Fine Food Fayre – St. Andrews

courtesy of owl eyes magazine

Last Sunday, Jac from Tinned  Tomatoes and a few of our friends visited the Fine Food Fayre inSt. Andrews. This is a yearly event run in association with The University of St. Andrews Raising and Giving Week to raise funds for a number of charities.

There were 50 stalls to visit, each exhibiting the best food and drink Scotland has to offer. There were a few exhibitors I had visited at the BBC Good Food Show back in October last year, but there were also a few new faces I hadn’t seen or tasted their wares. I wanted to mention just a few of the delicious treats I came across.

courtesy of the wee fudge company

 When I first entered the Fine Food Fayre, the stall that I approached was The Wee Fudge Company. I gave them one of my business cards and when they saw my name, it turns out that the nice people behind the Wee Fudge Company know some relatives of mine. We had a chat whilst I browsed the flavours they had on display including vanilla, maple, chocolate, strawberry and white chocolate. The one flavour I went for was Hebridean Sea Salt and Caramel. I love sweet and salty together and this was very salty, but also very sweet. A perfect combination in my books!

courtesy of mademoiselle macaron

 A very colourful stall was Mademoiselle Macaron. The Mademoiselle in question had a groovy beehive and retro glasses, and her business card had a wee caricature of  her on it. She had great flavours of macaron on display including salted caramel, gingerbread, lavender and many more. I bought four which were the salted caramel, to compliment my fudge of course, early grey tea, Hendricks gin and Innis and Gunn beer. The flavours might sound a bit 'out there', but I can assure you they were all as delicious as they looked. I told Mademoiselle that macaron were something I have yet to master. I hope to try very very soon.

I picked up a delicious bottle of something called Drink or Drizzle. It’s a bottle of fruit, in my case Strawberry mixed with cinnamon, which can be drunk as a juice or drizzled on ice cream, or whatever you fancy. There various flavour, gooseberry and elderflower, rhubarb and more Sadly, I cannot find details of this company on line to share with you. But I loved the juice will be using it in the future for various things.

I also came across Tipsy Mallow, a new company, they told me they were just 6 weeks old. They make artisan marshmallows which come in huge cubes, in lots of flavours such as Kir Royal, Irn Bru, Gin and Elderflower. I went for Lemon Meringue Pie flavour. The block was huge, but I polished it off with aplomb. Very tasty.

Iain Burnett, The Highland Chocolatier was also there with exquisitely designed chocolates. These award winning chocolates were on sample to try and I thoroughly loved them. I just wish I had gone back and purchases some.

There many others stalls, offering savoury bites from local cheeses and oatcakes to dips and anti-pasti type nibbles which we enjoyed on our way round. There were also some displays going on with a Masterchef semi-finalst, Tony Singh from the BBC Spicemen series and other events. Sadly we didn’t get a chance to see these.

When we left, our last port of call was the stand for TheEden Brewery. This is a local brewery who gave us a sampling of their many beers. These included craft beers,  wood cask conditioned beers and Aristeuein beers, which are progressive beers brewed in limited quantities. My favourite was an wood cask beer, called Rum Barrel. You could actually taste chocolate, coconut and lime in the beer - delicious.

We left not long after, with our purchases and with fuller tums than when we went it. The fayre is a good way to discover and support companies more or less on our doorsteps.

I’m looking forward to the 2015 fayre already!

Slice of Pie Cookies

A while back I saw a picture on Pinterest for little cookies that looked like slices of pumpkin pie (apologies as I can't remember the source). They were uber-cute and I wanted to make something similar myself.

Disneyboi loves key lime pie so I thought I would make something similar but flavour the frosting on top of the plain cookies with lime. The biscuit bases are just very plain cookies.

I was worried that they would spread too much when baking and not hold their wedge shape. I researched things online and saw that over beating your butter and sugar can cause spreading. As can the addition of baking powder. And chilling your cookies is crucial. So natch to them.

My icing still leaves a lot to be desired. It wasn’t smooth icing I was going for, but a rough creamy like texture as you would see on top of a pie (honestly). But I thought they were cute and so did Disneyboi who loved them.

As these are so customisable with flavourings, I have called them Slice of Pie Cookies as the colouring and flavours you add are entirely up to you!

Here’s how I made them:

Yield:Approx 40 cookies

Cookie Ingredients:

200 grams unsalted butter, softened

200 grams caster sugar

1 medium egg

400 grams plain flour

(adapted from Daily Mail/Peggy Porschen)

Icing Ingredients:

425 grams icing sugar, sifted

3 tablespoons meringue powder

5 tablespoons lime juice (or other flavouring)

Food colouring paste

Method:

In a mixer, beat together the sugar and butter, just until creamy. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Add the flour and mix slowly until a dough forms.

Break the dough into two halves and wrap each half in clingfilm. Place into the fridge for an hour. After the hour roll each half to about 1 cm thick. Taking a saucer (6” diameter) as a template cut out a circle of dough. With a pizza cutter, cut the circle into 8 ‘slices’. Repeat with the scraps of dough and place onto large baking sheets lined with greaseproof paper. Place back into the fridge for another hour.

Preheat your oven to 180C, then place the chilled cookies into the oven for 8-10 minutes, or until they have turned golden brown on the edges. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

In the bowl of a mixer, slowly mix the icing sugar and meringue powder together. Add the lime juice and increase the speed until the dry ingredients have moistened. Beat on high for 7 to 10 minutes. The icing will become thick.

Remove a quarter of the icing and place into a separate bowl. Next add food colour paste to the three quarters amount, just until you get the colour you are looking for.

Pipe the triangle wedges with your chosen colour, spread evenly with a knife (try and do better than I did) and allow to dry for a few minutes. Lastly, with a small star tip, pipe the white icing on the short end of the triangle, to look like piped whipped cream.

Allow the icing to dry and there you have a slice of pie that isn’t! Very cute and delicious.

And as these were made for Disneyboi, I am entering them into this month’s Treat Petite, hosted by Kat at The Baking Explorer and this month, by myself. The theme is ‘Loved Ones’.

Red Velvet Butterscotch Chip Baked Doughnuts

It’s Valentines day soon, so I thought I would make something for the season! In fact the good folk at OXO UK got in touch and asked if I’d like to make something for Valentines, using their hand-held mixer and egg separator.

They arrived in the post and I immediately set to work on these red velvet baked donuts. They have butterscotch chips in them, which adds another dimension of flavour. I have seen these in UK supermarkets now, but if you can’t get hold of them fudge pieces would work well too. Plus this red velvet doesn’t have cocoa powder in it. I made a red velvet cake once with a Martha Stewart recipe, which didn’t use cocoa, and since then I prefer mines without. Plus it makes the colour inside super-red.

Making the batter for these I used the hand-held mixer. I had never used a hand-held mixer before and it was very nifty, but to be honest I prefer my electric mixer. If you don’t have an electric one though this is a great substitute and the whisks detach very easily to clean.

As for the egg separator, I realised I didn’t need to separate the whites and the yolks for the recipe, but I tried it anyway! It can be balanced easily on thick and thin edged bowls and has a raised nubbin that you can crack the egg on, then drop into the well to separate. I always seem to burst my yolks, so this will come in very handy in the Cakeyboi kitchen.

The only tool you really need for baked doughnuts, if you’ve read my doughnut recipes before is a doughnut pan. But if you don’t these would work well as cupcakes too.

I finished mines off with a simple sugar glaze and sprinkled on lots of heart shaped sprinkles. Perfect for Valentines!

Yield: 12 doughnuts or 24 mini-doughnuts

Ingredients:

100 grams plain flour, less 1 tablespoon

1 tablespoon cornflour

½ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

100 grams caster sugar

1 egg beaten

100 ml buttermilk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon white vinegar

½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100 grams butterscotch chips

Red Food Colouring Paste (amount will vary on type)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 220C. Lightly grease the doughnut pan.

In a bowl, sift together the flour, cornflour, baking powder and salt. Add the oil, sugar, egg and buttermilk and mix together to combine. In a separate bowl mix together the vanilla, vinegar and bicarb. Add this mix to the other ingredients and stir to combine. Add the red food colouring to get a deep shade of red and mix through. Lastly fold in the butterscotch chips.

Transfer the batter to a piping bag and fill each doughnut mould in the pan about two-thirds full (I only have one pan, so repeated this process twice). Bake in the oven for about 8 minutes until they have risen and a toothpick comes out clean. Leave to cool for 5 minutes in the pan, then remove gently and allow to cool fully.

You can decorate in anyway you like. I used a very basic mix of icing sugar, water and a drop of milk. I dunked each doughnut into this mix then sprinkled with the sprinkles. I returned them to the cooling rack to let the excess icing drip off and harden.

The doughnuts were really cakey, delicious and red. If you haven’t had butterscotch with red-velvet before, it is worth trying!

I am entering these into a Valentines Bakes blog hop run by Elizabeth over at Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary!

Disclosure Statement: I received the OXO items free to review. I was not paid to write this post. Any opinions expressed are my own.

My New MOO Business Cards

At the start of Cakeyboi I had some business cards made up. They were quite basic and didn’t have too much detail on them. But times have changed; the logo is different (and whatever happened to that wee cartoon character…?). I needed something fresh.

Being a food blogger, it is a good idea to have yourself some business cards on hand. You never know when you might meet a new company to do some work with or meet like minded bloggers at conferences that you want to swap details with.

When Dan at MOO got in touch and asked if I would like to sample some of their business cards, of course I said yes.

MOO allows you to upload any design on their easy to use website, and have it printed on to your cards, the front and reverse side. I plumped for the regular sized cards with rounded corners and uploaded some of my cakey creations for the reverse side. On the front I had my contact details for email, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest on display (the picture at the top shows you some of my new cards).

MOO also have mini cards which are half the size of the regular, but as they say are twice as cute!

If you are looking for modern business cards, with plenty of customisable options, I highly recommend MOO. The service they provided was fast and efficient too.

Here is an example of their prices (inc. VAT):

Classic Business Cards:

50 = start from £13.19

200 = start from £47.99

MiniCards:

100 = £12.23

200 = £24.46

Thanks to Dan and the rest of the folk at MOO. I am very impressed!

Disclosure Statement: I received the MOO classic business cards free to review. I was not paid to write this post or provide a favourable review. Any opinions expressed are my own.

Dirty Coke Fudge - UK Style!

What is Dirty Coke I hear you asking?

Well, I read about Dirty Coke over at the brilliant blog Sugarhero a few months back. Elizabeth over at Sugarhero explained that it is a coke (diet or otherwise) with coconut and lime juice added to it. ‘Is that it?’ I also hear you ask.

But wait until you have tried one! The flavours altogether give you a brand new flavour experience, like nothing you’ve had before. People are also dirtying up other sodas, such as Dr Pepper and Pepsi. But I’m sticking with Diet Coke personally.

Elizabeth then went on to make a very delicious swirled fudge using the three flavours of cola, coconut and lime. I wanted to make it, and a couple of people asked me to try it too.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the cola flavoured oil or coconut syrup. Instead I got cola flavouring from the baking aisle in Sainsburys and coconut flavour essence from a local baking shop, but I had seen this in the Chinese Supermarket too. The fudge also used a jar of marshmallow Fluff, now widely available in the UK.

(I bought some limes and tried the drink with diet coke and coconut essence and I was hooked.)

Because there are different ingredients used, I didn’t achieve the swirled effect. Instead I got a lovely light coloured fudge which was packing mighty flavour. Here’s how I made Dirty Coke Fudge UK Style;

Ingredients:

110 grams unsalted butter, cubed

450 grams granulated sugar

180 grams sour cream

1 teaspoon salt

300 grams white chocolate chips

200 grams marshmallow fluff

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon cola flavouring

½ teaspoon coconut flavour essence

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Adapted from Sugarhero

Method:

Line an 8”x8” square baking pan with tin foil and lightly oil the foil with vegetable oil or another flavourless oil :) Set aside.

In a large saucepan place the butter, sugar, sour cream and salt. Heat on medium high until the sugar and butter have melted, stirring all the time. Bring it to a boil and then clip a sugar thermometer on the pan. Continue to boil (and stir) until the thermometer reaches 113C (235F).

Remove from the heat and add the white chocolate chips, fluff and vanilla, stirring until all of that has melted into the mixture. Lastly add the cola and coconut flavourings and the limejuice. Stir until combined and pour into the prepared tin.

Allow this to set for at least 4 hours at room temperature. When it is set, carefully turn out from the tin and with a sharp knife cut into cubes. I cut at least 36 cubes from mine.

And that is Dirty Coke Fudge UK Style. My tasters absolutely loved this fudge and one person even said it was the ‘best fudge they had ever tasted’. Which isn’t a bad recommendation at all.

Enjoy…

Thorntons Continental Tasting Heart Collection Giveaway!

Fancy a big box of luxury chocolates for free?

The very kind people at Thorntons (you know, chocolate heaven since 1911) have provided me with a box of their Continental Tasting Heart Collection to try and one for you lucky people to win, almost in time for Valentine's Day.

I can vouch that this 570 gram box of chocolates, worth £19.99, is jam packed full of 48 milk, white and dark varieties. The flavours inside are inspired by Europe and include, amongst others, cappuccino and Sicilian lemon.

As I have such a big heart (:D) I shared my box with Disneyboi and my work colleagues. The box was gone in no time and each flavour really is decadently delicious.

To be in with a chance of winning this box of truffles, pralines and mousse, simply enter via the Rafflecopter thingamajig below. The competition closes on 12 February, so only a week to enter and hopefully you will get your choccies as near to Valentines as possible. Still, chocolates are fine at any time aren’t they? Good luck…

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Treat Petite February 2014

 A big ‘thank you’ to those of you who entered Treat Petite in January. It was nice to see what can be done in the sweet treat world, which is a bit on the healthier side. To see the roundup, pop over to The BakingExplorer.

And without further ado, I bring you Treat Petite for February. It’s obviously the month that Valentines falls in and I am kind of going for a Valentine theme. It’s called;

 Any recipe which you are making for your other half, your kids, parents, best friends – anyone you love basically. It may be their favourite recipe, one you want to try for them, it’s up to you!

Remember the idea behind Treat Petite is quite simple – any sweet treat you can think of that’s not a big cake! From cookies to macarons, krispie treats to truffles; we want to see any delicious concoction you conjure up in the kitchen that is individually portioned!! And don’t worry, cupcakes are permitted.

Here’s the rules;

1. Email me by the 25th of the month (mrcakeyboi@gmail.com), midnight at the latest – include in the e-mail your name, if you have a blog the URL of your post and name of your blog, recipe and a photo (640x480pixels max) of your bake.

2. If applicable post your bake onto your blog and link back to Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer, stating who is hosting that particular month.

3. Follow Cakeyboi and The Baking Explorer blogs via the Google Join this Site button, if you haven’t already.

4. If you tweet use  #treatpetite and mention @MrCakeyboi and @BakingExplorer – we will retweet 
   
   
   
5. Add the challenge logo to the post and ‘Treat Petite’ as a label to the post
   
   
   
6. Use any recipe as long as the source is noted

7. Add your photo to the ‘Treat Petite’ Pinterest board (request access from me – Cakeyboi)

8. Feel free to enter old posts as long as you update the post and meet all the requirements above!

If you have any questions at all, please get in touch. Above all else have fun!