Chocolate and butterscotch poke cake

Ever considered giving yourself type II diabetes? No? Why not? I hear it's fun.

Well, if you change your mind...

Ingredients:

Cake:

• 50g of cocoa powder
• 6 tbsp of boiling water
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp of milk
• 175g of self raising flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 100g of unsalted butter
• 300g of caster sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract

Chocolate ganache:

• 400g of milk chocolate, broken into pieces
• 400ml of double cream

Butterscotch:

• 30g of salted butter
• 400g of light brown sugar
• 100ml of double cream
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees (fan) and line two 20-23cm tins. If you only have one tin, that's ok - you can bake the cake in 2 batches.
2. Mix the cocoa powder and boiling water together until you get a paste (that photo below shows you what it will look like. It's not a poo. I swear.).
3. Mix all the other cake ingredients in using an electric mixer until evenly combined.
4. Split the batter between the two tins and bake for 30 min.
5. When the cake is ready, take it out of the oven and set aside to cool.
6. Use a wooden spoon or a chopstick or some other stick-like utensil to poke holes in each half of the cake.
7. Make the ganache: heat up the cream in a milk pan until it's *just* boiling. Take off the heat, add in the chocolate and whisk until it's smooth and all the chocolate is melted.
8. Make the butterscotch sauce: put all ingredients in a milk pan, bring to a boil while stirring, then boil for another 5 minutes, stirring it every minute or so (be careful not to over-stir). Set aside to cool down a bit (because it will be hot enough to burn a hole in the sun).
9. Assemble the cake: Pour about 1/3 of the ganache on each half of the cake, spooning it on slowly and smoothing it out so that it seeps into the holes in the cake. Put the cake halves in the fridge for about 10 - 15 minutes for the ganache to set. Then, pour half of the butterscotch sauce on the bottom half of the cake, place the top half on top of it, use the remaining third of ganache to ice the cake, and finally, drizzle the remaining butterscotch sauce on top.
10. (Optional) Sprinkle a pinch of flaky salt on top.

Even more awesome if you microwave it for 20 sec before serving. Enjoy.

Apple and puff pastry roses

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that literally everyone with access to Pinterest has made these before.

If you haven't: Please enjoy this 100% original recipe of mine that I came up with all by myself and not plagiarised it at all. Honest.

So easy, so quick, and SO delish!

Ingredients

• 200g of puff pastry
• 1 apple
• 6 tsp (or around 100g) of Philadelphia
• 3 tsp of ground cinnamon
• 3-6 tbsp of dark brown sugar
• 1 tsp of lemon juice
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tbsp of icing sugar
• butter, to grease the tins

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease up 5 muffin tins.
2. Cut your apple in half, core it and slice up into very thin semi-circles.
3. Put the apple slices in a bowl, add the water and lemon juice, and microwave for a total of about 2 minutes, mixing through every 30 second or so. The apples should be soft. If they get there earlier, great. If they need a bit longer, give them another 30 sec in the microwave.
4. Drain the apples and set them aside to dry a bit (just so that they're not soggy).
5. Roll out your pastry. You want it about 1mm thick - if you bought pre-rolled, you may still have to do a bit of rolling to get it thinner.
6. Cut the pastry into roughly 25cm by 5cm strips.
7. Spread a thin layer of philadelphia on one half of one side of each of the pastry strips (along one of the long edges - see photo).
8. Sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon on the philadelphia, and lay out the apple slices on top of that.
9. Fold over the free side of the strip on top of the apples, and roll the strips up into a coil to form a rose.
10. Slide each rose into a muffin tin, and bake for 30 min.
11. Take out of the oven, let it cool and sprinkle a bit of icing sugar on top.

Peanut Butter and Jam cupcakes

Yup. Yup yup yup. As awesome as they sound.

And REALLY rich. Have, like, a half of one at a time. Unless you like to give yourself the beetus.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes (makes 9):

• 115g of self raising flour
• 115g of unsalted butter (cut up into cubes, at room temperature)
• 115g of caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp of baking powder
• a jar of your favourite jam (or around 9 tablespoons)

Icing:

• 130g of smooth peanut butter
• 50g of salted butter, at room temp, cubed
• 75g of icing sugar
• 3-5 Tbsp of milk

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C (fan) and put 9 cupcake cases in a cupcake tin.
2. Mix all of the cupcake ingredients (except for the jam) in a bowl using an electric mixer.
3. Split equally between the 9 cases and bake for 20 min.
4. Take out of the oven and set aside to cool.
5. Core the cupcakes, either using a fancy pants hipster cupcake corer like mine, or... dunno, your hands? A spoon? You're smart, you'll figure it out.
6. Fill the cupcakes with a tablespoon of jam each.
7. Combine the icing ingredients with an electric mixer, adding 3 tbsp of milk at first, and then adding more if it's still too thick.
8. Pipe the frosting on top of the cupcakes.
9. Go away, get high, remember you made these and weep the tears of joy. (optional)