Here at Myakka when we aren’t talking about furniture, we are talking about and making (and of course eating) cakes. With the Jubilee fast approaching, we thought we could share some of our favourite cake recipes with you in preparation for any street parties and events you may have coming up.
Alexandra’s Flapjack recipe has proven to be really popular in the office and the recipe has been passed around to lots of people here. If you like a nice gooey and chewy flapjack, this is the recipe for you…
- 500g porridge Oats
- 250g butter
- 250g fair trade brown Sugar
- 4-6 tablespoons golden syrup
Melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup. Add the porridge oats along with any extra ingredients you may want to add such as sultanas, raisins, pine nuts, sesame seeds, pumpkin seed, or nuts….anything you fancy really. Press it down into a shallow tin and bake at 180°C for approximately 20 minutes until golden brown. Delicious!
If pretty cupcakes are more your thing, then why not try Natalie’s Jubilee Cupcakes. Decorated with red, white and blue butter icing, these cupcakes are a fun way to celebrate the Queen’s 60 Years.
For the cupcakes-
- 200g soft butter
- 200g fair trade caster sugar
- A couple of drops of vanilla extract
- 4 free range eggs
- 200g plain flour
- 10g baking powder
- Pinch of salt
For the butter icing – (this makes more than enough for the 12 cupcakes)
- 200g very soft butter
- 400g fair trade icing sugar
- A couple of drops of vanilla extract
- Red and blue food colouring, I always use gel food colouring.
Beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and beat. One at a time beat in the eggs. If the mixture begins to curdle add in a table spoon of flour. Then fold in the remaining flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. If the mixture is very stiff, you can add some milk to loosen it. Put into cupcake cases (I have used special union jack cupcake cases which are everywhere at the moment), about 12 or so and bake in the centre of the oven at 170°C for about 25 minutes until golden and cooked all the way through. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes then move to wire rack to cool completely.
For the icing beat the butter until completely smooth with no lumps, a bit at the time add the icing sugar and beat hard, keep going until the mixture is pale and fluffy. The more you beat the mixture, the lighter in colour it will become making it better for the ‘white’ part of the icing. Separate the mixture into three bowls, of roughly equal amounts of icing. Add red food colouring to one bowl and blue food colouring to the other, as per instructions on the pack and beat well to ensure the colour is even throughout. Next use a piping bag fitted with a medium star nozzle and fill with alternate spoonful’s of the three different colour icing. Then decorate the cooled cupcakes with the piping bag and you should get a pretty marbled, 3 colour effect.
If you have a go at making any of these recipes, please do let us know how it goes on Facebook and Twitter. Here at Myakka headquarters we are holding a Jubilee Tea Party to celebrate where we will hopefully be eating lots of delicious cakes and sandwiches made by the Myakka team. Finger crossed the sunny weather continues so we can make it a picnic! Watch this space for pictures of our yummy homemade treats.
