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Saturday 28 November 2015

Brownie Cake with Peanut Caramel Butterscotch

Recipe Base here from Jacquelyn Clark

Now as much as I am a huge fan of being frugal, I also appreciate that you must risk waste in order to discover greatness, so my inner scientist gets her chance to play quite a bit.

I have on countless times metaphorically shaken my fist at the sky when a recipe hasn't worked out, and 9 times out of 10, the recipe is from the Internet. This is not to say that all internet recipes do not work, they all work on some level, but they don't always meet my expectations.

Yesterday I had some friends come around for a donut party; I had some piecrust ideas of two evenings of baking beforehand so that my guests could decorate them using the left over glazes that were accumulating in my refrigerator, requiring precious Tupperware tubs. That of course didn't happen, considering that my day job has been especially busy over the past few weeks, and my motivation to do anything when I get home is very low.

I decided to compensate by making a 'base' cake so that there was something for my guests to eat whilst donuts were being made, and made an uncharacteristically non-cautious move to try a new recipe as my only option. Risk taker, that I am.

In the last few months, I have really been increasing my usage of Pinterest, I didn't really get the concept at first, and to be honest, I probably still don't, however it has proved to be a great source of recipes and ideas for me. Check out my Social Media buttons at the top right of this window to see my perception of the site. Constructive opinions always welcome of course!

Anyhoo, the picture of this recipe was far too much for me to resist, however as it has peanuts, it's a recipe I would avoid making as taking it to work where there are many people who have nut allergies would not be such a good idea.

The recipe worked well... I did add a 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda rather than 1/4, and the cake rose well in the oven, nearly to the top of my springform tin. This was far more than I thought it would seeing as it is a brownie cake, but not an unpleasant surprise.
No, no, that occurred after I took it out of the oven. It was all very sad. The cake sank in the middle, quite possibly a combination of the excess bicarb, or over beating when adding the dry ingredients.
I must admit that I am reluctant to blame myself as it is not my style to over beat... I have a knack for 'lagom' mixing, and as much as it is feasible as a principle, the amount of bicarbonate does not usually affect the rise unless it is in excess of a 1.5 teaspoons, so unfortunately, innocent or not, I am holding the ratios of the recipe responsible here. It doesn't help the recipes's case that the caramel timings were a bit off, but I can be more forgiving of that as I believe the person who made the recipe lives in a warmer climate than I do, so that is understandable.

Hey! The first time I can use a cake stand I received
over a year ago for my birthday

I haven't had an opportunity to taste the cake just yet, but I did taste the peanut caramel butterscotch, and was suitably impressed. Such a great combination. I just love caramel, in its many different forms: caramel, caramel sauce, butterscotch (yes, I have been researching, as the word 'caramel' is bandied about covering many different things with a similar taste and/or consistency, yet varying ingredients). Adding peanuts to pretty much any of these forms is a natural combination, and was a joy to be able to do it myself for once with no guilt or worries about striking someone down with an anaphylactic reaction.

I really need to buy a cake lifter so I can
protect my lovely tins
I am not completely writing this recipe off as a base, but I do have plenty of other sure-fire brownie recipes I could use. I will however always remember that peanut caramel butterscotch sauce, and have some ideas of how to tweak it... I guess I need to have some more guests over so I can test it out!

Tuesday 24 November 2015

Caramel Toffee Cheesecake

Recipe base here

Although I am a cheesecake novice, I HAD to try this from one of my favourite recipe blogs: yammiesnoshery.com

I love Yammie's style, It's effortlessly beautiful and her photos are inspiring. She embraces the 'nobbly', homemade look, yet her creations are ones you would pay top dollar for. Plus like my baking muse, Nigella Lawson, she doesn't shy away from using the ingredients that without, would compromise the flavour. I'm not used to using cup measurements, but I bought a fun set of cups that I am only hoping are the same size as their American counterparts - it's all about ratio, anyway - and I just convert the butter measurement into grams so I can use my scales.

This was a recipe that had a five components: the toffee biscuity base, melted chocolate topping for said base, the cheesecake mix, of course, toffee topping, and cream decoration. The ingredients list consisted of 13 or so items.

Daim and the Gang!

Just taking a photo of the ingredients all together was a challenge! I rarely do such a stunt, let alone even take all my ingredients out as I dislike being surrounded by anything other than my duvet, but I felt this one was special. And indeed it was,

That would usually be enough to put me off, but I had a guest coming that I wanted to impress. So much so that I KNEW this had to be the recipe, as much I also knew I had to do a test run, such was my lack of confidence in my cheesecake making abilities. This would be the second one I had ever made.

Buttery Biscuit Base
(Masterchef UK fans might get that reference)
Lining the tin! Oh my goodness, what a kerfuffle! That was arduous.
Then I got on with the biscuit base with crushed toffee bits. Once I worked out what Heath bars were, I realised they were similar to Daim bars (or Dime bars, as I'm old skool, innit!).
Simple enough... but it later turned out that I have poor depth perception and made the base way too thick. I improved this for the 'real thing', but I think I need to be governed by the needs of the cake rather than the prescribed amounts of the recipe.

Then we melt the chocolate. I won't lie: it pained me to use so many of my precious chocolate chips just to melt them. Yes, yes, I could have chopped or grated a bar of chocolate, but who has the time?! Chocolate chips are only just becoming a bit more common in supermarkets in Stockholm, Sweden, in the last 15 or so months, and as is so often my complaint, prices for them are not low. I buy them in a suspicious bulk pattern and then hoard them like a dragon over its... erm... loot. I didn't want to say 'hoard' again!

The Hoard! It's melted, melted!
What a cruel, cruel, world!

A-ny-way, Then the caramel... again fairly straightforward American style with cream, very yummy. The knee weakening moment was actually when that caramel was mixed in with the cheesecake mixture. Oh. My. Goodness. If I was more dramatic, which is hard to believe, I would have sat down. That mixture was to die for. Soooooo gooooood. I almost didn't want to bake it. I did, though.

That mixture! Wooh!

Wrapped in damp dishcloths as I have no
tray large enough to hold it

Bekked


The decoration. Oh la la, I royally messed this one up. I didn't read the instructions properly so I mixed the caramel with some whipped cream and made... what?! I'll settle with caramel cream. I cheated and used a spray can for the whipped cream topping, and yes, it was impressive. I learned the hard way that whipped cream sinks, so had to re-spray the next day.

Decorated with erroneous caramel cream

2nd attempt

The sheer weight of it plus the stickiness from the fat in the base made it difficult remove from the base of the tin, so I had to just sit by and cry into my lap whilst my colleagues cut on my tin. With metal knives!!! Oh, the agony! The base was too thick on both occasions to cut through with plastic utensils, so it was an unfortunate necessity.

Attempt #1. The assault weapons, your Honour

Attempt #1 Slice.
Doesn't do her justice, really.

Whilst this is most certainly a show stopper and has had repeated requests for a return, I feel overwhelmed by this cake and it had better be a very special occasion for me to make it again.

Thank you all, and good night!

White Chocolate Snickerdoodle Blondies

Recipe base here

I've tried this recipe twice and whilst it has a lot of potential on flavour, I officially give up with this one as the appearance of the complete bake is not so appetising. It's something to do with the pan size (on a basic level) or the ratios (on a more complicated level). From the attempts I have made, I would say that it is the pan dimensions that are not quite working for me. This is especially ironic as the author makes a point of giving advice on varying pan sizes.

This was pretty much good to eat.
If you want to leave this world happy.
As the recipe is quite a pricey one to make here in Sweden, I feel it would be more fiscally responsible to my good self to find a better recipe base and apply these flavours rather than making this many, many times.

This was Attempt #1. I had messed up on the baking soda and
powder components on this one, but on the next one it was
perfectly measured and it still happened 
If you don't mind the appearance, you must make this. The flavour is well worth it!


A flattering picture

Sunday 22 November 2015

Filled and Rolled Loaf

I'm not even sure if this is already in my To Blog list as I have made a bread a few times that this recipe has evolved from. Nevertheless, I had to write about it. As I am wont to do, I was ogling a few of my recent baking snaps, and my greedy eyes rested on the pictures of the filled and rolled loaves that I made a couple of weeks ago.

Having never made two loaves in one day, which obviously involved four sets of hand kneading, I had some tired memories from that experience and was reluctant to do it again. But I'm huuuuuuungry! I decided to do some cursory research on cold proving dough overnight in the fridge as a friend has actually claimed that it produced a better loaf, Naturally I was going down this route. Fresh bread in the morning within an hour of waking?! Yes, please!


Unfortunately my plans were scuppered after I forgot to add sugar to my fresh yeast, which already doesn't seem as enthusiastic as the cakes I have seen in London. Oh well. I shall have to talk about my last bake.

Prior to this point, I had only ever made a bacon and cheese version, and still hadn't settled on a winning cheese combination. Well, this was the time I had to step up to the plate as it were, as a vegetarian cheese-only version had to be produced as well.

I have never used fresh yeast before, however I firmly believe that fresh is always best where possible, so decided to give it a go. Now I have to say that on my previous yeast attempts I used the instant variety, and whilst the bread proved nicely on all occasions, the actual activation was somewhat lacklustre. I should specify that I did not know the difference between dried and instant, and now that I do, the inactivation makes more sense.

Anyhoo, the fresh yeast activation was also marvellously underwhelming. From all the images I had seen, it should produce a glutinous beige semi-paste semi-liquid, however mine was the beige coloured water with some sad bubbles on top. I kept it in a corner in my bedroom that I believe is the warmest, least draughty place in my apartment, and made sure the temperature of the water was optimal, etc, etc,. I suspect the amount of fluid I am using for activation is a bit more than usual, and also the yeast here is just less assuming.

Pre first-prove hand kneaded dough
Aside from the physical workout of kneading the dough (I ought to invest in a stand mixer), the hardest part of this process is retaining the bacon that is used to fill the loaf. It's far too tempting!
The cheese... hmmm, I mentioned earlier how I had some pressure to produce a tasty cheese combination, and a common one that I was finding was parmesan and mozzarella. Now I wasn't so sure about mozzarella, as it is a lovely albeit gentle cheese, that I favour more for its texture than its taste. Well, I decided that I wasn't one to judge on cheeses, not being too well versed in them, so decided on Grana Padano and mozzarella (I couldn't find parmesan). i also had a random half bag of grated Tex Mex cheese, so I threw that in too. I found a nifty trick to grating mozzarella was to freeze it for 30 minutes. Shrewd! I ground black pepper over the vegetarian version, and would have done so for the bacon one, however I forgot. Meh! There was bacon in there!

Mmm bacon
Fromage!
The bacon and cheese bread came out well, a bit of oozing from the criss cross slashing, but I actually found that particular ooze rather charming.

After second prove

Baked!


The cheese version came out of the oven well, but because I'm a doofus, I cooled the bread upside down, hence squashing the poor loaf. Still tasty, but it looked like it was sat on.

Squashed vegetarian version
Bacon & Cheese slice





Available at Samara's Baked Goods.

I have still not settled on this cheese combination, so will work on it further. Perhaps blue cheese? Opinions, as always, are welcome. Relevant to this post, of course!

Available at Samara's Baked Goods.

Monday 16 November 2015

Vegan Banana Cookies

Recipe based on Yammie's Noshery: LINK

I'm not sure how it somehow became a mild expectation, however my second year students seem to believe that at some magical point of the year I will bake something for them.

Last academic year (2014/15), I had a particularly lovely bunch of students in my second year classes, and decided to treat them the smaller class. Not out of favouritism, just unfortunate timing. I knew one of the students is a vegan, so I in order to include her, I had to ensure I made a 'young person appealing' biscuit or something that didn't include eggs.

I found a recipe on one of my favourite haunts at Yammie's, and made a few tweaks to make sure it stayed vegan, and also nut-free. I had attempted a recipe a few days earllier earlier for flourless brownie cookies, hence they were gluten free, and after attempting a vegan version of them, namely replacing eggs with bananas, I was rewarded with flat, unappealing, yet extremely yummy... things.

This time the result was a very soft, squidgy cookie. In hindsight, they were perhaps too soft and squidgy, so I will probably increase the flour content next time.

After all that, the vegan student was absent that day. Pity.
Curious little chappies
Cheeky stowaway emergency freezer cookie

Squidge!

Two different types of dark chocolate

10th December-15
I made these again for one of my smaller classes, and tried to juzz them up by adding a dollop of my homemade caramel... Before baking. As expected, it melted, making them quite unappealing appearance-wise. They tasted amazing though so I'm not abandoning the idea or these actual specimens. I consulted my ...Domestic Goddess bible by Nigella Lawson, and tried making an indent so I could fill the biscuits post-bake, but they smoothed out in the oven, so I decided to skip that extra flourish.

The taste was lovely, definitely one for the recipe collection.

Melted dark chocolate

In the tin
Fresh out of the oven

The stack

Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Free From Cocoa Cake

Recipe Based on Not Quite Nigella: LINK

I recently made some BanBan Bread, and felt there was something missing. Not with the bake; the cake was a trusted one, and didn't fail to deliver. No, the disappointment came from another source. When I make banana cake, my Scottish colleague would often come up to me and say, after an appreciative and perfectly timed pause, 'that banana bread'. It was something I came to expect as part and parcel with me making this type of cake.

When my most favourite comment was not forthcoming, I went to seek it out, and demand its presence. It turns out that the comment's owner had recently changed his lifestyle and was cutting out lactose and gluten. Well! This put a spanner in the works. I live off droplets of perceived praise, and I couldn't let a reliable source run dry. I immediately started researching gluten free, lactose free recipes. I stumbled across a couple, however rather than being flourless, they tended to use gluten free flours. I am currently reluctant to invest in them, mainly because I am reluctant to go to a shop in the opposite direction from my home.

One glorious day, an email came into my inbox with a powerful headline. I was ordered to make this cake. a gluten free, dairy and lactose free, nut free, and most shockingly, chocolate free cake! The base of the cake was quinoa, Surprise!

Now I know very little about quinoa. I can identify it, I know its texture, but not much else. I managed to eventually locate it in the supermarket, prepared it the day before so it was nice and cold, and off I went. Into Egg Oblivion, where I did not realise I was one egg short. I decided to freestyle, and replace an egg with a mashed banana, as I was too far gone to turn back.

Now it could be the egg substitution, it could be the fact it had only cooled for 1 hour, but the poor bundt collapsed upon turning it out of its tin. After all that effort, I wasn't giving up, so I hastily transferred the cake pieces to cupcake cases, topped them with the coconut cream icing to make puddings.

Puddin's
Now even though the cake did not turn out as I expected, I loved the ease of it, and I genuinely liked the flavour and unusual texture. So much so, I will try it again when I can devote three evenings to its creation.


Chocolate Layer Cake

Recipe Base from The Kitchn: LINK

Hmmm, I am surprised I have not written about this cake, as it seems to be one of my most popular ones... weeeeeell, that's stretching it a bit. It's more a situation that this is a cake whose appearance exceeds the work required to create it, so it was the one I whipped up for a friend's barbecue. From that second attempt at the cake, I make the huge artistic leap to say that it's become somewhat of a go-to cake that I use to show that I care a little bit as it looks a bit more showy than a biscuit.

I, personally, am not the biggest fan of chocolate cake. Certainly not this one, which is of the cocoa variety. According to the preamble on the recipe, there are three types of chocolate cake: flourless, cocoa, and fudgy. The chocolate cakes that I appreciate most are of the fudgy variety. Most definitely. However, its seeming failings aside, this cake is actually quite good. I am very wary of layer cakes as I fear they will not be moist, and knowing the drying effect of cocoa, I was on edge the first time I made it.

I made some tweaks to the recipe that are scrawled somewhere on my paper copy, and going against my general rule of following a recipe exactly once, I just went with my gut.

I have now made this cake three times, and it has delivered each time.

My first attempt was okaaaay, but I ruined it by using icing that I had too much of and was far too soupy. Not wanting to waste the icing, I used as much of I could of the moussy stuff to sandwich and surround the layers. It resulted in a chocolate milkshake-looking cake.

The second attempt was perfection. Until I tried to level it. This is the second time I've attempted such a thing, and both have not gone well. When stationary the cake was a masterpiece. In transit, it slid off it Samara-crafted cake slope. Fabulous. I am considering investing in a wire cake cutter tool, however have not had confidence in the online reviews of the ones I have looked at. Suggestions anyone?

Finished product, naked cake style!
Eagle eyed viewers can spot my leveling attempt!

My last attempt was for my first order from my new online bakery, and was intended to be a 5th birthday cake for my colleague's son. This lucky young'un has a liking for both raspberry and chocolate, so after discussions, we agreed on sandwiching the icing with both raspberry and chocolate frosting. We didn't want to make it too adult/cocoa-ey, so I suggested a milk chocolate buttercream frosting. Grand idea, but ineffective. I used 150 g of precious milk chocolate chips, and it somehow got absorbed by the butter icing flavour, so I resorted to cocoa in order to obtain the cocoa taste, I managed to find some inspirations on making rasberry buttercream frosting, and concocted a rather successful batch of the stuff.

So lesson learnt: real milk chocolate does not flavour buttercream icing.

Now as much as I bluffly profess that I have no time for frou frou, decoration, and such like, this is more a testament of my abilities than of the visions I have in my head of what I want to create. This is one of those times that I will hide behind that proclamation. I pictured a towering masterpiece with clear and straight levels of cake and two tone icing. That is far from what the reality was.

Looks like something from Ghostbusters 2!
Luverly.
Whilst I was very confident in the cake and all the flavours, I have to admit that the final piece was a let down.

You see? You see?! It was better on the test run!
I made the mistake of using a ready made decorating tube or what turned out to be a thick, sticky, sugar paste, that I have never used before. And will probably never use again. My test 'piping' was passable enough that I wouldn't have minded that being on top of the actual cake. My real attempt looked like a child of the age displayed on the cake did it. I was as embarrassed to the extent that I could be (which is not much). To try to distract from the main debacle, I added some fresh raspberries covered in a white chocolate mix, which did nothing for their appearance, but did everything for the flavour, sprinkled some dried raspberry flakes and icing sugar over the top. It helped marginally, if that.

Reluctant frou frou

Side-ish view


Reflection:
Pipe writing with softer more suitable flavoured and perhaps dyed icing with my own piping tools
Pipe the icing between layers for a neater finish

I have a chance at redemption! My colleague has asked for a repeat order, with the addition of marzipan! I'm not confident on the flavour combination, but faint heart never won fair lady!

29th November 2015 UPDATE
Well... it was neater, however my mental images of piping a Cumberland style coil of icing for neatness didn't quite work, and I have a LOT to learn about marzipan. I'm not even convinced what I was using was marzipan. I wasted maybe half the packet. Learned it was delicate so didn't quite work with my strenous rolling, and that I should probably invest in a good size pastry rolling mat for ease of application.

As the original plan was to cover the whole cake in marzipan, I filled the layers with raspberry buttercream icing only. I also decided to try and beat the cake levelling system by placing the top cake layer upside down so that its flat bottom would create a level surface for icing. Yeeeeh, that didn't quite work. The top layer decided to have a bit of a breakdown, or rather just started to break so I had to carefully flip it over and use the domed surface.
Then I had to go to Plan B, and just roll out a top layer of marzipan and then cover the cake in the chocolate icing. There were no good raspberries in my local supermarket (they were all mouldy), so I there was no real juzzing to be had either. I tried, though, I did try. I tried to do stripy icing for the writing, and it disaster. Then I tried two tone sugar paste with blue and yellow, and it all melded together into a very pale green in the bag. Every day, there is so much to learn!

Yes, yes, the writing has not improved


Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Sunday 15 November 2015

Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcakes

Recipe base: LINK

I have a problem. If I see an interesting ingredient AND it's on some kind of promotion, I get filled with an increasing need to purchase said ingredient.

This happened with a jar of Dulce de Leche on offer in my local supermarket. Keeping in mind that I live in Sweden, whose grocery prices are pretty lofty, and whose price saving promotions are few and far between in my humble opinion. Even when there are offers, the price saving is not usually that great. However! You mustn't look a gift horse in the mouth regardless of the size of the gift, so covet it I did. Well I coveted two. Crafty producers offered two variations: Baking, and Classic. How could I choose?! I decided that as I wanted to use it with cake, I would opt for the baking option.

I went home, found a recipe, made it, was suitably disappointed, yada yada, more about that later.

You would think that the purchase would satisfy my needs, if not dampen them. Well, no, it did not. I am all about possession, and as with Pokémon, I gotta catch them all! The price promotion was still on at least three weeks later! They were really tempting me. I managed to talk myself down from the ledge of hopelessness, and put the jar down. I didn't really need it. Turns out, I had already bought the Classic jar in some sort of Supermarket Sweep blackout. I really didn't know, and happened upon the sneaky pot nestled behind a box of cocoa. Kerazy.

Anyhoo, so I was desperate to justify my initial purchase of the Baking Dulce de Leche so I scoured my usual suspects that I could search by ingredient with, and stumbled across a recipe for iced cupcakes. Huzzahs all around, everybody.

It seemed fairly straightforward except for the coring, filling, de-coring (is that a word?) of the cupcakes. Fiddly, monotonous stuff that I really had no time for, but beggars cannot be choosers: I had selected this recipe based on the limited ingredients at home, so I plowed on.

From memory, the cupcake mixture seemed nice and smooth, however proved to be heavy and close textured after baking. Big disappointment. Still edible nonetheless.

The Army
Reflection: add equivalent of bicarbonate of soda to baking powder for extra lift.

At the coring stage, I had a twinkling of a doubt that seeing as I was not baking the Dulce de Leche, I should have bought the other one, but I figured it wouldn't be much different. Kämpa kämpa. It turns out, I'm a mean corer; I could definitely have left more space for the gooey filling, but I retrospectively justified my actions by figuring that these were not results I could waste expensive ingredients on.

The icing was a bit grainy, maybe because I used the wrong sugar, but I don't quite remember. They were impressively uniform looking once they were frosted, so I surprised myself with my passable icing skills. Alas I did not think this through, so my transportation methods resulted in a few sad squashed fellows. Boo.

Cupcake
I have since invested in a 24-cupcake carrier. It is certainly a beast, however somehow more comfortable to carry than my old case.

Better luck next time... watch out for attempt 2!

Sunday 8 November 2015

Mini Zingi Loaves

Recipe based on 'How to be a Domestic Goddess' by Nigella Lawson.

So after having my recipe book for so long, I have finally decided to invest in mini-loaf tins. Along with a couple of 6-well donut tins, and a cupcake carrier case. No one cares about that, but I had to say it.

When selecting which mini-loaf tins to invest in, I was wavering between getting individual mini loaf tins (approximately 1/2 of a regular loaf), 6-well tins (approximately 1/3 of a regular loaf), and a 8-well tin (around 1/4 of a regular loaf). I was overwhelmed by the choice alone, so had to let Nige decide for me. In this book, she uses the 8-well tins, so they were what I opted for.

Now as I mentioned, I had invested in donut tins, and I have been having a lot of fun with them (I will update my blog as soon as possible), and realised that my other new purchase was not getting used, so I changed my plan of making more donuts, and debut homemade mini loaves... to myself.


Lovely whipped batter
As Ms. Lawson was my deciding factor for the tin, it only seemed fitting that the recipe I used first, was the one that swung the vote: Mini Lime-Syrup Sponges.


Syrup... somehow eclipsed by those
gorgeous loaves in the background!
I didn't have lime at home, but I did have an organic (non-waxed) orange, and a lemon, so I used the zest and juice from the orange, together with some of the juice from the lemon. It turned out that I did not need the lemon juice, but it did add a certain lightness to the flavouring.

I decided to make a double batch as 8 mini-loaves to take to work just wouldn't do, and thank goodness I did! I'm unsure whether I neglected to read it, or it simply wasn't there, but how full should the wells be?! Yes, yes, I understand the concept of dividing the batter equally across 16 wells, however with my non-fan, and quite frankly, dodgy, oven, I am limited to baking one tray at a time, so I fill them accordingly.
Syrupped!
I decided to fill the wells approximately 3/4 full, and as you can see from the pictures, they rose magnificently. Too magnificently.


And on the inside...
Taste and texture were perfection... and they may have been even stickier if the loaf size was more appropriate.

Definitely one to be tried again.

Available at Samara's Baked Goods



Butterscotch Layer Cake: Attempt 2

Recipe based on Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.

Big news! I've finally set up an online store for local deliveries and collection (Stockholm only).
I am just as surprised as everyone, as I have no real inclination to make a profit from baking, or indeed a living from it either. A friend directed to me a lovely site called Tictail.com, which gives you free online store space to set up a shop and sell items that you advertise.

The close up
Not one to blow my own trumpet, but in my category, my shop looks pretty polished, even though there are many things to improve.

Twins!
Anyhoo, as of 08/11/15, I have received two orders. One was for a chocolate layer cake that I will wax lyrical about in another post, and the other order was for a bumper 6 items!

One of the items in this order is... you guessed it, the Butterscotch Layer Cake that this post is named for!
Lovely smooth batter

This was the second time I'm making it, however I was fairly confident, although some doubt lay in the oven in the flat I am currently renting, and am still yet to get used to. It's a hasty oven, so I have been extra vigilant after 2/3 of the baking time has passed as I have been burnt before. As were two of my cakes.
So grateful for my stackable cooling racks

The cake is intended to be a naked one, so unlike my first attempt, I decided to present it that way, and instead of being governed by the quantity of icing and caramel I had made, I was governed instead by the aesthetic. Kinda. You know me, not one for frou frou. They looked better than the first attempt anyway. In a manufactured sort of way.
Homemade caramel

Butterscotch Cream Cheese Frosting
Anyhoo, they* turned out well, I was pleased, I will hopefully update with pictures of The Cut later.
Nice Slice
*They were twins! Otherwise known as two cakes made at the same time!

Available at Samara's Baked Goods