Are you in need of a simple recipe to impress loved ones… some Valentine’s baking inspiration perhaps? We created quick and easy, creamy, dreamy, fresh berry tartlets – made with a biscuit base and our instant Pastry Cream filling –

or as the French call it…

Crème Pâtissière – thick creamy custard used as a filling for cakes and pastries such as custard slices, mille-feuille, cream puffs, profiteroles or fruit tarts.

We used loose-bottom fluted tart pans, great for individual portions; however feel free to make and serve these tarts in ramekins, or pie dishes – use what you have, darling

Ingredients

1 Packet Nicoletta Pastry Cream Mix (aka Crème Pâtissière) 400ml Milk 1 Packet Biscuits (Marie / Tennis / Oatmeal Digestives) 3 Tbs. Butter, melted Fresh Berries

Smash the biscuits and blend them together with the melted butter. Squish the crumbs into the tart pan tightly – so that the base doesn’t seek to fall apart at serving or removing the tart shell! Place the tarts in the freezer for a few minutes to allow the butter in the tarts to harden – this therefore will make it infinitely easier to remove the shell from the pan without the tart falling apart.

Mix the Pastry Cream according to instructions on the packet (add the mix to 400ml cold milk in a bowl, and beat on high-speed for 2-5 minutes, until thick and creamy. Allow the mixture to stand for 2 minutes before using).

Remove your tarts from the freezer, pop them out of the pans and fill with sweet creamy filling. Decorate with fresh berries – we used blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.

Refrigerate until served.

For Nicoletta’s 10th birthday, we created a cake in our honour, to be henceforth known as the Nicoletta Cake; hear hear!

This cake was made with 3 tiers of varying shades of yellow sponge cake and iced with buttercream. We made a mini ombre naked cake to accompany our fondant iced creation, to indicate the layers in our Nicoletta Cake.

This recipe is a family favourite, and has been used for all kinds of birthday cakes, Neapolitan cakes, cupcakes and tray bakes. It is fondly known as the “1-2-3 cake recipe”:

250g Butter (room temp.) 1 cup Milk 2 cups Sugar 4 Eggs (room temp.) 1 tsp. Vanilla extract 3 cups Flour 1½ tsp. Baking powder

Cream the sugar and butter in an electric beater until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating till the eggs are incorporated after each addition. Mix in the milk and flavouring. Add the sifted cake flour and baking powder and mix well (scrape the bottom to make sure it’s all mixed together). Split the batter into 3 and colour 2 of the batters in varying shades of yellow (light yellow and bright yellow).

Spoon each batter into a pan and bake at 180°c for 15-20 minutes, or until golden and the cake tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool while you prepare your fluffy buttercream frosting:

185g Butter (room temperature, and cut into cubes) 200g Icing sugar 1 Tbs. Milk 1½ Tbs. Vanilla extract a pinch of salt

Whip butter in a mixer till it becomes very pale and very creamy; the more you beat, the creamier it gets. Add the remaining ingredients and mix slowly. Frost your cake.

Our friend at Love Life Cupcakes helped us out by decorating the cake using White and Yellow Ready to Roll Fondant Icing. The cake was covered in a sheet of fondant and draped with ruffle layers around the cake. Ruffles were created by cutting strips of fondant to build up the layers one by one.  The cake was finished with a large yellow and white flower!

Since these lemon bars were adapted from our recipe for lemon meringue, we made this tray bake using a mixture of condensed milk, lemon and eggs on a biscuit base. We adore our lemony treats to be tart and perfumed with lemon zest, so we suggest that you add lemon to taste. The biscuit base was mixed with Nicoletta’s new Lemon flavoured Sprinkle Crunch: crunchy hail sugar shards that were added for extra lemony-ness and texture.

Base

1 packet Oatmeal Digestive Biscuits 3-4 Tbs. Butter, softened 20g Lemon Sprinkle Crunch

Filling

2 Tins Condensed Milk 200-250ml Lemon Juice, freshly squeezed (to taste, depending on the sourness) Lemon Zest 4 Egg yolks, separated a few drops of yellow food colour (optional)

Blitz biscuits together with the butter, and mix in the Lemon Sprinkle Crunch. Spread and push down the biscuit mixture into a 29 x 29cm baking tray or dish to form the base. The tray should be at least 5mm deep.

Mix the condensed milk with the egg yolks and lemon. Do not whip to avoid the mixture becoming aerated. Pour onto the biscuit base.

Bake at 180°C for 10-15 minutes. Allow to cool.

This recipe is for a deep dish; halve the mixture if using a flan dish.

Vintage cakes are usually beautifully crafted and refined – and what looks more sophisticated than mini Battenbergs for high tea? Don’t be put off, this recipe may seem complex, but it is all about the construction.

The ‘Battenberg’ is a checkered sponge cake made by cutting and combining sponge cake pieces in a chequered pattern; the pieces are traditionally “cemented” together using jam; and the cake is then enrobed in rolled marzipan.

The origin of the cake seems to be unknown; early recipes use alternative names such as “Domino Cake” (recipe by Agnes Berthe Marshall, 1898), “Neapolitan Roll” (recipe by Robert Wells, 1898), or “Church Window Cake.” The Battenberg name is linked to the town of Battenberg in central Germany; and it is alleged that the cake was created for the marriage of Prince Louis of Battenberg and Princess Victoria, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria in 1884.

Our stylish mini Battenberg cake pieces were constructed with Almond Marzipan filling, and enrobed in rolled White Fondant.

This sponge cake recipe is based on our 1-2-3 cake recipe with some minor modifications.

Cake –

250g Butter 2 cups Brown Sugar, blitzed to a finer crystal 4 Eggs 1 cup Milk 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract 1½ cups Flour 1½ cups Ground Almonds 1½ tsp. Baking Powder Pink Food Colouring

Preheat the oven to 1800C. With an electric beater, beat together the sugar and the butter until the mixture is light in colour and fluffy in texture. Add the eggs one at a time to the mixture, beating the mixture until the eggs are incorporated after each addition.  Add the milk and the vanilla extract to the mixture, beat until well mixed. Add the cake flour, ground almonds and the baking powder and mix well.

Split the mixture in two. Add pink food colouring to one of the batches and mix well. Pour each of the batters into separate cake tins and bake in a warm oven for approx. 40 minutes.

 To Assemble –

Apricot jam, warmed until runny 250g block Almond Marzipan 250g block White Ready to Roll Fondant Icing sugar, for dusting

Our finished Battenbergs were approx. 70mm x 40mm:

Cut each sponge cake into long fingers, the height and width should equal 15mm (like a long square). It doesn’t matter how long the length is as this will be trimmed later. Roll out the marzipan on a lightly dusted surface and cut into lengths of 15mm wide. Brush with apricot jam. Position the marzipan between the sponge fingers and assemble with a pink and white finger at the base and then a white and pink finger on top. Alternate the colours to give a checkerboard effect. Trim the cakes and marzipan to 70mm long. Roll out the white fondant until it is 2mm thick. Trim the fondant so that it is approx. 120mm x 70mm. Brush one side of the fondant with apricot jam and wrap the fondant tightly around the sponge.

You can make the cakes as big or small as you like, just adjust the size of the sponge, marzipan and fondant accordingly. We decorated our mini cakes with Soft Cream Pearls studded on the fondant with a traditional crisscrossed pillow pattern.

Bundt cakes are so beautiful, and yield a very evenly baked cake! This style of mould was popularized in the 1950s +60s in North America; when a cookware manufacturer trademarked the name “Bundt” and began producing Bundt pans from cast aluminium, which was highly popularised Pillsbury. The origins of the Bundt cake moulds’ distinctive ring shape was apparently inspired by a traditional European fruit cake known as the ‘Bundkuchen’.

For our Bundt cake – we used a traditional apple cake recipe, based on Martha Stewart’s Apple Cinnamon Bundt Cake.

Ingredients

2 ½ cups Flour 1 Tbs. Cinnamon, ground 2 tsp. Baking Powder 1 tsp. Salt ½ tsp. Bicarbonate of Soda 250g Butter 1 ½ cups Brown Sugar 4 Eggs 1 x 385g tin Pie Apples – cut into small pieces

Whisk the butter, brown sugar and eggs until smooth. Mix the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and baking soda together and gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture. Fold in the apple pieces. Spoon the batter into the mini bunt pans and smooth on top.

Bake at 180°C for approx. 50mins, or until a tester inserted in the cake comes out clean.

We drizzled a warm simple syrup glaze (boiled sugar + water) onto our delightful apple bundts to keep them moist; and decorated the cakes with Pearl Nonpareils and Yellow Blossom Icing Shapes or Gold Twinkle Stars.

Traditional pink and white coconut ice has been replaced by our instant sprinkle-rich version. This satisfying sweet treat is quick and easy to make and promises to use up that desiccated coconut (which we all have) lying about the pantry. The recipe is so simple and ideal for the “little ones” getting hands in the kitchen as the ingredients are mixed together at room temperature and require no heating or baking!

Ingredients

 1 can Condensed Milk 600g Icing Sugar 390g Coconut, desiccated Sprinkles

Mix the condensed milk, icing sugar and coconut well. Divide the mixture in  half; press one half into a tray/dish, and mix the other half with colourful sprinkles (we used Nicoletta Cake Confetti Stars), press the next layer down, place in the fridge and leave to set. Cut into blocks.

 

We love our sprinkles! We added colourful Nicoletta Cake Confetti Stars to a vanilla cake batter before baking. Each confetti star became a delightful splash of polka-dot colour inside our mini cakes. These cakes practically sing ‘happy birthday’.

Ingredients:

2 cups Castor Sugar 4 Eggs 1 cup Butter, melted 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract 3 cups Flour, sifted 1 Tbs. Baking Powder 2/3 cup Milk 1/3 cup Cream

Whisk the castor sugar and eggs in a mixer until light and fluffy. Add the butter and vanilla essence, and mix well. Add the sifted flour and baking powder to the mixture alternating it with the milk and cream. Pour the creamed mixture into mini cake tray and bake in a preheated oven at 170°C for approx. 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

We iced our cakes with white buttercream frosting.