Pumpkin Pie Spice, homemade

Lots of American recipes I see now use Pumpkin Pie Spice in them.  I have checked closely, but nowhere sells it.  So then I checked my trusty friend, Google, and hey presto!  I found a recipe (or twenty!). 

I signed up a while ago to the Betty Crocker website, as they do so many different items and hav so many recipes from which to choose.  So when I saw that Betty had a recipe for spice mix, well, that just had to be the one I chose. 

As you can see on my photo, I didn't use quite all the right amounts.  And to be perfectly honest, I found it too heavy on the cloves even with these proportions.  So I added in another 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, to take off a bit of the clove taste, and it works better for me.

If you make some, do let me know what you think - and how much you enjoy baking with it.  Mmm, smells like Autumn!!

Chocolate chip pumpkin cake

I follow quite a few American baking blogs and Facebook pages, and at this time of year they all talk about the most wonderful sounding Autumn flavours of pumpkin, caramel, cinnamon, apple and the like.  So much so that I even made a Pinterest board just for Autumn flavours, mmm...  Feel free to follow that board, any board of mine, or even every board of mine - it'll be fun to have you along.

So anyway, one of these recipes I noticed was for a chocolate chip pumpkin cake (I don't have the link handy, but will add it in when I remember where I found it) that sounded easy and tasty.  Ok, found it! and it turns out it is actually for Easy Pumpkin bars, I must have tweaked it a little...

Although, looking at the photo I seem to recall that this may not have been quite the right recipe, because I remember halving it as I only wanted two, not four, loaves.  So I think the one I used must have been called a pumpkin loaf, or pumpkin bread.  Ah well, it will have been similar.

As you can see, the loaves are very low, so I could have just made one larger/taller one with all the batter I had... I probably made a note on the recipe to remind me of that for next time.  Because yes, dear readers, there will be a next time.  This was delicious, like an afternoon tea type of cake that suits the British palate quite well.  I have found in the past that pumpkin items tend to be incredibly moist, and not our favourite texture (like a pumpkin pie perhaps).  But this was eaten by the whole team, and all taste-testers were pleased with the texture.  Well, all the British locals were - one good friend, American, felt it wasn't quite moist enough for her!  ha ha.

You can't please all of the people all of the time, I guess...

4th of July is red, white and blue fun!

We're not American.  Don't have any specific ties with America - though there is an Uncle living in Tacoma. WA and a good friend living in NYC, and another good friend who used to live here in Dundee but is now back in VA I think.  And I follow a few American bakers, like Bakerella, The Girl who ate Everything,  Created by Diane, Pint Sized Baker, Rose Bakes and so on .  And I am part of an American baking group on Facebook, so see a lot of American style cakes and 4th of July ideas in my Facebook newsfeed and in the emails I receive to my baking/work email address.

So actually, America does seem to feature quite heavily, hmmm.  Anyway, a lot of great red, white and blue ideas have come my way recently, some trickier than others, and I fancied trying my hand at some of them.  These looked fun and easy, and the girls wanted to help with some of it too.  They would have helped with all of it, but it was warm and sunny outside and they were desperate to try out the new Slip 'n Slide that we'd bought last weekend.  

Don't know what this is?  Oh, you're missing out!  My siblings and I had a yellow one when we were growing up and used it loads!  Mind you, we did grow up in Melbourne, Australia, where they know how to do Summer.  Months of daily temperatures from 25-40c and sun - glorious warm, yellow sun!  Ahh, takes me back, ha ha.   Anyway, it's a plastic rectangle mat that goes on the grass and it has a tube through the middle of the mat that is poked with holes.  You attach the garden hose to the mouth of this tube and water sprays over the mat, through the holes and kids run up to it then slide along it on their tummies.  Make sense?  Kids love them!!

So, getting back to the baking.  I decided to go for two things I'd seen on my newsfeed from Facebook...  A variation on this Red, White and Blue Cookie Bark and some patriotic Marshmallow treats.  What fun they were to do, and easy too!  And oh my gosh, I had a sneaky taste of the bark - it is amazing!!!  We decided that adding Oreo's would be too much, and what a tasty decision that was.  The salt and crunch of the pretzels goes really well with the sweetness of the white chocolate.

You lay out the pretzels underneath (and Oreo's, if you're going to use them), then add the melted white chocolate over the top.

Then you carefully, or otherwise, place your selection of red and blue M & M's over the top before the chocolate sets.  I didn't think we'd have enough chocolate M & M's so used the crispy ones too.  Mmm, great idea methinks.

 Here's the finished product, all ready for the fridge.

 And here it is ready to eat, cracked into pieces for ease of nibbling.  Mmmm...

For the marshmallow treats, we even had real American wax paper - oooh!

These were a bit fiddly to do, but easy enough.  Although by the time I got around to them, the girls had had their hair-washed and gone to bed.

So they'll be a lovely surprise for them, and our friends coming to play after lunch, for tomorrow! 

 And here's wee funny for you.  Sadly, it's not that funny for me, ha ha

Uncle Sam needs you!

A lady was due to emigrate to the gool ole US of A, and was excited but also sad to leave her family and friends behind here in bonnie Scotland.  So her lovely daughter-in-law reqeusted a cake that would help make her happy, an American flag.  We looked at a couple of images, discussed ideas and this is how it all panned out. 

I thought it would be fun if, when they cut into the cake, it was coloured appropriately, so started out like this - one blue half, one red.  Once baked, the tops were sliced to flatten the cakes for layering with jam and buttercream and crumb-coated.  I saw this on one of the YouTube videos and am embarrassed to admit that it was news to me.  But no more!  It's basically where you coat the cake in a slightly thinner than usual layer of buttercream so that it catches all the crumbs, then after you cover it in buttercream or fondant.  Here's a photo of what I mean.

It's not pretty, but it is a foundation.  You can see that I'd tried to smooth the edges so that the next layer would lay well, in theory anyway.  I cut out the stars and couldn't decide whether to use small or large ones, so cut out both...

In the end I went for the large ones, and laid them onto blue fondant.  I did the stripes in Fruit Winders, which ended up a bit wobbly. Sorry.

The customer reviews were positive, phew!  "Thank you so much :) they both loved it! Looked Amazing, tasted amazing!" from the daughter-in-law and "Thanks Becca. Great cake! Really delicious. Thanks to our family party co-ordinator too for organising it! :) " from the lady herself.  They even took an interior shot for us, awww.