Italian chocolate chip bread

Today we made Italian chocolate chip bread from a recipe Eva had chosen in a book ‘Bread 100 everyday recipes’ we’ve had laying around for a few years.

Italian chocolate chip bread

The recipe and method were nice and simple for the girls to do and they absolutely loved eating it too!

I shared these pictures on my Instagram and after @wendy_naptimenatterblog asked if I would share the recipe I decided to share the recipe on the blog for anyone who wants to use it since it really is so simple yet so delicious and fun to make! Especially with Cadbury’s chocolate spread…

Fancy giving it a try yourself?

You will need

Vegetable oil for brushing

225g/8oz plain flour + extra for dusting

1tbsp cocoa powder

Pinch of salt

15g/1/2oz butter plus 1/2tsp melted butter for brushing

1tbsp caster sugar

1 sachet easy blend dried yeast (We used 7g Allinsons easy blend dried yeast)

150ml/5fl oz lukewarm water

55g /2oz plain chocolate chips

Method

1. Brush a baking sheet with oil. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and salt together into a bowl. Add the butter and cut it into the dry ingredients,
then stir in the sugar and yeast.

2. Gradually add the water, stirring well with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together, then knead with your hands until it leaves the side of the bowl. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 1o minutes, or until smooth and elastic.

3. Knead the chocolate the chips into the dough, then form into a round load. Put the loaf onto the prepared baking sheet and cover. Leave ti rise in a warm place for 1-11/2 hours, or intil the dough has doubled in size. Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/Gas mark 7.

4. Bake the load in the preheated oven forb10 minutes,
then reduce the oven temperature to 190°C/375°F/Gas mark 5 and bake for a further 15 minutes. Transfer the loaf to a wire rack and brush the top with the melted butter. Cover with a tea towel and leave to cool.

Enjoy!

Bakerdays Amazing Personalized Cakes

Last week I was sent a tweet from bakerdays asking if I would like to review one of their 5″ Letterbox cakes.
Of course, it’s cake and I couldn’t reply quick enough!

Letterbox Cake

I was curious what a ‘letterbox’ cake was so I had a look on their website bakerDays.com to see what they were all about.

BakerDays is a Personalised Celebration Cake Specialist, providing quality personalised cakes for all occasions. The delicious range of recipes and sizes are available for delivery 6 days a week, and if you order before 2pm, BakerDays can deliver the very next day! The Letterbox cake is the baby of the BakerDays family. Being just 5” in diameter, it fits perfectly through the Letterbox allowing you to surprise anyone with the most delicious personalised gift.

OK, so you can literally post cake now!? How did I NOT know about this!? Why wasn’t I informed sooner?

Picking A Cake

Luckily the lovely Emma at bakerDays responded to me quickly. All 4 of us were quickly browsing through cakes deciding which one we wanted. We all love cake here, especially chocolate cake (when we manage to grab a slice before the Mr!). So when we spotted there was an amazing chocolate chip option, we instantly knew we had to try some. Eva (5) spotted a minions cake and surprisingly chose that over frozen. She also decided she just wanted it to say Merry Christmas!

After choosing our options and Letting bakerdays know what we would like I was told it would be in the post soon. I would either receive it the following day (Saturday) or early the following week.

Quick Delivery

When my postie knocked with the box in his hand the very next morning we were all overly excited! CAKE!! I couldn’t wait to open the box and see what was inside.

Instantly I was impressed by the contents of the box. The cake itself was well packaged in a lovely ‘Just for you’ cake tin, Along with this was a Christmas cracker, a cute card and a Baker Days leaflet.

Affordable

At just £15 for a cake of this size (Letterbox 5″), I am happily planning to have several of these made up for upcoming birthdays and celebrations! I love the fact you can personalize them & get to choose from 6 delicious flavours as well as several different sizes. This is including cupcakes! (I definitely have a cupcake order for the Mr on the cards!). I just know receiving this in the post would make anyone’s day!

Well Packaged

Upon opening the tin we found the cake was in a sealed packet on a cake board inside the tin. Sticking up was a little tag to help you lift the cake carefully out of the box.

I kind of just expected a cake in a box and was quite pleased it had been packaged so well. The plastic bag keeping it fresh for upto 14 days is quite handy. Although lets face it most of us wouldn’t let a cake sit that long!

Print Quality

I was honestly amazed at the picture quality on the icing as a lot of cakes we have bought in the past have been really pixel-y (probably not a word). This is something that bugs me quite a bit surprisingly! 😂

When I showed Eva she squealed in delight and was really impressed with the cake bless her. She wouldn’t stop nagging me the entire day to try it!

We decided to cut the cake into 6 pieces.. 2 for the Mr and I and a slice each for the girls. 😉

bakerdays minion cake

I was stunned at how easy it was to cut the cake and move it onto a plate too, I can mess this up easily, yet managed to almost cleanly move both slices onto a plate. Admittedly I left some of the base on the card though.. But on the upside, it was a yummy little tester haha!

Minion cake cut into slices with 3 missing.

Our Thoughts

I couldn’t wait to try a slice after my tester and found the cake to be such a light and fluffy texture. The icing wasn’t horribly sweet and hardened, instead, it was creamy and soft. The first slice didn’t last long as it was absolutely gorgeous and was soon followed by a second slice. I would perhaps like a slightly chocolate-ier (another word that probably doesn’t exist) flavour but it was still delicious and I would happily eat it all over again!

The Mr enjoyed it too he was really impressed with the icing. He thought the texture and consistency of the cake was lovely but prefers a much chocolate-ier cake (He is a chocolate cupcake monster!). He agrees that it would be a perfect gift though, especially with the extras.

Eva couldn’t scoff down her cake fast enough! I tried to question her but all I got was ‘Mmmm’ ‘Chocolate!’ ‘Minions eeek nom’ until she was done.

More Please!

Afterwards, she said it was really soft and yummy and asked for another slice.
She was greatly disappointed the Mr & I had already scoffed 2 slices each 😬 and instantly asked if we can test another 😂

Izzy unfortunately squished a bit of her slice and shook her head but admittedly she was recovering from chickenpox and off her food, so I ended up finishing it off for her.

Half eaten bakerdays cake

Enjoyable

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this review for Bakerdays. I will definitely be ordering more cakes with them in the future! Who wouldn’t want to get a cake in the post seriously? With so many options and ways to personalize your cake, it’s ideal for a variety of occasions.

If you would like to find out more about bakerdays cakes there are several ways to find them. You can either search the hashtag #bakerdays or visit @bakerdays on twitter; Find them Here on Facebook or go straight to their website Here.