Cakes from Kim

This cake is so good that I've made it three times in the space of 10 days!


I discovered it at at work a few weeks ago - a colleague had baked it for someone's leaving do and when she told me what it was I thought, 'oh, sounds alright'  but when she took the lid off the box and I was punched in the face by the most delicious smell of coffee mixed with a hint of sweetness, I knew that I was in for a treat!

And oh how I was! It was such a light cake, with a big coffee kick that was balanced perfectly by maple syrup and coffee frosting. You know it's a good one when the whole room goes quiet as everybody tucks in, apart from the occasional 'ooh' and 'mmm'. I knew I had to get the recipe and somewhat surprisingly, it was from the ocado website.

 I knew exactly when to make it, too - the theme for the Runcorn and Widnes Clandestine Cake Club last month was Love at First Bite and I decided that this cake fitted the bill perfectly. I had a practice go at i…

I seem to have developed an obsession with American M&Ms. I'm not sure why, since I've never been that much of an M&Ms fiend, but import them from America, put some funky flavours in whack up the price tag and I'm sold!

After munching my way through some Pretzel M&Ms I decided they must be incorporated into something baked, and the thought of them mixed in to caramel cupcakes sounded just right.


I used the Hummingbird Bakery's recipe for Caramel cupcakes and folded in some bashed up M&Ms to the mixture. With hindsight, this wasn't the best recipe to use since I've found that Hummingbird recipes tend to be very runny and so unsurprisingly, the M&Ms mostly sank to the bottom (and then got stuck to the bottom of the cupcake case..).


That aside, the flavour combination definitely worked and so I just need to come up with a firmer cupcake batter to support the little chunks of pretzelly M&M goodness! I've been baking with a lot of carame…