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This slightly spiced plum yoghurt cake is one of my favourite summer time cakes. The plums make it slightly tart, but the cake is sweet and spiced with Pepper & Me Bakers Blend!
I love to serve it with natural yoghurt and a good cup of coffee! I have decorated with cake with freeze dried raspberries and dried rose petals.
PLUM CAKE
Ingredients
- 125 grams Butter softened
- ¾ cup Caster sugar
- Zest and juice of a lemon
- 2 Free range eggs
- 1 ½ cups Plain flour
- 2 teaspoons Baking powder
- 2 teaspoons Pepper & Me Bakers Blend
- 1 cup Natural unsweetened yoghurt
- 8-10 Plums stones removed and halved
Instructions
- Place the butter in a cake mixer or bowl and beat with a electric beater until creamy and whipped.
- Gradually add in sugar, then add lemon zest while beating, continue beating until light and white (creamed).
- Gradually beat in eggs adding 1-2 tablespoons of flour halfway through.
- Sift over remaining flour, baking powder and bakers blend then stir through the yoghurt and lemon juice.
- Spoon mixture into a lined cake tin and press plums onto mixture (cut side up).
- Bake 180ºc for 55-60 minutes. Cool on a baking rack
- Sprinkle with icing sugar and more Bakers blend once cooled, serve with natural yoghurt!
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Inspired by my friend Jane of Behind the Blush Door and her blog post listing all of her AliExpress finds! If you don’t follow Jane yet you must! Not only is she a lovely soul, her house is dreamy and shes the ultimate bargain hunter!
So I thought I would share some of my favourite AliExpress bargains!
Hopefully you will find some goodies from this list and please let me know of anything you have found that you love!! I have tried all of these items and are quite happy with them especially for the price I paid for them!
Remember when I shared this post on instagram I had so many people ask me where I got it from, pity I don’t have the swipe up function to share links in my stories. But thats where a blog comes in handy, here’s the link to buy this pink make-up organiser.
I ordered this rose gold wire basket to store all of my skincare together in the hopes of being tidy and it’s been great!
I brought sunglasses just like these from OnceIt over a year ago and have loved them to death, a couple of weeks ago they broke. So I thought I would search on AliExpress as I know quite a few of the items they sell are from AliExpress. I found these for $4 they are exactly the same and arrived in two weeks, so happy!
We all know how gaga I am over gingham so I could resist getting a black & white gingham knotted headband to hopefully keep my hair frizzies at bay for another day before having to wash it!
I got this leopard print knotted headband which I really love for $2. Its satin with an elasticated section which is great for fitting my massive head!
I recently ordered three pairs of earrings and these have been the first to arrive coincidently these grey raffia fan earrings I’m most obsessed over and was stinging out over spending $4 on them! I’m so glad I got them, they are so beautiful!
The latest arrival from AliExpress are these sweet tortoise shell geometric hoop earrings, they were around $2!
I brought these white 50ml plastic spray bottles for food styling but turns out they are also useful for making ‘Monster Spray’ for Coco to spray to keep the monsters from her nightmares away! To make the monster spray I filled the bottle with water and added a drop of essential oil, I made the label with my dymo label maker. You can order a variety of bottle sizes and colours
I originally ordered these christmas antler cake toppers for a christmas cake I planned to create for my Christmas ebook, I didn’t end up making it but loved popping the antler toppers into my christmas flower bouquet!
I’ve been wanting to grab some rose gold washi tape for ages and was going to use this in my Christmas wrapping but I totally forgot about it! It’s going to be very pretty for wrapping birthday gifts this year!!
Influenced again by Jane and fueled by my addiction to rubber stamps (you never know when you gotta stamp the hell outta something right??? It’s actually so theuropedic). I ordered the acorn, flowers, berries and bunny rubber stamps from the same supplier. They are quite small but perfect for stamping kraft paper for wrapping paper.
Floral tape for when I get time to make wreaths and for covering stems of flowers I use to decorated cakes!
I’ve always wanted white pumpkins to decorate for Halloween and these Pumpkin decorations arrived just in time for Halloween last year (allow about four weeks for them to arrive) I brought them in a set of 6 in various sizes for about $6. I also brought the Bat Balloon on AliExpress but was disappointed it wasn’t helium quality!
This mini tripod for my phone has been life changing! I have to admit I haven’t used it much yet but so far it’s been great for videoing instagram stories hands free (while doing some brioche slaying) and taking some selfies. The legs are bendy and the part that holds the phone can be swung around and tilted, it also comes with a remote and attachment to attach your camera to it but I haven’t tried that out yet.
I don’t know about you but I’ve never had great luck with my fat fingers writing and drawing on my phone so I hunted down one of these touch screen stylus pens on Aliexpress. They are available in a range of colours and you are suppose to be able to use both ends I have not seem to be able to use the pointy end on my phone
I will be adding more finds or a whole other stream in a new blog post of AliExpress bargains when I receive them. If you have any questions please ask away!
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I have a thing for scones, I think because you can easily whip them up and it’s totally acceptable to serve them with lashings of butter!
These date and orange scones are perfect for serving warm when you have guests coming around or that weekend treat!
Scroll down for the recipe which you can print off or pin to pinterest to save the recipe for later.
DATE & ORANGE SCONES
Ingredients
- 2 cups pitted dried dates
- 2 oranges rind and juiced (you need about ½ cup of juice)
- 4 cups plain flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon Pepper & Me bakers blend
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- 100 grams cold butter diced
- 1/2 cups milk
- Raw sugar/coffee sugar crystals for sprinkling
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Grate the rind of the oranges then juice them.
- Add the dates, orange juice and rind into a small pot and simmer until the dates soften (around 10 minutes).
- Sift the dry ingredients into a large bowl and rub in the butter.
- Stir in the date mixture and milk.
- Mix until just combined and it resembles a dough.
- On a floured surface gently shape into a flat rectangle piece and cut into smaller rectangles, triangles or squares.
- Place on the lined baking tray and sprinkle with raw sugar and bake for 20 minutes.
- Once cooked cool on a wire rack and serve warm with lashings of butter!
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These Plum cheesecake truffles are amazing!! The kind of dessert for Christmas that I could keep going back for that’s not sickly sweet but has enough flavour to make your taste buds happy! These are the cheats version of making and setting a cheesecake, so easy and so quick to make!
I personally love the layers of flavour beginning with the gingery cream centre, the tart but sweet plum then the hint of creamy sweet white chocolate! Make these to serve for Christmas dessert, take to a Christmas party or give as a edible gift!
PLUM CHEESECAKE TRUFFLES
Makes 20 truffles
These plum cheesecake truffles have the yummiest creamy ginger based filling then contrasting rich tart plum coating topped off with a hint of sweet white chocolate. These truffles would make the best edible gift and Christmas dessert. These delicious truffles are best stored in the fridge. I highly recommend doubling the recipe!
- 250 grams packet of gingernut cookies
- 120 grams cream cheese
- Zest of 1 lemon or 1 tablespoon of lemon curd
- 2 tablespoons Fresh as freeze dried plum powder ((half a packet))
- 50 grams White chocolate
In a food processor, process the cookies until fine crumbs. If you don’t have a processor, pop cookies into a large glad bag, seal and take out your issues I mean beat the cookies with a rolling pin.
Add in cream cream and lemon rind or curd, process until it forms a large ball like shape.
Roll into small bite sized balls.
Place the plum powder in a bowl and gently roll the truffle balls to evenly cover them in the powder.
Gently warm the white chocolate in the microwave or double boiler and sprinkle each truffle with white chocolate using a teaspoon.
Pop in the fridge to chill until firm.
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I love this Taco Salad for dinner (and leftovers for lunch haha!) Its a easy throw together dinner packed with flavour!
I hope you enjoy this recipe and if you make feel free to tag me on instagram so I can share it!!
TACO SALAD
This is one of my fave all in one salad dinners! The flavours, textures and freshness are the perfect combination!
Chilli Con Carne
- Olive oil
- 500 g premium beef mince
- Brown onion (finely chopped)
- 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
- 2 Tablespoons tomato paste
- Can crushed tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 2 teaspoons Pepper & Me italian stallion or dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- Pepper & Me chipotle salt or man grind
- 1 Cup beef stock
- Can kidney beans (drained)
Salad
- Cos or iceberg lettuce
- Tomatoes (diced)
- Carrots (grated (pop in salad or hide in mince mixture))
- Cheese (grated)
- Sour cream
- Guacamole or avocado (mashed)
- Corn chips
METHOD
- Heat a dash of olive oil in a fry pan over medium to high heat. Brown off the mince and remove from the pan.
- Add another dash of olive oil to the pan and add in the onion, stirring and once the onion starts soften add in the garlic.
- Then stir in the tomato paste, spices, canned tomatoes, stock, kidney beans and add back in the mince.
- Cook until the sauce has reduced.
- While the sauce is cooking, chop the lettuce, dice the tomatoes, grate the carrots and cheese
- Layer the lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, crushed corn chips, mince mixture (chilli con carne), top with cheese, a dollop of cream cheese, crushed avocado and sprinkle with Chipotle salt!
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I’m so excited to share with you my very first Christmas ebook resource!!
This Christmas ebook is all about creating a magical Christmas for you and your family!
I have made it super easy for you and compiled some of my favourite Christmas recipes and activities I do for my family in the lead up to christmas!Don’t worry there are plenty of easy ideas and recipes! Most of the the recipes and ideas are totally adaptable to your creative interpretation!
I wanted to create resource where you can find everything you need in one place to save you hours of research!
This Christmas ebook contains 32 pages of inspiring Christmas crafts, recipes and ideas including:
- A DIY guide to making a easy and affordable advent calendar which comes with printable numbers, activities and planning calendar
- How to make Christmas crackers with printable family friendly jokes.
- 16 ‘Take a plate‘ party food type ideas.
- 16 Christmas inspired Recipes that can be used anytime of year!
- 5 Super easy Christmas food ideas (that I don’t consider full recipes like salads etc).
- 7 Edible gift ideas.
- Stocking filler ideas.
- Christmas Eve box ideas with Reindeer food recipe.
- Styling grazing platter tips.
- Christmas gift wrapping ideas.
- Styling Christmas table setting ideas.
PLUS extra printable downloads:
- 2 December calendar planners for planning your advent calendar activities and elf of the shelf adventures.
- 2 pages of Christmas gift tags. I recommend printing on 200gsm
- Gingerbread house template. You can laminate this to re-use every year!
- Reindeer food tags.
- Christmas cracker jokes.
- Advent calendar numbers.
- Advent calendar activity ideas.
Plus you will get access to my private facebook group which has more step by step type images for taking you through the process of making some of the recipes! If you’re like me and your extremely visual this will be so helpful for you! In the group you can ask questions and share your creations with everyone else who’s brought the book!
Feel free to print the book, view it on your phone, tablet or computer or just print out the extra downloads!
To start print out the Advent Calendar planner and activities (if you choose activities alternatively you can just pop chocolates in) and plan out your month. If you also indulge in Elf on the Shelf I have included a planner for that as I always plan my advent activities and elf adventures together so I can merge the days activities! If you think any of the activities and recipes would be great to do with the kids you can add those to the advent calendar activities!
Please tag me @thestyleaesthetic in any of your creations you make from this ebook, I would love to be able to share it on my Instagram stories!
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did creating it!!
Buy Now
Please note the ebook is 10mb so ensure you have enough space on your device to download the PDF file.
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This is another version of my classic cinnamon brioche but taken to another level!
I personally love the sweet caramel flavour with a hint of cinnamon and the texture of the buttery macadamia nuts!
Bake it over the weekend and serve it with coffee with people you love!!
If don’t have Caramilk you can of course use white chocolate or x2 blocks of Whittakers West Coast Buttermilk Caramelised White Chocolate.
This week I’m giving away two blocks of Caramilk chocolate, one on Instagram and one on Facebook!
Pop over to both to enter and make your own Caramilk + Macadamia Brioche, which is too die for!!
Print out the recipe below to make or save it to Pinterest!
Don’t forget if you do make it tag me on Instagram and I would love to share it on my Instagram stories!
Caramilk + Macadamia Brioche Scroll Recipe
This Caramilk and Macadamia brioche recipe is a a version of my cinnamon brioche scrolls. If you can’t get hold of caramilk, white chocolate also works really well with macadamia nuts!
Brioche Dough
- 1/2 cup warm milk
- 1 8 gram Edmonds instant dry yeast sachet
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 whole egg
- 2 cups high grade flour (you may need a little more)
- 75 grams butter (softened)
Caramilk Filling
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 block of Caramilk chocolate (chopped)
- ⅓ cup macadamia nuts (chopped)
Icing
- 1 tablespoon icing sugar
- Combine milk, yeast and sugar in a small bowl and leave until the yeast froths – approximately 5 minutes.
- Lightly whisk egg yolks and egg and stir into milk mixture.
- Place the flour in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the liquid along with the butter and mix well until mixture forms a dough.
- Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic or use a cake mixer with a dough hook for 5-10 minutes ( The dough is soft in texture and will be a little stickier than bread dough).
- Place dough in a bowl, cover and sit in a warm spot for 1 hour until doubled in size.
- In a small bowl combine the brown sugar and cinnamon.
- Preheat the oven to 180 C.
- Turn the dough out and roll into a rectangle approximately 20 cm x 40 cm. Sprinkle the dough with combined cinnamon and brown sugar and smooth over the dough. Sprinkle over the chopped Caramilk chocolate and macadamia nuts.
- Gently roll up the dough into a long sausage shape.
- Starting from the longest side roll dough into a log and then slice into 4 cm pieces. Place the dough with cut side facing up onto a tray lined with baking paper or place in a 23cm round springform cake tin.
- Leave to prove for another 30 minutes
- Brush with egg if desired and bake for 15 – 20 minutes until golden.
Icing
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Dust icing sugar over the cooled down brioche with a tea strainer or sieve.
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This Mexican Layer Dip has been my ‘go to, easy take a plate’ dish which is great over summer for bbqs and parties! For these photos I made it for my annual Halloween party but you can layer is so avocado isn’t on the top but cheese is and of course it can be for any occasion!
Just layer up all these goodies and set it in the fridge for at least two hours, then serve with loads of corn chips!!
Don’t forget to pin the top image to save it to Pinterest or print out the recipe below!
Enjoy!
MEXICAN LAYER DIP
This is a great ‘take a plate’ dish that everyone loves! I always serve twice as many corn chips as the kids mainly eat the chips and not the dip, then the adults don’t have enough chips to finish the dip! This would also be great made in cups or jars as single servings, fill the jars and refrigerate then serve corn chips on top when ready to hand out!
- 1 can refried beans
- 3 avocados (mashed)
- 1 Taco mix packet
- 250 grams sour cream*
- 354 gram Jar sliced spanish black olives
- 1 Green capsicum (diced)
- 2-3 tomatoes (diced)
- 200 grams Tasty cheese (grated)
- Corn chips
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In a small bowl mix the packet of taco mix with the sour cream, *saving 3 tablespoons of the sour cream to pipe on the cobweb.
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In a large serving bowl or dish with sides layer of refried beans, then avocado, sour cream mix, a layer of black olives, sprinkle the capsicum then tomatoes on top then finish with the grated cheese
- Refrigerate for a couple of hours and serve with corn chips!
*To make a Halloween themed mexican dip, put aside 3 tablespoons of sour cream in a piping bag or small glad bag with the corner cut off to pipe on the top of the tip as a spiderweb
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I have had ‘make homemade washing powder’ on my list for so many years it’s embarrassing!!
This week I finally made it and I was scoffing at how fast and easy it is!!!
Like why haven’t I done this earlier?? Oh well now I will be doing it more!
I really wanted to test out the washing powder before sharing it, and I’m pleasantly surprised!
It washes beautifully and the clothes are coming up clean!
I had quite a few people asking me to share the washing powder recipe, so here it is:
Feel free to pin the above recipe to Pinterest to save it for future reference! You could use any natural soap block but I have only tried the Eco store Honey & Kelp which is my favourite smell (this is also why it’s slightly green).
If you are worried about borax, take a read of this.
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I came up with this idea to make Jammy Cookies (think shrewsbury’s) to bake to donate to our School fundraiser and Halloween party – Halloween Hooley.
Scroll down to print off this Halloween Jammy Sugar Cookie recipe or save it to your Halloween Pinterest board!
I remembered I had some mini Halloween cookie cutters I bought years ago so I dug them out (I did collect cookie cutters at one point, urghhh I know but it’s actually been so handy!).
I also had a round scallop edge round cookie cutter (that I think I bought at a opp shop, another great place to look out for these kinds of things)
I cut these sugar cookies (you can see my other post about making sugar cookies here) out with the round scallop edge cutter then for every second cookie I cut out the middle with the mini Halloween cookie cutter.
I mostly used the ghost and pumpkin cookie cutters.
Once the cookies had cooled I spread apricot jam on the base cookie then placed the cut out cookie on top. Then I dusted the cookies with icing sugar!
I love the look the apricot jam gives, its really fits into the American ‘fall’ Halloween and kind of looks like pumpkin jam!
The kids demolished the leftover mini shaped cookies as they quite like them plain!
HALLOWEEN JAMMY COOKIES
- 250 grams butter (soften)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 2 egg yolks
- 3 cups plain flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- Apricot jam
- Icing sugar
- Preheat oven to 180ºc. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
- Cream butter and sugar in a cake mixer until pale and fluffy.
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Add in the egg yolks and vanilla then mix to combine.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix to a firm dough.
- Sprinkle the bench with flour and roll out a portion of the dough to about 5mm, I normally use a good handful of dough at a time.
- Using your chosen cookie cutters cut out the shapes and gently lift the cut cookie dough onto the baking tray with a fish slice.
- Bake for 10 -15 minutes or until lightly golden.
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Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5 minutes on the tray then transfer to a wire rack.
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Once cooled, spread the base cookie with jam then gently place the cut out cookie on top and dust with icing sugar.
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