Hazelnut Crumb Cupcakes with Homemade Dulce De Leche and Vanilla Icing

These cupcakes are awesome and hide a surprise of yummy caramel in the center! Full of Dulce De Leche caramel and hazelnuts these are just the thing for the upcoming Easter holidays! The vanilla yoghurt in these give a lovely acidity that cuts through the caramel and the buttery flavour of hazelnuts perfectly, and make for a indulgent treat!

Ingredients:

Cup Cake Batter:

2 Cups of White Plain Flour
1 Cup of Organic unrefined Sugar
1/2 Cup of Chopped Hazelnuts
2/3 Cup of Canola Oil or Sunflower Oil
2/3 Cup of  Soya Milk or Hazelnut Milk
2/3 Cup of Vanilla Yoghurt (Alpro or Provamel)
1 tsp of Baking Powder

Dulce De Leche:

1 Carton of Coconut Cream (Blue Dragon)
1/4 Cup of Organic Unrefined Sugar
Pinch of Salt

Vanilla Icing:

4 Cups Of Icing Sugar
1 Tbsp of Margarine
1/4 Cup of Vanilla Yoghurt

Heat your oven to 200c and line a cupcake tin with cupcake cases. In a sauce pan bring to the boil the carton of coconut cream, sugar and salt. Once at the boil reduce to a medium heat and stir. Meanwhile add to a bowl your flour, sugar, hazelnuts, oil, milk, yoghurt and baking powder and mix with a hand held mixer until smooth and glossy. Spoon the mixture evenly into the 12 cup cake cases and place in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden brown on top and a knife inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Meanwhile stir your dulce de leche mixture, it should now becoming more opaque and thick and will not easily run off your spoon, it takes a good 10-15 minutes to reach this point. Once it is thick and has a light golden colour, place to one side and make your vanilla icing.
In a bowl add the icing sugar, margarine and yoghurt. Mix with a hand held mixer until thick and stiff and will hold peaks. If it doesn't, add a little more icing sugar to thicken.
Now time to assemble! Take each cupcake and with a knife cut a small hole in the center of the cup cake. Then gently pull out the small piece of cake you have just cut, out of the hole. Fill the hole with a teaspoon of the dulce de leche caramel and then press the piece of cake back in to cover the hole.This will make for a lovely surprise when you eat the cake and find caramel inside! Then fill a piping bag (with a large smooth nozzle) with the icing and pipe a swirling pattern on top. Finish with a sprinkle of chopped hazelnuts. You can also wet a spoon and make a mini scoop of dulce de leche on top to finish! Enjoy! X

Black Pepper Breaded Aubergine Slices

It's true I love breadcrumbs. Anything from a pasta bake to Mac and Cheeze, I savour the golden, crispy bread crumbed morsels, and will always make an excuse to add extra to a recipe if they are required! There are alot of bread crumby fake meat slices out there and although I love them they aren't especially good for you being usually high in salt and processed. So I thought I would get my fix and bread crumb some aubergine slices, and they turned out great! Once again use a good non-stick frying pan or you could bake these in the oven making sure to turn them frequently to get a nice golden crust.
There a lot of people who 'salt' their aubergines to remove bitterness and their water content, but I tend to be in the non-salting prep camp. I have never had a bitter aubergine and I enjoy the moist middle of these slices, so see no point in wasting salt and having to wait an hour to do this mythical aubergine salting. You can do it if you like but they will work beautifully without this preparation.

Ingredients:
Dry Mix:
2 Cups of Fine Bread Crumbs ( 4 or so slices of bread whizzed up in a food processor)
1/4 Tsp of Black Pepper
1/2 Tsp of Mixed Herbs
Pinch of Salt

Wet Mix:
4 Tbsp of finely milled Linseed or Flaxseed
1/4 of a Cup of Hot Water
2 Tbsp of Nutritional Yeast

1 Aubergine cut into Slices (about 1.5cm thick)
Olive oil for frying

Heat a non-stick pan and turn your oven on to 190c. Put the bread crumbs, black pepper and mixed herbs on a plate add a pinch of salt, and mix with a fork. In a bowl add the flax and hot water and mix to form a thick gluey gel! Add the nutritional yeast and pour the mixture onto another plate. Then dip your aubergine slices (both sides) in the flax gel and then into the bread crumb mix. Gently pressing on the bread crumbs to help them stick and then place in the hot pan with a little olive oil. Fry gently until golden and then flip over to fry the other side. This should be a couple of minutes each side. Depending on the size of your pan you should be able to get at least a couple of slices in the pan frying at a time. Once golden on both sides, pop into an oven dish and place in the oven to continue cooking while you finishing frying the rest. Remember to add drizzles of olive oil to the pan each time you start frying a new batch so that the bread crumbs don't burn. Once they are all golden, plate up with a lovely salad with new potatoes and avocado! Yum!

Deerly Beloved Bakery's 2nd Birthday Today!

Deerly Beloved Bakery is 2 years old today! It seems like only yesterday I would sit drinking cups of tea with my friends and dream and chat about my bakery! Now it is two years since I started the blog, and the bakery quickly followed a month later! Thank you so much to everyone who supports us, comes to our stalls, comes to our vegan get togethers, orders cakes and bakes and reads our recipes! You all rock and we love ya deerly! X

Easter Range!

Easter is fast approaching so I thought I would share the Deerly Beloved Easter Range with you all!

The Deerly Beloved Easter Celebration Cake is a rich chocolate cake sandwiched with a chocolate buttercream inside and then covered with white icing. It is then topped with beautiful handmade daffodils and mascari flowers! Our Easter cake comes in two sizes  4.5'' and 10'' round cakes and serve 2, 16 (respectively) generous slices. All Deerly Beloved Bakery cakes can be made gluten free and although we have a strict cross contamination policy, please bear in mind we do use gluten flour in our kitchen. All ingredients are local, seasonal, organic and fairtrade where possible and 100% cruelty free! They are freshly made to order, no cakes hanging round waiting to be sold here! They can either be collected from the bakery or delivered in the Norwich area for a £3 charge. Ordering can't be simpler! Email your order to deerlybelovedbakeryvegan@gmail.com and you can either pay by cheque or I can send a PayPal invoice to your email address. Once I have received your payment I will send you an email confirmation and your cakes will be freshly made, ready for you to collect or be delivered in the Norwich area.

4.5'' Two Layer Mini Cake £13 Gluten Free £15

10'' Two Layers Sandwiched with Vegan Buttercream £39. Gluten Free add £5

4.5'' Serves 2. 10'' Serves 16.


Deerly Beloved Easter Whoopie Pies!

The Deerly Beloved Bakery Easter Whoopie Pies are two delicious daffodil hand painted vanilla biscuits with a chocolate center which is a flavour combination that the whole family will enjoy! We can also do larger boxes, just ask! Ordering can't be simpler! Email your order to deerlybelovedbakeryvegan@gmail.com and you can either pay by cheque or I can send a PayPal invoice to your email address. Once I have received your payment I will send you an email confirmation and your whoopie pies will be freshly made and sent! 

•  Two Whoopie Pies in a presentation bag £3.50 + £4.50 p+p

• They can also be collected from our bakery 

Deerly Beloved Bakery's Easter Spring Chocolate Collection! 

The Easter spring box is naturally gluten free and of course vegan! It contains:
2 Blueberry and camomile truffles. Fresh home-made macerated blueberry sauce is mixed with organic camomile flowers to create this smooth truffle with organic and fair trade 72% chocolate.
2 Lemon and Pine Nut pralines. Fresh lemon juice and zest stirred into 72% chocolate with home-made chunky pine nut paste.
2 Pistachio Nut Caramels. Home-made thick caramel with chopped pistachios and a hint of sea salt encased in 72% organic and fair trade chocolate.

Ordering can't be simpler! Email your order to deerlybelovedbakeryvegan@gmail.com and you can either pay by cheque or I can send a PayPal invoice to your email address.

• £7 for a box of 6. Can be posed anywhere in the UK for £4.50

• They can also be collected from our bakery

The Deerly Beloved Hot Cross Buns!

These delicious Hot Cross Buns contain vanilla, currants and lemon zest to create a more indulgent spin on the normal easter treat!

Ordering can't be simpler! Email your order to deerlybelovedbakeryvegan@gmail.com and you can either pay by cheque or I can send a PayPal invoice to your email address.

• Box of Three £2.50

• Collection from our bakery only so they reach you perfectly fresh from our oven!

Deerly Beloved Bakery must receive payment in full (all cheques cleared) before we will send out any orders.  all orders must be received by 25th of March to guarantee your order arrives in time for the holidays!

Norwich Eco Awards Best Small Business!

I have just found out that Deerly Beloved Bakery has won the award for Best Eco Small Business from The Norwich Eco Awards! We are so pleased and happy to receive this award!
The awards ceremony took place this afternoon and I couldn't attend because you guessed it, I was making and delivering cakes! So it was a lovely surprise to hear from the awards organiser Claire Tullet that we had won! I apparently have got to pick up a certificate and a trophy, I have never had a trophy in my life but I am so happy to have gotten one for my little business.
Thank you so much to Norfolk County Council for recognising and encouraging green businesses! As my background is in environmental work, a chef promoting green eating and now, trying to make my business as sustainable as possible, from the ingredients I use to the packaging I package my cakes in, this means so much! Right I am off for a well deserved chocolate brownie to celebrate!

Read more here:
Evening News Write Up: http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/news/green_city_heroes_recognised_in_norwich_eco_awards_1_1961396
Norwich City Council Write Up: http://www.norwich.gov.uk/news/Pages/City'secochampionsareunveiled.aspx

Guest Post: Alex from In Vegetables We Trust's Breakfast Loaf Recipe!

At the last Deerly Beloved Vegan Meet Up I got chatting the the lovely Alex of In Vegetables We Trust and we decided to do a guest post on each others blogs! Alex's blog is amazing, full of inspiring dishes and it's so great to chat to someone who gets so excited about baking ingredients and food as much as me! So here is Alex's yummy Breakfast Loaf which includes my favourite ever fruit Blood Oranges plus yummy cranberries, cinnamon and quinoa flakes for a protein kick! I cannot wait to make this! Thanks Alex! X


A tasty sweet and healthy start to the day. Lovely toasted with vegan margarine or fruit spread. If you cant find quinoa flakes rolled oats will work just as well. as vegans we all know how awesome quinoa is. I buy fair trade quinoa to avoid that awkward "yeah but quinoa is evil for the farmers" speech and also well I buy fairtrade where ever I can afford it anyway, give me warm fuzzy feelings of niceness. This loaf is also makes the most luscious vegan french toast topped with fresh berries and pairs well with marmalade. This recipe makes 2 loaves. 

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups plain strong white organic bread flour, plus extra for dusting surfaces3/4 cup quinoa flakes, pulsed in a food processor1/4 cup quinoa flakes1/2 cup dried cranberries1/2 cup flame raisins1 tbsp ground cinamonthe zest of 3 blood oranges3/4 cup blood orange juice (about 3 oranges)1/2 cup  tepid almond milk, plus extra for glazing loafs1 sachet of fast action dried yeast1 tbsp agave syrup2 tbsp melted vegan margarine

Method:
Whisk the yeast into the tepid almond milk with the agave and set aside for a few minutes. In a mixing bowl stir together the dry ingredients and the orange zest, make a well in the center add all the ingredients to the bowl and stir together well for about 4 minutes, the dough will be quite wet. Turn the dough out onto a generously floured surface and knead in extra flour until you have a manageable dough. Knead for a few minutes more. Drizzle a little canola/rapeseed oil into a bowl a toss the dough gently round the bowl to coat in the oil. Cover with cling film and place somewhere warm for 1 1/2- 2 hours until doubled in size. Once the dough has risen to double the  size, half and gently knead into two loaf shapes and place into two lined loaf pans and allow to rise up for another 30 minutes. bake in a preheated oven at 200c/400f for 30-40 minutes until golden brown on the outside and cooked all the through. You can test the loaves by flipping upside down and tapping the bottoms, they should sound hollow. allow to cool before slicing. Makes lovely toast!

You can find out more about Alex's gorgeous recipes here: 

http://invegetableswetrust.wordpress.com/

https://www.facebook.com/InVegetableWeTrust

https://twitter.com/InVegeWeTrust

My Week According To My Camera!

1) Our New Chocolate And Coconut Snowball Cupcakes! Available tomorrow at The Norwich Vintage Fair at St Andrews Hall.
2) Roasted Onion and Tomato Rosemary Crumble Tarts! Available tomorrow at The Norwich Vintage Fair at St Andrews Hall.
3) Hazelnut Chocolate Cake available at Waterstones Cafe W!
4) Chocolate Orange Spice Cake available at Waterstones Cafe W!
5&6) Puppy play date!
7) Cheezy Potato Cakes with Rocket, Homemade Tomato Sauce and Sauteed Black Kale, Mushrooms and Cherry Tomatoes!
8) Making paper pom poms for our wedding!