml vegetable or sunflower oil

3oz / 85grams sultanas or raisins

For the cream cheese icing - I usually just take a good 3 to 4 tablespoons of cream cheese and add as much icing sugar as required to get the right consistency. Start with a little and gradually beat more in with a woden spoon

Put wet ingredients in one bowl and sift dry ingredients into another. Add the two together and stir until just combined.

Butter a 12 hole standard silicone muffin tray if not lining with paper cases. This will generally make 10 big muffins in lined muffin tins or 12 slightly smaller ones if in unlined silicone muffin trays. Where icing with cream cheese frosting, I do like to use muffin cases inside the trays. I don't bother if I'm not icing

Preheat the oven to 180deg C - Fan oven and bake for approx 25 mins

Raspberry, Vanilla and Black Pepper Chocolates - RECIPE and TUTORIAL - Union Jack Flag

These beautiful chocolates were made using our unique, registered design chocolate mould depicting the British Union Jack Flag. This 12 cell silicone mold is available from SiliconeMoulds.com, currently priced at £4.49

In this blog post, I'm going to tell you how to make these chocolates and the pretty handmade chocolate box shown above. For those of you that are avid blog and Facebook followers, we're introducing PROJECT PACKS so you can join in many of our forthcoming creations.

This first project pack will include the BOXER board with scoring tool, double sided tape pen, 9 sheets of pretty Kanban card (two each of the British patterns shown, plus 1 each of 5 colours in polka dot), a sheet of acetate for making aperture windows in chocolate boxes, 100 mini paper cases and union jack silicone chocolate mould.

The goods in this pack would normally cost over £30.00 with UK shipping, but the project pack will be just £23.99 including UK delivery. International shipping options are also available.

 Available to buy HERE

Lets get started !

First of all, you will need some tempered chocolate. I chose to use milk couveture chocolate. Most supermarket chocolate has had most of the cocoa butter content removed and replaced with vegetable oil. It's really not suitable for tempering. Tempering is what gives you that beautiful sheen and snap.

If buying couveture chocolate, two brands I would recommend are Callebaut and Belcolade. If you are just starting out however, you'll find that Lidl's dark chocolate is pretty good and is generally suitable for microwave tempering. Just be sure to chop it up into small pieces.

There is a short video guide to microwave chocolate tempering here (see part 1). I also wrote a blog post about tempering a few months ago.

First of all, take a chocolate mould of your choice (at least 2cm deep). Place it on top of a baking tray and fill all the cells FULL of chocolate. Give the mould (on the tray) a good rap on the counter to help get rid of any air bubbles. Then, pour all of the chocolate back out into the bowl.

You really need both hands to do this ! I was trying to tip it out with one hand and photograph with the other. This made rather a lot of mess !

Using a bench scraper, wall paper scraper or flat spatula, scrape all the excess chocolate off the top surface of the mould. Leave the mould for about 5 mins until the chocolate begins to set, then pop in the fridge for a further 5 minutes to fully harden.

Now, make the chocolate filling. This mix will make enough to fill approx 48 chocolates. You may prefer to scale down the volume. It's a versatile recipe and easily adapted by changing the alcohol to some other liqueur or flavouring

INGREDIENTS

50g butter

12g glucose

350g tempered white chocolate

1 tablespoon Chambord (raspberry liquer)

1/4tsp black pepper

seeds of 1/2 a vanilla pod

First of all, put the room temperature unsalted butter, glucose, pepper and vanilla pod seeds in a bowl. Beat with a hand mixer until light and fluffy.

Change to a wooden spoon and gradually mix in the tempered white chocolate. Once combined, mix in the liquer.

Put this mix into a disposable piping bag. Tie a knot at the top.

Get your moulds back out the fridge, and pipe filling into the chocolate shells. It's very important that the shells are not over full. You need at least 3mm of space above the filling to be able to cap them off with chocolate after filling !

After capping with chocolate, pop into the fridge for 10 mins to fully set up. Remove (wearing gloves - so not to put fingerprints on your chocolates.

TO MAKE THE BOX

Take your boxing board. One side has metric measurements and the other side is inches. For this box, I used the metric side.

Turn the board so the end that says BOX LID is facing the top.

Take a sheet of A4 stock card and score it  using your scoring tool (with the card portrait and on the reverse) at 11cm. 

You need to do this twice and cut two pieces of card to 215mm x 110mm. Note - these pieces of card need to be IDENTICAL in size although they do not have to be the same pattern. 

Choose which piece you are going to use for the lid, and which piece for the base. That needs to be decided now !

Score the lid at the 2.5cm marking on all four sides (right round) - then ROTATE the board and do the same for the base. If you don't turn the board round, you'll end up with two lids that will not fit together.

Where the folds cross over, cut some small V's out. These will create the box flaps. Do this on both top and base pieces.

If you want an aperture / window in the box, measure 1cm down from the fold at the narrow end of the box and cut out a piece 40mm wide x 45mm deep.

If using a coloured card (ie not cream or white), take a felt marker and run this over the cut edge for the aperture. This is not essential, but does really neaten up the finished box.

Cut a piece of acetate a little bigger than the window in the box. 

Use the mouse pen on the card, and put a line of double sided sticky tape close around the window. Press on the acetate.

Fold the sides for the box. Use the mouse glue pen on the front side corners of the box to apply the sticky tape and then press to hold the corners in place

That's it ! Place 5 chocolates in mini paper cases into each box and it's done :-)

Quick, simple and easy ....

Happy Box Making !

Sarah-Jane Nash - SiliconeMoulds.com - April 2013

PLEASE Mummy - just one more !

Maple and Walnut Fudge - It's Quick and Easy !

I've blogged my fudge recipe a few times before - it's quick, easy and very versatile. Just change a few small things and you can create any flavour you wish. I promise - this is far nicer than shop bought fudge.

It keeps a fair amount of time too - 2 > 3 weeks in a tupperware box in the fridge. I've never tried not refrigerating it - so no idea if it will survive non refrigerated for more than a few days.

The main thing is : DON'T FORGET TO STIR ! You do need to stir this stuff constantly or it will burn on the bottom of the pan in the blink of an eye.... 

INGREDIENTS

2 cups (250ml liquid volume) of sugar

1/2 cup of evaporated milk

125g salted butter (or unsalted plus a pinch of salt)

1/4 cup of maple syrup 

100g of marshmallows

125g white chocolate (chopped)

1/2 cup of chopped "add-ins" (in this case walnuts) - plus extra for the top

Put the sugar, evaporated milk, maple syrup, butter and marshmallows in a large heavy based pan. Do make sure it is a large pan - and preferably non stick - as this stuff can and will bubble volcanically ! There is nothing worse than getting hot sugar on your skin - it can inflict some rather serious burns.

Bring slowly to a rolling boil. As soon as a gentle rolling boil is achieved, time for 5 minutes.

Stir constantly - there will be some carmelized brown bits come to the surface. This will not appear in the finished product. If you stop stirring, it will catch and burn however.

As soon as the 5 minutes of boiling is up, stir in the chocolate and add ins until the chocolate is melted.

Immediately pour into a 9" square silicone bakeware pan or alternatively a 12 sponge finger mould as I used in the video and put some extra walnuts on top.

Leave to cool before slicing.

For other variations, try milk or dark chocolate, 3/4 cup of evaporated milk plus some vanilla, rosewater or other flavour extract. For alcoholic versions - use 1/2 cup of evaporated milk and 1/4 cup of alcohol (ie Bailey's, Malibu, Whisky, Cointreau, etc). For add-ins..... pretty much any dried fruit and nuts work, broken cookies, candy / sweets such as maltesers, m&m's etc.

Have fun creating and let me know what combinations you make !

Sarah-Jane Nash, www.siliconemoulds.com - September 2012

Crazy Candy Cane Macaron Shells ( advanced - method )

I admit it. I'm a macaron (not macaroon) addict. It's more so the process of making them than eating them to be fair. Saying that, those blueberry and lemon ones and the chocolate and coconut macarons take some beating and are truly delicious.

These were nice. They were minty and creamy and smooth.... and crispy and chewy.... and I didn't want to share them.

Truth be known, it wasn't because I wanted to sit down and eat a whole plate load unlike a few of the others I've previously made. It was just because they were so damn pretty !

I could easily have sat and looked at these and smiled all day long..... that's when you know you're a baking addict.....

They even looked awesome just piped (before baking) on my double sided macaron mat.

The actual macaron recipe was no different from any other macaron shell ingredients.

I used my standard macaron shell recipe and the Italian method as you can find on this earlier blog post, except I used a tsp of peppermint extract instead of orange extract to flavour the shells.

I wanted a candy cane twist effect and it took a little thinking on how to achieve it before I began. 

If you have never made macarons before, start with a basic single colour shell and have a go at this once you've got to grips with the basic method.

HOW TO !

You will need some VIOLET /  PURPLE and RED gel paste food colourings and a cocktail stick. Note that you need the gel paste types and not liquid. I was looking for a near white macaron shell with really red markings.

Well - if you have made plain macarons before with no colouring, you will be well aware that they will turn out a creamy colour at best - and more likely have slightly darker tinged edges. If you cook macarons of any colour at too high a temperature, the  edges will fade or discolour. I've also found that lemon oil extract does that too.

So exactly what did I want Violet / Purple gel paste for ?

Well - the reason is simple. Violet neutralises yellow. That's why old ladies use a purple shampoo to make their hair white.

The almonds have a yellowness to them as do raw egg whites. When you mix up the initial paste for first stage macarons, you will see it's a kind of pale yellow colour. Well - baking that won't make it white will it !

If you add the tiniest tiniest amount of violet gel paste to buttercream icing you can make it white. Don't believe me ? I blogged about it here last summer. It's important only to add a teeny weeny bit at a time, otherwise it gets a greyish hue. That can be counteracted with buttercream by adding a bit more butter.

It's pretty much the same with macarons. Add a tiny tiny bit of violet to the macaron paste and mix it in. Add very very tiny amounts using your cocktail stick at a time and mix each time thoroughly before deciding to add more. Eventually it will just happen. The macaron paste is NOT going to turn white - but it significantly lightens / removes the yellowness by a surprising amount. I'd suggest keeping a 1/2 teaspoon of the original paste aside as a comparison.

When you have colour corrected as much as you dare, continue by making the sugar syrup and then adding this in the normal way to your egg whites - and then folding in to the almond paste. It's going to look pretty much white by this time.

To get the candy cane stripe effect, take a small artists paint brush and  liberally paint stripes of red gel paste inside your piping bag. Don't be scared of the food colouring here. About 5 is right - no more than 6. Make sure you keep the bag open and do not let it close - otherwise the stripes will smudge.

Load the piping bag with the macaronage and pipe out your macarons either on to one of our macaron silicone baking mats (which have a different size of macaron cells on either side) or on to some baking parchment.

You will need to pipe directly from above and not from the side to get this effect.

When you get to the end of the piping bag, wash it out and then repeat the steps for the candy cane effect.

To bake set the oven to 160deg C. Put the macs in for 5 minutes, with the door ajar.  This step cuts out the need to let them sit for 30mins and let a skin form.

After 5 mins, shut the door and turn temperature DOWN to 120deg C. This is a much lower temperature than normal, but helps preserve the colour. You will need to cook your macs for approx 30 mins.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool totally before attempting to remove from the silicone baking sheet. As long as they are properly cooked and cooled, they can be removed very easily from the mat.

Happy Baking and Happy Easter to all !

Chocolate Tempering (and new mould designs !)

There is a knack to making chocolates and chocolate bars. That is, it you want to get the nice snap when you break it, and glossy finish with a smooth texture throughout.. 

Had I known a few simple things much earlier about tempering chocolate, I wouldn't have spent a fortune ruining the stuff !

Some of the many disasters include white mildewy type marks all over the surface (or in patches), crumbly interiors and dull finish.

If you look up chocolate tempering on the net, there are many web pages that tell you how to do this. They all use two classic methods. 

The one for best results includes pouring chocolate on to a piece of marble, scraping it back and forward to cool it and then back into a bowl before pouring into moulds.  I'll tell you now that this seemed like too messy and too much effort. I would also have needed to invest in a big lump of marble. There is so much "stuff" in my little kitchen at the moment that I have nowhere near enough storage space as it is. I therefore admit that this method was instantly put on the sideline....

The second method is called SEEDING. It seems to be the simplest and will give great results - as long as you get it right....

This is one of our new chocolate bar moulds. It's now a registered design and due to launch in about 4 weeks.

I've fallen in love with these chocolate bar moulds - which we have available in two different sizes. This one makes finished chocolate bars of 70g or thereabouts (depending on what fruit / nuts / sweets you decide to use for decoration - if any).

Here is the larger 3 cell chocolate bar mould which produces a chocolate bar with approximate weight of 100g (mine ranged from 95 to 120g depending if they had extra additions or not).

Simply wrap in cellophane and tie with ribbon - or make a pretty box / card sleeve - they make such a stunning  home made gift.

For moulding your chocolate and getting good results, there are a couple of things you need to buy.

First thing is good quality couverture chocolate. This has a higher cocoa butter content and can be re-tempered quite easily. I buy really nice Belgian chocolate sold under the names of Belcolade or Callebaut from www.chocolatefountainwarehouse.co.uk. It normally has about 1 year sell by date on it. The stuff I buy comes in callets.

Callets are like small drops rather than a big bar. The Belcolate callets are like giant chocolate buttons, whereas the Callebaut callets are teeny weeny ones in comparison.

For early practising, you will get astonishingly good results with supermarket basics dark chocolate - 100g bars from the likes of Sainsburys are about 42p. Don't bother trying to work with budget grade or commercial brand white chocolate. I've wasted a lot of money myself trying that..... It doesn't taste as nice - but it tempers quite nicely.

Secondly, you need a chocolate thermometer or laser thermometer. I've got a laser thermometer (cost about £15.00 with postage) and the temperature range is both high enough to use for candy making / sugar syrup for macarons and low enough for tempering chocolate. It's not at all fiddly, and the temperatures are really pretty accurate.

Lastly, get a glass bowl if you do not already own one. Using other bowls such as earthenware creates hotspots unlike the glass which transmits a much more even heat and can burn or overheat your chocolate.

To temper your chocolate by the seeding method, you first need to melt it. This can be done by zapping it in short 15 second bursts in the microwave or using a double boiler (glass bowl over simmering water). If using the double boiler method, be sure that the water does not touch the bottom of the bowl and DON'T get a single drip of water in the chocolate or it will seize and become useless.

For the microwave method, simply stir every 15 seconds and remove when a little more than half melted. The residual heat in the bowl will continue to melt the rest of the chocolate. With the double boiler method, I prefer to pour boiling water into a pan and sit the bowl over the top. Leave it and wait until the chocolate melts. It is important not to let the temperature of your chocolate exceed 120deg F - so check the temperature regularly.

Once melted, you can begin the seeding process to cool the chocolate evenly to 80 deg F and then warm slightly until you reach moulding temperature. To do this, you need to add a little solid chocolate into the melted chocolate. It is important to stir constantly. It is best to use a silicone spatula as you can get all the chocolate away from the sides of the bowl.

Stir this until it melts in and add more if required. Check the temperature regularly. For plain / milk chocolate, it's ready to pour or dip (enrobing) truffles at about 85deg F. For white chocolate, you want a lower temperature of 80 to 83deg F.

I used to get ok results without a thermometer SOMETIMES. Success would be hit and miss. Sometimes the finished chocolates would BE perfect, but more often than not they would quickly develop a bloom (whitish covering) or go crumbly inside. These of course were entirely edible - but they didn't look nice and the texture was very wrong.

If you want super results every time, the pouring temperature of chocolate is crucial.... as is a chocolate thermometer (or laser thermometer) .

Incase you had not already guessed. this chocolate robot mould is another new registered design we'll be launching soon. The metallic effect on the chocolate robots was achieved by brushing a tiny bit of lustre dust (used for sugarcraft) inside the mould as suggested by a Facebook Fan. I think it was Ellie (sorry - I can't find the old chat post now !)

Sarah-Jane Nash, April 2012

Oliver Makes Toffee Popcorn

Got children ? Get them involved with you in the kitchen.

My little boy, Oliver is 3yo and loves helping Mummy in the kitchen.  He adores baking (especially sifting flour) and peeling vegetables. Another favourite is getting to make omlet for his tea. The blue eggs from our cream legbar hen are his favourite and he has now got the hang of cracking them properly without just squashing the whole thing in his hands after breaking the shell.

Recently, we made toffee popcorn. He had such fun watching it pop through the glass lid in the pan. So much so, that we made another batch at his request the next morning. He took it to nursery for "Show and Tell" to share with his class. It was a horrid rainy day, so the kids got to watch a short film and eat their popcorn. Oliver's teacher said the kids had a blast !

Anyway - here is a first YouTube tutorial by Oliver. All you need is some popcorn kernels, a little oil, butter and golden syrup.

Enjoy x

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

Wild Blueberry & Lemon Macarons (with VIDEO TUTORIAL) - FoodBuzz #7 15/2/12

I have to say, these were not the prettiest macarons I've made over all. I actually made two batches. The first batch were colour perfect. I added some lemon oil extract to the shells in the second batch, and it seemed to react with the gel paste food colour a little and give them a yellowy tinge round the edge. 

Most of the first batch had been eaten at the end of the video tutorial and these were all that were left.

Macarons seem to have a reputation for being horrendously hard to make.

It's honestly not that bad. If you are already a confident baker, you'll find it quite simple.

I've made a video guide that you can watch below which may help give a little confidence - using the Revolutionary Double Sided Macaron Mat.

Do note, that undercooked macarons are are likely to sink and crack on removing from the oven. If not cooked enough, they will be impossible to removing from your baking paper or macaron mat. If properly cooked, they'll be crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle once cooled. They'll peel off your mat but leave a little sugary residue. If half the macaron sticks to the mat - it's undercooked ! 

I like to soak my mat in warm soapy water for a few minutes in the sink and then give it a quick clean by using a dish brush. Rinse in clean water and then pop in the oven for a couple of minutes only with the door open to rapid dry without water marks.

If your mat starts to lose it's shine after a few uses (common as there is no fat content in the meringue shells), I give a light spray before use with some cake release spray. Rub this in until the mat is shiny again but NOT greasy. All you are doing is sealing the pores in the mat.

Happy Baking !

How to Make Bombs - Bath Bombs (Fizzers)

Already it's August. Just where did the time go ? Thankfully there is still a bit of summer left. 

The best bit too - with all the super late summer fruits like plums, cherries, new season apples and blackberries.

However, before you know it, we'll be plunging into winter and we'll all be tapping each other for ideas for Christmas hampers and making gutsy, rich winter stews.

Home made bath bombs are so easy that even the kids can help. You would really never guess that they could be so simple and the ingredients are things most of us food bloggers tend to keep in the cupboard. (.....some stocking up may be required). I actually made these about 3 weeks ago and sent them to nursery with Oliver for their raffle at Sports Day

Bath bombs make a lovely gift at any time of year and will keep for rather a long time. As long as you keep them dry that is ! They look lovely simply wrapped in some tissue paper with ribbon

Recipe (makes approx 6 largish bombs)

1 cup of citric acid

2 cups of bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp of olive oil

2.5ml tea rose fragrance oil (or another fragrance of your choice)

1ml colouring

water to spritz (spray bottle required)

No special equipment is required to make bath bombs apart from a simple plastic spray bottle. These are easily and cheaply obtained from pound / dollar stores or similar. It really does not need to be anything fancy.

You will also need something to mould your bath bombs. You could use a metal or silicone muffin tray. If metal, I suggest you line it with papers to make it easy to get the finished bath bombs out. Bath bombs will release very easily from even very intricate silicone moulds after they have been left to harden for a while. Silicone bakeware moulds mean you can make some really pretty designs.

 For these, I used our new 6 cell mixed flower mould that you can see below

Large volumes of citric acid and bicarbonate of soda are easy to buy online via ebay. Make sure the fragrance oils are cosmetic grade and not just suitable for candles / oil burners only. Some fragrance oil brands are much stronger than others, so you may need to vary how much you use.

Sift the citric acid and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl.

Add the fragrance oil, olive oil and colour. Mix well to combine.

Using the spray bottle, spray on a little water a little at a time. You really don't need much at all. Work quickly. Add only JUST enough so that when you squeeze the mixture hard in your hands it forms clumps. It will be very sandy in appearance and texture. 

If you add too much water, the bicarbonate of soda will start to fizz ..... and we really don't want that to happen yet !

Press the mix into the cells of your silicone mould and leave to harden for a couple of hours or so. That's all there is to it. 

Oliver loves to drop these in the bath and watch them fizzzzzz.

Here are some photos from last month's Nursery Sports Day...

READY...... STEADY..... GO !

Ooops. No motion shots - but here is Oliver getting his race completion sticker from Ladybird class teacher Miss Willimott.

Some of the yellow team being led off "train style" ready for the next race.

Here's race #2 !