Baking: Home-made pizza recipe

For me, there is no comparison between home-made pizzas and shop bought ones. The humble home-made pizza is a firm favourite amongst my family. My dad definitely holds the pizza making crown but my sister and I are determined to give him some competition! This is our trusty recipe we follow for a delicious home-made pizza.

What you will need to make two pizza bases:

• 500g strong white flour
• 1 tea-spoon of fast-action dried yeast
• 1 tea-spoon of salt
• 350ml tepid water
• 2 table-spoons of olive oil

Method

1. Sieve the flour into a bowl, then add the yeast and salt.
2. Make a well in the flour and add water and olive oil.
3. Now for the messy bit- use your hands to mix it all together until it goes into a smooth elastic dough.
4. Once smooth take the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface and knead for ten minutes.
5. Shape into a round ball and put back into mixing bowl, cover with cling film, leave in a warm place for an hour (e.g. airing cupboard, near radiator, hot plate).
6. When you return to the dough it should have risen, now turn it out of the bowl, cut in half (as the mixture you have made is for 2 pizzas), knead both for 2-3 minutes.
7. Using a floured rolling pin roll out the dough until about 1cm thick, and place on two baking trays. 
8. Spread passata over the two pizza bases (you really don't need too much), sprinkle over mixed herbs/oregano. Add crumbled mozzarella and then add your toppings of choice...we used mushrooms, olives, ham and peppers.
9. Grate over some more cheese if you like your pizzas cheesy!
10. Pop in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for 10-15 minutes.

Serve with a side salad or home-made potato wedges and enjoy! xxx

Bake me a cake....

Good evening everyone! Something a little bit different from me today.......a little bit of baking. I'm quite the lover of cakes and nothing beats a home-made cupcake! So I thought I would share with you all how to make these delicious (and light) small cup-cakes // fairy cakes.

What you will need:

1) 110g self-raising flour 

2) 110g caster sugar

3) 110g margarine

4) 2 eggs

5) 1 teaspoon baking powder

6) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

(It's a good idea to sift the flour and sugar to get any lumps out and also to help achieve maximum 'fluffyness' in the mixture)

Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees C and whilst that's warming up place all of your weighed out ingredients together in a bowl. Then with either a wooden spoon (muscles needed!!) or an electric whisk, mix them all together and keep doing so until the mixture becomes really light and fluffy......it should look something a little bit like this:

Then once it has reached this consistency you can start spooning the mixture into bun cases (I find using two teaspoons really useful as you put the mixture on one and use the other to scrape it off). Ensure that an even amount of mixture is distributed between all of the bun cases otherwise some will be bigger than others....about a third full is the right amount.

They don't look particularly impressive but trust me once they go into the oven they rise really quickly. Pop the tray into the oven and leave them to cook for approximately 20 minutes (make sure you check back regularly) until they are springy to touch and golden in colour.

Once they are done, take them out of the oven and out of the tray and leave them to cool on a cooling rack before you ice them.

I iced mine with Glace icing that I mixed up which is really simple to make-

200g sifted icing sugar

55ml boiling water

tiny bit of gel food colouring

*Recipes and method taken from Kate Shirazi's book- 'Cupcake Magic'*

The beauty of cakes is that you can be as extravagant or as simple as you like.....I'll leave it up to you!