office baking.

In my opinion there wasn't enough cake in the office (although there are always biscuits and I'm pretty happy with that) and so I've been battling on the tube with my cakes and hoping they remain somewhat intact by the time they arrive at work.

So far we've had lemon drizzle cake (a total staple cake of mine) and brownies. I have so many ideas of what to bake next but I've narrowed it down to these three (one, two, three).

Lemon drizzle cake

Ingredients:

125g unsalted butter

175g caster sugar

2 large eggs

zest of 1 lemon

175g self raising flour
pinch of salt

4 tablespoons milk

For the syrup:

juice of 1 and a half lemons

100g icing sugar

 

Method:

i) Preheat your oven to 180 C/ gas mark 4.

ii) Cream together butter and sugar and add eggs and lemon zest, beating them in well.

iii) Gently fold in the flour and the salt, mixing thoroughly and then add the milk.

iv) Spoon the batter into your prepared tin and bake for 45 mins or until cake tester comes out clean.

For the syrup:

i) Put the lemon juice and icing sugar into a small saucepan and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.
ii) As soon as cake is out of oven, puncture all over with skewer and pour over the syrup. I use a knife for mine as the holes are bigger and you get more of the lovely syrupy juice in there.

iii) Leave cake to cool completely before removing from the tin.

Brownies

Ingredients:

170g (6oz) plain chocolate
115g (4oz) margarine or butter
225g (8oz) soft brown sugar
1tsp vanilla essence
2 eggs
170g (6oz) plain flower
100g (4oz) chocolate chips

Method:

i) Pre-heat the oven to 180°C or 350F and grease the tin.

ii) Break the chocolate into pieces and place in a small heat proof bowl.

iii) Melt the plain chocolate in the bowl over a pan of boiling water on the hob.   

iv) Cream the margarine/butter and sugar together in a large bowl

v) Stir in the melted chocolate and vanilla essence.

vi) Add the eggs to the large bowl and stir in.

vii) Add the flour to the large bowl and stir in. I add a couple of heaps of cocoa powder, it can never be chocolaty enough.

viii) Stir in the chocolate chips.

ix) Pour the mixture into a baking tin – 20 x 30 cm is ideal.

x) Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes. 

xi) Remove from the oven and turn out onto a cooling rack and leave to cool.