SALE - Jayne's Big Booky Baking Bonanza. (Or baking with friends and family 2020)

This year, waiting for spring sun to finally show its face, and while rain rattled at the windows for a week solid, I decided to collect some "foolproof" recipes from family and friends. I thought it might be a good chance to announce a sale and a fitting way to get ready for the third Bespoke novel "A Deadly Shade of Night" coming later this spring (like spring itself).

BESPOKE is now available at a special sale price, so if you have not yet picked up your copy, now is a good time to get started on this Victorian romance/murder/mystery/cake-loving series. YAY!

Now, you will need something to eat while you're reading, so here are some recipes, kindly submitted by my friends and family. As a consequence, some are in English cooking-speak and some in American. Depending on your location, you may need to translate measurements etc. via our dear friend Google! (What did we ever do without it?)

Enjoy!

Great Niece Millie's Magnificent Cookies

Cream together 100g margarine and 100g of sugar. Add 1 egg and half a teaspoon of vanilla. Stir in 225g of plain flour and 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Add nuts, chocolate chips, coconut -- your choice. Roll into balls and place on a baking tray. Press down gently. Bake at 180 degrees c for approx. 14 minutes. This mixture can make 12 normal-sized cookies or 30 bite-sized! Or 1 large me-sized.

Auntie June's Jolly Jammy Scones

Put 225 grams of self-raising flour and 1/4 teasp of salt into a bowl. Add 50 grams of chilled butter, cut into small pieces. Rub in with your fingers to a crumb mix, lifting to aerate the mixture as you go. Stir in 25 g golden caster sugar. Make a well in the centre. Add a few tablespoons of full fat milk to 125 mls of buttermilk and pour some of this into the flour mixture (reserve some of the buttermilk, in case it is not needed). Use a round-bladed knife to combine the flour, fat and buttermilk until it forms a soft dough that is almost sticky. Work in the remaining buttermilk, if needed. Do not overwork. Lift out of bowl to a lightly floured surface and knead only 3-4 times. Pat gently into a thickness of no less than 2 cm and no more than 2.5 cms. Dip a fluted cutter in flour and use to cut out scones. Place on a lightly greased baking tray and bake at 220 degrees c for 10-12 minutes, until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack. Serve with jam and whipped or clotted cream.

(Point of Interest: If you're in Cornwall, you put the cream first, then the jam. If you're in Devon, it's the other way around! So now you know. Don't say you never learn anything from this blog.)

Cousin Lynda's Bountiful Bouncing Banana Cake

Place 1 egg, 1 ripe banana, 5 oz sugar, 2 oz of soft butter, 1/2 teasp. of vanilla and 1/2 teasp of salt

into a food processor. Blend on maximum to a smooth consistency (about one minute). Sift 5 oz of self-raising flour and 1/4 teasp of bicarbonate of soda into a bowl and mix the wet mixture into the dry just until combined. Bake in a 7 inch, greased tin, at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes. Serve with banana cream: Blend 1 oz of sugar to a powder in the blender and then adding it to a quarter pint of whipped, chilled cream with one smashed, ripe banana and 1/4 teasp of nutmeg. You would be bananas not to try this!

Sister-in-Law Lori's Socially-Distant Poke Cake

Bake a white cake mix (from box -- I like where this one is going) in a spray-greased rectangular tin at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes. Whisk together one can of sweetened condensed milk, 1 cup of brown sugar, a stick of melted butter, a dash of cinnamon, a dash of salt. Make holes in the baked cake and pour the condensed milk mixture over it. Whisk together one block of cream cheese, a dash of vanilla, salt, a stick of butter and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Whisk this mixture into whipped heavy cream and spread over the cake to finish. Eat immediately all to yourself, bearing in mind that it might not be healthy to get close enough to share and we are supposed to be isolating!

Laughing Lynne's Cracking Cannoli Dip

Mix together one cup of ricotta cheese, 8 oz of cream cheese (at room temp.), one cup powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and as many mini choc chips as you like. Stir well and refrigerate. Serve with graham cracker cookies! Or you could just eat out of the bowl.

Marvelous Marta's Tantalizing Tiramisu


Prepare a cup of strong coffee and leave to chill. Whip 500 ml of double cream in a large bowl until thick. Add 500 g of mascarpone and mix until smooth. In another bowl mix 6 egg yolks with ½ cup of sugar until smooth. Combine the mascarpone mix and egg yolk mix. Stir to remove lumps. Dip 2 packs of sponge fingers (lady fingers) in chilled coffee and use to create a base layer in serving dish. Pour creamy mixture over sponge fingers. Repeat. On the last layer, sprinkle with a dusting of cocoa powder (using a sieve/strainer). Oh, and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours. If you can wait that long!

Dastardly Debbie's Voluptuous Victoria Sponge


Beat together 200g caster sugar, 200g softened butter, 4 beaten eggs, 200g self-raising flour, 1 teasp baking powder and 2 tablespoons of milk until smooth. Divide between 2 sandwich tins. Bake for 20 mins at 190 degrees c. Cool on wire rack. For the filling – Beat 100g of butter and 140g of icing sugar together with a drop of vanilla extract. Spread a layer of this buttercream over one layer. Spread strawberry jam over the other layer and sandwich together. Dust with icing sugar. Even Queen Victoria would be amused.

Kooking Kathy's Captivating Coconut Cake

Grease three 8-inch, round cake pans. Line bases with parchment paper. Grease paper and flour. Flour sides too. Preheat over to 350 degrees f. Sift together 2 and 3/4 cups cake flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teasp. salt. In another bowl combine 2/3 cup of vegetable oil, 3/4 cup whole milk, 1/2 cup of water and 2 teaspoons of coconut extract. Using hand-held electric mixer, beat the oil and milk mixture into the dry ingredients until it is a very smooth batter. In another bowl, beat 4 large egg whites until frothy (make sure they are room temperature at start). Add 1/4  teasp. cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Gradually add 1 and 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, while continuing to beat on high speed until well blended and firm. Using a large spatula, fold this mixture into the cake batter, one third at a time. Pour into the prepared tins and bake 20-25 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Remove the cakes and let cool. Leave oven on. Toast 2 and 2/3 cups of sweetened coconut by spreading in a thin layer on a baking tray and putting in the oven while it is still on and after the cake is out, for about 7-12 minutes. Take out and let cool.

For the frosting/filling: In the top of a double boiler, over simmering water, beat together 1 and 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, 2 egg whites (at room temp.), 1/4 teasp. cream of tartar, 1/3 cup of water and pinch of salt. Beat constantly with hand-held electric mixer until soft peaks form (about 7 minutes). Remove from the simmering water in the boiler. Add 1 teaspoon of coconut extract. Beat until soft enough to spread, but not dry (about 2 mins.) Use as a filing between the cold cakes, and also cover the sides and top. Sprinkle toasted coconut over cake before serving.

All this, by her standards, is easy; by mine...deadly. I'll wait for her to make it for me again one day, but you might be braver.

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My warmest thanks to all who contributed!

We hope these recipes will keep you busy, well fed and somewhat entertained, until the next edition of  Jayne's Big Booky Baking Bonanza™.

Don't forget to grab your special sale copy of BESPOKE now from all good online outlets and enjoy!

Above are photos of two of my own attempts. The top one, as you can see, was a disastrous lemon and orange bundt cake baked with great optimism, and relentlessly high expectations, for my long-suffering husband's birthday. Yes, laugh away! The bottom was a more successful, diabetic-friendly hummingbird cake (which was quite delicious, although I say so myself, and a rarity among my efforts!)

Jayne.