Fruit bread

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Teacups and Pearls

Is there anything better than the smell of bread baking in the oven? Well yes, there is. Cue the fruit loaf. Perfect on a cold and wet Sunday afternoon with a cuppa, this rich and sweet bread will certainly warm your cockles.

You’ll need:
300ml milk heated to boiling point then left to cool until warm.
500g strong bread flour
200g mixed fruit
1tsp salt
7g quick yeast
75g caster sugar
50g very soft butter
3tsp ground cinnamon

Mix the flour, sugar, butter, cinnamon, salt and yeast together before drizzling in the warm milk. Mix in the fruit and knead the dough for 5 or so minutes on a floured surface until it’s smooth and elastic.

Put the dough in a greased bowl and cover loosely with clingfilm. Leave somewhere warm to prove for an hour or until doubled in size.

Knock the dough back and knead again. Divide into two and put in greased loaf tins. Leave to prove for another hour then bake at 180oC for about 30 minutes or until golden and hollow sounding when tapped on the underside.

Melt some apricot jam and use a pastry brush to glaze the top of the loaf. Enjoy warm with butter.

Nutella cheesecake

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Teacups and Pearls

If you’re looking for a decadent yet simple to make dessert this is where it’s at.

For the base you’ll need:
A packet of chocolate digestives (I think my pack was 300g)
Approx 100g salted butter melted
100g chocolate chips (optional)

Topping:
500g mascapone
400g Nutella
3 tablespoonfuls of icing sugar
Chopped hazelnuts or chocolate to decorate.

Crush the biscuits, add in the butter and mix. Add the chocolate chips if using and press the mixture into the base of a springform tin. Chill in the fridge while you make the topping.

Mix all the topping ingredients together until smooth and well combined and spread over the base. Sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts or chocolate and chill overnight. Best served straight from the fridge. Enjoy!

If you liked this you might like this very indulgent chocolate and peanut butter cheesecake.

Elsa doll cake

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Teacups and Pearls

When I look at this cake the words “never” and “again” spring to mind. It probably would’ve been a lot easier had I had enough fondant to roll it out slightly thicker. As it happened I didn’t, and the result was that the skirt kept splitting, so under that white cape is actually a complete mess, hence there aren’t any pictures of the icing process. My hands were too sticky and my head to stressy to think about pics! Anyway, here’s the link to the tutorial I was following, although you’ll notice the end results are pretty different due to the icing saga! I used three quantities of a basic Victoria sponge recipe and baked two in round springform tins and the third in a Pyrex bowl.

Slice each cake in half and fill with seedless raspberry jam

Stick each cake on top of each other using buttercream as the glue

Wrap Elsa in cling from the waist down

Carve a hole out using a knife

Stick Elsa in up to her hips.

Shave bits off the cake to create a skirt shape.

Cover in buttercream and chill for an hour.

At this point the disasters started so I’m afraid the next pic I have is this one…

I used flower paste to make the cape, and royal icing for the snow and snowflakes. The main thing is that the little one loved it!

Here’s what it looked like inside:

If you’d like to see the last Frozen cake I made (for her last birthday) you can check it out here.

Princess bedroom makeover

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Teacups and Pearls

Firstly, apologies that I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks. Things seem to have been busier than usual with Easter and a certain little girl’s 4th birthday. Anyway, I’m back now and ready to show you what we did to the little one’s bedroom for her birthday. The only specification she had given us was that she wanted the walls to be purple. From my point of view I wanted to give her a room that was functional, had a decent amount of storage and could easily be adapted to grow with her. My favourite bits of the end result are the beanbag with all her stuffed toys in it, and the Ikea kitchen utensil tubs as storage for her art and craft supplies. The dressing table us the one I revamped with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and you can see that post here if you want. Enjoy the pics!