honey

Rye Waffles With Goats Cheese & Honey

- Michael 6 Comments

Rye Waffles

So I finally cracked and bought a waffle iron in January. I’ve wanted one since I was born (well, the last couple of years anyway) and there are a couple of fancy ones I’d had an eye on. As someone that can’t justify spending £100 on a waffle iron though I finally had to bite the bullet and get one down the bottom end of the range. I now don’t know why I waited so long. Yeah it only cost £27 and it doesn’t latch close but now I get waffles whenever the hell I want them, and I warn you, that means there’s going to be an inordinate amount of waffles pictures of instagram for the next few months (and years).

Rye Waffles
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Honey & Rye Cake

- Michael Leave a comment

Honey & Rye Cake

As alluded to previously, before I popped up to Leeds for the Bloggers Blog Awards, I went to my parents in Scotland and due to the weather on a couple of the days, I ended up doing a good amount of baking. Ingredients up there can be slightly more awkward due to a need for things to keep. My dad also has a bread machine, and because of this he has a large stock of different flours. We unearthed a bag of rye that he practically begged us to use as he had no plans to and didn’t want it to go to waste. After raiding the cupboards we worked out that honey was probably the best ingredient we had at our disposal for doing something cake-y. Some quick (by my parents island internet standards) googling took place and we found that honey & rye cake is actually a particular french special.

Honey & Rye Cake
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Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

- Michael 4 Comments

I have some problems with my stomach. I’ve had them for years. The last time I went to the doctors they tried to find out what was wrong with it to no avail (or at least what was triggering it). Due to these problems I spend a lot of time drinking herbal teas that are designed for soothing the stomach or aiding digestion. These include ginger, peppermint (although peppermint is far from my first choice) and Camomile (usually camomile & honey or camomile & maple). Camomile is an anti-spasmodic, which happens to be one of my favourite words especially when you say it to someone that hasn’t heard it before. As a result of this I’ve been wanting to bake camomile & honey cupcakes for a while, and just not gotten around to it. The recipe I used was based on this one here.

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes
 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

January has, as usual, hit the wallet pretty hard and I’ve been having to greatly cut back on spending for the last couple of weeks. The great thing with these, is that outside of the cream, I already had everything already in stock.  It wasn’t until I got home and took a look at Timehop that it reminded me it was a year ago, to the day, that I last baked tea themed cupcakes. Last year it was Green Tea Cupcakes & Matcha Frosting (I’ve since improved on this by doing the cakes as purely chocolate and making the frosting Matcha & White Chocolate).

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

 
Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

I am going to be kicking off my “Baking Basics” posts at the start of February. As I detailed in my previous “2015 Goals” post, I want to properly teach myself how to bake (i.e. how it works, why you use certain ratios of ingredients and how to do certain techniques etc.) this year. Does anyone have any suggestions for basics I could include?

Camomile & Honey Cupcakes

Camomile & Honey Cupcakes
 
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Serves: 12 cupcakes
Ingredients
  • **For the cakes**
  • 60g Unsalted Butter (At room temperature)
  • 125g All-Purpose Flour
  • 150g Granulated White Sugar
  • 1tsp Baking Powder
  • ½tsp Bicarb of Soda
  • 3tbsp Dried Camomile (I used camomile tea bags)
  • 120ml Milk
  • 1 Large Egg
  • **For the glaze**
  • 190g Powdered Icing Sugar
  • 5tbsp Double Cream
  • 2tbsp Honey
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 160°C and line a cupcake tray with cases.
  2. Cream together the butter and the sugar before mixing in the flour, baking powder and bicarb of soda.
  3. Whisk the milk and the egg seperately and pour into the dry mixture, mixing constantly while adding.
  4. Add in the camomile (and I sometimes add a squeeze of honey here too) and mix until well combined.
  5. DIvide the mixture evenly between the 12 cases. There should be exactly enough to fill them to about half way each, you'll need to scrape the sides of the bowl.
  6. Place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for 15-17 minutes (until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean).
  7. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
  8. While the cool, make the glaze. Cream together the sugar, cream and honey until smooth and thick.
  9. With a kitchen knife or small palette knife spread the glaze on top of the cakes.