Sika Lodge's Mango & Passionfruit Granola Cups

My homemade granola in Sika Lodge never lasts long, I am constantly restocking it, and jokingly telling my husband he's not to have it, it's for the guests.........much to his disgust!!These granola cups are made as a little treat for my guests, simple to assemble and very tasty, not to mention healthy.

*The mango & passionfruit puree is made from a can of mango slices, just whizzed with a hand blender and then cutting a passionfruit and mixing the seeds through the mango.

Follow my link to see how I make the homemade granola, but you can of course use store bought granola. http://serenasmediumrare.blogspot.ie/2013/07/sika-lodges-homemade-granola.html. I don't use exact quantities in my ingredients, it all depends on the number of granola cups you wish to make. Leftover ingredients can be kept in the fridge in air tight containers.

Ingredients

• Granola
• Greek Yogurt
• Mango & Passionfruit Puree*
• Whole, washed raspberries.

Method

1. Spoon the granola into the base of glasses, I use wine glasses.
2. Top the granola with a thick layer of Greek yogurt.
3. The final layer is some mango puree, level it out evenly on top of the yogurt.
4. Place a raspberry in the centre of each cup.
5. For a final flourish, sprinkle a pinch of granola over the fruit
6. Chill until ready to serve.

Cheats Gold Star Chocolate Chip Cake

I baked this cake to mark my daughters six month 'birthday' last month. I was up against the clock with work in the B&B, and had told my family to drop by for cake, so I adapted my Quick Blueberry & Apple Cake (http://serenasmediumrare.blogspot.ie/2013/04/quick-apple-blueberry-almond-cake.html) recipe to made a super fast and easy chocolate 'birthday' cake. My little cheat in the process came in the form of pre-made butter cream frosting courtesy of Better Crocker - a lifesaver in last minute baking dilemmas. The frosting tasted great also which was a surprise. I would use it again in a bind hands down! 

This recipe is for your basic chocolate sponge, and in fact I use the same ingredients and quantities for my breakfast muffins for the B&B. How you wish to decorate the cake is totally up to you. I took the lazy approach with Dr Oetker edible gold glitter spray, Betty Crocker buttercream frosting, and Milky Way Chocolate stars. If anything else, its great practice for the actual '1st Birthday' cake. If you want to be super indulgent, double the recipe, bake 2 sponges and sandwich them together with chocolate buttercream frosting..........now that's a cake I'll be baking in the future...

Anyway, here's how I made the chocolate cake. It's seriously simple and yet impressive to look at, people would think you had been slaving for hours.

Ingredients

• 200g self raising flour
• 25g of cocoa powder
• 100g of chocolate chips
• 165g of caster sugar
• 125ml of milk
• 125g butter, melted 
• 2 large eggs

Decoration

• 1 12oz carton of Better Crocker buttercream frosting
• 10 mini bags of milky way gold stars
• 1 can of gold food glitter spray

Method

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees and line a spring form tin
2. In a food mixer, add all the  dry cake ingredients first and stir to combine
3. Add  the eggs, butter, milk and vanilla extract to a jug and whisk to combine.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until just combined (do not over whisk)
5. Scrape it into the cake tin and level it out evenly.
6. Bake in the centre of the oven for 45 minutes.
7. Check that the cake is fully baked with a skewer before removing from the oven (Insert skewer to centre of cake if it comes out clean it's done, if not bake for a further 5 mins and try again)
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack before decorating.
9. Using a spatula, spread the buttercream out evenly over the cake.
10. Dot the chocolate stars in a uniform fashion all over the cake.
11. Spray the whole cake lightly with the gold spray. (optional of course, but in for a shilling, in for a pound)