The Great Jodie Bake Off

My first ever cake! An apple cake made from a gluten free, dairy free and sugar free recipe.

My first attempt at a Slimming World cake recipe. Sponge cake using low fat spread and sweetener. I have no idea how and why it looks the way it does - what a disaster!

My second attempt at a Slimming World cake recipe - haven't clue what the heck happened!

My third attempt at a sponge cake - this time using the measurements from the Slimming World recipe but using "full fat" ingredients of Stork margerine and caster sugar. I did use the SW recipe of Muller Light yoghurt mixed with Quark for the filling. SUCCESS AT LAST!!!!!!

My first attempt at a chocolate loaf. Apart from not rising properly it wasn't bad. And it tasted ok which was definitely an improvement on my other first attempts!

My first attempt at using my heart shaped cake tins using the sponge recipe. I like to call it  "spongicus errupticus".

My second attempt with the heart shaped cake tins. Thankfully this attempt resulted in a much smoother, albeit well done, appearence.

My first attempt at a chocolate sponge cake. I used ready made Betty Crocker vanilla icing for the filling. Yummy but definitely not Slimming World friendly!

My first attempt at lemon drizzle cakes. I used the zest of the lemon in the cake mix and the juice of a lemon mixed with boiling water for the drizzle. They definitely tasted lemony!

My first attempt at banana and choc chip muffins using a Slimming World type recipe including sweetener but no butter. Not very bananay as I only used half a banana.

My second attempt at banana and choc chip muffins. I used a whole banana this time so the flavour was stronger. I used self raising flour this time as the recipe calls for plain flour but as my first attempt didn't turn out that great I decided to throw caution to the wind and tweak the recipe to see if it would improve on the texture. It didn't help massively.

My third attempt at the banana and choc chip muffins. This time I used some Stork margerine even though the recipe didn't include butter/marg but I thought it would help with the consistency/texture and it did improve things a little bit. Next time I'm going to go the whole hog with the full fat ingredients and use caster sugar instead of sweetener in addition to the self raising flour and marg. I have come to the conclusion that low fat cakes just cannot be made.

MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH!!!!!!

I finally made muffins that look like muffins - hurrah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Strawberry and white chocolate muffins and they are BLOODY lovely!!!!!! I just need to try putting them in the paper cases next time to try and get the bottoms to look more muffin-like but this is a massive improvement and it's probably  because I used a full fat recipe.

My next foray in to muffin making was an attempt to make chocolate muffins using cocoa powder. They were a little bit bitter but edible.

 

 

And next came blueberry muffins which compared to shop bought ones which I assume use a jam instead of real blueberries were a little bit tart.

And after I'd succeeded in the world of muffins I decided to try cupcakes/fairy cakes complete with pink icing which I made by making buttercream and mixing pink food colouring in. My first batch were a practice batch which I donated to my theatre for their Macmillan Coffee Morning.

And my second batch were a gift to my friend Janis and her family to commemorate the birth of her little girl Eilidh. I bought pink gingham cake boxes specially for the occasion.

In January 2018 I felt very proud to have made my Mam a birthday cake for the very first time.

Then in February I made my Aunty Joyce a birthday cake because she has always been the one who made Victoria Sponges for everyone else's birthdays. This time I had a crack at decorating the cake with rolled icing and little edible flowers. I was very pleased with my first attempt at decorating.

 

In early March I made a surprise unicorn cake for my friend Louise's birthday and although I may have slightly overdone it on the sprinkles I was really happy with how it turned out, especially the pink sponge. We'll not mention the fact that the decorated cake ended up looking more like a chicken than a unicorn!

Later in March I made cupcakes with home made icing which I had coloured blue and piped on top to spell out KEN to celebrate my Uncle Ken's birthday.

After my spate of full fat recipe cake successes in April I decided to dabble in Slimming World dessert recipes once again and made a Slimming World cheesecake. While it did come together and was not a total disaster it didn't taste particularly great and the consistency was dodgy but I haven't ruled out having another go at it at some point in the future.

In March 2019 I made another batch of cupcakes to celebrate my Uncle Ken and Aunty Joyce's combined birthdays. I made some icing and had planned to colour it with yellow icing to suit both male and female but it was a disaster. I miscalculated my measurements so the icing was runnier than water and looked radioactive as I added too much dye. One mad dash to the supermarket later and I hurriedly decorated the cakes with some ready made icing in two different colours but I was very happy with the finished product so for once I was quite glad that my Plan A had gone wrong. They were yummy and the birthday boy and girl enjoyed them as did the rest of the family. Result!