A VERY SWEET WELCOME

plus a brown butter cake with honey cream and an apple & fennel cobbler to brighten up your January

Hello and welcome to Sweet Things!

A place to make, eat and talk about all things sweet.

This newsletter will be the new home for all of my recipes and is a place where I can develop the recipes I want and share them with you directly. There’ll also be lots of other fun bits including answering hard questions like ‘what are the best biscuits to buy?’ and ‘why is tiramisu the best dessert of all time?’ Paid subscribers will be getting extras like rundowns of my favourite bakeries and what to order if you go, all the delicious sweet things I’ve eaten recently and behind the scenes of my day to day life as a food writer and food stylist. I’m very excited to create a proper little community on here! To be honest, Instagram has been a bit draining for a while and I’ve felt the pressure to conform to ‘the algorithm’, trying and failing to keep up with posting reels every second of every day and spending far too long looking for the perfect trending audio.

This newsletter will allow me to share at a more sustainable pace and also get input from you guys! I want to hear your thoughts, what sweet things you’ve been making or eating recently, what type of recipes you’d like me to develop and anything else you want to share with myself and each other in the comments.

Since appearing on The Great British Bake Off all the way back in 2016, I’ve been professionally writing and developing recipes for nearly eight years now and have been baking since I was about 10. (I’m now 31, eek!) Somehow I’ve still got lots more ideas in this little brain of mine so you’re in for a real treat. Paid subscribers will receive a new recipe every week and the £5 a month subscription works out at only £1.25 per recipe or even less if you go for the annual option. An absolute steal! And for free subscribers, you can look forward to a new recipe in your inbox every other week.

I’m very much looking forward to sharing with you and to kick things off, I’ve got two wonderful recipes, perfect for a cold, cosy January.

Lots of love,

Benjamina

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Brown Butter Cake with Whipped Honey Cream

You’ll quickly come to learn that if anything on a menu contains brown butter or malt, I will very much be ordering and devouring it. Brown butter or beurre noisette if we’re being technical, is a bit of a magical ingredient that effortlessly transforms dishes, be it cakes, cookies, scrambled eggs or roasted veg. It works hard so you don’t have to. If you’ve never made it before, do not fear! I promise it’s very straightforward and the more you make it, the less you worry about burning it. All we’re doing is heating some butter, letting the water evaporate and browning the milk solids that turn into little specks at the bottom of the pan. This week, we’re using the brown butter in our sponge to bring a soft caramel-y vibe to a simple cake. Sandwiched together with a luscious whipped cream spiked with honey and sea salt, this is a perfect Saturday afternoon kind of cake. I’m all for incorporating lots of herbs, spices, nuts and chocolate in my baking but sometimes I want things a bit stripped back. January for me certainly isn’t a time of restriction but after a heavy month prior of full on feasting, I like to keep this time of year just simple and cosy.

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RECIPE

serves 10-12
equipment : two 8 inch (20cm) sandwich tins

220g unsalted butter, cubed
200g caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 egg yolk
200g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
40ml warm milk

For the filling
200ml double cream
30g honey (I like to use heather honey)
1/4 teaspoon flaky sea salt
icing sugar, to dust

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 160C fan/180C. Grease and line two 8 inch sandwich tins.

2. Add the butter to a deep saucepan. (If you’re browning butter for the first time, I recommend using a light coloured pan to help you see the colour changes more easily). Heat the butter over a medium heat until completely melted.

3. After a few minutes, the butter will start to bubble and spatter. Give the pan a swirl and a stir every so often to ensure it’s melting evenly. The butter will then start to get foamy and at this point things will move quickly! Keep scraping the pan to stop the milk solids from sticking to the bottom. It should be smelling quite fragrant and nutty at this point and that’s how you know you’re close. Once the butter looks a nice deep amber colour (don’t be scared to take it fairly dark!) remove from the heat and pour it into a heatproof bowl or jug, including all the brown bits at the bottom of the pan. Let it cool to room temperature before chilling in the fridge until it reaches the consistency of softened butter. If it gets too firm, just leave it out at room temperature to soften a little.

4. Once the butter is at the right consistency, add it to the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl along with the sugar. Cream together until it’s really pale and fluffy.

5. Add in the eggs and yolk one at a time, beating well after each addition.

6. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.

7. Add about a third of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture and mix on low speed until smooth. Add in some of the milk and continue alternating with the rest of the dry ingredients and milk.

8. Divide the batter evenly between the two tins and bake for 26-30 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool completely.

9. To make the filling, add the cream, honey and salt to a bowl. Whisk until the cream just passes soft peaks. You don’t need it to be super stiff, it should gently be able to fall off a spoon.

10. Spoon the cream on top of one cake and drizzle with a little extra honey. Place the second cake topside down and dust with icing sugar to serve. Once assembled this cake is best eaten on the day due to the fresh cream.

Apple, Maple & Fennel Buttermilk Cobbler

Cobblers feel distinctively American. As a Brit, I‘ve grown up with fruit crumbles as standard and occasionally a pie. But rarely a cobbler. I’ve grown to really love them and their more robust exterior - perfect for someone like me who prefers a higher crust to fruit ratio. Cobblers come in all different forms; some are more cakey, some are more crumbly and then there are cobblers with more of an American biscuit or scone type topping like mine. These are my favourite.

Using buttermilk here brings both tenderness and tang to the topping (hello alliteration). I’m a big fennel lover and the seeds give just a touch of liquorice vibes without being too much for people who don’t like liquorice - myself included. Serve this with cold cream or hot custard - or potentially both? No rules or judgement over here, especially not in January.

RECIPE

serves 4 - 6
equipment : I used a 22cm round pie dish

For the topping:
150g plain flour
80g unsalted butter, cold and cubed
30g golden caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, plus extra to finish
80g buttermilk, plus extra to brush
demerara sugar, to top

For the filling:
approx 700g apples (I use a 50/50 mix of Bramley and Braeburn)
120g golden caster sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 tablespoon cornflour
pinch of salt

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 160C/180C fan.

2. Add the fennel seeds to a pestle and mortar and crush them to get a coarse consistency. Add them to a bowl along with the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Give it quick mix to combine.

3. Add in the cubed butter and use your fingertips to rub it into the flour until you have a coarse mixture with pieces of butter about the size of chickpeas. Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk.

4. Use a table knife to stir until the dough starts to clump together. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface use your hands to bring it together. Use a rolling pin to gently roll out the dough about half an inch thick. Use a small round cutter to cut out discs and re-roll once to get some more shapes. If you don’t have a cutter, you can use a small glass (just dip the rim in flour first) or you can slice the dough into squares instead! Place the shapes on a tray or plate and chill in the fridge whilst you prepare the filling.

5. Peel and core the apples, and roughly chop them into 2cm chunks. Place them in a bowl and add in the sugar, maple syrup, lemon juice, ground ginger, cornflour and salt. Give everything a good mix and tip it into the baking dish.

6. Top the apples with the dough (it’s fine if not all the apples are covered). Brush the tops with a little more buttermilk and generously sprinkle on some demerara sugar and whole fennel seeds.

7. Bake for 45-55 minutes until the cobbler is a deep brown colour and the apples have softened and are bubbling away underneath.

8. Let the cobbler cool a little for 10 minutes before serving warm with custard, cream or ice cream.