This post is way off topic for me, but I have always been a big supporter of Comic Relief and I wanted to share my latest culinary creation, since baking for this great cause seems to be the big thing this year…
My First Bake
It all started a few weeks ago when my girlfriend’s birthday was approaching. She is addicted to Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so I decided I would try and make a peanut butter cake and set off to find a recipe. Now, I haven’t baked since I did food technology at school, over a decade ago, so I decided to play it safe and I found this recipe on BBC’s Good Food website.
I decided to modify the recipe a bit. First, I used an extra 50g of chocolate so there was enough to cover the whole cake (I also added extra milk and some icing sugar to the chocolate to make it smoother, creamier and shinier). Second, I had to use a pre-made butter-cream mix for the filling as I couldn’t get my hands on Dulche du Leche, but this worked very nicely. And finally, I covered the top of the cake in chocolate flakes before adding the caramelised peanuts and decorated the edge of the cake with Peanut Butter Cups.
The result was delicious, I can highly recommend this cake, though it is obviously not suitable for people with peanut allergies (in fact it’s probably their worst nightmare!).
The Cupcakes
Then came Comic Relief, and with all the baking that seemed to be going on I decided to use the recipe again, but this time make experiment a bit more and make some cupcakes – part of the theory being that you could sell these more easily at a bake sale to raise money. We used the same recipe and quantities to make the sponge, but divide it into 24 cupcake cases. We used even more chocolate (prepared as above) and poured it on once the cupcakes had cooled, before adding the sprinkles, caramelised nuts and some toffee sauce. I’d recommend using even more chocolate (we ran out!) so that you can fill the cupcake cases to the brim!
They are so easy to make and delicious, so they’d make an excellent addition to any Comic Relief bake sale. Thanks to the Good Food website for the original recipe and feel free to borrow any of my little embellishments (especially if its for a good cause!).
Unfortunately, because my PhD thesis is due in a couple of months, I didn’t have time to go to a Comic Relief event or to badger my friends or colleagues into buying them, so instead I bought them off myself for £1 each and donated the money to Comic Relief.
Donate!
If you want to donate to Comic Relief, and I urge you to do so, you can do it through their website: https://www.comicrelief.com/donate.