Gibby Bakes

This might just be my most triumphant bake to date, owed in part to the fact that it's an entirely vegan creation! This a Vegan Chocolate and Salted Caramel Cake! The cake is comprised of four layers of chocolate sponge, is filled and decorated with chocolate and salted caramel buttercream, and is topped with homemade double chocolate cookies and homemade vegan fudge! The drip (which did so much emotional damage to me!) is a salted caramel sauce.  I had to combine elements from a few different recipes to pull this cake together, the majority of which come from Freya Cox's vegan baking book. This book is proving to be something of a vegan baking bible! To start with, I made the sponges following the method for her Black Forest Gateaux recipe, which uses espresso powder to enhance the chocolate flavour! The cookies are a take on Freya's Triple Chocolate Cookies, except I couldn't find any vegan friendly white chocolate in shops near me, and had to leave it out. For the bu...

 This is without question one of my dream cakes!  With no plain piping nozzle to hand I had to  use a piping bag with the end trimmed off to pipe these kisses! This cake is comprised of three wonderfully moist apple sponges, containing homemade apple puree for flavour and texture and spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice, is filled with homemade apple butter, and is decorated with salted toffee buttercream! All flavours that I just adore! Glowing in the fire light! Although we didn't do anything as a group for Halloween, when Bonfire Night came around we just had to have a little gathering around the firepit, making use of the bar we built last year by having a few drinks and a catch up! I decided to bake this cake to surprise my friends with, and it went down better than I could have hoped for! Whilst this cake is something of a dream for me it definitely didn't come together like one! For a start I've never made apple puree or apple butter before, and whilst both of...

The next part of my autumn spice journey comes in the form of these Vegan Carrot Cake Cupcakes! Don't get me wrong, the autumn spice isn't the main attraction here, but it features prominently enough for me to count it as one of my signature autumn bakes!  The cakes! Carrot Cake is one of my absolutely favourite flavours, and honestly if you say you don't like it you just have a bit of growing up to do! These cupcakes are flavoured with orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, obviously feature grated carrots, but also contain walnuts and dried cranberries for a little sour hit amongst the sweetness! Less is more with the  decoration here, showing  off the piping! These cakes, like the Vegan and Gluten Free Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes, are topped with a vegan cream cheese frosting. Cream cheese frosting is another favourite of mine, and to make it vegan is something of a triumph! Simply using vegan butter and vegan cream cheese makes a stunning frosting. From the practice vegan ...

My pumpkin spice mission continues! If you've read even a couple of my posts then you'll be absolutely sick of me banging on about this, but I just love autumn! After a few doctors appointments and illnesses I've managed to get back out running, and I reckon it's the best time of year for it. A favourite route of mine involves running in circuits up and around the park woods, and after seeing how the colours on the trees had changed since my last run I knew I just had to do some more autumn inspired baking!  The Pumpkin Spice Cupcake  alongside a vegan Carrot Cake  Cupcake! In all honestly this is my second attempt at these cupcakes. The first cakes I made simply just to try some more vegan and gluten free baking, and I had a nightmare! I ordered myself some cute little autumn leaf cupcake cases to go with the theme, but they were a strange size. They were halfway between fairy cake cases and bun cases, and I didn't have a tin the right size to accommodate them. Thi...

When your bestie moves to a city half the world away (Sheffield, in fairness), what better present can you give than a batch of freshly baked doughnuts?! I thought these cute little doughnuts deserved a little post of their own. I'm under no false pretenses here. Just because these doughnuts are baked rather than fried doesn't necessarily make them "healthy", as subjective a word as that is. Instead, I chose to bake these doughnuts as I find the baking process easier to control in the oven as opposed to when deep frying. These doughnuts also contain no yeast, meaning they don't need to be proofed. This means they are also a relatively quick bake if you fancy a doughnut fix! The doughnuts! A close up of the orange and pistachio and biscoff doughnuts! In terms of flavour, I planned to use three different combinations, orange and pistachio, biscoff, and dark chocolate and hazelnut. I then decided to add a fourth for some more colour variety. Unfortunately, a couple o...

 Before I get going with this one I just want to mention a couple of things:  1. These croissants are far from perfect, but for such a technical bake I wanted to show what an early attempt looks like for me, as I'm proud I even managed to make them look as good as they do! 2. Like a fool I didn't take a photo of the inside of the croissants. The photos I have of the final results are not the best, but the texture and bake on the finished croissants were so good that they felt like a triumph, despite their appearance! With that out of the way, here's how my croissants turned out!   Displaying the croissants in a  cute little bag to disguise how  imperfect they are! Making the dough for croissants is straight forward to begin with. You simply combine strong bread flour, salt, sugar, yeast, milk and water, and knead until a smooth dough forms. Veronica helped with this as a the dough is quite wet to start with so a food mixer makes this stage easier. It's at this p...

Coming from Nadiya Hussain's book "Nadiya Bakes", this spanakopita recipe puts a Bangladeshi twist on this Greek spinach pie. I was intrigued when I first read through this recipe, but hearing this kind of bake literally being called a "spinach pie" put me right off. I know spinach is really good for you, and I often add it to curries and other meals for that extra Vitamin C and Iron hit, but only as an extra. I've never made something where the spinach has featured so heavily as the main event before (750 grams in this pie!). What a cross section! However, I'm a big fan of both paneer and ricotta cheese, which also feature in this recipe. I convinced myself to give this pie a go after all. If nothing else, this would be another good opportunity to work with filo pastry! And I'm so glad I did! Both the flavours and textures of this pie are heavenly, and I'd say that the filling is really easy to make! First, the spinach is covered in boiling wate...