Wakey Bakey Cakey

I bought myself a Xmas present. I know that's sad and pathetic. Whose Xmas highlight is the present they bought for themselves? My boyfriend who's been planning my surprise Xmas present for the last 7 months also thinks it's sad and pathetic. Oh no wait, he doesn't, because imaginary boyfriends seem to have limited thinking abilities. 

So I bought myself a Russell Hobbs 15 Bar Espresso machine. It's beautiful. My espressos are beautiful. I might be a liiiiiiiiitle too hopped up on caffeine. But I think the eye twitch can only add to my charm.

So what's a girl with too much caffeinated energy to do? Bake two huge batches of rusks of course! As far as I'm concerned there are two types of rusks - the wholewheat healthy or the bad-ass buttermilk. After lots of searching I found a great compromise. I've even added seeds to the original recipe so though they taste great you have nothing to feel bad about.

Not unless you eat my Yule Log cake. Then you're going to get into a heap of calorific trouble. But hey, it's Xmas. And I read somewhere that caffeine burns calories. OK maybe I didn't but maybe it should. And if it doesn't, well, I've already got an eye twitch so what chance in hell do I stand of getting a boyfriend anyway.

xx

J

ALL BRAN BUTTERMILK RUSKS

300g Butter

250ml Vegetable oil

500ml Sugar

2 Eggs

500ml Buttermilk

250ml Nutty Wheat (or wholewheat flour)

1kg Self raising flour

750ml All Bran

125ml Sunflower seeds

5ml Salt

Butter two baking dishes, line with greaseproof paper and butter again. Melt the butter and mix together with the oil, sugar, eggs and buttermilk. Stir in the nutty wheat, flour, all bran, seeds and salt. Bake at 360F for 45 min - 1 hour. Make sure you cover with foil when it starts getting too brown. Allow to cool for half an hour before cutting. I cut each of my pans into 24 rusks so it yielded almost 50. Cover your oven racks with foil and pack your rusks on it. Turn the heat down to 200F and dry out for about 5 hours.

CHOCOLATE BERRY YULE LOG

I really thought swiss rolls were a part of high level baking. I thought I'd break it and it would look like a trainwreck. But it was dead simple and it would've taken the consumption of half a bottle of brandy for me to break it. A valuable kitchen lesson: Just cos it looks fancy don't mean it's hard!  

Swiss Roll

5 Eggs

100g Caster sugar

60g Flour

40g Cocoa

1t Vanilla extract

Beat the eggs and sugar in a processor for at least 5 minutes until it's very thick and pale. Add the vanilla extract, sift over the flour and cocoa and fold in very gently. Butter a swiss roll tin, line with greaseproof paper and butter again. Spread the mixture in it and bake for about 12 minutes at 360F. Tip it out carefully onto greaseproof paper sprinkled with caster sugar. Let it cool a bit then roll up and wrap lightly in the paper.

Filling

200g Frozen cranberries/cherries

75g Caster sugar

400g Bournville

20g Butter

500ml Double cream

1T Whiskey

Icing sugar

Simmer the cranberries/cherries with the caster sugar and 2T water for 10 minutes. Bring 450ml of the cream to a boil then remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate and butter. Allow to cool for 5 minutes then stir in the whiskey. Cool for another 10 minutes then whip up for 5 minutes. Pour out a third of the mixture and whisk in the other 50ml cream. Unroll the sponge and spread this mixture onto it then spoon over the cranberry mixture. Reroll then spread the rest of the chocolate mixture over it. You can go crazy with the decoration and if I make it for Xmas, maybe I will. If you're not in the mood use a fork to scrape patterns into it and sift over some icing sugar.