Category: Snacks

Homemade jaffa cakes recipe.

One of my favourite British snacks, besides pork scratchings, is jaffa cake. The half biscuit half cake chocolatey orangey combo is addictive, perfect with a milky mug of hot tea. If you’re the sort of person that likes chocolate and orange together, you’d LOVE jaffa cakes.

# – Jaffa cakes!

Here, I get my jaffa cakes fix from Marks & Spencer but they are just mini jaffa cakes so they finish really quickly :(

# – Mini jaffa cakes from M&S. Picture from pievcake.wordpress.com.

They’ve recently started selling regular sized jaffa cakes but the price is a bit hard to justify so I decided to make my own jaffa cakes!

For the cakes:

  • 2 eggs
  • 50g of caster sugar
  • 50g of plain flour, sieved



    • For the filling:

  • 1 packet of good quality orange jelly powder
  • 1 tablespoon of orange marmalade
  • 125ml of boiling water
  • 200g of good quality dark chocolate, minimum 70 per cent cocoa solids, broken into pieces

    • # – First pour the orang jelly powder mixture into a measuring jug.

    # – Pour the boiling water into it. Stir till powder is all dissolve. Mixture will be very thick, it is normal.

    # – Add the orange marmalade and stir again till combined.

    # – Pour the jelly mixture into a tray.

    # – Chill it in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours.

    # – In the meantime, simmer some water in a pot and put a heat proof bowl over it, making sure the water doesn’t touch base of bowl. Beat the sugar and eggs in the bowl until pale and fluffy. It will take about 4-5 minutes.

    # – Then, gradually add the sifted flour while still beating the mixture.

    # – Pour the batter into a non-stick 12 hole muffin tin, each to about 0.5cm thick. If you don’t have non-stick, make sure the tin’s properly greased and coated with a light dusting of flour.

    # – Bake at a preheated temperature of 180 degrees celcius for 8-10 minutes.

    # – After baking, allow to cool slightly and remove the cakes with a rubber spatula.

    # – Leave them on a rack to cool down completely.

    # – When ready to assemble the jaffa cakes, melt the chocolate in a microwave at medium heat for 30 seconds. The chocolate will still look quite solid after you take them out of the microwave but as soon as you stir it, it will become gooey & glossy :)

    # – Scoop up some jelly that you’ve made earlier and spread it onto the cakes.

    # – Like this.

    # – Then, pour the melted chocolate all over the cakes. Chill in the fridge till the chocolate set, about 1/2 hour will do.

    # – Eat the jaffa cake.

    Obviously, these taste much better than the store-bought stuff. At first I thought 12 were too little, but they lasted between two of us for about a week. You can just eat one and be very satisfied :) Otherwise, multiply the recipe to your liking…hehe.

    My man made scones! Here’s the recipe :)

    We had a sudden craving for cream tea last night. Okay, actually only the BF did, but he successfully performed “sconeception”.

    I was a little hesitant at first due to the sheer numbers of calories involved but when the man offered to make the scones from scratch, I was sold.

    # – Scones with jam and cream.

    Making scones may involve simple & basic ingredients, but if not careful might end up with hard lumps reminiscent of paper weights. Which is why I’m so impressed by the man for it’s his first time making scones and they were absolutely DELICIOUS!

    The ingredients:

  • 350g flour, plus more for dusting
  • 2 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 85g of salted butter , cut into cubes
  • 3 tablespoons of caster sugar
  • 175ml of milk
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
  • 1 egg, beaten (for glazing)

    • # – Before you start making the scones, first pop the milk into a microwave or warm it in a saucepan. The idea is to get it just warmed through, not boiling.

    # – Then, add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the milk.

    # – Followed by a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Set the milk aside while you work on making the scones.

    # – ALSO, remember to pop your empty baking tray into the oven at 220 degrees celcius to heat up.

    # – Now lets begin to make the scones. Pour the flour into a mixing bowl.

    # – Then, add the baking powder.

    # – Followed by the cubed butter.

    # – Using your fingers, rubs the butter and flour together until resemble bread crumbs.

    # – Now add the sugar and stir to combine.

    # – Pour the milk prepared earlier quickly into the mixture.

    # – With a knife or pastry cutter, quickly work the mixture until it forms a loose dough.

    # – Tip the dough into a floured surface.

    # – With your hands, gently knead the mixture, becareful not to overwork it. Then pat it down to flatten it, forming a sheet about 4 cm thick (or thicker if you like tall scones).

    # – With a round cutter (5-6cm), cut the dough and place onto the baking tray which has been heated. If you don’t have a round cutter, you can always improvise with a cup or something :)

    # – Brush the surface with beaten egg.

    # – Stick it in the oven at 220 degrees celcius for 10 minutes or until golden brown.

    # – Delicious scones, DONE!

    # – Cut scones into half and serve with good quality jam and cream (just beat whipping cream until stiff). Better to serve with clotted cream but it’s so expensive here! :(

    # – This is really what happened after the nicer pictures are taken. SCONE GORGEFEST!!!!!

    Easy to make and taste truly delicious. Crispy on the outside, light and soft in the middle. Just remember not to overwork the dough and you’ll be fine :D

    Make your own crunchy caramel popcorn!!!

    It started with Fiqa bringing back some Garrett’s popcorn from Singapore for us to try. OMG the popcorn was gorgeous!!

    But since we were sharing the popcorn and I’m like really chinese when it comes to stuff like this, I didn’t eat more.

    I pretended that I was considerate and that I cared about my friends and like I was totally into this thing called “sharing”.

    No, it’s all a BIG FAT LIE!

    So, because I didn’t get to satiate my popcorn craving, I decided to make some myself, at home!

    # – Homemade caramel popcorn.

    For the popcorn:

  • 1/4 cup of dry corn kernels (easily found at spice section in supermarkets)
  • 60 ml of cooking oil

    • For the caramel:

  • 125 grams of salted butter
  • 3/4 cup of demerara sugar (you can use ordinary sugar)
  • 2 tablespoons of honey
  • 1 teaspoon of paprika, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of black pepper, optional
  • 1 teaspoon of chilli powder, optional

    •  

    # – First, pour oil into a medium sized saucepan and heat it until it’s very hot. To test if the oil is hot enough, throw in one corn kernel and when it pops, the oil is ready.

    # – When the oil is ready, pour in all the dry corn kernels and immediate close with a lid.

    # – Hold the lid down. Soon you will hear a lot of popping sounds. Truly SATISFYING music! With your fingers firmly over the lid, hold the saucepan handle with your other hand and shake the pot gently but away from the flame (imagine you’re holding the reins while riding a horse). You do not want to burn the popcorn as the smell is absolutely rancid!

    # – When the popping sounds have stopped, that means the popcorn are now done! Like magic!

    # – Now, pour the plain popcorn into a large mixing bowl and allow to cool down.

    # – In the meantime, throw in all the ingredients for the caramel into a saucepan and heat them up on medium heat. I flavoured my caramel with paprika, pepper and chilli powder to give it a bit of kick amidst the sweetness. Be creative and experiment with your favourite spices!

    # – Constantly stir the mixture.

    # – Stir until the mixture has completely melted, turned a darker shade of brown and quite bubbly (about 10 minutes). Some people like to push their caramel to the darkest end (for a richer, slightly bitter taste) but it’s quite easy to burn them (nasty bitter taste) so becareful!

    # – Immediately pour the caramel into the popcorn and mix them up with 2 large metal spoons until popcorn are evenly coated. You’re handling extremely hot mixture here so be careful! Constantly stir them to loosen the popcorn so they won’t stick together until the caramel has cooled down & hardened.

    # – If you find the popcorn abit greasy, just pour them onto a kitchen towel to absorb the oil a bit.

    # – Homemade caramel popcorn, DONE!

    It’s crazy easy, crazy cheap, crazy delicious, crazy crunchy and best of all, it’s homemade.

    You can flavour the caramel however you want, you can even experiment with savoury flavours. This is not really conducive to my slow carb diet but sometimes a girl gotta have her popcorn!

     
     
     
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