Obsession

Easiest and bestest almond macaroons

2011-12-20T22:35:00.000Z

This recipe is so easy. It is unbelievably easy. And it tastes AWESOME. Severe overuse of that word but I swear it's true. Do you know those almond macaroons you get at the supermarket or at the chainstore bakeries? Or at the occasional artisan market stall. *snorts* I love these. My sister loves them more. We're not talking french macarons and if you're not a fan of those, these are definitely not the same as the guy at work hates those and loves these. These are, in the shop bought form, large round cookies stuck to rice paper, delightfully chewy, with a fat almond stuck in the top. If you made these a bit bigger, you'd get that. Anyway, my recipe came from Alldessertrecipes.com based on a google and ignoring any that forgot to tell me how many eggs I needed.

Technically these make 12 if you make a decent size. I made 18 and they were reasonable hershey kiss cookies sized. They don't spread too much either, easily just larger by 1cm in diameter max after.

Ingredients:
2 egg whites (I used large but I don't think it makes a vast difference)
150g caster sugar
150g ground almonds
few drops of almond essence
rice paper
blanched almonds to decorate

Method:
1. Heat oven to Gas Mark 5 (190°C/375°F)
2. Whisk the egg whites to a froth (by froth I mean use a fork and don't look for peaks, just breakdown of the eggy stuff.)
3. Chuck in caster sugar, ground almonds and almond essence. i.e. everything that makes sense to go in.
4. Mix to a paste (see why we didn't need peaks?)
5. Roll into balls (the first one is easy, the last one is a sticky mess that clings to the leftover stuff on your hands... use two spoons if you get stuck.)
6. Stick on the rice paper lined baking tray. (Now I'd say you can save on rice paper if you make these more than once as you can estimate the spread and therefore just put cut pieces of rice paper and put them under the respective balls. Odds are though, you won't make these every day - though it's easy enough to... so in six months time you're looking at saved out of date rice paper anyway. Saying that... I've just used two months out of date rice paper and have no idea what the difference is.)
7. Stick a blanched almond on each. (I like to press down because they can catch a little in the oven.)
8. Bake for 20 minutes till gently golden.

Now that's done... I have to say, they are yuuuuuuuuuuummy.... but with one pitfall. They are not the cheapest of baked goodies. £2ish for ground almonds, another £2 for the blanched (although you get far more than you need), rice paper.... it's pricier than my usual bakes, but look on the bright side, you end up with twelve and they usually charge 79p for each in the shops.

Devil's Food White Out Cake

2011-07-31T22:48:00.001+01:00

It's not the most elegant of cakes. It's covered with crumbs which defaults to messy. Very messy. Messy in a sweep all the counters and a few floors cake. It is however, really rather yummy in a Sara-Lee / Trifle kind of way. I did this for my sister's birthday when she requested a chocolate and cream cake. I didn't quite do double cream but it did meet the not too sweet criteria.

I would say this though. Lower the sugar in the cake. The frosting is actually really nice. Not too sweet, pleasantly foamy and easy to cover the cake. The cake itself just has a slight aftertaste which may have came from my choice of chocolates and cocoa. Words of warning to follow: Watch out when you transport it. The top two levels slid an inch across and left the rest of the cake... it did gently smush back in place, but just in case it's for company. Warning 2. The book may have it showing beautiful, full, crisp white layers in between the chocolate. Mine... less so. And based on the internet, most people had the same smushiness. It tastes great anyway. Just don't expect a sliceshot.

The recipe cake from Dorie Greenspan's book and is on the internet already - the below is my abbreviated / bastardized version.

Devil's Food White-Out Cake
Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
5oz unsalted butter (140g ish)
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 oz dark chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 cup buttermilk /whole milk
1/2 cup boiling water
4 oz chocolate chips (I used a pack)
For the filling and frosting
1/2 cup egg whites (I used 4 eggs worth of egg white powder mixed up)
1 cup caster sugar
3/4 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
Gas Mark 5/6 (350 degree recommended)

1. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
2. Cream butter and sugar, eggs, vanilla and the cooled melted chocolate (add in that order)
3. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk, ending with dry.
4. Add boiling water and then chocolate chips.5. Put in lined pans (I used 3 x 8 inch round pans - the recommended is 2 deep 8 inch pans)
6. Bake for 30 minutes
7. Cool. Now the book says you have two pans, you slice into two and crumble one of them. In my case I had three cakes, I leveled them and ended up with enough crumbs. Potato-PoTAHto... it's all the same result.

Frosting:
1. Egg whites in bowl. You're making a kind of Italian meringue thing here. Finding a helper or having lots of space helps.
2. Sugar, cream of tartar and water in a saucepan (small) and boil/stir a little bit to begin with.
3. Get it to 235 degrees F (I started before this) and start whipping the egg whites with an electric whisk. Medium/fast is good, you want it white and fluffy and holding peaks the way meringue does without any sugar.
4. Get the sugar to 242 degrees F (soft ball) and then tip the molten sugar into the egg whites whilst whisking.
5. Continue whisking till the frosting is room temp and the bowl doesn't feel hot any more.
6. Spread on cake and shove crumbs around the side. Tah-dah!!!

Old MacDonald Cake

2011-07-17T22:53:00.000+01:00

My nephew turns ONE this week and so we made a cake to celebrate. This little number was my usual vanilla buttermilk sponge, which encountered a lot more problems than usual. Check this. Firstly I forgot to put the sugar in which I didn't notice until I poured the batter into the tins - when I thought, hang on, usually there's more of it. Which after tipping back into the mixing bowl to remix, might have resulted in the cake becoming a little more flat than usual.

Brilliantly though, my solution was effective - slice the layers really thin, sandwich with whipped cream and peaches and you don't notice the texture issues. Really. The peaches were so beautiful. I have to make a chinese style fruit cake with them before the season is over. White peaches. Beautiful and pale with a light flush. It was such a shame to hide them inside a cake.

This is the sheep in production. It was my first time working with fondant for modelling. We've played around with making roses and little flowers etc, but I did desperately want to make an Old MacDonald cake because it's my nephew's favourite song. Hence the fevered searching on youtube. As it was, once you watch them once and understand the principle, you don't need it anymore and you just freeze frame it on the final design. I did want to make a little pony to go with, however I realised it wouldn't fit on the cake.

The first thing I'd say is that it is a LOT easier to make than I thought. I thought fondant animals would be really difficult. It wasn't that bad. One thing I would recommend is the food colouring pens. Very useful for the eyes. I used ready made white and yellow icing, mixing with liquid food colouring in the main despite buying a load of paste. Guess I need to find some use for that now. The liquid food colouring leaves the fondant a little sticky, but it's still okay to form things with. The other little fyi I would say is, don't put fondant in the fridge. It ends up damp and the icing pen I used to do patches on the cow ran. I didn't plan on putting it in the fridge but we had to save the cake a night later than planned and if we didn't fridge it the cream and fruit would go a bit squiffy.

Picture of a cake slice. We sliced around five millimetres thick. Six people ate a quarter of the cake. It's a sweetness thing I think. Buttercream is one of those things we're not a major fan of. It would have been nice to work some green or blue fondant to cover the cake but we hate fondant even more than buttercream. One day I will overcome my issues with the stuff, or make marshmallow fondant which might be tastier, but until then, a bit of buttercream, unfortunately overworked by the end of it, did the trick.

My sister has her birthday soon. I think she'll be a lot happier with a chocolate mousse cake bought retail though!xx

Tribute to Katherine Hepburn brownies

2011-07-13T19:30:00.000+01:00

I'm gonna say it. I like these better than my chilli brownies. Check out that picture. I took them to work the next day. The chocolate lumps were still molten. No idea how the science works but it tasted yummmmmy. They didn't have the papery crust as promised, but possibly it's my oven. As it was, it was blatantly uncooked when the timer pinged so I left it in for ten minutes longer, then turned the oven off and left it in for a further ten minutes. Bizarre, but just the mood I was in. Anyway, the recipe was from Dorie Greenspan, but I omitted the coffee, the nuts and the cinnamon and because my tin was about 8 inch square, my brownies were about an inch square (I like small brownies so they don't bend and break). Recipe found already typed by this lady.

Fruit gateau

2011-06-26T22:32:00.000+01:00

Perhaps it's wrong to call this a gateau. It's only got two layers for a start. Anyway, it's my attempt at the chinese-ified gateau's that you get in Chinatown, without the faux cream because I still don't want to try the lard concoction. This is the sky-high vanilla buttermilk cake (rather than chiffon) and covered with whipped cream and fruit. The intention was to wrap the cake in mango like they do in the shops, but I realised that a) my mangos were overripe and slightly squishy, b) I'm a bad slicer, c) the mango is not very "tall" compared to my cake (even though there are just two rather than the three that the sky-high recipe makes - that other layer was eaten hot.) Anyway, just a picture then.Nom.

Celebration cakes and chocolate decals

2011-06-19T22:39:00.003+01:00

This lady made a cake at work and it tasted amazing. I asked for the recipe and I was surprised to hear it was Nigella's Victoria Sponge from How to be a Domestic Goddess. I very rarely make anything from Nigella's cake book any more and never this sponge. Probably because it was a Victoria Sponge as well, for which I've used the Good Housekeeping book that my mum has had since the 80s. I think I messed up the temperature somewhat as it didn't taste as good though :( Just slightly tighter somehow.

As it was Father's Day today I made it for him. Just cream, minimal fruit decorations etc. Parental approval all round.

I've been messing with chocolate lately and that's why it's got some leftover chocolate squiggle squares on top.

The other little chocolate number I made was the below for my sister's colleague's birthday. They had a £5 kitty for a cake so I figured I'd experiment so she might get something nicer than a standard M&S tray bake.

It was a standard Sky High vanilla buttermilk cake with buttercream in between, but I doodled melted white and dark chocolate on a bit of parchment first and wrapped it round a cake tin before letting it chill .

It was a very lucky thing it did come loose from the tin. The impressive thing was how bendy it was still. In fact the ends didn't join properly and I could use it as a cuff bracelet almost. So I cuffed the cake effectively.

Added a few words piped in dark chocolate on parchment paper (again peeled off) and then we were done. Nothing fancy, no fruit (I wasn't exactly hitting a £5 but I didn't want to go OTT in funding this girl I've never met's birthday.)

Happy birthday to the random girl out there in the universe.

Roses, fondant and Sunday afternoons

2011-05-22T17:15:00.000+01:00

I went to Cork last week for work and found a rather lovely shop called Brennan's which I LOVED. The entire first floor is cake *stuff* and it's hung with all the icing cutters you could want on the wall. I was in there oohing twice over the same Saturday. The lady let me :)

I decided to purchase a Gerbera cutter set, the biggest Wilton petal nozzle I could find, briar rose cutters, red fondant, and various other little flower cutters as well as the red fondant. So since I was home with no plans this weekend, this is what I got up to . The icing is strawberry flavoured icing from Silverspoon which I bought on a whim.

It's interesting stuff. 125g which you add a spoon of water to and then mix with butter. Pretty effective as it doesn't cause huge icing sugar clouds to form. I might see if I can do that for my normal buttercream. Note that it does say it covers 12 fairy cakes, not cupcakes, and certainly with my decorations it doesn't really stretch. The colour once mixed with butter is a bit more of a muted orangey colour fyi, but if you made it glace I think it would be quite "proper" fairy princess pink. As in too pink for adults.

So I made a few ribbon roses by folding strips of fondant together and rolling, a rose which isn't seen here, various stamp outs and my buttercream roses. It's probably my second time trying to make them, but I have to say, having a giant nozzle, makes ALL the difference. Unfortunately of course, you have to eat the bucket of icing... sorry to say it, I've not brought myself to eat the cakes with icing on yet, but I'm working up to it.

If you are interested, the white iced cupcakes are just marshmallow fluff, and the cupcake recipe themselves were from The Hummingbird bakery book, but ignoring the recipe and going with a cream butter and sugar then add the rest in batches methodology. That recipe FYI makes 12 but makes 12 with a large margin (3/4 of a cm?) from the top of the muffin case. Making icing interesting if you don't like mounds of the stuff. It was another so-so vanilla recipe.

Baking round-up

2011-05-08T17:46:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I last blogged, but in fairness I've not made anything blogworthy. Nothing uber pretty, no recipes I thought were inspiring, but here come the pictures and the round-up of my recent bakes.

Coconut and lime cake - tangy. The sponge was quite unique in that it used 1/2 a grated block of coconut and it became very light and a different type of sponge to normal. Not chiffon, not victoria, not muffin, but different. The topping was a bit tangier than I wanted, but next time I'll get it to marshmallow properly. As a nice afternoon tea kind of thing, I'd make it again.

Low fat strawberry gateau - call it shortcake. This was an interesting proposition, and wasn't that bad. You had to accept that the "sponge" was more biscuit, but then there wasn't a raising agent and when you poured it onto the swiss roll tin it spread so thin the creases in the baking parchment showed and the cake curled when the paper curled from the heat.

What I did find was that it was near impossible to stick the nuts on the sides of the gateau. You know when you have cake and buttercream they say to hold it up and dip the nuts on, it's a lot harder when the cream is of a drippy soft consistency that fromage frais and low fat cream cheese makes. You'll have to forgive the two pictures, I didn't know which one I preferred and it is a rare occasion that I bother to pose it properly.

Lemon and mincemeat tartlets - Actually quite yum. Excuse the odd time of year for mincemeat, but you know that stuff lasts for years. What I keep forgetting is how hard it is to roll pastry thinly. Always use a polythene food bag under the rolling pin and it gets thinner without breaking. Awesome.

Lemon cake a la Raymond Blanc

2011-03-13T17:29:00.003Z

I made this cake after watching Kitchen Secrets and thought WOW that cake is YELLOW!!! Sadly it seems, this was not something to be repeated with mine. Note to self - retune the tv. Anyway, the recipe is here, but oddly the voiceover lady gets it wrong (based on the producer comments) so when the recipe says add zest only to the cake, and she says add the juice, she is wrong. Ho hum. Having made the cake, I'd say ADD THE SODDING JUICE. Without it, it tastes distinctly... eggy. And not of lemon. So after the first mini cake (I split the cake into two batches - one for work and one for a taster for my hard-done-by dad who had to watch me make cheesecake yesterday and waltz off with it to a friends.) I made some adjustments.

1. Stab and drizzle. If you've made lemon cake before, the usual rule is when it's warm from the oven, stab it with a skewer and pour over lemon juice mixed with icing sugar.
2. His recipe calls for an apricot jam layer of glaze. I used lemon curd.

My other comments for this recipe have to be that I find putting it in the oven (post glazing) a little strange. Possibly because to me it seems like it just melted off all the glaze that I spent so long daubing on with a brush. Either way, we'll find out tomorrow if it tastes any good. I'll settle for reactions which are not of the.... hmm, it's interesting....

Corn Custards and Sunday Lunch

2011-02-27T20:42:00.000Z

Today I decided to try some new recipes from my books. Corn custards from Marcus Wareing's book Nutmeg and Custard. Funnily enough, there's both Nutmeg AND Custard in this...

It was a really basic recipe although I had to amp up the heat to Gas Mark 5 rather than 1/2 as after 20 minutes it still didn't set. It was lovely... but I'm not into it. It's too sweet as a side dish, and that's just from the natural sweetcorn!

I also made mushroom risotto and a large meat stew. Naturally mushroom risotto took twice as long as usual and twice as much stock as it said on the back of the packet, but it did taste fabulous!

This was from yesterday. Strawberry and cream chiffon swiss roll. It was my second attempt at chiffon as it's drives my mother's competitive streak so I try not to touch it too much. I used Sunflower (see blogs on the right) recipe for Orange Chiffon, replacing the orange juice with water instead. I poured far too much and therefore made this giant roll which cracked when I rolled it. But it was lovely and got eaten very quickly. I still think my mother's version has an edge, but I think that's due to the cream of tartar in her recipe. This recipe only has baking powder so it's a little crisper.

Biscuiteers Flooded Cookies

2011-02-20T20:43:00.002Z

Cookie cutters are a horrible addiction, bested only by my addiction to Bundt tins. However, whilst I use my Bundt tins, I rarely use my cutters because I reckon drop cookies (chocolate chip anyone?) taste sooo much better.

Flooded cookies have been en vogue for awhile and Biscuiteers is definitely the most famous. So, when I was in town checking out the latest bookshop to go bust (boooo...) I found the Biscuiteers book. I have to say, I didn't buy it. There wasn't enough recipes for me to buy - probably about eight and most of them were "adjustments" of the basic recipe whereby you replace flour with cocoa etc. Moreover, it didn't take me long to spot an editing error whereby the Anzac coconut cookies didn't tell you how much coconut you needed to put in the recipe. Anyway, I digress. I didn't buy the book, though it was a very pretty book. You might like it all the same, but I'd rather have more recipes for my money.

There were some handy points which I thought might make it worthwhile reading.
1. How to pack the cookies.
2. Bake the cookies on a low heat after icing to maintain crispness.

I write the recipe for the cookie below. It made four trays of cookies and really doesn't spread much at all. I did however get bored so I mixed my second batch with dried peel and that was okay. It's just not a very strong flavoured cookie and I had to use 2 medium eggs to get the mix to a pliable consistency. I used Royal Icing mix (icing sugar and egg white powder) with water and some lemon juice to ice. The amounts quoted in the book was too much for me (1kg plus) which is great if you love icing... less great if it's just you playing pretty pictures.

Basic cookie
Makes 24 cookies
350g plain flour
100g self raising flour
125g granulated sugar (I suggest caster as it did show up grainy when I used normal granulated.)
125g salted butter (surprising right? I used unsalted and added half a teaspoon salt.)
125g golden syrup
1 large egg

Method:
1. Sift flours and add sugar.
2. Rub in butter until breadcrumbs appear.
3. Add syrup and egg.
4. Draw in and mix until dough like.
5. Roll and use. (Does not need chilling.)
6. Bake for 15minutes at Gas Mark 4.

I added vanilla essence but evidently should have added more. Next time I will be trying Martha Stewart's recipe, which with 2 tablespoons of cognac, sounds yummy!

Sky-high Banana-chocolate chip cake

2011-02-06T00:54:00.000Z

After obsessing about the Sky High baking group pics from several years ago, and buying the Sky High book, I've funnily only ever made one recipe - the buttermilk cake recipe, that is *drumroll* up till now!! It was my brother's birthday and ... I realised that in our family we don't have any "favourite" cakes. My sister doesn't do raisins, my parents don't like cinnamon or anything other than vanilla sponge with whipped cream, but we have NO FAVOURITE CAKES. Which, can be quite handy.

So today I made Banana and chocolate chip cake from the book. Shockingly easy, but also in the american way of baking, not so great on the results. Let me explain, if you gave me a list of ingredients I am almost always going to go butter, sugar, eggs, flour - in that order. This cake is almost muffin-like in it's creation. Dry meets wet, meets some more wet. I think the texture suffered as a result and it didn't have the lushness of banana bread. A bit more cream maybe would have helped - or not leaving the cakes in for as long as instructed or cooling unfilled for as long. It's possibly one to develop, but I think there are enough chocolate and banana cakes for me to experiment with not to touch again. It's good to know that I can finally chalk another one off the list though, but as ever I have a quarter cup of buttermilk left over. Is it time to make pancakes or scones this time?

Chocolate tea at the London Hilton

2011-02-04T21:49:00.005Z

You have to love January sales. But as it's me, I hit the 25% off deal online for the London Hilton Chocolate Tea on Park Lane. Which, on the date that I went was a bit of a horror. I must explain - Park Lane is just near Hyde Park. Where the students were having their protests that day. And the President of Bangladesh was staying at the Hilton as well so there was some protesters outside the hotel specifically for that too.

It gave us a rather odd feel of Marie Antoinette in a way. "Let them eat cake." We were also very grateful not to be sitting near the windows.

The service/protocol at the restaurant was mixed. They offered to switch the sandwiches if we wanted to, were generally lovely and doggy bags come as standard. When I say doggy bags, I mean hopelessly elegant pink cardboard and glossy carryouts. I'm saving it to carry my own cakes later. The bad side was that it's not a place where they pour the tea for you, but also that you feel a little pressured to stick to the same tea whereas usually I switch between each pot, plus it wasn't even a tea refresh, it was just new water. There was a keyboard player who sang up to date songs. Unfortunately a little loud because I suppose she was trying to drown out the protests, but it made conversation a bit difficult. She did manage to sing Happy Birthday at least five times whilst we were there so if you're into that, make a request!

The important bits. The chocolate plate. It actually comes ON a chocolate plate. The selection changes periodically. My sister in law went a few weeks earlier and had a different set of cakes. The one we had were as below - work from the top middle in an anticlockwise direction, the lychee mousse is covered in the picture by the marshmallow cone.

Lychee, raspberry, rose water mousse, sugared diamonds (fluff with a bit of raspberry, strawberry flavour. Low on flavour and I hate sugared diamonds I've now decided. Like silver dragees, rock hard and non-biteable.)
Chocolate mille feuille with Griottine cherries (voted good but no one liked the cherries)
Pineapple crumble with chocolate jelly (okay, but not great)
Jaffa cake chocolates (not good)
Cone of marshmallow and chocolate ganache (slightly rubbery for me, but a cone of chocolate is never bad)
Caramel of white chocolate and praline (the brandy snap looking thing at the top)
Pistachio and chocolate macaroon (green lollipop on a stick)

The cupcakes. They were, lemon, strawberry, chocolate and peppermint. I only ate the peppermint and it just tasted of buttercream and dry chocolate cupcake. They also od'ed on the sparkles and baubles which meant I had to spit bits out - so elegant I know! The rest of the cupcakes I sent home with my friend. Odd for a tea place, they only had one of everything (apart from the jaffa chocolates and the scones). Usually it's one each for everyone. I also felt a bit bad because I had heard such good reviews about the coffee cupcake they had.

The scones. I think scones are like the hygiene factor of a tea. As in, no one cares if they are good, but they care if it's bad. Industrial Relations course. Go figure. The scones were good. Light, fluffyish. They are even served warm which is usually a bonus bonus in my eyes. But even though we asked for the mixed selection, no chocolate chip scone could be found :( We countered it with a mound of chocolate spread on a plain scone instead. The same problem happened when my sister in law went.

Would I go again? I think my vote is no. There's better out there. It was worth it for the once, but there's a slab of chocolate plate sitting downstairs still and my friends don't have the sugar tolerance that I do and didn't even make it to the cupcakes. xx

Chocolate and almond marble cake

2011-01-27T21:15:00.000Z

Yes I bought another bundt tin. It was on sale!! Okay I suppose Selfridges puts them on sale every year but still. I think if I get the Bavaria tin which is used mainly for the Tunnel of Fudge cake, I will be happy and complete. Just as well they don't sell them in the UK that frequently, and by frequently I mean in a place other than the internet.

Today's cake comes from the book Bundt cookbook by Nordic Bakeware. By book, it's more of a pamphlet with some very random recipes in. Unfortunately a lot using mixes, but bizarrely lots of gelatin moulds. Moulded salmon anyone? In a ten-cup mould no less. Anyway, the recipe I used was the Orange/Chocolate Marble cake, but as we didn't have any orange extract I used almond. Things you should also know was that I screwed up reading the recipe and forgot to dissolve the cocoa in water before I added it to the mix, which was why I was mixing it thinking, why did I whip egg whites if it ends up as this stupidly stiff mixture?? Oops. Whereupon I threw in the water and it turned into liquid chocolate. It turned out very well at the end of the day, and rare for bundts, it needed less than an hour to cook. The proper recipe is as below, I just omitted orange peel and replaced the orange extract for almond.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cup caster sugar
4 eggs
2 1/2 plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp grated orange peel
1/4 tsp orange extract
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup water

Method:
1. Cream butter, sugar, add egg yolks.
2. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt, alternating with milk (usually done by about 1/3 of the dry at a time)
3. Fold in whipped egg whites. (Mine was relatively stiff as a mix, but it does loosen chiffon style once you beat the first half of the whites in.)
4. Halve the mix, mix blended water and cocoa into one batch, the orange flavourings into the second batch.
5. Marble in the pan.
6. Bake at 350 degrees which is about Gas Mark 6 for 50-60 minutes. A little less would have been fine so start checking after 45min.

Christmas baking

2010-12-25T22:06:00.000Z

Merry Christmas all.... it's 10pm and I'd LIKE not to be the sad case that blogs, but check the awesomeness of this - I managed to book my holiday tix to Japan today on sale!! £100 cheaper than when I previously looked so uber happy, ESPECIALLY as I got it done before the VAT increase. Anyhow, see pics attached. Above is a maderia cake covered in marzipan and ready roll fondant. The cake I made in a pan smaller than it should have been because I wanted it to be taller - epic fail because when I tested it, it came out clean, but I knew it felt uncooked, so I prodded a few more holes until I found the damp bit... and naturally the middle collapsed. Never fear!! I halved, then patched the hole with left overs from the crusty top. YUM.

FYI DO NOT BUY SILVERSPOON PRE-ROLL. Comment for myself maybe, but as I unrolled it (it came on a very good plastic roll and sheet which I am reusing) it cracked in several places. Not good for ready roll, plus it didn't patch together too well either. Ouch. Anyway, the crackled cake is above. Decorated with a mini Santa Einstein, wife and oddly a pig too xx

Please see my now almost annual gingerbread. This year I managed to get little men and angel cutters. The angels naturally look more like ghosts. I also found myself taken to humming the StarWars Storm trooper theme when I was lining them up for the shot. Scary. Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Gratuitous food shots from eating out

2010-12-18T14:29:00.005Z

Time for some eating out pics - the desserts naturally.

From Yautcha - The Mandarin with mandarin sorbet and rice cracker (Yum, but the coconut was better.)

Here is the Coconut Charlotte - coconut mousse, raspberry sorbet, mango jelly, mint and basil sponge (Yum.)

From Michael Caine's Cafe Bar and Grill in Exeter, Dark Chocolate tart with malt ice cream (too rich, too dark, too heavy, too boring - I actually left some) Go for the Ginger pannacotta... when they have it, it's lovely although not heavy enough on the ginger and a little bit white all over the plate. You'll see. FYI if you're there the mains and starters are pretty yummy but they tend not to cut the meat into sizes where you can get away with just using a fork. Try the Boutique for takeaway lunches. The chicken salad was gorgeous, fresh, with tons of chicken, just a shame they can't ripen an avocado to save their lives.

Tea at Kensington hotel That's a sort of softset version of a trifle, carrot cake (frosting a little bland and no tang), fruit tartlet (poor show, premade pastry and a few berries), fruit cake and a multitiered mini victoria sponge. Worth it at the price (2-4-1) and with the rather lovely scones with lemon and passionfruit curd and with the strawberry and rose jam. Sandwiches were also fresher than usual. Hot chocolate (milk or white) also included. Kudos. Ask to sit in the drawing room which is beautiful.

Honey Madelines and some other random bakes

2010-12-18T14:12:00.007Z

I haven't posted for ages, but then again, I've not really baked for ages. I had a yen earlier in the year to buy a madeline tin - not that I particularly liked the factory monstrosities that my mum occasionally got from Icelands/poundshops, but the shell is pretty so I did it. I waited till work took me to a town with a Lakeland and bought me a tin! You'd be surprised how hard it was to find tbh. John Lewis sells silicon ones, and the rules are that silicon doesn't make the nice colouring in the grooves. Anyway, Lakeland has the cheapest at around £8. In the wretched way of most recipes, the recipe made 14 madelines... when my tin has 12 pockets. So I made an extra mini pan as well. The recipe I use was from Roux brothers for Honey Madelines. Claire Clark repeats it in her book Indulgence. It's easy as and makes a liquid mix so I'm not entirely sure where all the concern for more air to make it light came from, but there you go.

Other little bakes include Pineapple upside down cake:

Blueberry whoopie pies which were heavy - blame the recipe pamphlet that came with the tin (Robert Dyas, £6.99??) and Allisons lumpy flour... but using blueberry rather than plain yoghurt makes them this rather grotesque Halloween blue. Awesome.

Gateau Saint Honore

2010-09-05T23:16:00.003+01:00

Rightly or wrongly, I am a little bit chuffed at this one. Not because it tasted the best, but because after many failed attempts, this is the first time choux pastry worked for me! The recipe is from James Martin's "Desserts" and the first thing you might notice is that his instructions conflict between the top step by step "immediately add the eggs" and the bottom highlighted section "allow to cool before adding the eggs". On the grounds I didn't want scrambled eggs, I asked my sister to have a look at our good ol' Good Housekeeping book which said to cool slightly :P

So that's a choux pastry base and puffs. Mr Martin appears to omit the crucial stage of choux which is to pierce and return to the oven to dry out. Fortunately, online he appears to have amended this faux pas!

What else do you need to know? The cream is whipped double cream folded with custard and orange flower water since I didn't have any suitable liqueur. I have two tiny blisters on my fingers from attempting to dip the buns in caramel. The caramel burnt a little bit too much and detracted from the taste of the cake... and oh, the cake looked better with the half ice cream scoops of cream in the centre, but I had a piping back so it just seemed a waste of all the extra cream... Overall, still chuffed.

Grrrr....

2010-09-05T22:51:00.002+01:00

So I had a look at my stats today. I never realised they were there before but I had a click. Oddly enough the Rachel Allan pie had the largest number of hits and I went to click on the link to the recipe to see if it still works. To my surprise I saw MY picture on the Goodfood website above the recipe. Submitted by someone called UKTVSTAR. I don't mind mind as such, but it's left me quietly fuming that no one asked. I don't want to be one of those sadf*cks who need to copyright everything - I take pictures with my mobile phone and that's like 2mpx? Grr. Grr. and more Grr. Like do people REALLY need a pic of shop bought puff pastry covering meat? Ai.

Laduree vs Hermes...and some little William Curley Cake porn :)

2010-08-04T13:45:00.005+01:00

There's a long running feud of macarons, which apparently is between Laduree and Hermes. Since Hermes recently crashlanded in Selfridges, I finally got round to trying them. In a nutshell, don't do it!! Haa... Opinions do differ though and I have a friend who believes Hermes has the crown, but to me? They are overstuffed nuggets. The name of the flavour is more interesting than the taste, and the ultimate test - the salted caramel for me, just doesn't live up to Laduree's delicate and pleasing nibble.

Packaging wise, the bag was a bit trashy (unpictured because I was that offended :P ) a white bag with leaf cut outs. Too primary school for me compared to Laduree's "Marie Antoinette shops here" style bag. The box, well I had to ask specifically for a box than a plastic bag, was nicer than the Laduree one because it was good and solid, but I can probably find the solid ones at Laduree too.

And so, the little overstuffed little suckers sit. Costing well over a quid each. Ouch.

Now, drumroll please, some William Curley cake porn. I've loved him since he was at Green Park. Funnily enough I'm not a major lover of his chocolate. Paul Young seems to have the eccentric zing for me, whereas my staple is Selfridges. But the cake. Oh the cake.

We were doing the elephant challenge (as you do) and I got all of them bar the late released Glastonbury number (as only the obsessed do)... and we stopped off for some cake at the Sloane Square shop. We also had the lemonade which had a very interesting little touch of vanilla. Kudos William.

Item one: Blackforest number.

Item two: Petit four

Item three: Salted caramel, chocolate, hazelnut tart thing... v good but wasn't mine dammit!

Ginger fluff sponge with Apple Sauce filling

2010-07-18T18:46:00.005+01:00

This is from the Crabapple Bakery cupcake cookbook. I've loved this cake for ages, looking at the picture for some time, but finally I made it. Decoration wise I don't have any flowers to put on top so I put the little chocolate mushrooms I bought from the Japan centre on top. This cake I'd definitely remake, but without the sponge fingers which are decoration only and don't add anything. They stay stiff and unyielding against the cream which is almost a disappointment when you're eating it.

Ingredients:

1/3 self raising flour

1/3 cup cornflour

3 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2 tsp cocoa

5 eggs, separated

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 tbsp golden syrup

- Apple sauce

- Whipped cream

- Sponge fingers (250g pack works fine)

Method:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients (bar sugar) together

2. Beat egg whites to peaks, add sugar and keep whisking, then add yolks and golden syrup

3. Fold dry into the egg mix

4. Bake in two greased pans (18-20cm round sandwich tins) for 15 minutes at Gas Mark 5.

5. Once it's cool, sandwich with the apple sauce and cream and surround with sponge fingers.

A Nutty-Nut day

2010-07-18T17:23:00.005+01:00

Today was a day for nuts. I don't know how it ended up that way, but that's just the way it is. Since I did nothing yesterday I guess I was trying to kill it with some over-productive bakeathon.

Since I've stopped buying cookbooks for my new year's resolution (it's July now and I'm holding strong!) I've been hitting the library. A few wonders in there, and an opportunity to try out some books that I refuse to buy.

The above are Peanut Butter Biscuits from Baking - Delia Collection. It has the simplest recipe ever. My substitution was a poor one I think, not that it tasted bad - we ran out of bicarb and so we used baking powder. It didn't come out as a dry dough like the recipe suggested, but was quite greasy. When they were baked the edges weren't as cookie cute as the picture in the book, but they were definitely yummy. On my list for make again favourites :)

Peanut Butter Biscuits

Makes "20" according to the book, 12 plus 4 small ones by my count.

Ingredients

110g crunchy peanut butter

75g butter

110g light brown sugar

175g plain flour

1 egg

3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

a little demerara

Method:

1. Mix everything apart from the demerara together. (Told you it was easy!)

2. Shape into walnut sized balls and dip into the demerara.

3. Put onto greased baking sheet and press down a little.

4. Bake for 15-20 minutes at Gas Mark 4

My other little experiment was from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. It's a non-repeat from me I think, although using nutella might be a new ingredient of choice. It's all a little sweet and brings new meaning to the word "yeet-hey". At the same time it is overwhelmingly chocolatey without being rich. The sponge is light and just functional as a vehicle for the piles of frosting and the filling.

For those who are interested, the translation of "yeet hey" is "hot-air". Chinese wise, food is split into types, the ones we usually focus on are "yeet-hey" or "lerng" which means sort of refreshing or cooling. Either one, yeet-hey or lerng can cause you problems so you need to balance with the other. Peanuts, crisps, all that jazz are under yeet-hey. Melons, fruit and veg tend to fall under lerng.

Hazelnut and chocolate cupcakes

Makes 12 in muffin tins

Ingredients:

100g plain flour

20g cocoa pwder

140g caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

40g butter

120ml milk

1 egg

120g chocolate spread

Method:

1. The method in the book says mix all the dry with the butter and then add milk. Personally I find this weird so I did my usual - cream butter, sugar then the egg, then the rest, then the milk.

2. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes at Gas Mark 3.

3. Cool and cut out little cones from the top.

4. Fill with teaspoons of nutella.

5. Cover with frosting

Frosting ingredients:

250g icing sugar

80g unsalted butter

25ml milk

80g hazelnut and chocolate spread

Method:

1. Mix the ingredients together, adding the chocolate spread last.

Summer Strawberry Meringue Cake

2010-06-13T19:26:00.005+01:00

As cakes go, this one is a-may-zing! In imitation of one Joey Tribbiani "What's not to like? Cream good, strawberries good, cake good, meringue goooooooooooooood" :D This has parental popularity which is rare, but is enjoyable all the same.

This recipe cake from the Good Housekeeping Simple and Stunning Cakes (by Greg an Max). Very, very minor tweaks on my part - I used unsalted butter rather than margarine (you can tell the age of the book!!) and added a little vanilla (like 1/4 tsp) to a pot of light double cream. Note that I didn't chose to use light double cream (Elmea no less :S) just that someone bought it and we had to use it up. Something you need to watch out for is the flipping of the cake on top of the other one when you finally plate up. Very delicate and very breakable!!

Ingredients:

Cake:

50g unsalted butter

100g caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

4 egg yolks

100g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

3 tbsp milk

Meringue:

4 egg whites

225g caster sugar

50g flaked almonds

300ml cream (one pot)

strawberries

Method:

1. Line two 8inch round tins with baking parchment and warm up the oven (Gas Mark 4 -5 if you use a mediumish shelf)

2. Cream butter, sugar, add vanilla and egg yolks.

3. Add flour and baking powder, alternating additions with the milk.

4. Spread into tins.

5. Whisk egg whites and add sugar to stiffish peaks.

6. Spread meringue over cake mix.

7. Sprinkle almonds on one of the cakes.

8. Bake in oven for 45-50 minutes.

9. Take out of tin and allow to cool.

10. Whip cream with a little vanilla and cover the base cake with cream and sliced strawberries, top with the other cake and decorate with remaining strawberries.

Rose and Apricot Macaron

2010-05-31T21:58:00.006+01:00

I've been trying to do macarons for awhile, (okay I've tried like twice?) and I think this actually worked. Funnily enough though, the should-have-been-a-failure ended up better than the ones that were text-booked.

The recipe I followed was as follows here. It's the one in the comments which I reproduce here.

110g icing sugar
60g ground almonds
(sift these together after whizzing down to a fine powder in a food processor)
Then beat up 60g egg whites (usually 2 eggs' worth) with 40g caster sugar and a LITTLE bit of food colouring (a tiny dot of the gel stuff is much better and more intense than the liquid stuff), untill you have a firm, shiny meringue.
Fold this gently, a third at a time, into the almond mixture. DON'T overmix; when it's just incorporated part the mixture with your spoon - it should slowly flow back together like 'molten lava' might. (If you can picture such a thing)
Then pipe circles by holding your piping bag still and squeezing it a bit to form a neat blob. When your baking sheet is filled, hold it firmly and rap it down on the worktop to pop any air bubbles. Leave out to rest for 15 minutes then bake at 170C for 10 minutes roughly. They should have formed those frilly 'feet' and come easily off the baking sheet.

I didn't have any food dye gel but I had red liquid stuff which I put almost a capsworth in. I put about half a cap of rose water in as well and sandwiched it with apricot jam.

Oddly enough, the egg whites were non-stiff because I used the same bowl I used for the other macarons (with the greasy almond bits in) but as a result, these didn't have the humps and peaks that the other ones had, and had perfectly even feet. Food for thought.

Here are some random bakes from today - cherry and almond muffins.

Happy 10th Anniversary British Born Chinese!

2010-05-03T19:26:00.005+01:00

So it was the tenth anniversary of this web forum I belong to - see right for link, and we were asked if we would consider making some cakes to mark the occasion. Much stress!! There were two practice cakes where I tried to make a chocolate gateau, but finally decided that the chocolate mousse filling would make it incredibly difficult to eat on serviettes. But, here it is finally. Despite dropping my ipod on the "y" in "Anniversary when I put on my coat on the train (it landed on the clingfilm which I think saved it from being squished completely!). Despite the pouring rain and Piccadilly Circus closing most of it's exits because of the flooding. Despite me wrangling for my umbrella and mobile with cake boxes in each hand. It made it through the storm!!!

The cake itself is a Vanilla Buttermilk Cake from Sky High Cakes. I've made it before but for cupcakes (the lemon jam centre ones). This time I did try to emulate cake flour to an extent by replacing two tablespoons of my plain flour with cornflour. Will need to try with the proper stuff at some point. The recipe for that is here. I cooked with individual cake pans but won't attempt to give the time for it. Just check after half an hour and depending on two layers or three it will change the timing. Of course you could just... buy the book?

I layered it with strawberry jam and lemon buttercream. The buttercream was approximately 250g unsalted butter, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 7-8 cups icing sugar. I use a recipe and then go by texture when stirring.

The wafer rolls were Askeys and you do decide how much cake you are going to use to match the height. I did have a layer of cake left but was going to fill the top with fruit which would have made it level. After I put the chocolate letters in though (ice melted dark chocolate onto baking parchment and leave to set) it was apparent there wasn't enough room to do so attractively. So, wafer rolls around the side, some cape gooseberries on the top, a tiny bit of piping to hide the fact the cake doesn't quite have straight sides, ribbon around the whole caboodle, et voila. Cake.

The cupcakes were made from the Usbourne cookbook for fairy cakes. 90g of self raising flour, sugar, butter and 2 eggs, which most cake bakers wouldn't need any more instruction on, Gas Mark 5 for 15 minutes in my case. It is the easiest cupcake recipe ever and makes 12 fairy cake sized cupcakes. The icing was enough to cover 18 conservatively.

Lalala. And that's about it for cake. I'd like to say it came out pretty well, holding up to the elements and the klutziness that is me. The sponge is a really soft sponge and I don't think it would hold up to fondant or heavy decorations. The wafer rolls were superb protection (I don't own a proper cake box that fits). If you want to look for them, I used Askey's which are 99p from Tescos (see the ice cream wafer section) and £1.06 from Waitrose. I have no idea where the 7p goes.

The cake stand I made from here. I didn't wrap the cake drums in ribbon though - I just bought paper and sellotaped.

Good night and god speed, I'm making savoury for awhile... oh but I have met a 13 year old boy who is allergic to dairy and eggs so I might be meeting the challenge with some vegan baking soon :)

Ebelskiver

2010-04-14T18:47:00.002+01:00

So I got me an Ebelskiver pan :)

For those of you as blank as I was, basically I was perusing the Williams-Sonoma website since I WAS going to be going to NY but never made it. But my friend was lovely enough to buy one and bring it back for me.

Google it. Youtube it. Ebelskivers are basically pancakes (with a touch more egg white) which you can fill with things like nutella or jam.

I used the recipe that came with the pan but observe. First go, they look pretty cute although a lot easier to get round rather than pancake shaped if you don't fill them. Lots of tips online on how to turn - I used wooden chopsticks. Easy peasy. Although if you do fill them, the jam can go a bit weird and turn it purple :)

The Chocolate mousse gateau experiment

2010-04-14T17:38:00.006+01:00

So I have a week off work and this is what I do with it. The great big cake experiment. There's this anniversary thing for the forums I frequent and so needed to try. The above is a chocolate mousse cake from "Cakes to Celebrate Love and Life" with some large amendments. Below is the amended versions with some notations. The main aspect would be that it requires a lot more chocolate to make the band but they didn't give that much in the line of instructions for that.

Chocolate cake

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 3/4 cup plain flour

3/4 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup boiling water

Method:

1. Gas Mark 4

2. Grease an 8 inch cake tin with a removable base.

3. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

4. Add the wet ingredients aside from the boiling water

5. Mix and then stir in the boiling water till blended. It will be ridiculously wet.

6. Pour into the pan and bake for an hour or until a skewer comes out just slightly damp rather than raw cake (think brownie).

7. Cool in the pan for ten minutes, turn out, then cool completely.

8. Slice into three layers. (I used a very large serrated bread knife and a palette knife to cut and move onto pieces of greaseproof paper). The book said with a 26cm pan it should give 3cm layers...don't know how, my cake I had about 1.5cm but it was sturdy enough to complement the mousse.

Chocolate mousse (YOU NEED ABOUT HALF OF THIS)

Ingredients:

330g dark chocolate

150g butter

3/5 cup milk (150ml)

2 1/2 cup cream (I used double)

Method:

1. Boil milk and tip over the grated chocolate and cubed butter and stir till dissolved. (Now whilst the book said this, I'm not sure how it works. Maybe if I actually grated the chocolate, but who can be bothered with that? Heat the butter, chocolate and milk with a double boiler or use a microwave.)

2. Cool the chocolatey mixture to room temp.

3. Whip cream till soft/stiff peaks and then add the chocolate into it until a glorious chocolate cream.

Chocolate ganache

Ingredients:

300g dark chocolate

1 cup (250ml) cream

Method:

1. Heat chocolate and cream together over a double boiler till mixed.

2. Leave to cool. Will become nice and thick but still pourable. FYI. Different proportions are okay, you just need to get it roughly right although you may have to chill it overnight if you want something stiffer/spreadable.

Chocolate band

Method:

1. Take a piece of baking parchment and measure it so it wraps around the cake with a bit of overhang.

2. Cut out exactly what you want the band to look like around the cake.

3. Put on top of another piece of parchment and take some melted chocolate - I used white, and spread thickly. I didn't use nearly enough but that was laziness on my part. I used a butter knife. Go right over the parchment and onto the parchment underneath.

4. Leave to cool for a bit. Officially until the chocolate loses the gloss a bit.

CONSTRUCTION:

1. Take cake, smother with mousse, put another layer on, put on mousse and top with final piece of cake. Neaten up so it looks level (spare the spirit level and use a piece of greaseproof and press gently on top). Fill the gaps with more mousse. If you were being good you should fridge it overnight.

2. Pour ganache over it and around the sides. You should fridge it till it sets but it was a cold kitchen that night...

3. Take the chocolate band, wrap it around the cake. Leave the paper on and fridge/leave the cake to cold.

4. When you're ready to serve, peel the paper off the chocolate band, leaving it standing tall.

PERSONAL SUGGESTIONS:

The cake to me had waaaaaaaaaay too much cream. It wasn't bad, even the day after. Kind of like a chocolate trifle. But I like cake. And moreover I have to feed people on serviettes. The next time I plan to make a vanilla sponge, same recipe just no cocoa and flour to replace. and fill up the cake using only half the mousse.

I'd top with fruit (google Patisserie Valerie for examples) or malteasers.

The band would be a lot thicker.

However, I may be adjusting it completely and just ganaching the cake and decorating with chocolate sticks and a ribbon. Who knows? Experiment continues. xx

Valentines Day Custard Creams

2010-02-14T20:52:00.000Z

I made custard creams from Nigella Lawson's Feast today. A few tiny adjustments because we didn't have (and I don't like) shortening - we used butter as a replacement, and I don't own a processor so I rubbed in the fat and the egg. It was ridiculously flaky but not as delicate as her recipe suggests. The biscuits themselves could have been rolled a lot flatter than 5mm and would have been a lot nicer - note that for once it wasn't me being lax!! I did make 29 cut outs in total, the recommended is 28-30! Maybe next time I'll try the shortening. Or maybe I'll just buy a packet of custard creams... Happy Valentines (and Happy Chinese New Year!)

Afternoon tea at...Hyatt Regency

2010-02-11T21:17:00.005Z

http://www.afternoontea.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=3

There was a 25% off deal in January and so we went as a family (well sis-in-law (in pic), bro, my sis and me...) It is located nicely behind Selfridges and is just past the lobby. Unfortunately, in a way, it IS the lobby since the lifts are just there without much separation from where we were sitting. On the plus side, it was very family friendly as there were several little kids around. Also a nice place to waste the afternoon since there is a gorgeous little sofa and fire area which one couple had commandeered. Maybe with some foresight it could be booked, but I wasn't there for the romance ;)

To the tea! Firstly, choice of tea was pretty good. Included the greens, rosebud, but also hot chocolate which my sis-in-law chose. Me, I went for the Assam. The closest thing to PG Tips is basically what I chose to go with afternoon tea. Anything else just feels wrong. Bonus points, it came in a teapot and in leaf form. I'm not a snob, but when it's afternoon tea, unless we're eating in a caff, teabags are just not done.

We started with a little apres-dessert? Is that the word? Surprise course. I love surprise courses. Ours was a raspberry coulis topped with a sort of yoghurt mousse with a sprinkling of pistachio in a shot glass. Yum. The menu otherwise for the cakes is as follows:

- Lemon macaroon, chocolate ganache
- Caramel macaroon
- Chocolate cheesecake
- Strawberry n cream topped muffin
- Fruit tartlet

The sandwiches weren't anything to write home about. The macaroons weren't quality ones and a little rough around the edges. The cakes were definitely better than the Carnaby, however we did get very *creamed-out* Brilliantly, they let us rest for ages before bringing on the scones. These were made fresh for us and you could tell!! They also brought butter when requested and we got to take the leftovers home. Happiness. I'd definitely go again once they changed the menu (it's all about new things...) but will go with friends if they ever come down.

Primrose Bakery Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

2010-02-11T21:03:00.004Z

I picked this recipe up in the Metro ages ago because the picture looked very pretty and I've been to Primrose bakery in Covent Garden once before (and unlike Hummingbird, I think the cupcakes are very nice if not particularly remarkable against home baking).

I debated the merits of frosting, but decided against in the end. I'll write the recipe here as per the newspaper cutting (in my odd bullet way). Since the frosting was chocolate it wouldn't have achieved what I thought was missing from the cupcakes - a stronger orange taste. Next time I think I might have to find some orange crunchy bits or something. An orange aero crushed up maybe. It was just missing... something.

Ingredients:

115g dark chocolate

90g unsalted butter

175g caster sugar

1 orange zest

2 large eggs

185g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarb of soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp milk

1 orange's juice

1. Melt chocolate and leave to one side for a sec (I use a microwave, you can use a bain-marie... most people have established that the best way to melt chocolate is not to sit on it, albeit it can be unfortunately effective...)

2. Cream butter, sugar and zest.

3. Add egg. Mix. Call this Mixture A

4. Flour plus bicarb, baking powder, salt etc in one bowl. Mixture B.

5. Milk and juice. Mixture C.

6. Now, put the melted chocolate into the butter mix (Mixture A) Mix in (don't worry, you're going to mix some more so it's not going to matter too much).

7. Add 1/3 flour stuff (Mixture B)

8. Add 1/2 juice (Mixture C)

9. Add 1/3 flour stuff (Mixture B)

10. Add remaining 1/2 juice (Mixture C)

11. Add remaining 1/3 flour (Mixture B)

12. Now if that wasn't too complicated (if you give up just mix it all in gradually in batches, it really doesn't matter that much although it's preferable to end with the floury stuff. )

13. Put into cupcake cases (I have 12 muffin sized ones)

14. Bake for 30 minutes Gas Mark 4.

15. Prod gently/shove a skewer in to check.

Enjoy the yumminess.

Giddy - and some carrot cake

2010-02-11T20:35:00.003Z

Am extremely happy today. Have discovered Nigel Slater's Real Food on Youtube (under TV, Food and then it streams from 4 on Demand)

http://www.youtube.com/shows?p=None&s=sftv&b=23

But, other little things I've been up to. Made a carrot cake today. The originating recipe was from James Martin's Desserts, however I made some fairly dramatic changes to it. None of the decoration, a different frosting, different flour, different flavouring, different sugar, no nuts etc etc.

My version therefore is as below:

Ingredients:

200g grated carrot (two big-uns..)

175g demerara sugar

2 large eggs

150ml sunflower/veg oil

200g self raising flour (I comboed baking powder and plain)

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tbsp cinnamon

120g sultanas

50g dessicated coconut

Frosting:

300g cream cheese

2 huge tbsp icing sugar

1/2 lemon worth of juice

Muesli

Method:

1. Sugar, eggs and oil. Mix.

2. Add flour, cinnamon and bicarb. Mix.

3. Put in sultanas, coconut and carrot. Mix (Note, I did a quick soak of the sultanas in a squeeze of lemon and a bit of cordial but on tasting it didn't really show since I had nice organic sultanas anyway.)

4. Pour into a pan (mine was about 8 inches, lined with parchment on the base, greased at the sides, and had a loose bottom.)

5. Bake for approximately an hour at Gas Mark 5. (Start prodding with the skewer at 35minutes)

6. Tip the humped back mary out onto a plate and leave the flat side up to ice. (Don't have to, but it saved me a dilemma of how to get it back down...)

7. The frosting. I used a couple of large, heaped table spoons of icing sugar (to be technical it was fondant sugar but that's just because that's what we had), dissolved it in a decent squeeze of half a lemon (we had lemon in the house), mixed with a 300g pack of philadelphia cheese to taste.

8. Spread around and then top with a sprinkle of muesli. Mine happened to be the uber pricy but 50% fruity Dorset brand but it is pretty and was damn yummy. Ah cake.

Maze by Gordon Ramsey

2010-01-10T18:32:00.004Z

So for the first time ever, I headed out for some "fine dining". Well I say first time, being that usually someone else, e.g. a boss or the company pays. If we're talking company paying, we've been to Quilon (an upmarket, michelin-starred Indian) which was nice, Bank, canapes at the Savoy... the list isn't really that great for someone who works in London and in finance tbh. Hmm. So anyway, my resolutions was to try and break out a little bit. Eat the budget lunches and max out for some nicer meals. Maze was the obvious choice for me because I've been looking at the peanut butter and jelly dessert for AGES and this weekend I went there.

http://www.gordonramsay.com/maze/menus/alacarte/

I decline to add any pictures because it was seriously dark in there, albeit there's plenty of pics online by other bloggers. The decor is a bit Japanese teppen-yaki, and a bit hotel lobby - both of which I spend a bit too much time at. Bathrooms are individual and okay. The seating was actually really bad for my back (no lower back support). The service and staff were actually very good (thankfully given the service charge tabbed on). Me and the other people around were dressed in jeans so it is relatively casual. No teens as far as I can see, but nothing snobby about this place.

Funny thing is, the menu is just PEPPERED with the poncey stuff. i.e. the stuff off Great British Menu. Horseradish snow. Raspberry gel. Squid paint. Anyway, we opted for the a la carte as it offered us choice. The tasting menu is around the same price. I had two cocktails (£10 each), and my friend had two glasses of wine (apparently very nice) and a cocktail plus a bottle of sparkling water. We had four dishes and a dessert each and the bill came to around £180 including service.

What I ate:

Crab salad, marinated golden beetroot, apple jelly, Bloody Mary sorbet £10.50

- little fish finger sized row of crab salad on six slices of beetroot with little bloblets of the sorbet, apple jelly and something else on top plus the micro-veg/herbs, very delicate and pretty but not actually much impact.

Jerusalem artichoke velouté, duck ragoût, Lincolnshire field mushrooms on olive toast £8.50

- tiny mushroom with a pate on a crouton slice of toast (very flavourful), a bowl of mushrooms and bits of duck (I think!) with the artichoke veloute (i.e. soup) poured over. Hot and yummy.

Cornish lamb and tongue, salt marsh mutton shepherd’s pie, spring cabbage and mint jelly £13.50

- tiny bit of tongue arranged on a bit of lamb on top of a piece of spring lamb with a little jelly. Lamb was a nice thickness and decent cut. Shepherds pie in a separate pot. Same soupy mash (they'd call this a pomme puree until the new rustic phase came into fashion) poured over mince. M&S seriously does it better.

Scottish red leg partridge, cob-nuts,‘ neeps n tatties’, haggis sauce £13.50

-Pretty little leg, nice nuts (ooh-er...), some weird wrap excuse for neeps and tatties, and haggis sauce which had no haggis flavour. Disappointing. Just like meat with some kind of red wine sauce.

and

Peanut butter and cherry jam sandwich, tonka bean cream and dehydrated cherries £7.50

- A sandwich of nut florentine (no chocolate bondage) and peanut ice cream. A tiny roll of cherry ice cream and gorgeous cherry sauce. A little tonka bean scoop (smooth, slightly savoury) with flat slivers imbedded which I assume is the dehydrated cherries. Yumminess and a lot better than the chocolate delice.

---------------------------------------------------

What my friend ate:

Confit of wild mallard, raspberry gel,

walnuts and compressed celery £11.50

- it's duck.

‘Warm Scottish breakfast’ London-cured salmon, smoked haddock risotto, egg and bacon,

horseradish snow £10.00

- Salmon, with a side ramekin of a very creamy risotto, with a tiny egg and bacon on top. Nice. But not amazing.

Suffolk pork ‘cheek n belly’, spiced pumpkin jam,

red cabbage, crispy crackling £13.50

- just pork belly.

Irish ox ‘tongue n cheek’,caper raisin and ginger carrots, horseradish pomme purée £13.00

- my mum makes similar meat.

and

Bitter chocolate délice, honey gelatine,

honeycomb ice cream £8.00

- rich chocolate mousse with a thin piece of chocolate balanced on top. Ice cream on top of a little crumbled pile of honeycomb. You could see Slug n Lettuce being able to dish this out tbh.

Out of the lot, I would eat, the Jerusalem artichoke velouté, duck ragoût, Lincolnshire field mushrooms on olive toast (was tiny, but a lot of flavour and very yummy) and the peanut butter dish again. The rest wasn't memorable, albeit the shepherds pie was memorable for being pants (no crust and was like a soup) and the haggis sauce was distinct in it's lack of haggis flavour. Must return to Scotland at some point. I don't think I'd go again to Maze. It's worth going to the once I think, but just not my thing.

Have a feeling that I will start paying more for upmarket teas rather than meals out. Maybe go to Roast? It will be disappointing if Toby Carvey tastes better though.

Love n kisses,

Budget Cynic.

New Year - New you... errrr....

2010-01-02T15:40:00.010Z

Happy new year all!

Few wee resolutions firstly...

1. Scary - not to buy any new cookbooks APART from those bought on holiday (NY is earmarked)

2. Moisturise.

3. Be frugal.

Most are un-cake related, however frugality links in with non-cake book buying in a way. I bought a shiny little laptop on New Year's Eve and out of guilt feel I must make up for it by making my lunches etc. That is not to say I won't spend, but whilst I am increasing my grown-uppyness by going to places like Maze for dinner (not that expensive based on the a-la-carte) I figure I can compensate elsewhere.

So what have I made this frosty new year?

Honeycomb as above (oddly hard to get the sugar to 160 degrees C but persevere otherwise it fails miserably) I used James Martin's recipe "Cinder Toffee" but you can get recipes which don't call for thermometers or liquid glucose. This will store for a few days as long as you airtight it with at least two wrappings of plastic/foil and don't give it to your dummy brother.

Wreath cake (made with my usual bundt cake from Dorie baked for 45min only, but with peach jam - too much peach jam for such a shallow tin, hence the volcano effect - on eating, don't add the jam, whilst it will cook, the jam merges with the sponge on cooling and creates a marzipanny uncooked effect which I don't like. And it was definitely cooked!!)

Christmas time... mistletoe at £3

2009-12-28T14:30:00.005Z

'Ello all. One assumes that we are all fed and... fed. Quite possibly you are hitting the mad Christmas sales like the rest of the world. I was quite petrified on entry to M&S in Marble Arch that we pretty much left as soon as we got there. Scary. Anyway, here's my baking run down - there's not much in fairness since we were mainstreaming on the savoury stuff. A chicken, some pork, a forerib of beef for boxing day. I did however make some truffles which though very yummy, pretty basic - chocolate, hot double cream and a drop of peppermint essence if you fancied it. I also made mincepies with some cranberry mincemeat from Waitrose. The recipe was from Nigella's Christmas. Since SOMEONE complained that we never get to see the failures, I want to post this. Personally I don't think of it as a failure - I KNEW it was going to bubble over, but then I wanted the volume of mincemeat that we had. If you don't want it to do this, one option is to put a lid on it (literally!) the other is to only fill it with a little bit and then top up later. It's yummy for me anyway (who was the only person who liked mincemeat to begin with, but dealers choice. For artistic-al ones... look away.

Other things... we had a white Christmas here in Herts, but as it had been white for a week it's less fun. A few funky gifts from the relatives - a Wreath cake tin?? Will be making that this week so look out for that if you are... well that bored :P Enjoy your Xmas everyone!!

Afternoon tea at the Carnaby

2009-11-16T22:04:00.003Z

Afternoon tea on short notice. One of my new favourite websites http://www.afternoontea.co.uk/ featured this one, and we went as it was convenient. First off, it's a Hilton. Therefore do not expect much. We were one of two tables that afternoon, and it took 45 minutes to serve us. The tea comes from Twinings in bags, the sugar is granulated without their own serving spoons (I hate using wet spoons). But to the review: It was £14. What do you expect?

You are served one of these little stacks each. The scones are warm and plain (joy for my sister, the non-raisin eater). However - you get ONE pot of jam each. Strawberry. I'm a purist. I expect a selection somewhere. There's clotted cream in the little black scoop, which did not match the tea set at all. Those little brown cones were either frozen mousse or very stable chocolate ice cream - nice, but when there is only one choice of cake on the stack - apple and walnut, you feel a little robbed of afternoon tea joy.

The sandwiches were cucumber and cream cheese, smoked salmon and cream cheese. Crust free, but slightly dry from being left uncovered briefly without damp teatowel or equivalent.

All in all, wouldn't go again - but it was pretty decent in terms of you could stay there all day and just have tea refills and I'd doubt they'd care...

Coconut and Honey Marshmallows

2009-11-14T18:55:00.006Z

It's raining, it's pouring, we had to do SOMETHING!!

Adapted from Marcus Wareing's Nutmeg and Custard, I made these little babies. I don't think the honey flavour is to my taste, but they are a brilliant texture and look like the picture :D

My adaptation stems from, you guessed it, a lack of almonds. I probably won't make these again as is, but it's worth having listed so I can adapt later.

Dessicated coconut (100g?)

12 leaves of gelatine (yep seriously - 12!)

150g sugar

7 tbsp clear honey

100ml water

2 egg whites

1. Line a wet dish with clingfilm. I used a circular dish around 3o cm in diameter, however the book recommends 15cm square. A nice brownie pan would do nicely (which I need to add to my christmas list). The wetness lets the cling stick to the pan. If you have OCD like me you will try and get the wrinkles out of the cling, but it doesn't matter because you won't see anything.

2. Toast coconut. I put mine on a metal dish and placed under a grill till you can smell and see the toastiness. You start remembering it's in there after you've burnt two lots.

3. Sprinkle half the coconut on the clingfilm.

4. Soften up your gelatine in cold water and squeeze out.

5. Put sugar, honey and water into a little pot and melt over the hob. This is why it doesn't matter what sugar you use.

6. Once boiling, add gelatine and stir to let it dissolve. Boil it rapidly for 4 minutes (I actually set a timer for a hob item!! hahahaha)

7. Whisk egg whites to fluffiness. Because you're not putting sugar in, it won't get to stiff peak stage which you might be used to seeing, but it will be white and have plenty of volume despite the tiny amounts of whites used.

8. Pour boiling syrup into the egg whites and continue to whisk until fluffy. I saw this like an Italian meringue and you end up seeing waves in the whites holding a little bit. It won't be stiff, but relatively solid.

9. Tip into pan and top with remaining coconut.

10. Chill in the fridge for an hour and then slice into squares. A wet/hot knife might help but I just used a sharp one.

11. You might want to coat the other edges but it's your call. I fancy I might dip these in chocolate, or have some crisp drizzles for contrast. But meanwhile, I need to know if these will roast on a candle like normal ones do. Laters! x

My favourites

2009-11-07T15:38:00.002Z

Every now and again, someone asks, "What is your signature dish?"

I never really know how to answer but I think, after a few years of proper hobby baking, my top contenders are as follows:

- Lemon cheesecake

- Chilli Brownies

- Cheesecake cupcakes

- Vanilla Bundt Cake

I'll add to these at some point (I hope!) but these are the ones which get eaten first time round with limited comments from the parentals.

A lot of these, I admit, are very recent additions to the fold. But hunt on the site and the recipes should be up. x

Lemon and Ginger Cupcakes

2009-11-06T16:45:00.003Z

There's something called the Iron Cupcake competition which has been around for around six months. I've followed it from the beginning on the Caped Crusader's site (see right) but I've never been because I was always out of town with work. This was the first time I made an entry and it was lemon and ginger. First off, I'd like to say it is not a good idea to bake something first time for a "competition" but since it's free entry for bakers I thought I may as well.

The lemon and ginger recipe came from the book Decadence, with some adjustments because I didn't have any stem ginger, and so instead I did a coning job and filled

it with a little bit of lemon curd mixed with a ginger syrup I made. The gingerbread cookies however was a pretty wonderful recipe, also from Decadence.

Chocolate chilli brownies

2009-10-25T14:53:00.007Z

I'm not a major fan of brownies, when you get them from the shops or even Borough Market they tend to be a touch dry, or they fall apart. So with the exception of Nigella Lawson's philadelphia cheese brownies, I rarely make them.

Today I made chilli brownies. The reason being is that there is a spice cupcake competition in town and I was wondering if chocolate chilli cupcakes would work. They probably would but whether that would be against the rules almost. Anyway, I'd already made cupcakes this morning - apple and spice cupcakes which on tasting, were definitely more muffin than cupcake. My fault. Any recipe using oil instead of butter comes out like that. I'll post an apple muffin pic up here, but not the recipe because it wasn't fabulous. You can find others just like it, but whereas I want the spice to meld into the cupcake, it was more like cake, with spice stuff. So back to the drawing board if I'm going to be entering that one (it's a fun competition anyway because you get to taste everyone elses!)

The chilli brownies however, were fantastic. If I say so myself :P They sliced nicely into really diddy squares and weren't overpowering. It was just a nice tingle on the lips that really told you there was chilli in the mix. The original recipe came from Jill Dupleix but I pretty much substituted everything by accident or design. To start with, I made it with dark chocolate. Not even good dark chocolate, bourneville since we had loads left (sister bought by accident when I asked for dark chocolate) and I've been working through the packs by shoving it into premade croissant pastry. It actually tastes pretty damn good in this. If you want to be precise, 100g was decent 70%+ dark chocolate from the baking section in Waitrose, which I found is about 15p cheaper than buying eating chocolate from the chocolate section.

Other changes include the fact that I didn't read properly and melted 300g of chocolate into the butter at the start, rather than saving half to put in the mix as chunks - so I substituted with a packet of white chocolate chunks, which don't look that nice to me. Far from Nigella's imagery of snow, I just think of...*ahem* other less savoury images of which you don't want to think of when eating brownies. Also since I was making dark chocolate rather than white brownies, I figured there's no point in using a green chilli for extra colours. But anyway, the recipe, is as follows. Enjoy!

Chocolate chilli brownies

200g butter

300g dark chocolate (bourneville was actually okay)

3 eggs

100g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour

1 pack of chocolate chunks/drops

pinch of salt

For the chillies

2 large chillis, sliced and deseeded

100g caster sugar

150ml water

Method

1. Heat the oven to Gas 6

2. Line a roasting tin with parchment paper (no grease necessary)

3. Steep sugar, water and chilli mix on the hob at a light simmer for 5 minutes then turn off and leave.

4. Melt chocolate and butter together and let cool a bit.

5. Mix eggs, sugar and vanilla, and then add the melted chocolate

6. Fold in the sifted flour and salt, then add chocolate drops.

7. Drain chillies and add to the mix.

8. Bake for 20-25minutes until the top is firm although the middle might have some sink when you prod it.

9. Slice into one inch squares and eat from the outside in - the middle is still squidgy ;)

Bundt Cake... and a Dorie Convert

2009-10-22T22:53:00.006+01:00

Third time's the charm. I gave in and bought cake-release from the dreaded Lakeland. I love it. But I hate it as well. Love hate Lakeland. So commercial. But so necessary. It never has quite as specialist a gear that I need, but it still has more than the regular high street and more over, I have to go to odd places to get it!! Still, this concoction of hydrogenated fat allowed me to turn out a perfect bundt cake without any digging at all! *pop* cake. The recipe itself also was a winner.

Dorie Greenspan's recipe, I do not believe I've made her before but boy does it rock.

The recipe repeated here so I don't lose the yummy recipe which I did not change for once (although using my usual subs for sugar when I ran out) is as follows:

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks (220g ish) unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar (used 1 golden caster, 3/4 granulated white)
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract (used one)
1 cup sour cream
3 Tbsp jam, optional

1. Preheat Gas Mark 6.

2. Mix your sugar and butter.

3. Add eggs.

4. Sour cream and vanilla.

5. Add flour slowly.

6. Put half in the pan and blob jam on top.

7. Put rest on top.

8. Smooth over.

9. Bake for 60 minutes until skewer comes out clean. Cool for five minutes or so and turn over. Voila! :D

"Pineapple" buns aka Bor Lor Bau

2009-08-13T23:37:00.007+01:00

Going through a chinese baking phase so that my food gets eaten, but these de-lovelies I found were in want of a touch more sugar I think. Will adjust for next time. However, as a first attempt, the parentals were very pleased at the reduced sugar content.

A bit of background before I get into this, Bor Lor Bau's are a staple of chinese bakeries. They are called "pineapple" (bor-lor) buns (bau) because they have the funky pattern that look like pineapple. Occasionally you will see recipes with a tiny touch of crushed pineapple in the mix, but I suspect that may have been the result of a rogue trade descriptions officer. This particular recipe was extracted from a newspaper recipe my new sort-of-cousins-in-law supplied. The triple rise was also a helpful hint from their dad.

As for most chinese cakes, I have little clue why the ingredients are as they are. I mean, milk powder, custard powder and 1 piddly teaspoon of carnation milk?? What do these things DO?? By the way, the carnation milk was just that. I think it was evaporated but I could be wrong. The recipe in chinese just reads carnation. Mother dearest said her mate had said it would help prolong the life of the buns, like adding preservatives. One should not reason why, but appreciate the fact that the other recipe called for ammonium bicarbonate which I have no idea where to buy.

All in all, a worth bake. Officially by the way the recipe makes 16, but I made 10 giant ones. Don't be fooled - what fits innocently in the hand expands rapidly in the oven...

Bread buns:

Ingredients:

1lb strong white flour

4oz sugar

1 egg

2 tsp yeast

2 oz butter

2tbsp custard powder

2 tbsp milk powder

8fluid oz warm water

Method:

1. Mix all but the final ingredient together

2. Add water slowly. 6oz cold water can be used if desired but will give a slower rise. Not sure why the yeast isn't prepped with warm water first but this is the recipe I got.

3. Form a dough and knead for a good ten minutes till elastic and dough like (just looks sticky before you do)

4. Cling film and leave to rise for 2 hours till doubled. Slow rise = tender, fast heat rise = tougher. Your call.

5. Beat down and leave to rise again (not usually called for in recipes but again, tender tender).

6. Form into buns and leave on greaseproof (these days I use parchment paper as the stuff has never failed me yet)

7. Brush with water and leave to rise.

8. Brush with egg wash and place crumb coating on top.

9. Score crumb coating and brush with egg wash.

10. Bake for 15-20 minutes at Gas Mark 5.

Crumb coating:

Ingredients:

100g plain flour

45g sugar

55g butter

2tsp milk powder

1tsp carnation milk

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 egg yolk

yellow food colouring

vanilla extract

Method:

1. Cream sugar and butter

2. Add all the damp products

3. Add all the dry ingredients

4. Form into dough and rest in the fridge for 20 minutes

5. Roll out into little rounds - bear in mind this is just crumble, accept that it rips and tears and makes a mess. Don't work it too much or you'll end up with... dough.

6. Make enough rounds as you have rising buns.

Catch up

2009-08-05T10:28:00.007+01:00

Completely not posted for ages, but there was this little thing called my brother's wedding.

Anyway, despite completing the Cookie Carnival, I forgot to send it in. They were lemon ricotta cookies as below.

In addition, other baking things involved foccacia with red onion, mushroom and mozarella:

some buttermilk cupcakes with vanilla buttercream.

Comfort baking

2009-07-12T20:04:00.007+01:00

So I've indulged in a little comfort baking lately. Which is to be understood given my current situation. I'm not saying it's the best idea in the world, being that it means I now seek comfort in baking rather than, I don't know, socialising, meeting people and friends. These days my social circle is limited to a few stress-heads that I know and love, and somehow I've left the rest of my world just to fall away because it's too hard to concentrate. Either way, enjoy some of my little delectations. The above is a Lemon cupcake with lemon butter icing.

The recipe for the cake is as follows, but it gives you slightly too little for the cupcake size and alarmingly grease soaks into the cupcake papers like crazy.

The buttercream icing I suggest you find your own as, whilst I had a recipe, I possibly ended up putting twice as much icing sugar in as required, and felt it could have used a lot more lemon juice to give that punch.

The swirls I was quite happy with, a bit of fun in my mundane world. I've also got a bowl left over so I better bake something else this week!!

Lemon cupcakes:
Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter
1 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1 cup self raising flour
lemon zest (1/2 lemon but tbh I just scraped a little in)
3 tbsp milk (warm it up a bit)

Method:
1. Cream the butter and the sugar together.
2. Add eggs.
3. Add everything else.
To be honest, you could just shove everything in and mix it, this recipe originally called for a food processor. But mix, pour, make 12 slightly undersized cupcakes.
4. Bake at Gas Mark 5 for 15 minutes until springy.
5. Cool it down (that's hard for me!!) then cut a little cone out of the top (and eat) and fill with a teaspoon or so of lemon curd (or jam I suppose - blackberry would be very cool).
6. Top with buttercream (125g butter, 4-6 cups of icing sugar, 1/2 lemon's juice, 2 tbsp milk)

This is the Malteaser cheesecake I made recently. Not a favourite, well people ate it! But they tend to with the cheesecakes because they don't necessarily become "second-rate" as such after the first five minutes out of the oven! It's my usual recipe for cheesecake, but topped with crumbled digestives and malteasers. There was also an abundance of malteasers crushed in when I made the base. I'm not a fan, but I think if I tried the baileys chilled malteaser cheesecake one day I might be a convert.

Cookie Carnival: Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

2009-06-14T20:34:00.006+01:00

Here we go. Early as usual, but these few weeks are manic and since I had to be home to sort out my expenses and the state of my room, why not bake at the same time? Here in lies Martha Stewart's rendition of Strawberries and Cream in cookie form. The recipe is remarkably easy, just make a crumble and add cream to it and then the fruit. In essence it's not bad, but makes it feel more fattening because you're tipping in a load of cream to boot.

The recipe is here, but I made a few changes. One, I added a tablespoon of lemon juice because I didn't read it before I chucked it in (and I cba to drain it off either). Two, there's no sanding sugar because I don't own any. Three, I added a slug of vanilla to the mix because I could. All in all, a very nice cookie, especially fresh from the oven. But after that I think it lacks a certain punch, even with the lemon juice. Maybe I should have considered adding black pepper or balsamic? Those tend to add some tang to the mix, however even as is, I reckon these are going to be well received although I might have some difficulty transporting them as they are distinctly floppy with strawberries unless I toast them crisp.

I also made some mini-muffins from the mix (no difference, just in the cases). This was because I couldn't be bothered to use another baking sheet and just plonked them in. Very cute and because they're small, they'll get eaten. Dangerous!

Learning to swirl darlin'

2009-06-07T13:01:00.003+01:00

So I forked out some hard-earned cash this Friday (well, less forked out, more electronic transferred and therefore it didn't feel like I paid anything at all... dangerous that!) to go to a buttercream class. The lady in question is of Faircakes. She's been in business for about a year and has quite a following on facebook and twitter (which I don't use). Anyhow, in an effort to get some me time, and just blowing stuff on something "for me" I went along.

It was a small class (just two students including me) and it was pretty damn interesting. Firstly, she's from the same university as me, and evidently experienced the hideous office politics barricade and left the rat race for the baking tray. Interestingly enough she's not a lover of cake. It is to her, a business, which makes a lot of sense to an LSE girl like me as well. Whilst I love, love cake, I'd be reluctant to lose my tastebuds in an "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" sense. If you didn't love it to begin with, well that's probably okay, because you might end up hating it. My school of thought is more Nigel Slater, live it, breathe it to the point of lovers lost and spurned (a date who doesn't like cake?? If he doesn't at least hold a spoon and pretend to share mine I'd see issues...)

Anyway, back to the class. I went because it was of a level that suited me. I don't pipe stuff. I've never piped stuff save the icing gun debacle which a friend told me resembled one of his tissues (don't ask) and I guess the macaroons which are less piping, more dripping decoratively. It was unfortunate in essence that there was very little actual piping time, however the smushing of buttercream of airbubbles and filling the piping bag will probably make more difference to future piping than what practice I could get in there.

What was interesting was the other lady who was there, she was basically practically using Faircakes as a franchise. Wanted the EXACT recipes, the EXACT tin measurements, and I was kind of (in a way) laughing because here was a woman who was making cakes, selling them, and quite frankly doing it at a loss. Like, BASIC spreadsheets, costs vs pricing. It's the business nerd in me that I take for granted. You wonder why people go out of business. Actually it makes me wonder why I don't go into business. I can bake. I know better than to pay for a stall in Oxford St markets (Borough, Kings, Portabello - the price might be more expensive but here is where people will linger for food purposes.) *shrugs* And here was the interesting thing. The lady taking notes, she didn't seem to twig that her idol (the teacher) was trying to get OUT of baking cupcakes and into classes because the profit and time allocation was better. If it didn't suit her as a business model, for someone who has finally established herself (thanks to Facebook, twitter and the internet revolution!) why copy it? Not my problem, I was there to make cakes look pretty.

Anyway, the above is basically what I made, the flowers and stampy things are what the lady teacher made - I did like that trick, can't make the piping look good? That's fine, cover it with a flower or something. She was literally the Delia's Cheat guide to cupcakes. Two things she did miss out on which I could have suggested as a net nerd/cake addict
- chiffon cake
- scooping batter in with ice cream scoops
Will post some more later.

Cookie Carnival: Hazelnut Macaroon Sandwiches

2009-05-10T15:57:00.010+01:00

I made these insanely early, but here is my schedule:

4th May the Cookie Carnival email came out from Kate, this weekend I made them, next weekend I'm in Scotland, that gives me two weekends left. Yeah, looking at that, now I have no idea why I thought I HAD to make them this weekend (10th) :S I'll figure out what I HAVE to do in May soon. Probably some hen-do or wedding for someone I've forgotten. Ouch.

I've always struggled with macaroons. I've made them... twice. Once using the Roux brother's book, once from the wonderful Tartlette blog (see right). Both failed miserably. The first one was edible. It probably wasn't a good idea to try and use teaspoons which they SAID was okay, the second time I tried to risk it with greaseproof and naturally everything stuck everywhere. They also make scarily little so by the time you've peeled them off the tray, you've eaten most of them. This recipe made a shed-load. There's pictures of the macaroons on every surface, but I think you'll get it from the following picture - and that is AFTER me and my sister worked our way through the ugly ones!

So today's recip e is from Williams-Sonoma. Which I gather is a US version of a cookery store like Lakeland only a bit more flash. And it was with a great deal of apprehension that I embarked on making these. I wouldn't say it was a successful macaroon, not in the way that La Duree macaroons are, with delicate little feet and flat tops. Mine were more along the lines of almond macaroons slash meringues with a nice nutty flavour.

There are things in both the Roux books and in Tartlette's blog that I believe might make a difference - firstly Tartlette ages her egg whites, and the Roux brothers use the high heat then switch ovens/leave the door ajar after the initial period approach. Both might be interesting, but quite frankly, these were lovely anyway. I'll spare you the chocolate ganache, namely because I thought the jar in the cupboard would work, but apparently after donkey's years it's finally decided to grow some mould. Instead I've applied a little peanut butter and some lemon curd to some for the pics but they were pretty de-lovely to begin with. Scratch that, just ate one with peanut butter. WOOT WOOT!!!

The hazelnut came through which was brilliant - namely because I could only find one packet of hazelnut in the shops and I used a mini-chopper to "grind" it. I did force it through a sieve before using and the stuff that didn't make it through, I made up the difference with a pile of ground almonds from a pack.

Overall a wonderful experience this time around, and I sincerely doubt the trays of macaroons will survive the evening let alone till I get home from Scotland next week!!

BRING ON THE NEXT CHALLENGE!!

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

2009-05-10T12:40:00.007+01:00

What with my new cupcake books arriving from Amazon, one look at the Raspberry Cream Cheese buns on someone elses's site (made with blackcurrant there) and I had to make them. Knowing full well my family wouldn't touch them. Four of these babies were therefore made with big dollops of lemon curd instead, which made delightfully caramelly messes of the tin, but also on the buns, not that I get to touch those - I have eight buns to eat!

The original recipe is from Buttercup Bakery book (New York) and one of these days I'll try the dried cherry one from Magnolias (since I own the book...)

What you need to know about these is that the recipe is easy - as easy as muffins are, but they sink like heck given the amount of preserves you're putting in them. What they give back though, is something so moist and rich you just want to sink yourself into them. And since I've eaten two of them, I'm doing quite well!

As you can see, massive craters. If you don't want that, use less stuff (see one on right). I chose not to use preserves, but to mush raspberries over the stove with a bit of icing sugar. It causes the proportions to be more damp and I guess, results in the intense cragginess. Not that it's a bad thing. I flooded the ones I ate with leftover sauce at the end. Reasons unknown, I just wasn't in the mood for another jar of jam in the fridge. It's loaded with maple syrup, apricot and lemon curd as it is.

My version:
1 3/4 cup plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
200g pack of soft cheese
1/2 cup marg
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup of raspberry slush (chuck in saucepan, heat with some icing sugar, smush in a sieve)

Method:
1. Cheese, marge, sugar, eggs, vanilla. In that order.
2. Add the dry stuff and the milk, mixing in a bit of each till you've run out.
3. Fill your muffin tin (I lined with papers because I don't want to scrub. I admit it's prettier without and you won't have people thinking you have cupcakes gone wrong.)
4. Put splodges of jam/curd/raspberry slush on top and swirl in with a knife/spoon etc.
5. Gas Mark 5 for 25 minutes. They'll sink on the way out.
6. Enjoy.

Carrot and orange cupcakes

2009-05-09T09:12:00.004+01:00

I accept that no one should really put more than one, MAYBE two pictures up on any baked good. It's like looking at pictures of people's kids. Odds are, one is enough, unless of course your child is super-adorable and super fantabulous. Which of course they are! But hey I was playing with icing and I actually made the effort to crumble gingernut biscuits over the top as decoration (I know, I know, the effort...) so appreciate the fact that I am insane.

Carrot cake cupcakes are a stalwart of cupcake books. They go with the peanutbutter and chocolate ones I have yet to make. But anyway, I love really good carrot cake and after the super finance woman who made amazing cupcakes blew me away with the her carrot cake one (recipe was not forthcoming - grrrrrr) I decided I needed to try my own.

These ones were from Elinor Klivans Cupcakes! book. They were pretty decent. I love golden raisins/sultanas in carrot cake so it worked well. The frosting had butter and cream cheese in and I have to say, I'm not a fan of the buttery-ness in frosting.

On the grounds I cba to post recipes which don't blow me away anymore please go buy the book or ask me if you really want it. They were nice. The recipe was definitely good. But it wasn't, please have sex with me fantastic. Which of course, is what every single girl wants to say!

The recipe itself left lots of room for icing on top and I managed to use the ice cream scoop to measure it into the cups. Half a scoop each makes for the cupcakes shown.

Snickerdoodles and things wot I dun wit da buttercream

2009-05-09T08:32:00.007+01:00

Oh happy day!! Oh happy Dayyyy... last weekend I made snickerdoodles. As you do. It came from the Ultimate cookie book and I downsized on the sugar for the parentals and they liked it. Snickerdoodles (such a cool name) to me should be softer and more cookie bendy like the chocolate chip things you get in shops. However, that might be because M&S once upon a time had bendy snickerdoodles in their shops. Those might have been more peanutty and chocolatey though. Not sure if it's my memory or whether they thought that was a cool name to call american cookies.

Anyhow, as usual, I digress. Snickerdoodles are apparently originally German and the name got mutilated by the good ol' US of A. But it is such a cool name! These babies, probably because instead of making 36, I made 15 -20 golfball sized blobs on a few baking pans, turned out a bit humped and less cracked, which doesn't look like the wikipedia picture but I'm not that bummed. As a result they kept really well and I ate them the next day without being disappointed.

If I did it again, I'd put more cinnamon in the rolling mix as I really wanted distinct brown vs crack patches (no jokes please gentlemen!)

There are gazillion snickerdoodle recipes out there. So go forth on the internet and search people! I think I'll try another variation next time. Good, but not enough to make me commit!

Just for silliness sake, here's a pic of what I did with the remaining cream cheese frosting from the carrot cake. Gingernut sandwiches (shop bought with squishy cream)

Cookie Carnival: Lemon Bars

2009-04-19T18:39:00.011+01:00

My first Cookie Carnival project. Many thanks to the organiser and this month's host for letting me join in.

Lemon bars from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. I have no idea who Melissa is but I'm not a fan of her lemon bars. Hmm, I sense I'm already at odds with the cheery Cookie club mentality, but to thy own self be true. (Lord, I'm quoting Clueless again...)

The recipe looks close to Lemon Meringue bars, but with less yolk and a touch of flour. And missing all important meringue. Now here’s the thing. This is the

. We don’t HAVE Lemon Bars. I’ve just done a quick search on Google Images and it appears they have a very standard appearance. Adding meringue would definitely be cheating, as would my first thoughts of drizzling these babies with dark chocolate. These babies are rectangular, they are dusted in icing sugar and they better be made with lemon.

I made a few changes but not enough as far as I'm concerned. More yolks would have made the filling that bit more yellow, and it would have needed some more flour to keep it a bit more solid, it was still liquid compared to the pictures I've seen online. Moan, moan, moan. Anyway. The fundamentals to why I am changing the recipe:

1: I don’t own a food processor, ergo I’m cheating on the ground toasted almonds.
2: How is 20 tbsp = 1 ¼ cups??
3: I’m cheap. I’m not buying almond extract. Will exchange for a bit of orange blossom we already have instead.
4: 7 lemons does not a ¾ cup juice make.

My amended recipe (for the real one, go search someone else's website ;) )

For the Crust:
2 cups plain flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup ground almonds (lightly toasted)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cup butter

Method:
1. Toast the ground almonds under the grill. Keep a close eye on them and give them a stir until they change shade and smell nice and fragrant.
2. Mix all the dry stuff together.
3. Add the butter and mush to make crumbs as usual.
4. Grab a pan lined with greaseproof and gently oil.
5. Smush crumbs into a pastry case. Manfully ignore your fingerprints in the pastry and just bear with it. Make walls on the edges because the filling is liquid.
6. Bake blind for 30minutes at Gas Mark 4, then 15 more without the beans. Scarily enough, this pastry needs it because of all the almonds I think, as the paper came up slightly damp and stuck to the pastry which isn't normal.
7. Allow to sit whilst you get on with the filling.

For the Lemon Filling:
4 large eggs
1 3/4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract (replaced with orange blossom water)
1/2 cup plain flour
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons but note that these are the big unwaxed ones which are 50% pith, a small organic waxed one yields much more juice comparatively)
1/4 cup icing sugar for sprinkling

Method:
1. Sugar, eggs, then extract, then flour, then juice. Mix.
2. Pour into case.
3. Bake for 30 minutes at Gas Mark 3.
4. Douse in sieved icing sugar, slice into pieces and enjoy.

Conclusion? Bring on the next challenge!!!

Apple cupcakes

2009-04-19T18:09:00.003+01:00

Almost everything looks better with icing sugar. With the possible exception of my stove. What I did notice was that it does, like makeup, accentuate the pores. Hmm. I think I'm transgressing because I spent Saturday looking for new foundation. Maybe I should consider dipping my face in icing sugar. The colour is probably in line with my goth-like skin anyway.

The recipe came from Faircakes and I won't repeat it here. It was, a relatively decent recipe. Pretty much victoria sponge, give or take a few spoons of cornflour. It was... just vanilla cupcake. As it was designed for people to plaster with icing, it made only ten normal muffin tin sized cupcakes. For me, the minimum spoonage into one of those cups is one "plop" from a normal tablespoon (i.e. the non-officiated tablespoon people actually own.) This is why I only made ten.

Once they were out of the oven, the first few were eaten warm by Daddy dearest, who asked me regarding timing so he could return from his walk and not miss the fresh from oven taste. He ignores all baking after this five minute time frame. Since there wasn't that many remaining, I just cut a little cone out and filled it with some apple sauce made from the leftover apple and a spoon of sugar. I WAS going to do a whipped cream swirl over it. But with around four cupcakes left it seemed a waste, hence we just have some top-hatted apple cupcakes.

My other bake was something for Cookie Carnival, which I'm not entirely sure I'm allowed to post about yet. Will read the rules as next week I'm in Edinburgh and will have no time to post. Brb.

The cheesecake

2009-04-13T18:11:00.002+01:00

Yes I cranked out the icing sugar finally. The blackberries are covering some HUGE cheesecake cracks, but the actual cake itself is as soft and melting as I always want, unlike the cakey, floury number I feared. Sister dearest informs me that whilst it was lovely, it was slightly eggy, which is probably the result of the two extra egg whites. Needless to say, I ended up with a lot of blackberries to eat after my family scraped them off.

Monday, Monday...

2009-04-13T11:08:00.004+01:00

Easter Monday!! Woohoo!!

Okay so here is what I made.
2 cheesecakes.
Cinammon and apple french toast.
All before midday!

It actually involved a sprint to Waitrose when I realised I forgot to add sour cream to my cheesecake ingredient list. I used the same recipe as last time doubled, but added 300g less cream cheese as we didn't have any, one egg rather than two egg yolks. Added a tablespoon of lemon juice because we had some. Added bigger heaps of tablespoons of flour (to firm it up) because we have to go Toby Carvery soon. That's about it.

I'm kind of looking at it and thinking, maybe that's a BIT too much flour. Because it's rising slightly.

French toast - I should have put the more aesthetically pleasing middle slice on top, but you know what? I wanted to eat it, and it was YUM. One shot only.

Ingredients:
100ml milk
2 eggs
1 tsp and sprinkling of cinnamon
Brioche
Bramley Apple
60g brown sugar

1. Mix milk, eggs and 1 tsp cinnamon together with 30g of the sugar.
2. Soak slices of brioche in the mixture.
3. Peel and core slices of apple, cutting into wedges.
4. Coat apple in a mix of remaining sugar and cinammon.
5. Heat up butter/spread and pan fry apples gently. Just leave in the pan and turn once each side is done.
6. Now, you have a choice. You can either finish cooking the apples and use a new pan for the brioche. Or you can be lazy and fry the brioche in the same pan. Word of warning, because the apples have already been going, you end up with more burnt bits of sugar on the brioche if you use the same pan. You can imagine which one I went with! It's not a BAD thing, just that you have to be careful not to take it past the ucky stage.

If I was feeling disgustingly presentationy, I'd sprinkle with icing sugar. But that's a waste of a packet of icing sugar. For brunch as well.

Cheesecakes are now out of the oven. Look a bit over cooked to me (probably because of the flour firming it up a bit much for moi. There are also HUGE cracks in it as a result. Will decorate ours with blackberries to hide the cracks. This will no doubt be scraped off by my loving family.

Chocolate and Cherry Cookies

2009-04-05T18:03:00.006+01:00

So they had a very pretty plate of cookies in the book. More to the freaking point. They were ROUND. I was suspicious. Very suspicious. But I went with it. They did have a few quirks to the usual chocolate chip cookie, and you know what? I think this may replace my existing recipe as "The One". The texture is a bit nicer, the only drawback being that they are that bit smaller and they don't spread so you do have to do what I did if you want them to be pretty. Instructions to follow on that. But check this out, they had dried cherries in this, AND MY SISTER HAD THEM AND SURVIVED!! She of the dried fruit hate at them. *WOOHOO!!*

Chocolate and Cherry Cookies
Ingredients
75g butter
75g caster sugar
75g light brown sugar (WOW I FORGOT TO ADD THIS!!! Umm... the recipe doesn't need it.)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
50g dried cherries chopped in half
100g chocolate chips

Method:
1. Grease the greaseproof.
2. Butter, sugar, add egg, add vanilla, add cherries, add flour and baking powder, add half the chocolate chips.
3. Place in teaspoon sized heaps on the greaseproof, sprinkle over remaining chocolate chips and flatten.
4. Bake for 10 minutes at Gas Mark 4 till golden.

My adjustments. One, don't do the sprinkle of chocolate chips - they go all over the place and look kinda alien. Just mix them all in like you normally would. Two, these babies don't spread. Well maybe they would if I added the rest of the sugar but I doubt it. But, they make kinda weird cookie shapes if you follow the recipe. I suggest you do what I did to achieve the round little baby at the top of the page - put in a freezer bag, roll into a sausage and put in the freezer to chill. Slice them out (24 cookies in total) and whilst they do squish a little as you slice, you can reshape with your fingers before you bake. (Is it just me or is there a generation who remembers Cher in Clueless with the cut and bake cookies - "Thunk" she didn't bother cutting...)
Anyway, pretty cookies result. xx

Publish or Perish

2009-04-05T17:43:00.006+01:00

No I'm not an academic. But here I was tapping my laptop wondering why suddenly all my web disappeared when my brother hasn't unplugged me. Turned out my dad unplugged the router for the vacuum cleaner.

So here is my new purchase. The Usbourne Children's Book of Baking. Bear with me, I'll get it on my side list, especially as I cooked not one but two recipes from this book today. Both were pretty tasty, with minimal messing with.

Pear and frangipane tart
I used apple - sorry I had four giant bramleys left. I will of course next time do the proper pear tart because aesthetically speaking it's more attractive. Also, you can actually slice it properly like they instruct you to, without slicing a little bit out of your finger! (I'd like to say at no point did my blood enter my cooking, and also it was just a fleshwound babe ;) Papercut size and the result of trying to core an apple without breaking it into quarters first. This was parentally approved (the cake not the cut) and at no point did anyone go "Add some red bean paste to this..." and instead they asked if we had any vanilla ice cream to go with. My mother. Whilst yes indeed vanilla would have gone well, I think this culinary demand stems from the fact they went to Burger King yesterday and managed to get apple pie warmed with ice cream. Myself, I still miss the McD's apple pie ala mode...

Ingredients: Pastry
175g plain flour
25g caster sugar
100g butter
1 egg
2 tsp cold water
Frangipane:
50g butter
50g caster sugar
50g ground almonds
1 egg
15g self raising flour
3 small, ripe pears or alternative fruit
Glaze:
2 tbsp apricot jam
1 tbsp lemon juice

Method:
1. Make shortcrust. If you don't know how, I'd worry. Sugar plus butter, add egg, add water, add flour and mush into dough. It is extremely dry but bear with it and knead. Chill for half an hour and then roll out to line a 20cm flan tin before chilling for 20minutes, baking blind at Gas Mark 6 for 10mins with 5 minutes in the open air. Oh and remember to prick before it goes in.
2. Frangipane: Butter, sugar then add a tablespoon of ground almonds.
3. Add the egg, then the ground almonds, then the flour and pour into baked pastry.
4. Cut pears in half lengthways, core and then split the fat bit into a fan, not cutting all the way to the top. Place on top of frangipane.
5. Bake for 35 minutes at around Gas Mark 3 (I ramped it up, especially since I wanted it a bit more brown.)
6. Glaze with warmed apricot and lemon juice mixed together.

I've done it

2009-04-01T12:27:00.003+01:00

I've taken the first steps to being affiliated.

Ever since I've become hooked on reading food blogs I've been interested in the mass bake-athons that are baking rings. People bake, usually monthly but sometimes more regularly than that! the same dish. Now given that I'm not at home half the time with work, it makes it a little hard, but check it out. I found a group to join. Okay, sounding a little weird and psycho now. Kinda like "BE MY FRIEND.... PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE" And that's just not me. But hey ho, this might let me do my baking thing, indulge some of the showy off tendencies other than on facebook, and generally enjoy the company of other online bloggers in a non-perverted way.

Oh and FYI I cancelled the gym membership. 3 months off due to illness and now 5 weeks solid client bookings, it's just money down the drain. Now it's money into a nice new camera or a Wii. I haven't decided.

Lacking that certain...

2009-03-29T21:28:00.004+01:00

Two sets of cookies I made today. Two somewhat different results. The first I made were the Pineapple and Macadamia nut thins from The Ultimate Cookie book. Except I have no pineapple, I used chopped nuts and er... I think there was something missing from their recipe. It was very much cream sugar and butter together, add flour... and then guess what? There was no binder. No egg, no water. Nothing. So I added an egg and made dough rather than crumble. It wasn't a bad cookie but not worth putting the recipe down. I used chopped crystallised ginger if you are interested, it tastes nice, but it still hasn't reached the pinnacle of cookie thinness and lusciousness.

The dove cut outs you can see above are from Amazon marketplace. I put them on my shopping list awhile ago, forgetting to read how tiny they are. I think they are definitely better for fondant, although come winter I'm making the partridge in a pear tree linzer cookie I see so much of. Meanwhile, I also realised I desparately need PLAIN cutters. Some plain round and maybe some frilled ones. Our frilly ones are circa 1970s and come with associated rust. The round ones cut above were made by using the lid of my matcha tin. Yay for great packaging.

The second cookie of the day was Melting Moments from 1000 recipes. These were very simple, and I actually followed the recipe, bar the lack of the glace cherry. My mum first made melting moments for Christmas Eve when I was little, just before we went off to work. These tasted similar, but weren't quite as dark. As it was though, these still taste a lot tastier than the ginger and nut cookies. What a shame though, that these cannot be cut into pretty shapes.

Melting Moments
1/2 cup margerine
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

Method:
1. Cream margerine and sugar.
2. Add egg and vanilla.
3. Add flour, baking powder and salt.
4. Drop spoonfuls (around 16) onto a greased baking tray.
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes at Gas Mark 4-5.

Sloppy day

2009-03-27T21:55:00.005Z

I made a lot of damp food last week. Above is the lemon curd, which I am very proud of because a) it used up the lemons
b) it came out well (and like the shop bought stuff)
c) it was ridiculously easy

Lemon Curd:
3 eggs
1/3 cup of lemon juice (2-3 lemons)
3/4 cup sugar
50 g unsalted butter

1. Stir lemon juice, eggs and sugar over a bain marie.
2. After around ten minutes it gets thick.
3. Pour through a sieve and then whisk in butter.
4. Cover and cool.

The cake, the cake... I made a cake because I felt like it (mother's day at the time). The recipe for the cake was from Good Food and it was really tough! Looking at the photo they have, I think it's supposed to be. Don't know why they've rated it so highly. I stuffed it with pear and whipped cream. I covered it in a mixture of whipped cream and ready made custard just for a bit of a change. Yes I know it's sloppy, but since I realised the cake itself wasn't going to amaze me, I got lazy with the decoration.

Cranberry Brownies

2009-03-17T22:41:00.004Z

Second baking session of the day - using up the cranberries. As a result, I have an entire tray of brownies to eat on my own because no one eats cranberries! Ai.

First of all, the recipe calls for dried cranberries. Let me make that clear. I knew therefore at the outset there was a bat's chance in hell that the brownies I made would actually set, being that I used frozen berries defrosted. Other than that, recipe wise it was pretty decent. Used cocoa rather than dark chocolate which made it a darn sight cheaper than usual. Definitely fudgy since it won't set. I would like to try it with dried berries one day, to see if it will set, but since I whacked it in for another half an hour with the frozen berries, I have my doubts. Otherwise, it's a nice, moist, tangy chocolate pudding. Served warm with vanilla I think it'd go down a treat.

Cranberry Brownies
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup flour (probably add some more if you wanted it to set)
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Method:
1. Blend dry ingredients into the wet.
2. Spread in a greased pan and bake for 25 minutes at Gas Mark 5.

Coconut Cookies

2009-03-17T14:07:00.006Z

It's time. To use up that half a pack of coconut I have left over. Not feeling able to commit myself to the full coconut cake as I have no one to offload it onto. Check this out, previous cake I have just demolished. 90% on own. Thankfully it's borderline healthy (I keep telling myself). This is because, yes, thy family does not do fruit in baking. And I still have a pile of cranberries to eat. *sigh*

I'd make the coconut cranberry chews because the reviews are raving about them online, however, I can also read. And when it says 6 DOZEN, one should worry. 6 x 12 = 72. 72 cookies! That my family won't eat! Screw that. Save that one to try at Christmas when the offload potential is greater. Curiously the Metric recipe they offered uses 10 g more brown than white, but cup wise it's the same. Either way, will cheat and use margerine, even though I should really use butter in such a simple recipe because the ingredients really pop when you have less of them.

Post making conclusion? Make these. It's nothing fancy but just nice in the way shortbread is nice. The recipe is really simple. I made 22 golf balls of cookie and they worked out the right size. It is worth squishing them down as they don't spread like chocolate chip cookie dough for instance. Not major spreaders either so you don't have to position them 3 inches apart like the original recipe said. It was however pretty necessary to rotate trays near the end so that the bottom layer were lightly browned too. I made basically four trays of cookies with six/five cookies each. Parents were very happy with these.

Chewy Coconut cookies
1 1/4 plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (marg!)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/3 cup dessicated coconut

Method:
1. Cream butter and sugars, add egg and vanilla.
2. Add flour gradually then coconut.
3. Drop by the teaspoon onto an ungreased pan.
4. Bake 10 minutes at Gas Mark 5.

Apple and Cranberry loaf

2009-03-16T18:43:00.007Z

After a bit of a horrible day off - me with the grumps, an aunt downstairs with a very loud voice, I finally got round to baking. Bring it on! I used up the apples, overdosing the cake with them since I'm sure four granny smiths does not equal 2 cups (see the massive chunks in the picture). But it all turned out well. I had the apple corer/slicer thing which I bought for a quid, and aside from drenching my top in apple juice, it did the job fine. I also managed to use a cup of cranberries, leaving another cup to use up tomorrow I guess, but since it's been sitting in my freezer since Christmas it's time.

My verdict on this cake? I love it. The apples are slightly too bland, probably because they've sat around for awhile and because the chunks are so big, but the cranberries work a treat alongside. Plus it would seem this cake is ridiculously healthy. No butter, just 2 tbsp of oil and one egg. It lacks some punch though, so I think next time I'll add some more spice or lemon peel just to give it a boost. As it was I put a tsp of mixed spice rather than the original cinnamon requested, but other than giving it a lovely colour and smell, it doesn't offer much in the way of warmth or depth.

It does look a bit of a stunner though doesn't it? Mother dearest commented I should have put those peeled almonds round the edge like in dundee cake. What you don't get in dundee cake (I suspect at least, because I never made it myself) is the sheer lumpiness of this cake pre-bake. I wish I took pictures, but it went in as a pile of apples coated in brown batter. It is pretty amazing how it expands and becomes a cake though.

Picture of the sliced wedge just to show how chunky the apples were. It was ever so slightly raw in the top of the dome in the middle, but we ate it anyway. Not entirely convinced skewer trick works given the amount of fruit in the mix.

Since this was a recipe worth repeating, especially how healthy it felt. Please see below.

Apple and Cranberry loaf

Ingredients:
2 cups peeled, chopped apple
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp oil
1 egg
1 1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 cup cranberries (I used frozen dunked in water briefly)
(The original recipe calls for chopped walnuts but I chose not to sully my cakes with nuttier elements - feel free if you want = 1/2 cup chopped walnuts at the same time as the cranberries)

Method:
1. Apples, sugar, oil and egg - mix.
2. Add everything else bar the cranberries.
3. Mix well and then stir in the cranberries (wait till now otherwise you'll just have pink cake with lots of cranberry skins. Not a bad thing. Just pink.)
4. Place in a lightly greased pan. I used a deep round cake tin with a loose base. I'm not convinced not greasing it would have mattered, but will experiment with that next time.
5. Cook for 1 hour at Gas Mark 5 until skewer comes out clean.

Ingredients list

2009-03-16T16:07:00.007Z

Random note to myself.
Things to use up:

Ground almonds
Gelatine
Chocolate cake covering
Plain chocolate
Poppyseeds
Green tea
Green food colouring
Yellow food colouring
Rose water
Orange essence
Apples
Icing sugar
Fondant

And they call me mellow yellow...

2009-03-16T14:35:00.005Z

Remember the Gap advert?? Well it's better than the other things mellow yellow remind me of.

I'd like to say, I LiKE myself. Now I don't want this to turn into some gratuitous blog of my life's comings and goings, which, I must say, I've indulged in before in my life. What happened to the days of writing in secret diaries? Being affronted by invasion of privacy, whereas, these days we just post it all out there...

Now, back to why I like myself. I could be a little slimmer, a little smarter, a little nicer... but sitting here on my day off, looking at blue sky, getting a bit narked off by my auntie who is ridiculously loud downstairs and disturbing my baking schedule, I like myself. Why? I think I've lost track a little. Well. I like baking. I like taking pictures of them and saying "Look at me, look at me" (10 things I hate about you). I am, even looking to spend some money on a camera, just so I can do that, that bit better. (Blame the food blogs, all you people with 10mgpixel cameras!) But you know what? I've not fallen into the mummy trap. My mum has her signature cake. The chiffon cake. If anyone bakes it better, I think she would fall into a depression slash killing spree type mood. I accept that I am not the best. You only have to look at some of the blogs out there to know and likewise, I don't make baking my identity. It's part of me, but not all of me. So I like me.

But here it is, the source of my weird self-awareness day. The Comic Relief bake sale. I didn't make anything, I went out the night before, plus the fact I am a little cake-shy to be honest. The first few times I did check out the Hummingbird bakery cupcakes.
They weren't that hot, but they weren't bad. The red velvet featured fluffy icing, the chocolate cake a little light and boring, but it worked. The vanilla, iced in a tasteful neon blue, was a little stodgy and BLEUGH in icing but hey, it's all for CHARRRRRRIDEEEEEEEEEEE. But then the next day, there was an actual home made bakesale. And the woman (from finance no less) turned out a large table of baked goodies, of which I forked over £2 for a tiny carrot cupcake.
Oh that cupcake made me surprisingly heady. I can make carrot cake. It's alright. Last time I made them I didn't frost and they were designed to be muffins. But this? The cupcake was light and spiced. Moistened with the little sultana bits. The top was perfect. AND PIPED. With a tiny white chocolate carrot on top. *sigh* I emailed her for the recipe and to commend her on such an amazing feat. Cake envy of the highest degree. Check out the pictures. Hummingbird doesn't come out too great... that's all I can say!

Midweek banana baking

2009-03-10T21:32:00.006Z

It's that time... yes I need to use the slightly out of date leftover stuff from the weekend. The glup of buttermilk and the sour cream. Unfortunately there is still a half cup of sour cream I have to find a use for, but! To the Banana Cake Batman!

The recipe is from Betty Crocker, free application on the ipod touch. It's one of those pigging annoying recipe books where 99% of the recipes use a mix created by... Betty Crocker!! However, it has a recipe search where I looked up buttermilk and so, made banana cake. If you are doing this, one assumes you'd actually have buttermilk. I used my glup and made the difference up with sour cream. Please note that Frau Crocker also grossly underestimates the baking time. Mine took an hour or more using a 9 inch pan? Don't let it put you off though (apart from the gas bill I guess) because putting the cake itself together took less than ten minutes. I admit though, I had my brother mash the bananas for me, and being my brother he chose to do it with my potato masher. *sigh*

Banana Cake
Ingredients:
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp mixed spice and a sprinkle of ginger (Crocker says ground cinnamon but I don't have any)
pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup margerine
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 cup mashed bananas (2 bananas)

Method:
1. Cream margarine and sugar.
2. Add eggs and vanilla.
3. Add dried goods and buttermilk alternately.
4. Stir bananas through.
5. Bake for 1 hour at Gas 5 in a lightly greased tin (I did half an hour at 6 and then a further half at 4)

It does have a nice crust to it, and is deliciously moist. Not sure whether it will just be damp by tomorrow, but next time I fancy adding some fat golden sultanas to the mix. Must learn to separate the sections so I get sultanas in one side and chocolate chunks in the other since sultanas are on the list of non-sister friendly!

All American Buttermilk Cake

2009-03-06T19:30:00.010Z

Buttermilk cupcakes. It's my fault. Trains were awful this morning so I turned myself round at the station and asked for the day off as holiday. In my quest to bake I bought buttermilk and sour cream because all my recipes call for that? Right? Wrong. Why is it that all those recipes suddenly disappear? So I looked online and found a recipe for buttermilk cake. Which I made into little cupcakes because I cba to grease a pan and because my cousin said to .

Buttermilk cupcake

100 g margerine
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

2 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
pinch salt
1 cup buttermilk

1. Cream marge and sugar, add eggs and vanilla.

2. Alternate buttermilk and dried goods.

3. Gas Mark 4 for 30 minutes.

They came out very flat - expected really since the recipe has an insane demand for self-raising AND added raising agents, must have been compensating for something. But they were delightfully flat and flooded the pan in pretty way. Mum preferred them to my usual cupcakes because they were more moist and looser in crumb. Well she would have said that if there was a direct chinese translation but that's basically the gist of it. After giving her the recipe, she asked what buttermilk was... and proceeded to enquire if she could use milk. Cream? Evaporated milk? She doesn't really go for things in the chiller like I do. Makes sense really - I now have an annoying glup which I will have to make scones with.

I also decided to make a small amount of frosting using a glup of sour cream (the rest of the pot will make a batch of my standard cupcakes). Remind me to stop doing this. I don't actually like sour cream frosting, but every time it calls because it is so easy to make. Actually I think it's mainly the plain chocolate effect I hate but either way, MUST STOP.

Recipe for sour cream frosting which I used on two cupcakes:
4oz chocolate (100g or half a pack of the big bars)
1/2 cup of sour cream (glup, glup)

1. Melt chocolate.
2. Mix in sour cream.
3. Ta-dah!

Okay I missed a step. Although it was optional! I bought some coffee granules today. I don't drink coffee other than the sugar and cream high frappa-chi-chi latte what have you's from Starbucks. So it was a task. I picked the smallest jar that wasn't Nescafe and lo - it was this slightly fancy hazelnut one that I picked. Alternatives were french vanilla or swiss chocolate. Interesting! I've had a cup now and it's not half bad, but no point getting into a caffeine addiction when I already do a nice cuppa tea. Anyway I got them for purposes of all these cute coffee biscuit recipes I have, but for the purposes of today I dissolved a teaspoon in a teaspoon of water, added to the sour cream before I stirred it all into the chocolate. Can't say I really tasted it, but then it might be why I had to add some sugar at the end because the plain chocolate is REALLY plainnnnnnnn. Will never understand why it is THE cooking chocolate when milk tastes so much better but hey. Maybe I should just rebel.

That's a picture of the cupcake innards. I also bought some sprinkles today and so decorated with some granulated sugar and a little coloured E numbered topping. Appetising aren't I? Oh well, little in moderation. Had some Hummingbird bakery cupcakes yesterday. Not great great in my opinion. The red velvet wasn't half bad last week, but the chocolate is just light chocolate with definitely a better frosting than what I achieved today. What I did find wow was the ingenuity. I've never frosted cupcakes much namely because if you are travelling with cupcakes its hard to keep them intact. But some of the chocolate cupcakes from hummingbird were coated in chocolate vermicelli. Making a nice, neat, protective cover of chocolate over the frosting. Gotta try it!

Sunday bakes

2009-02-21T18:09:00.006Z

My cake stuff arrived!!! Very happy. Forked out some chi-ching money for some nordic bakeware which I've always been a bit dubious about - it may be gorgeous but it weighs a ton and will it/won't it come out the tin like it does on tv? Worry not! The cakes came out really easy, and when I say easy, I flipped them out with my fingers.

You can see that the shapes came out nicely, although because I wasn't using a pound cake/bundt cake type recipe, there are some little air bubbles in the design. The recipe I used was for easy yellow cupcakes from Cupcakes! And it was a surprise to me how they turned out because, well, I always make them as the base of the vanilla cheesecake cupcakes, hence I've never seen what they ACTUALLY look like. All in all, very nice but I'd definitely try these out with some spice cake mix or apple sauce cake. Oh the excitement! Mother dearest naturally flinched when I told her the cost - but I'm ill so it's not like she can actually yell at me properly for it. She also commented that it was *sniff* just looks and cake would be just as good plain. HAH! You know as soon as I go back to work she'll be using that tin and leaving crusty bits of cake on my non-stick (she does this to my Hello Kitty Jelly moulds already).

My other purchase was some leaf cutters :) Very sedate and grown up for me. I did want to ice them but as usual I just felt... lazy. Instead I dipped them in chocolate. They just tasted... slightly lemony with the plain chocolate. The recipe was from the Ultimate Cookie Book which I halved, but that somehow doesn't stop the necessity of adding lots of flour to the mix. Something to consider with the chill recipes in Ultimate Cookie. One of these days I will achieve the incredibly thin delicate sugar cookies of lore.

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

2009-02-18T17:43:00.004Z

Baked cookies today during a "good" phase. These came from The Ultimate Cookie Book and it is yet again the cookies by the same name in the book, albeit with some recipe adjustments. This has definitely taken my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe place. The minor adjustments to my previous adjustments were that instead of chocolate chips, I put walnut sized blobs on the greaseproof paper and then a chunk of plain chocolate, putting small blobs on top to cover. Turns out well, albeit I still prefer milk chocolate. I might try these again once I've worked off the extra calories. Please see below, the original "adjusted" recipe which I used.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup margerine
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cup plain flour
2 packets of chocolate chips

1. Cream sugar and margerine.
2. In order, add egg, vanilla, flour and chocolate chips.
3. Place walnut sized teaspoons on ungreased greaseproof paper.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes at Gas Mark 6

Makes enough for three sheets of six using the chocolate chunk method, more for chocolate chips as it spreads more.

Lemon Meringue Pie

2009-02-13T10:52:00.009Z

My facebook status yesterday was "I want to make a Lemon Meringue Pie you'd want to sleep with" and in fairness I came close. Not to physical intimacy with said Pie but those mmmm-y moments I get with really good stuff. Like Gu chocolate puds and scottish oatcakes. Don't ask. You could film a porno soundtrack with the noises I make over those delicacies.

Had some trouble with the photos - well I'm still using my camera phone and it's 2m pixels and er... sh!t? Well tbh it's about the effort and I didn't make the effort to wipe the plate clean which would have been a lot better. However, as no one reads this site bar the advertising bloggers I wouldn't worry about it. Here's a curious thing though. All cake pictures look better pointing with the narrow point to the left. What is WITH that???!!

The recipe came from Waitrose online . I saw loads around, but I liked the 3 egg approach - although I didn't opt for blacktails I just went for M&S free range. On saying that it lacked the more custardy taste to the curd that I wanted, and that I suppose is due to the lack of butter in the filling mix. I'll probably adapt the recipe I have rather than try someone new, but please see below for the recipe I used and my adjustments.

Lemon Meringue Pie
Crust
300g plain flour
150g butter (I used I can't believe it's not butter)
1 egg
zest and juice of 1 lemon (only half a lemon was used)

Filling
3 yolks
zest and juice of 2 lemons
100g caster sugar
5tbsp cornflour

Meringue
3 egg whites
75g sugar (I used an icing sugar and granulated mix as we had that in the house.)

Crust:
1. Rub flour and butter into breadcrumb (I smush with the back of a spoon)
2. Add zest and egg.
3. Add juice gradually till it forms a ball. (I used unwaxed Waitrose lemons which look tiny but generate and yield their juice easily.)
4. Wrap in sandwich bag and chill for 30 minutes.
5. Roll out and line pan which has been greased lightly. (I liked a deeper pie which is smaller - think it was smaller than 30cm but you can refer to original recipe)
6. Prick base and chill for 15 minutes and then bake blind for 10 minutes at Gas Mark 6. (I used a heavy saucer wrapped in foil.)
7. Remove beans/weight/saucer etc and bake for 5 minutes.

Filling:
1. Zest, juice, sugar and 300ml water in a saucepan and heat.
2. Dissolve cornflour in 6tbsp cold water and stir in, boiling for about a minute until thick.
3. Beat in egg yolks one at a time. (I sieved as I got a few stray eggy bits.)
4. Pour into case (I didn't wait for it to cool.)

We also added extra sugar to the recipe as - well, I had an extra half a lemon from the dough which I also added. I just got my mum to add to taste since she's more fussy.

Meringue:
1. Whisk whites in usual way (grease free, no water etcetc.) and add sugar.

Construction:
1. Top pie with meringue. I start from the outside and seal it to the edges and then once the outer circle is done I plop into the middle and just spread it about until it's flat on the curd but peaked where I want it to be.
2. Bake at Gas Mark 2 for 25 - 35 minutes.

When mine came out I didn't feel it was crusty enough - I like a crisp top although the foamy meringue underneath was perfect.

It also did the annoying weepy thing where little beads of condensation appeared on the top - albeit I managed to avoid the scary meringue and lemon separation some sites were talking about.

Live and learn. Definitely would make this again. I loved the crust, it was soft and gorgeous and my family basically ate the whole thing in one sitting which is rare for my cooking (no one likes fruit, no one likes chocolatey cakes, no one likes anything that isn't plain victoria sponge with whipped cream - sorry these days it's Chiffon cake :P )

Raspberry Crumb Squares... my style

2009-02-10T12:01:00.004Z

Sense the inevitable.

These Raspberry Crumb Squares are not made of raspberry.
They're not Square.
And er... yeah we changed the recipe. But not by enough it seems.

Magnolia Bakery cookbook, your cult status fails me. Why did it surprise me? I didn't like any of the cupcakes bar the Red Velvet in the shop!!

They were... bland. Which shouldn't of surprised me based on the ingredients but I did try namely because it seemed so simple. I made just a quarter of the amount specified in the recipe (maximum butter usage for me in any recipe is one package), and since I don't like the seeds in raspberry jam I used blackberry jam.

Rough recipe - it would be pointless to reproduce.

1. Mix melted butter with flour and form into a dough.
2. Spread dough on baking sheet and bake for 15.
3. Leave to cool and spread over jam.
4. Make crumble from sugar, butter and flour.
5. Spread over base and bake for a further 15.

It just tastes of what it tastes of - butter and flour. Needs almonds, coconut, vanilla, some salt... it is still bearable though. Heated up in the microwave, and if I could make the effort I'd pour over some custard. Will I make it again? Not likely.

Some random bakes.

2009-01-18T13:33:00.004Z

Nigella's pancakes with bacon and maple syrup from Feast (prefer the cottage cheese based ones to these banana "but don't taste of banana, yeah rite" pancakes.)

James Martin from Saturday Kitchen's Buttermilk scones. Still my all time favourite recipe for scones because they don't make many and the buttermilk makes them lovely and soft.

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

2009-01-18T12:43:00.003Z

Some things should be noted. I'm not a major fan of Rachel Allen. She always seemed such a poor man's version of Nigella. Some trophy wife of a producer somewhere making a lady of leisure's living of cookery shows playing up the Irish accent in a cavernous show kitchen. Perhaps it was because all her helpful "tricks" had already been touted by others a long time ago - like getting the garlic smell out of your hands... But over the years she's kind of grown on me. The format is a little twee, the pink accessories want to make me barf, but she isn't the spawn of all things faux goddess anymore. (FYI I have no idea with regards to her personal life etc, but like my distaste for Ashley Judd, one wonders how she gets good films with little acting skill.)

So here I was, tapping away on the internet last week whilst she was on tv, and there it was. A beast of a pie. It was so beautiful. Her job was done. Out I trotted to buy a huge pie dish (we don't own ceramic anything.) Bought a lovely Waitrose chicken. Then disregarded most of her recipe to make a pie. Her recipe is here but mine uses, no herbs (too pricy and too wasted) , some chicken powder, no celery because I hate it, no ham because we didn't have it, and no cream because I forgot to add it. Oh and because I couldn't find a surface clear enough to roll the pastry, it doesn't quite cover the meat. This sounds a lot like most of my recipes no?

As it was, it was good. Not great. Well seasoned for me - for once there was no "add some more salt next time" but it wasn't filling. Better luck next time.

Boxing day bake-athon continues

2008-12-26T17:47:00.003Z

It's baking time again!! But at least it's not me. See below: Our selection of "wives" cakes. Legend has it some man lost his wife in a gambling debt (welcome to the Chinese and gambling), and to get her back, he sold lots of these cakes to buy her back.

Well tomorrow I'm going up north to the Grandparents and so mother dearest baked a lot of cakes. I sat aside and let her get on with it as I'm not a major fan tbh. But check out the pictures.

Sis holding pei-dan so

Pei-dan is a thousand year egg. It's an egg that has become a black jellified solid. It tastes amazing in congee, but it also goes in these little cakes, in a mass of lotus paste wrapped in flakey pastry. I can't say I'm a fan of it in that form, but it's something we make. The pastry is the same as the wife cakes but they are more egg shaped.

Mama-san egg washing the "wife" cakes. These are stuffed with a more melon paste type concoction. Wife cakes are flat rounds and there are some special places in HK that are reknown for them. Personally I've not gotten over the wife cakes that have chunks in them as they taste nicer with more texture.

Boxed up wife cakes for grandparents.

Mum mixing mooncakes (yes we know they're out of season).

Eggwashing the mooncakes (also not a good idea as they got too brown in the end).

We stuffed theses babies with lotus paste mixed with some flour to lessen the sweetness. The incredible pattern is due to the mould.

Lye water. The deciding factor between mooncakes that keep, and mooncakes that go soggy.

My cheese and parma ham puff. Completely unchinese. But I needed to use up the cheese and ham.

Christmasberry baking

2008-12-24T19:14:00.004Z

What else can I say? I've been a busy baker recently. Namely because I've been hugely antisocial of late, slight toothache and just generally sick of it all. So for the first time in ages I've been spending large amounts of time in bed curled up and so to be productive I've been baking a bit.

Coconut cupcakes (which neglect to mention the chocolate factor)

175g softened unsalted butter
120g caster sugar
2 eggs
25g cocoa powder
50g desiccated coconut
150g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons milk

Frosting:

150g mascapone
1 tablespoons icing sugar
zest of 1 lemon
25g desiccated coconut soaked in a little milk

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a 12 hole muffin tray with paper cases. Cream together the butter and sugar in the large bowl until pale and light. Add beaten eggs and mix well. Add cocoa powder and coconut.

Mix together theflour and baking powder and fold it to the butter-egg mixture, and mix until smooth. Divide between the paper cases and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for 30 minutes until the cakes are golden and toothpick inserted comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

To make the frosting, mix the mascarpone, icing sugar and lemon zest until smooth. Add coconut. When ready, spread an even layer of the mascapone mixture over the top of each cake and sprinkle with coconut.

I can't remember where I nicked the recipe (they used lime but we have lemons so tough) but it's not something I'd make again although the sponge was delicately soft.

Jingleberry jingleberry jingle bell rock...

2008-12-24T19:01:00.003Z

I'm in a petulent mood. Hmm maybe that's the polite way of putting it. Right now, I want to whip raw potatoes at the wooden fence outside. If I had superpowers and could throw fireballs I'd be in trouble right now. All in all, not feeling too Christmassy. Usually I'm really into the cooking. My only opportunity to cook the main. But I made goose last week (£19.99 at Lidl) and I suppose that might have killed my urge. I was banned from cooking goose for Xmas because it's too fatty, too expensive, may as well get duck... and when I bought it the parentals got all excited because it's not that pricy, it's huge and quite tasty.

I followed Nigella's Feast to a certain extent. Stuffed it with mashed potato but also some apple wedges which did not go down too well. I also learnt that geese have some large greasy valves near the bum which require squeezing or cutting off. (Icky, but less icky than what I thought it was.)

Presenting: My Goose.

Restaurant Blogging

2008-12-14T17:52:00.004Z

I'm procrastinating as I should work (it's Sunday) but a mate said since I ate out so much I should really write reviews... well, tbh I should just write to remind me where to eat next time. Will do a round up and then try to blog going forwards. I already take bad pictures on my camera (well you're sitting on your own so being a freak isn't so weird...) Edit this as and when I can go through my receipts and remember where I was and what I ate...

Brighton
Hotel: Jury's Inn: Nearest to the station, clean, basic, no biscuits on the nightstand, gym or free wi-fi. God-awful food. Will explain.

Unlike some of my more refined colleagues, I didn't mind Jury's Inn. I don't mind you have to go to pick up room service from downstairs. And I don't mind the minimal tv channels because channel 5 is a luxury for me (I live in a valley). The hotel is blissfully less than a minute's walk to the station. It's also about ten minutes walk to the Lanes where most the restaurants are. So on occasion if it's rainy, I am lazy enough to stay put and eat in the restaurant.

I ate three meals there I think. Pasta - plain, with a odd sprawl of spikey lettuce to garnish. Apple pie. With mango coulis. Steak pie with the world's flattest pastry (supposedly puff). Rhubarb and raspberry tart. With mango coulis. Cold. It really did get quite bleak. The Beef lasagna in the bar was of findus standard, which I didn't mind. But the garlic bread it came with was burnt. And didn't taste garlicky. Bleak. In fairness, most the time if I do get room service or hotel restaurant food I go for three courses because the main is rarely up to scratch. But it was pretty bad food attempting to be a bit fancy. Lovely staff though.

Englishes: Seafood
Lovely little restaurant which was pretty much completely empty when I dined there. Odd banquette seating (is that a word?) Think plush benches which have you facing other benches. If I wasn't there alone I'd be staring at another couple pinned to the wall by their table.

Regardless, I had some oysters because I was near the beach, there's the excuse anyway, however I don't think I'm any more inamoured with the slippery b@stards. Unlike the last time they were well shelled. However you still had to claw the muscle off the shell and this time they were freezing cold to the point of no flavour. Hmm. Is that meant to be the appeal? Just as a well they're not an aphrodisiac - there's not much around in Brighton. Mains was a rather gorgeous fish pie. Or rather a seafood pie. It came in this deep noodle bowl, topped with mash with red leicester. Definitely a nice touch. Given that I'm not a fan of fish pie - which is usually from M&S in my case, and given I'm not a major cooked fish fan, the fact I fell in foodie lust for this pie says something. Creamy sauce, peas, good chunks of fish, prawns... it was just yummy. I literally scrapped the bowl clean and licked my chops. *sigh* Good memories. Dessert however, was a bust. It had a fairly boring selection. Chocolate mousse and Raspberry Mille Feuille stood out. Trying to be experimental I went for the Raspberry. What a disappointment. It was chiller cabinet cold. It was pale white with a kind of raw pastry taste. Like layers of filo pinned together with water. Squiggle of raspberry sauce. If I'd not been on expenses I would have been disappointed. Go again? For the pie, the pie.... if only for the pie. Otherwise, just give it a miss!

Piccolos: Italian
Another questionable establishment which was packed to the gills the day I went. The risotto was not risotto. It was fried rice. With less oil. You know how risotto should have the wave to it and a slightly soupy texture? No soup. Fried rice. It was a good rice dish. Just not risotto. Dessert was Tiramisu and it was a round wedge. I'm guessing Brakes Brothers or Icelands, but it definitely wasn't home made. Oh poor mama! Go again? Not really. No. Consider it a stranger in the night.

Bristol
Hotel: Thistle: Nearest hotel to the shopping complex. Are we sensing a theme here? It was a nice hotel. Cosy. Had a gym I never got to use but shops weren't bad.

What can I say about the food? Well never go to one where the review in the lift talks about rubbery scallops. I mean, you put the NICE reviews up, not the middling ones... as it was we had to "wait in the bar" for a table when there were plenty empty. Food wise it wasn't hideous. I remember it being fairly decent actually, if only I can remember exactly what I had! I do remember a mushroom cappacino thing to start with though. Slightly frothy mushroom soup served in an expresso cup. Hey I liked it. But then I always like surprise food you haven't ordered. Worth going to again, but not the best best.

Bordeaux Quay: Absolutely gorgeous restaurant. Beautiful bread. Didn't charge for water. Think I ate duck. This really is a poor review isn't it? Worth going to again. Particularly if it's with someone you actually carry a conversation with.

Sheffield
Hotel: Best Western

Ate at the best Italian restaurant I've been to for a long time. Can't remember the starter but it was good. The main however was a dreamy cream sauce pancake dish (crispolini?) with chicken and I can't wait till I have cause to go again. Great value for money and I only wish I had room for dessert.

Aberdeen
Hotel: Carmelite
When in Aberdeen you should be prepared for two things. One, their hotels are extortionate. i.e. London prices. It was £135 a night for mine. Two, the quality sucks. Admittedly it was town centre, but even London would not give you a room that was sub-Travel lodge standards for that price. The lounge and restaurant was impeccably designed, and so were the suites so I hear... but the room that I got? Let's see, there was bird poop on the window, a little board nailed to the window so people at street level couldn't look up whilst you used the toilet, the toilet had this fantastic contraption that made lots of churning noises to make sure the water circulated away. It was just... caravan class. The furniture was circa 80s yellow MFI, the wi-fi dubious and oh, the tv went out at one point. But you know what? It's not the worse hotel in town! Actually it's one of the good ones apparently. Colleague went to the Copthorne, of which I am a fan of the one in Newcastle, having blown my budget on tea and cakes with a friend and grabbing a cheap dinner in town instead. That one again has a b&b room and a price tag of a fair heft.

To the food. Breakfast at Carmelite is a bit of a funny affair. Buffet spells pancakes, pastries, cornflakes etc. It's generally very sugary. One of the days I did spot mould on the american pancakes and discretely shoved it aside. I tended to stick to toast and cornflakes when I'm on expenses anyway but I was there that long I tried most things. Porridge was blah. On the days I did try the cooked, it's a funny affair. It came stacked on two crumpets like mini towers for a start.

Dinner. Ah. What can I say? I craved haggis. I have a love of haggis. Try not to quote me. Ever. It turned out that it seems to be more of a Edinburgh thing, because although you could get haggis in the shops, restaurant haggis is a rarity. Carmelite was the only place that had it, although I spotted chicken stuffed with haggis elsewhere. The haggis was lovely, but it only came in starter form. One of the days I did ask for it as a main. They said "oh I'd have to ask the chef", chef said fine, they came out with a starter sized main. Bright they ain't. Tasted my way through an assortment of starters and steaks etc. Memorable one includes scallops with blackpudding salsa. I'm not a blackpudding fan - it's okay. But the salsa is vile. Neither did I expect for the price, to get three scallops plopped on the little black mess. At least they were the beautiful fat chinese style scallops, but had I paid, I'd be starving and in tears. Dessert wasn't amazing either. Ultimately, if I wasn't eating there that frequently (it rained a lot when I was in Aberdeen) I may have liked it as it did have a nice decor and well-presented food. But a two week job where I probably ate there four nights? No thanks.

Prime Cuts: Meat
Had mushroom and ricotta pasta the first time (well I was trying to conserve my expense budget for the dessert) and it was lovely. Can't say I was elegant enough to taste the truffle oil but it was nice and well cooked - pretty good considering it was a veggie dish in a restaurant named after slicing meat. The dessert (oh the dessert) was baked alaska. It was actually the reason I chose the restaurant in the first place. It was the first time I'd eaten baked alaska and I'm not sure how I feel. They cheated. Well that's my opinion. They did the meringue and blow torch routine. I have no idea why but it feels like cheating in my opinion. Was yummy and well worth someone else's money though.

The next time I went I had beef (when in Aberdeen...) and it was lovely. It was meat. I don't know. I think the one to beat is Black and Blue at the moment, with regards to steak that is. Although I think that might be because they had garlic butter to go with the beast there. Had the chocolate parfait to finish and it was very nice. Just nothing to write home about. I'd go again, it's a first date kind of restaurant, comes with cutlery, glasses, linen and enough room to embarrass yourself in private.

Jasmine: Chinese/Thai/Everything vaguely oriental...
Haa... how to describe this. It was Chinese. I ordered a fried rice and mussaman curry. I love mussaman curry. It's peanutty with potatoes, coconut and onions and just enough spice to be interesting but not to scorch. Jasmine did a good curry. It had no peanuts in. And it had pineapple in it. Got to love the bizarre. Had a toffee banana to finish. Hefty portion, cantonese restaurant style. Go again? If I was in the mood why not? It was what it said on the tin...

Lemon Cake by Nigel Slater

2008-12-14T17:36:00.007Z

I think I've been failed by Nigel Slater. It's very disturbing. Now he says he's not a cake man anyway, he's predominantly mains, ice cream and the odd fruit based dessert. However, I had poppy seeds, so I decided to borrow his recipe from Kitchen Diaries and tweak. I have to say it was an easy to make, albeit I judge him for requesting 90g of ground almonds when the packets come in 1oog amounts. So anyway, the cake. Which I forgot to add the poppy seeds to until the cake was in the pan. But I digress. Why did I feel the cake failed?

Well it lacked the lemony-ness one craves. But, even worse - although might be partially my fault.... it tasted quite bitter when warm. That could be because that's an entire lemon with peel sitting on the top. Or it could be that I made the syrup in the pan that held the slightly caramelised lemons. Oh well. Live and learn. And also figure out a way to use the shredded coconut that's in the cupboard...

Truffle buffle

2008-11-08T21:31:00.003Z

Made them. And whilst they look okay, they taste BLEUGH!! Reason being was I didn't roast the nuts. But I didn't PLAN on using nuts. I only used them because the white chocolate stuck to the pan when you crank them off the plate. Hence they were a last minute adjustment. Recipe I used was one using Golden Oreos. But this is the UK so we didn't have those. So I used ginger nuts and digestives. But they tasted blah so I added loads of lemon curd.... so in the end I don't think it's even worth linking the recipe! Recipe I would follow (if I was sane) looks like this.

Lemon Cheesecake Truffles
200g soft cheese
Half the smallest pack of digestives
Half a pack of ginger nuts (whatever was left over from the cheesecake!)
Half a pack of white chocolate cake covering (Dr Oetekars? is about 300g in total)
Bag of chopped mixed nuts.
3 large table spoonfuls of Lemon curd.

1. Bash the biscuits.
2. Mix in the soft cheese and lemon curd.
3. Roast the nuts.
4. Melt the chocolate in the microwave.
5. Roll balls of biscuit mixture in the white chocolate with forks and dip and roll in the nuts.
6. Chill.
Makes around two/three platefuls (so accurate I know!) Come Christmas I'm doing these in coconut.

It took that long to get the pics out...

2008-11-08T18:58:00.017Z

Just some random pics. I went to a friends house and did the Gordon Ramsey cookalong. Made possible by the fact he has a tv you can pause and rewind!!

The starter Pea, mint and bacon soup was yummy, the lasagna a lot smaller than on screen (and sadly lacking in mushrooms). The dessert was lemon and lime syllabub and although it tasted like there was a touch too much cream, it was a good laugh to compare the pile of zest from Ramsey's lemon and what we got from our three Tesco's value ones!!

It's been awhile since I've been round people's houses but that was quite enjoyable. Gordon Ramsey, bit of background, is the footballer who is now a major celebrity chef and this is his rapid fire, cook a meal for four people in an hour job. It helps if you can eat when he does the boring bits, but in all honesty, he goes so quickly you can't actually pan cook any of the stuff in the time that he does it on screen.

The other picture is a pic of my rhubarb. I've never bought the stuff before, but it was on discount so I bought it, roasted it in lemon juice and sugar and it turned out quite nice! (Needless to say, I was the only one who would eat it in my family.)

Today I will try and make some cheesecake truffles. It's an effort to use the lemon curd, the biscuits and the lemon leftover, the double cream, chocolate and three packs of soft cheese I bought today. It was entirely stupid because there is no call for double cream and I need maybe one pack of soft cheese, but one was stupid and I thought I wouldn't have enough when I was in the supermarket.

Failing that I need to make a lemon cake of some kind.

Dirty little cheesecake...

2008-11-02T20:54:00.011Z

Not to sex up dessert... no, not at all. But I've always had... earth moving experiences with food. It has been noticed that I seem to inadvertantly *mmmmmm* when I eat certain foods I find appealing. Gu chocolate molten middle puddings - those ones you put in the microwave for a minute, and oddly enough Scottish Oat cakes really do it for me.

Anyway today it was all about the cheesecake. I should have gone to the gym and watched a film at the cinema since it wasn't rainy, but instead me, mum and sis hit the local Waitrose for a shopping trip. Came back with the makings of cheesecake because after last year, year of the gingerbread house, this year is for cheesecake. It's a competitive thing. I think I must have mentioned. If not, here it is again, the ladies who bake are competitive. The chinese chiffon cake is the main item of choice, however my great-aunt has recently discovered the joy of cheesecake and orders it if they go to cafes. They don't know how to make one. I do. Hence since her daughter-in-law now makes gingerbread (copycat) I need to up my game and make cheesecake to allow mum bragging rights. Sorry, not bragging rights (we are talking about a daughter in law who is terminally ill and all, but competitive baking holds no prisoners). It's not bragging rights, it's "oh, well my daughter made this, oh she's so lazy, she can't bake at all, but just try this..."

So that's the backstory. Nevermind I'm not actually a fan of cheesecake, but hey. It's just life - I love raspberries, none of my family do. Hence there's a problem finding people to eat my food that I like to make. Regardless, the "family" favourite is to buy the lemon cheesecake from M&S or Tescos. Personally I liked the apple muffin cheesecake I bought once at Sainsburies (it was on sale!) Either way, it means I'm having to perfect a recipe for something I don't ACTUALLY really like.

However, today I made the cheesecake. It came from GoodFood, with a few adjustments... like no raspberries, a deeper dish, lemon curd, ginger nuts rather than digestives... is it even the same cake??!! Still, one baked and the middle was molten and you are supposed to let it cool and set, but... it's our family. We like things hot. No one ever serves cheesecake hot. Or even warm. It's wrong isn't it? Well I sliced. I spooned the liquid middle with the swirls of lemon curd and oooooohhhhhhh.... It has a sexy warm liquid feeling. Like....the melting middle puddings. Like a warm version of a particularly voluptuous trifle... oh that's a thought... But anyway we sat there spooning this rather delectable cheesecake and drifting nicely into a lemon buttery cloud. Mmmm. *Sigh* time to shake the pictures out of my mobile. Enjoy.

Dirty lemon cheesecake
Base:
12 ginger nuts
50 g unsalted butter

Filling
600g cream cheese
160g sugar
2tbsp flour
2 eggs
1 yolk
140ml sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
Few tablespoons of lemon curd

Method to my madness:
1. Bash ginger nuts and stir with melted butter.
2. Smush into the base of a loose-bottomed tin. Think mine was 9 inches.
3. Bake briefly (less than five minutes) at Gas Mark 5.
4. Beat cream cheese, sugar, flour, eggs, yolk, sour cream and vanilla together.
5. Pour onto biscuit base.
6. Drop small drizzles or teaspoons of lemon curd artistically on cheesecake.
7. Drag knife through to make funky patterns.
8. Bake for 50 minutes until edges come away very slightly, middle is molten and wobbly.
9. Turn off oven and leave in there until the middle solidifies a bit more.
10. Just eat it warm regardless. It's... yummy.

Sunday Lunch

2008-10-19T22:22:00.004+01:00

To remind me of the occasions where I love my family - Sunday Lunch.
That's a big chicken, some sort of roast potatoes, dumplings with chinese cabbage and noodles.
I say sort-of roast potatoes because I boiled them far too early because mum wanted the hob, and then I used butter to roast when I'd really prefer olive oil. Hence they are only sort of crispy in parts - namely the bits where I drizzled chicken fat over. Will do better at Christmas - if I knock mother out the way! The chicken however is majestically browned. The product of buying from Waitrose, smearing with butter and salt, shoving two quarters of lemon up it's nethers and bits of garlic all over. Yummy.

I took the picture above in Bristol. It's fried tofu wrapped in seaweed with some kind of sweet soy. The reason I took the pic was because it wasn't what I ordered - but it was pretty nice all the same. That's it for savouries. Until I find a use for half a lemon in baking, plus the chicken flavoured butter (health and safety would have my head!) we're over and out. xx

London Lite

2008-10-15T21:51:00.002+01:00

List of cake places to hit (according to London Lite - I'm a London Paper girl myself...)
Outsider Tart
Hummingbird Bakery
Buttercup cake
Treacle
Primrose
Bake-a-boo
Konditor & Cook
Peyton & Byrne

Bristol Blue

2008-10-15T20:16:00.003+01:00

Apparently this is what Bristol is famous for. Bristol Blue. I had a vaguest recollection somewhere about it but did a search today. Picture is filched from a website of the same name. In all honesty, the only Bristol Blue I've seen, is one lone bottle behind the reception of my current client. That's only because I've been storing my luggage behind there that I noticed. (Always notice breakables when you are a klutz like me!)

This is an entirely non-foody blog day. My back is aching, I have eaten Japanese to the gills in Bristol. I'm debating whether tips are allowed on expenses. I'm wearing a pair of black jeans bought this week and have just realised one of the belt loops needs attaching. (But they look good and didn't cost me £81 but the bargain price of £25. Okay at Dorothy Perkins it was the pricier pair but still!!) I am still wanting the Gucci watch (Black dahhling) but since I've not been in London, none of the shops seem to carry the crazy priced watches for some reason... *hmm* but anyway, it remains my lust object, and maybe in a year's time I'll actually buy it. Maybe if I didn't traipse around the country and didn't risk leaving it in hotel rooms that is.

Feeling the weight of endless work engagements now (can you believe it's been less than two weeks since I had two weeks off? Of course that was exams so that's hardly restful!). But work stretches out before me until Christmas. Whereupon I have my days booked between Christmas and New Year. Pity. Christmas always spells a more fun office. Albeit with the hot desking environment I think I might be disappointed. This week, work-wise, apart from the inevitable feel of a lightening bolt striking my head every time my current profession is announced, it has been good. I'm sat with some crazy guys doing reconciliations as a day job. But in all honesty lean on their arms, take naps and discuss who sung "Bad Day" and the reasons why they are taking Japanese classes (to read Manga baby!!). They do a good job of what they do, but there's a definite camaraderie that's slightly more lacking in what I do because we don't sit with each other every day. Saying that we text, online message and generally rip into each other with equal abandonment across the electronic airwaves. I complain a lot. I complain when I know people too well. I complain when it's that little bit more distant.

A bit more gym this weekend, and hopefully my first facial. Need to contemplate snack pimping and addressing that list of things to make at some point. Think cheesecake has risen to the top of the list though as the Xmas bake - purely because we have relatives that eat it and it's the mother-one-up-man-ship game. (Bear in mind these are not schoolyard stalkers, these are ladies of the pensionable era). Since I don't like cheesecake particularly and I have until Christmas to get a good one going, I better get started so my family don't die of heart attacks from regular portions of whipped and baked cheese. Ta-tah for now. xx

Scary

2008-10-12T00:32:00.001+01:00

The extent of how much I need to invest to photograph properly has just been made abundantly clear. See that plate below? It's actually pink...

One ugly pie

2008-10-11T23:58:00.003+01:00

It has to be said, this baby isn't pretty. It did look absolutely gorgeous till I heaped the brown mess of streusel on top. Think next time, we'll opt for my usual sugar streusel with white sugar. This brown stuff... looks like something you scrape off a shoe. Like I said before, we had sour cream in the fridge, a glut of apples, and so I created this little number from a recipe online. The picture they had was slightly better and retrospectively that might have been because I was rough and ready with the measuring of the butter, plus I melted it rather than make crumbs from it - fridge cold, microwaving it seemed easier. Therefore there was actually butter to pour OFF the pie before it finished. Still tasted yummy and family are actually eating it. Bit OTT given the JustRol had TWO rounds of pastry. The other round I made in to a banana, apple sauce and custard topped pie. It looks as random as it sounds but very edible. However, for the picture above the recipe went like this with my adjustments (for laziness and available ingrediants) :

Sour Cream Apple Pie with Streusel Topping

Filling:
1 cup sour cream
2/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
3 cups peeled, sliced tart apples (four hefty ones with lots of core and bruises cut off)
Roll out shortcrust pastry for 9 inch pan (JustRol had a deal)

Topping:
1/3 cup muscavado sugar (loose)
1/3 cup flour
1/4 cup butter (melted)
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice

1. Line pan with pastry.
2. Mix all the filling stuff together.
3. Bake at Gas Mark 6.
4. After 25 minutes, mix all the streusel topping mix together and pour on top.
5. Bake for a further 20 minutes.
6. Cool slightly and slice.

Sour cream and apples

2008-10-11T13:04:00.003+01:00

I'm a bad, bad person. I bought sour cream last week and still haven't used it. Well I was in Bristol all week. Work. Rather fabulous city although no dessert! Which is namely because of the colleague I was with. Oh well. At least I suppose I am no heavier. That might change this weekend since the sour cream is still in date so I can bake with it. I did manage to dine at the recommended Bordeaux Quay in Bristol though and it was really affordable. Well I say really - the service charge is automatically added, but they didn't charge us for water which I was surprised by. So used to water being pressed upon you for £XXXX that I actually feel bad that we didn't buy a drink or have dessert (like I said, colleague). So I will look around and see what I can make with sour cream, although I can always do my favourite cupcakes, it seems lacking in va-va-voom experimentation today.

The apples by the way are the product of some man with a large organic stock who is giving them to my mother (generous!) Rosy red, they make good eating stock apparently but perhaps maybe we can do some pan-fried with pork or something. We shall see. Hopefully back on with some pictures later today, but meanwhile I will just catch up with some Desperate Housewives!

So much free time!!

2008-10-05T19:18:00.005+01:00

So. Exam over. Friday I went out briefly for steak and lemon meringue pie. Wasn't an amazing pie but at least it was a good sized slice. Saturday featured the joys of Watford shopping centre and a fashion show. I love them. Pity the poor models who have to dance in high heels on a stage designed almost to trip them up. It's a hard life. Even if you do look hot.

Sunday was rainy. So it had to be done. BAKE FEST!! I went straight for the cookies book. Fortunately there was a bit of planning involved. I spent the Saturday stocking up on flour and various chocolate chips and coconut, just in case there was an opportunity! I did, I confess, not make any of the recipes that I had listed. Instead I opted for the classic - chocolate chip and a vanilla cookie. The aim was to make use of the Hello Kitty cookie cutters I have from HK. Unfortunately, as you can see, they didn't really show up (although as I've just noticed, a ghost of Hello Kitty is in the top corner of that heart). Will have to push harder next time or make a stiffer cookie.

The vanilla cookie is called the Teatime sugar cookie in the Ultimate cookie book. Very sticky dough and so extra flour was called for.

The chocolate chunk cookie recipe I adjusted a lot but still not enough. Critique from father was (funnily enough) was firstly "they're not cooked yet" - "no dad, that's a white chocolate chip", the second I agreed with - 10% less sugar. As it was we reduced the sugar by half a cup in the first place. Plus I suppose I used a pack of white chips which are infinitely sweeter. Must re-jig next time I make them.

Chocolate chunk cookies
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cup plain flour
2 packs chocolate chip (about 200g)

Gas Mark 5

1. Beat butter with sugar
2. Add everything else in order, beating in the flour gradually. It is slightly drier than my usual chocolate chip recipes.
3. Place rounded teaspoonfuls on an ungreased baking sheet. I put five walnut sized blobs per sheet.
4. Bake for approximately 8 minutes.

One more day....

2008-10-02T13:42:00.002+01:00

One more day to revolution, one more day to... Les Mis anyone? Exam's tomorrow. I'm in denial that I don't know anything. Spent a few minutes watching fireworks on tv celebrating something to do with China and HK and possibly Samsung since their building was behind every shot.

Being sent to Bristol for four weeks. What's that famous for then?

I will bake. And if I'm lucky go to the meet. (FYI all "meets" are basically the British Born Chinese ones). And maybe the Barn Hotel since my brother is free this weekend (gf with a rock on finger/possible fiance has gone to Manchester this weekend). And a film. I could go see a film... and catch up with all the Ugly Betty's, Heroes and Desparate Housewives I've missed.... must.focus...

Cake shopsssss

2008-10-01T10:25:00.002+01:00

Hmm. No baking. Some forum posting. But someone posted (at length) about Maze restaurant and her birthday. It was informative. I have to try it some day. But guess where my eyes zeroed in on? Bea's Cakes of Bloomsbury . *chi-ching* Guess where I'm going hunting this weekend? :) American cakes. Which one do I try?? Debate on fried rice online at the moment. People put the egg in last? Sacrilege!! Oh well. At least they didn't say cook separately and slice into slivers and toss through *grins* Ah the yesteryears of "chinese" cookery. Beats people who would overcook the egg I suppose. Craving for fried rice now.

Dark Clouds

2008-09-29T15:09:00.002+01:00

Today beckons the week that my exams lie... Friday afternoon to be precise. I just feel so *ARGH* *tear hair out* and all that malarky. It's the THIRD time I'm going through the question bank and that's quite extreme, even for me. Which is probably why I look at the questions and just blank in some cases. Either way, after going downstairs, eating my body weight in oatcakes and rich tea and watching some Diagnosis Murder, I'm going to officially take the next hour off. No study. Tidy room. Maybe go bask outside in some sunlight for a bit before beating the cr@p out of something.

One things I thought might be interesting - an art/weird stuff blog

Oh and I read the Daring Bakers bitty again. You have to "unveil" on the same day. With me in a different county most weeks I think I may have to bow out and just force myself to bake something once a month instead.

Off to dive off a cliff. (Since we live in a valley that can't even get Channel 5 there are very specific reasons as to why I've survived so long!) xx

I want nobody, nobody but you....

2008-09-28T10:59:00.005+01:00

Thanks to my friend I now have an addiction to a Korean girl band. Think Girls Aloud. Think PussyCatDolls with less gynecological cameramen. This is as sexed up as mainstream Oriental pop acts have ever been. I love the cartoon dancing (it's slightly reminiscent of dances in videogames) and evidently the fact they sing in Korean does not make a bit of difference to me. Meet.... the WonderGirls.

And now to food... or reading anyway! First read of the day was National Geographic in the bathroom. That was interesting, especially when you consider the copy was from October 1980!! Apparently sis went to the second hand shops and bought a few to look at. Had to say I was mainly looking at the adverts. The height of designs that year for Cartier watches and Nikon cameras! My how twenty odd years changes things. It is amazing though. Tempted to buy some more and frame the adverts.

Reading part 2: Waitrose magazine downstairs whilst I was eating my cornflakes. As a time saving option, why not buy ready made mash which you can reheat... in 40 minutes. It takes less time to make from scratch surely? But I suppose that's 40 minutes in the bathroom pampering rather than pounding the pesky lumps out. Also quite funny (I'm easily amused) their range of bistro foods, the Finest, Treat Yourself type range... guess what it's called? As Good As Going Out. Jesus. And they PAID someone to come up with that?

We need a picture. Oh here, have the one from William Curley of what the dish looked like when I ate it.

Sunny Saturday

2008-09-27T17:18:00.002+01:00

I've actually had a relatively good day's study. Four hours at five o'clock in the afternoon is pretty decent. Of course I'm not entirely sure I've learnt anything. I'm doing the questions again (third? time) and it's like... yes I am still getting X wrong. Least I know what it is and I've got precise notes on what the answer SHOULD be. I have this weekend to do the questions and then four whole days to memorise the missing elements.

Cake moment. Have I mentioned the Daring Bakers? I'm still in debate on whether to join. This month's challenge was almost off-putting. Gluten free crackers? Is that my future? Spending a Saturday a month making dishes I won't really eat? Hmm. Given I've found a new love in Scottish Oatcakes when I was I was in Aberdeen perhaps I shouldn't be hasty. We shall see. But I am beginning to make a HUGE list of recipes I MUST try.

Things I found reading the two books I bought yesterday - the biscuit one really is OTT in the amount of colouring they add to almost everything. I shall be remedying that. By, er, not buying a single recommended colouring. We own one bottle of food colouring in this house and it is used in miniscule amounts to try and tint the edge of the icing. We use Bird's custard powder to make egg tarts yellower (the colouring is in there but it FEELS less toxic). Either way, very happy I bought the book and you can hold with baited breath to watch me fake corn syrup. Golden Syrup apparently doesn't cut it in all cases.

The Magnolia cookbook I have decided to keep. Brother dearest just took a look and said, "Well if you don't like it, just give it to someone for Christmas." The solution to all Christmas shopping for him is raiding the downstairs room. OOOH Just realised this Xmas I might be able to go see my cousin's baby. "Irrelevant" says the New York Times. Ok, well the big a$$ coconut cake on the front. Is big because they make three layers. Cheats. Also, the frosting is as far as I can tell, Italian Meringue. I had an internal conflict here as raw eggs are something that we don't usually use for baking purposes. Last year I used the dried egg whites for royal icing on my gingerbread house and this year I've tried Swiss Meringue Buttercream which cooks the egg whites over a bain marie. I *think* I've been convinced by the BBC food forumites to just go for it. But I won't be telling my mother what's in the frosting!

For your loving dis-interest and because it saves me saving bookmarks each time I reformat the hard drive - William Curley gives the recipe for a) Truffles b) The chocolate thing I ate at the dessert bar. Note he doesn't give the recipe for the "hazelnut and almond Dacquoise, chocolate biscuit jaconde, milk chocolate and praline Feuillantine, praline ice cream, orange caramel compot and confir kumquats". Well he has to keep some secrets!

You might want to take note - he's won some awards for his chocolates so I don't know, he might be some good? xx

I had to post this

2008-09-26T12:05:00.002+01:00

Think as you know I've been going a little crazy online shopping, but I was looking at baking tins on Amazon today and as usual you get a few things which are tagged so they show up in the search despite having little relevance at all. This however, made me crack up. An Optical zoom for mobile phones. Way to take on those food bloggers with their DSLR's ;)

They arrived!!

2008-09-26T11:44:00.009+01:00

Amazon delivers! And whilst I was being a lazy bum they were downstairs...

Book1: Better Homes and Gardens: The ULTIMATE cookie book looks like something I will definitely cook many recipes from, pour over and make lots of fat friends from :D

Book2: The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook was the one I bought to make the £15 threshold for free delivery (that's a skill, you aim to get £15 and then you spend £17 extra) I know I shouldn't have. Heck I remember being in NY, not loving the cupcakes, and coming back finding a few on the internet and still... mmmm I don't know.

But there it was. A big coconut cake on the cover. With stiff icing. And a rich, deep devils food cake next to it for contrast. I don't think I'm sending it back somehow! It is the priciest book I've bought for ages and low value in fairness. It's relatively slender and doesn't have the multiple pictures that I've gotten so used to. Still, if I make a good chocolate cake, a good coconut cake and the one fruit torte which looks more like sponge, then it will be worth it no? It's sitting to my left right now, smugly squat and knowing that it's not going to be sent back. (When cooking books speak to you I'm guessing the men in white coats are only minutes away...)

OH TO GET THIS EXAM OVER WITH (one week to the day!)
Then I can bake. Then I can go to the gym and pretend it makes the slightest bit of difference.

Maybe just maybe...

2008-09-26T00:35:00.002+01:00

My books will arrive today...

Scored myself 48-56 on my mock. Not bad with a week to go and my ruthless marking. It is precisely 7 days now. NEXT FRIDAY!!

Also kind of freaky that the BBC Food forums shut down after a certain time *blink* *blink* It's as if you've woken up in a deserted ghost town. Eerie!!

Today I am supposed to do accountancy...and a mock

2008-09-25T15:19:00.006+01:00

Right. Quick blog as yesterday I didn't blog. But didn't study. Pathetic. Here is somewhere I really, really want to go to. I've been lusting after it for ... approximately five years? They advertise quite regularly in our local free magazine Optima and thus I've been wanting to go on the basis of two pictures. The fact it isn't really local at all and I have to beg a lift from my brother is probably why I haven't been. Plus every birthday I've had in the past two years (er that's two then) I've either been - unable to eat hard foods, or just not up for a big meal.

The picture has that certain "I'm so beautiful, look at me, eat me, you want to eat me!" quality to it. Hence I've actually blown it up a bit. Here's another little teeny tiny problem with it though. There's a taster menu there. So if I eat a taster menu, will I have room for this little baby? Problem part two. There's a chocolate version... admittedly not the BIGGEST problem of the world since my family (I love my family) are very big sharers of food. We specifically order different things so we can try each other's plates. I thought this was entirely normal till I took a mate out and he thought it was akin to swapping bodily fluids (since we were at the time... PG13 style mind! it wasn't an issue but surely with family? You share the same DNA anyway??!)

Chocolate version below. And if you fancy giving it a go, the name of the place is the Barn Hote l in Ruislip. Please don't go before I finally make it there!!!

Shopping blog

2008-09-23T12:03:00.002+01:00

Okay I think I'm so desperate to write things that this has steered away from a baking blog to ... a blog. But much excitement - my ipod dock/alarm clock arrived!! Very happy. My laptop was designed for business use and so the speakers are abysmal. And this is coming from a girl who listens to tapes recorded from the radio on a Panasonic tapedeck still!! I feel the lack of pictures though and so here's a picture from William Curley's in Mayfair. One of the more recent additions to my cake walk in Green Park, it's slightly more hidden away, they do cakes at John Lewis on Oxford Street too.

When we went it was for the dessert bar where they make the dessert in front of you (really more of a construction job, but kind of cool watching people who actually know how to pipe stuff). It was really an effort for me to try and recreate the experience I hoped to have in NY, but since we had cool desserts every day, making the effort to find an out of way dessert bar fell to bottom of the list. Check it out if you do go that way, because I want to know if it's worth the hype. Chikalicious.

Have to say, the actual cake was lovely, probably because I rarely get the full done up type of desserts (although these days eating on expenses I get a bit more!) But don't think anything beats a proper crumble and custard. Will construct of list of things I want to do and try and do it next year. Pudding club is one of them.

Giddygiddygiddy!!

2008-09-22T22:24:00.003+01:00

Hehehee.... just bought a cookie book and a Magnolia bakery cookbook today and just got the warm vibe on impending pretty pictures and recipes. I'm silly but it makes me happy.

Happy Bunny Day!

2008-09-22T15:59:00.003+01:00

Okay I have a slight... obsession with wedding cakes. In fact my friends have reached the point where they just expect me to be incredibly critical about their wedding cakes. I'm well...I keep my opinions from the bride and groom naturally but I always think a cake should reflect them and boring cakes don't hit the spot. (There is a difference between boring and classic mind!)

I am happy today (despite now rainy weather) because a mate of my sister's is getting married and my sister is bridesmaid (we think - the offer has been extended and retracted before as there is a certain indecision regarding the matter.) We've known this for awhile, but basically the CAKE and the decisions surrounding it have entered my sphere. Consultancy here I come!! :P First off, it's GREAT when someone cares about the cake. My friend's couldn't give a monkeys and she was told the morning of the wedding that they got a cake arranged by dad (I'd like to say, she did get married in Thailand and the "wedding" with the cake was more like an afterthought where we had to dress up. It was a very yummy cake actually (chinese) but there was no obsessive, compulsive comparison of flavours, designs, etcetcetc.... what some people do with the dress, I think about with the cake. I have all this with my sister's mate *gleams*.

You couldn't possibly care (if anyone is actually reading this), but so far we are very likely to get one made of cheese as well. (Happy dance somewhere...) The sweet cake is varying between cupcake ones, traditional ones, chocolate ones... originally the remit was this:
Layer 1: Chocolate cake
Layer 2: Fruit cake (she's traditional)
Layer 3: Cheesecake.
Very excited and throwing all kinds of questions at her. I don't fancy making a wedding cake (too much pressure and I can't decorate jack...) but certainly a girl on a budget I'm trying to be as sensible as possible! (Not all people want to blow several thou on a cake!!)

Love and kisses from a happy, but should study, amateur wedding cake consultant :D

Possibly the laziest moment I've had...

2008-09-21T14:44:00.000+01:00

Studying a bit better - got two questions under my belt today.

Laziness factor is this, was making myself some humous on toast (humous from M&S and I didn't even buy it myself!) and was in the process of spreading when knife lingers over cup of fresh tea. *plop* in goes humous.

Surprising bit is the fact my tea tastes fine and given the oil based nature of humous, I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that it didn't stay solid enough for me to fish out with a spoon. Ah well.

Nuclear egg tarts

2008-09-21T11:01:00.000+01:00

I'm still wondering about what to make for pimpthatsnack.com as it's been something I've been wanting to do for agggggggges. Trouble is, most things have been done and in a spectacular fashion. Bearing in mind I'll probably do my exams and it will be forgotten as I get my life back again - kind of like wanting to learn to "crank" ala Soulja Boy whilst I was on sabbatical.

It does seem wrong to write what should be a food blog without pictures - so here's a picture of some chinese egg tarts I made a long time ago. Only they're not really chinese - I cheated and used puff pastry and since I don't like to waste the trimmings, there are some in there that look like they've been through a nuclear fall-out as my friend put it. There is a chinese recipe for puff pastry which does the folding marlarky but instead of layer of butter, it's actually TWO types of pastry folded, one water-based and one oil-based. Unfortunately the oil is lard, although you can do it with vegetable shortening, and the lard made me queasy when I was mixing it in by hand. Rather than go through all that effort again I think I'll stick to my frozen puff which I love anyway, but in you're in ChinaTown and you get some warm egg tarts, you'll notice the difference.

The oddly addictive thing about blogs is, and you do find this going onto other sites, is that the photos are key. People ask each other what camera they use. And I am, er, using the one that comes on my mobile! So very tempted to get a DSLR and you can get them for around £250 which is probably a touch more than what I paid for, for my regular digital camera - HOWEVER when will I use a DSLR?? Other than in the house photographing food? It's heavy, you look like a geek wandering around with it (and yes Chinese people worship cameras and so there are a lot of GEEK geeks out there). Something to think about because, well it's money and I should really care since I've hit a materialistic phase lately and want things like Gucci watches when I'm seriously a Primark, M&S, and H&M type shopper.

I'll pretend to study some more this morning... but if I end up posting again, don't be surprised.

Obsession

Easiest and bestest almond macaroons

Devil's Food White Out Cake

Old MacDonald Cake

Tribute to Katherine Hepburn brownies

Fruit gateau

Celebration cakes and chocolate decals

Roses, fondant and Sunday afternoons

Baking round-up

Lemon cake a la Raymond Blanc

Corn Custards and Sunday Lunch

Biscuiteers Flooded Cookies

Sky-high Banana-chocolate chip cake

Chocolate tea at the London Hilton

Chocolate and almond marble cake

Christmas baking

Gratuitous food shots from eating out

Honey Madelines and some other random bakes

Gateau Saint Honore

Grrrr....

Laduree vs Hermes...and some little William Curley Cake porn :)

Ginger fluff sponge with Apple Sauce filling

A Nutty-Nut day

Summer Strawberry Meringue Cake

Rose and Apricot Macaron

Happy 10th Anniversary British Born Chinese!

Ebelskiver

The Chocolate mousse gateau experiment

Valentines Day Custard Creams

Afternoon tea at...Hyatt Regency

Primrose Bakery Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

*Giddy* - and some carrot cake

Maze by Gordon Ramsey

New Year - New you... errrr....

Christmas time... mistletoe at £3

Afternoon tea at the Carnaby

Coconut and Honey Marshmallows

My favourites

Lemon and Ginger Cupcakes

Chocolate chilli brownies

Bundt Cake... and a Dorie Convert

"Pineapple" buns aka Bor Lor Bau

Catch up

Comfort baking

Cookie Carnival: Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

Learning to swirl darlin'

Cookie Carnival: Hazelnut Macaroon Sandwiches

Raspberry Cream Cheese Buns

Carrot and orange cupcakes

Snickerdoodles and things wot I dun wit da buttercream

Cookie Carnival: Lemon Bars

Apple cupcakes

The cheesecake

Monday, Monday...

Chocolate and Cherry Cookies

Publish or Perish

I've done it

Lacking that certain...

Sloppy day

Cranberry Brownies

Coconut Cookies

Apple and Cranberry loaf

Ingredients list

And they call me mellow yellow...

Midweek banana baking

All American Buttermilk Cake

Sunday bakes

Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Lemon Meringue Pie

Raspberry Crumb Squares... my style

Some random bakes.

Rachel Allen's Chicken Pie

Boxing day bake-athon continues

Christmasberry baking

Jingleberry jingleberry jingle bell rock...

Restaurant Blogging

Lemon Cake by Nigel Slater

Truffle buffle

It took that long to get the pics out...

Dirty little cheesecake...

Giddy - and some carrot cake

Dark Clouds