Ginger biscuits and beyond.

Growing up my favourite biscuit was a custard cream, closely followed by a gingernut. Custard creams are delectable sandwich biscuits with a 'custard' filling and the correct way to eat these is to prize them apart and scrape the 'custard' off one half, I suppose they are like an Oreo in that respect. Gingernuts are a harder biscuit and need a good dunking in coffee or tea to soften them up before you eat them or they are liable to cause damage.

There is something very satisfying about dunking a biscuit and then eating it, and it really seems to be a British thing to do. I remember introducing the art of dunking to my Japanese co-workers when I was there, and the expression of surprise/delight accompanied with a muffled "Oishii" said it all. Delia Smith has a great recipe for gingernuts in her book "Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course", the cornerstone of any cook book collection, chocked full of tried and tested recipes which never fail. 

Here is her recipe as it is in the book.

Gingernuts

4oz (110g) self-raising flour*

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp bicarb of soda (baking soda)

1.5oz (40g) of granulated sugar

2oz (50g) butter

2 tbsp golden syrup

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5, 375F or 190C (175C for Fan ovens). Grease one or two large baking sheets and dust with flour.

Begin by sifting the flour, ginger and bicarb into a mixing bowl, add the sugar, then lightly rub in the butter until the mixture is crumbly. Next add the syrup and mix everything together to form a stiff paste.

Now divide the mixture into 16 pieces about the same size as each other, and roll each piece into a little ball. Place them on the baking sheet, leaving plenty of room between them because they spread out. The simply flatten each ball slightly with the back of a spoon and bake just above the centre of the oven for 10-15 (I found 12 was perfect), by which time they will have spread out and cracked rather attractively. Cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire wrack to finish cooling, store in an air-tight tin.

*self-raising flour has a raising agent mixed into it in the correct proportions for cake baking

Now these turned out fantastic and Delia was right in her blurb where she said that when you first make them you wonder why you ever bought them before.

Alchemaic Baking

In my bid to come up with some original takes on classic recipes I decided to ransack my parents pantry and see what spices and flavours they had in there. I pulled out, stem ginger in syrup, chinese 5 spice, black treacle and sweet mixed spices.

Substituting them into the above recipe was really easy, just take out the ginger and golden syrup and replace it with the following:

Stem gingernuts

• 3 tbsp of the syrup from the jar
• 2 pieces of the ginger diced very finely

5 Spicenuts

• 1 tsp of 5 spice
• 2 tbsp black treacle

Mixed spicenuts

• 2 tsp of mixed spice
• 2 tbsp of golden syrup

The results were really great, I think the stem gingernuts were on par with some of the finer range of biscuits you can get in shops. The mixed spice ones were still not flavoursome enough and could have done with some more spice in them, another tsp perhaps. The 5 spice and treacle ones were very interesting, Mum described them as tasting like a glass of Pernod, and if you like the aniseed flavour that the fennel seed brings then try them out.

I shall make the stem ginger ones again and sandwich them together with a light, slightly spiced, cream cheese frosting. 

I shall also try out maple syrup with cinnamon as the spice.

I used a decent camera for most of these photo's and tried to actually set up a shot for them too. I feel the last one in the greenhouse sets a story up of someone taking a break from potting plants and having a read of some well thumbed books with a cup of tea and biscuit.

Pastry, quiche and no soggy bottoms thank you very much!

As a sort of homage to last night's show I thought I would share the recipe that received good praise from Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. For the first round of face to face auditions we were asked to bake something sweet and something savoury that would WOW the judges, the sweet bake I made was the meringue (posted earlier) and the savoury bake I made was a smoked trout cheesecake in a pastry case, a sort of luxurious quiche if you like. 

The part of it that gave me the high praise was my pastry, something that has always been complimented but until recently I never felt it was up to scratch. That is until I discovered the baking book, Bourke Street Bakery, quite possibly one of my all time favourite baking books; everything I've baked from it has turned out well. They called for the pastry to be made over a couple of days and also the inclusion of a top ingredient, white vinegar. I know what you are thinking, vinegar tasting pastry isn't a pleasant idea but bear with me as I explain the reason.


When you mix flour with water, gluten is released. Now long gluten strands in bread is essential to give it that elastic doughy consistency but in pastry it can leave it very rubbery and not at all short. Short crust pastry needs to be melt-in-the-mouth and what vinegar does is to prevent the gluten from forming long strands. It acts to tenderise the pastry, resulting in a very short, flaky pastry.


The Bourke Street Bakery book also suggested something else which went against every instinct and method you've been told before... use butter that has been out of the fridge for 20 minutes or so! I know, we are indoctrinated with the mantra of keeping everything as chilled as possible and to reduce the amount of handling as much as you can but this pastry is amazing so be prepared to suspend that disbelief and have a go.


Perfect Short Crust Pastry


400 g  unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 1.5 cm cubes
20 ml/ 1 tablespoon) vinegar, chilled
170 ml /(2/3 cup) water, chilled
665 g plain (all purpose) flour, chilled
5 g/ 1 teaspoon) salt


Measure out all the dry ingredients and put them into a refrigerator to completely chill, do the same with the wet ingredients. Take out the butter 20 minutes before you need to use it, the butter should not be solid but still cool. 


When you are ready, add the butter to the dry ingredients and begin to rub it in. It is important that you don't go too crazy and get it to 'resemble bread-crumbs'. I know this goes against all you've been taught but trust me, all you need to do is get the butter smooshed into the flour enough so it is well mixed through and there are still some large lumps in there which have been broken down a bit. 


Empty this floury, buttery mixture out on to a clean work surface and then sprinkle over the water and vinegar mix. You may not need it all, but as you add it use the heel of your hand to smear the flour and butter away from you, bring it back to the centre and repeat. Do this, adding water as needed, until a dough is formed that isn't overly wet but at the same time isn't breaking apart into floury clumps. Form it into a disc or ball and then wrap it in cling film and pop into the fridge for 2hours or overnight (which is even better), this allows the gluten to relax!


Once chilled take the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out to the desired size. Every time you roll, start the pin in the middle of the dough and push away, rotating the dough as needed until and even thickness and size is formed, ideally you want about 1.5 - 2 cm thickness bearing in mind it will shrink in the oven. Line a pasty case or tart tin, allowing some of the pastry to overhang at the sides so it can shrink, then back into the fridge to chill again and relax that gluten, 2 hours should do it.

Right, now to blind bake the pastry. This is an important process as it pre-cooks the pastry and ensures no soggy bottoms! Preheat the oven to 200C and remove the prepared tin from the fridge, prick the bottom several times with a fork. Using foil or baking parchment to line the pastry, fill the case with baking beans or rice or something else heavy. Whatever you choose must be something that can fill the case and get into the flutes along the edge so a weight from a set of scales won't do it! This prevents the pastry forming air bubbles underneath it, and also stops it rising whilst it's cooking.

Pop it into the oven for 12-15 minutes, after which the risk of the base rising up should have gone, and then remove the beans. Put it back into the oven to finish cooking the pastry and once it's brown and crisp I recommend brushing the base and sides with a beaten egg, put it back into the oven to cook out the egg wash, which seals the pastry and also helps to prevent the dreaded soggy bottom!

Your case is now ready for a filling.


I filled my case with a thick, savoury smoked trout, cheese cake filling.


N.B. the quantities here are big, I would say this would make more than enough to fill an 8 inch tin and then some.  Then again you probably have pastry left over so why not make some individual tarts for lunch?


Smoked Trout Cheesecake

• 3 8oz. packages of cream cheese, softened
• 5 eggs
• 1 pint of sour cream
• 1 small onion, minced finely
• 1/2 - 1 cup capers (optional)
• 1/4 lb. cold smoked trout sliced
• 1 cup of fresh dill, chopped
• zest of 1 lemon
• salt and pepper for seasoning
• 
  

Put the cheese into a mixer and mix until soft, add the eggs one at a time and beat them in, pour in the sour cream and mix until combined. Add the remaining ingredients and stir them in by hand, season with salt and pepper only after you add the trout and capers because they will have some salt in them and you won't need as much.

Pour this into your prepared cases and bake in an oven set at around 180C until it is brown on top and set. One tip for avoiding burnt edges to your pastry is to cover just the rim of the tart with foil. If you want to avoid the cheesecake cracking then completely seal the base of the tin with foil and place it into a deeper baking tin, filling this tin with water that comes up to 2/3 of the height of the pastry tin. This adds a humidity to the oven which prevents cracking.

Paul and Mary enjoyed the filling as well as the pastry, complimenting the delicate flavour and the good choice of cold smoked trout as opposed to hot smoked trout. Paul suggested it would be better with some cream in it and less cream cheese, to make it less dense but overall enjoyed it. Mary liked the pastry as it was dry, short and flaky! 

Enjoy experimenting with lots of different flavours of filling and pastry! 

Scone or Biscuit?

Well I've just gotten back from the USA, having spent 3 fantastic weeks out there with some of my favourite people in the world. Whilst there I tasted some amazing baked goods and took photo's of most of the food I ate. One thing I found really delicious were american biscuits-

-seen here at the top right, served with breakfast.


Not to be confused with the UK variety of course, which include classics such as bourbon and digestive, these American biscuits share more in common with a scone, regard...

See on the right the delightful bourbon (great as a chocolate cheesecake base) and on the left the American biscuit (not so great as the bourbon in doing that job). 

I was watching Ina Garten on her show Barefoot Contessa , which is broadcast here in the UK on the foodnetwork (channel 49 on freeview) and she was making chive biscuits which she served with two types of soup. They looked like savoury scones but had a lighter, more buttery texture. This matched what I experienced when I ate them in the US myself! 

Here is her recipe.

Chive Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups (10oz) of plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1 stick (4oz) cold, unsalted butter, diced

3/4 cup (180ml) of half and half... this is basically very thin cream that they use in coffee in the states. Make it by mixing half milk and half cream.

1/2 cup of chopped fresh chives

1 egg mixed with a splash of milk, for an egg wash.

Ina basically put the dry ingredients, along with the butter, into an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and mixed until the butter became "pea-sized" lumps. Then she mixed in the half and half and chives until the dough came together. She turned it out onto a board, kneaded it briefly, and rolled it to a thickness of 2cm. She dusted a round cutter and cut out about 6 biscuits. Then they were placed onto a lined baking sheet, the tops brushed with the egg glaze, and baked in an oven preheated to 200C (400F) for 20-22 minutes.

Now compare that to the scone recipe I made for the second series of The Great British Bake-off.

Scones

500g strong bread flour

80g butter

80g caster sugar

2 eggs

25g baking powder

240ml milk

Place flour and baking powder in a bowl.

Work in butter and sugar with hands.

Gradually add whisked egg and milk.

Roll out and cut into rounds.

Cook at 230°C for 15 mins

As you can see the recipe was very basic.  I tweaked it here and there, the oven temp. for example was too hot for a fan oven otherwise it produced good scones... or so I thought (dissapointing! Bah I even watched this video to get the method just right).

Anyway, it would appear that American biscuits contain more butter than scones and no eggs in the dough.  This does affect the  finished taste and texture, and perhaps I should make my next audition piece based around a biscuit so I can show them that my attempts at scone type things have gotten better, I'm not bitter.

On the subject of the British Bake-off, I started to watch the first episode and am very happy to see someone from my group of auditions made it through to the final 12, despite her bake-off cake going sad in the middle, she was a lovely person and I wish her luck.

Alchemaic Baking

I was watching the food network last night and on the show 'kid in a candy store' I saw a baked good I have never experience before, a Gooey Butter Cake.

Essentially it is a sponge cake baked with a cheesecake on top of it. Not too dissimilar from a black bottomed cupcake, which I sadly still cannot make properly - take a look...

 


The cake on the left is a genuine black bottomed cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery in London (well worth a visit if you are ever in town). See how the cheesecake filling is actually inside the cupcake and the frosting is on top. Nothing like my own attempt where the cheesecake formed a cracked lid to the sponge cake beneath. The key is to have a runny cake batter and thick cheesecake mix that sinks into the cake. One day I'll manage this and it'll become my signature cupcake.


Anyway a slice of gooey butter cake looks like this...

I think I'll give these a go next, Paula Deen has a basic recipe for a vanilla type. Apparently vanilla is the only true flavour. I do hate though how the recipe calls for a packet of yellow cake mix... I wonder if just making a plain vanilla sponge will suffice as a replacement?

The show was explaining how a bakery in St Louis (the home of this treat) was mixing around with flavours and different combinations. So at it's heart, this is a very alcemaic baked good as long as you make the flavour of the topping compliment that of the base... rhubarb and custard, mint and chocolate, matcha and anko (maybe scrap that last combo).

two recipes from the food network

Intro
Well The Great British Bake-Off has started on TV, and I'm being told bits and bobs about it (I haven't yet seen it as I can't get BBC here). What I hear so far though is interesting, I am keen to see just what I should have been like to make it on to the show. I know my recipes would have been great from what I hear. I look forward to catching up on it

Food!

Slightly cheating at posts here but I'm watching the food network, in Minnesota, and thought I'd write up two recipes as they are presented on the show. So the format for the recipes isn't traditional but they should work. I haven't got photo's but believe me when I say they look absolutely great.

Forgive the american measurements (I use grams and ounces usually), but 1 stick of butter is about 4 ounces so that's a good way to start, and you can usually buy American cups in most cooking shops.

Chocolate hazelnut drop cookies
2 sticks of unsalted room temp butter
1/4 cup of powdered (icing) sugar, cream them together, whilst creaming get a jar of chocolate hazelnut spread. Make sure all sugar is mixed in and then add 1tsp of vanilla extract and mix again. add two cups of all purpose (plain) flour, one cup at a time, slowly mix in using an electric mixer and the paddle attachment, scraping down the sides.
Measure out 1/2 cup of chocolate hazelnut spread, spoon it into the cookie dough, mix it all together and this turns it into a chocolate dough.

Line a baking sheet with baking paper, so the cookies don't stick. Use a small ice cream scoop and portion out the dough. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes, cool on a cooling wrack until completely cool.
Roll them in icing sugar until they are covered.


Salami and apricot scones.
I'm in two minds about this write up as she's used a scone mix!

Anyway, it'a one packet of scone mix, 1 stick (4 ounces) of cold butter cubed,  mixed in a food processor until the butter in mixed in, (you could make the scones from scratch though I suppose).
Next add about 1 cup of chopped apricots, then add 6 ounces of salami chopped as chunky as you like. Add some thyme leaves, lightly chopped. Mix it up so all the apricots and salami are coated in flour and butter mix. 1 cup of butter milk is added next and then mix it all together until it's all incorporated. Spray a baking sheet with non-stick baking spray.
Use a one cup measure to scoop out the dough onto the sheet, bake at 450 for 20 minutes or so, until browned and fluffy.

I'm not sure Paul Hollywood would approve of these scones, I remember making some classic scones for him and they were "disappointing", but then scones aren't something I'm very used to making, so it's something I need to work on.

Alchemaic baking.
I had one of these tarts at Austin Java, a great place for lunch and breakfast if you are ever in Austin.

There was no pastry or biscuit crumb side to this tart so I imagine it was cooked in a spring form mini tin. The meringue was only just browned. I wanted to make a chocolate mint variety of this for the Great British Bake-off. With a chocolate biscuit base made from crushed bourbons, and then a mint/marshmallow filling made by warming milk, adding marshmallows and melting them and then adding peppermint essence and green food colouring to make a sort of grasshopper filling.
The top would then have been a cooked meringue made from the method where you dissolve the sugar into the egg whites in a double boiler before you whisk them up, this makes a very creamy, silky meringue which can be eaten without being baked but would still take colour and stay fluffy.
I was thinking about just letting the mint filling set, piping on the meringue and then using a blowtorch to brown it.

Dream Bars.

 These are so easy to make and extremely tasty and the variety of things you can use for toppings make it a truely alchemaic baked dish.

Start off by baking a simple shortbread using the 1,2,3 method. These are the ratios of sugar, butter and flour respectively e.g. 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of butter and 1 cup of sugar or 300g of flour, 200g butter and 100g of sugar (though the cup proportions work the best). If you end up not making enough then just make some more and fill the rest of the baking pan.

Preheat oven to a baking temperature and in the bowl of a freestanding mixer, with the paddle attachment, add the ingredients and beat until a smooth paste is formed. I was freaked out when I first did this as I was used to making bread crumbs by rubbing the fat into the flour and then bringing it together by hand. I was feeling lazy and thought my friends mixer would do it quicker but it blended the butter and flour together in to a dough before I had time to realise what was going on. I carried on though and believe me the base is so crumbly light and perfect for this dish that I will be making it this way in the future!
Press the dough into a baking pan that's lined all the way up the sides with baking parchment (not tin foil as this will stick to the final dish!) and bake it until it is golden brown and firm, then let it cool slightly in the pan, don't remove it from the baking tin.

On to the top of the cooled shortbread add some dessicated coconut, dried fruit of whatever you desire (last time I used blueberries and raspberries), and then, and this is the best bit, open and pour over two cans of condensed milk, being sure to 'poison-test' the condensed milk first.

'Poison-testing' is the most vital part of baking, it's a selfless act of tasting the pre and post cooked product to ensure it won't poison your friends, even better is if a friend is there to back up your opinion, it's an honour to be asked to poison test a baked good and something that is extremely important.

Pop it back into the oven and bake it until the condensed milk has become a caramel. For extra awesomeness put some marshmallows on top and pop them under a grill to brown them (or use a blowtorch).
Let it cool slightly and, then remove it from the pan, using the foil to lift it out and when it's completely cool, cut into bars and serve. If you serve it warm, it would go very well with cream or custard and served cold it would go best with a cup of java.

And Finally

Queso dip.

A very delicious cheesy dip that I first tried in a great Tex-Mex restaurant in Austin. Essentially you get a pound of melty, mild cheese, sauté some onion, chillies and chorizo and then cube up the cheese, and put it all into an oven proof dish and melt in the oven. Then serve hot with tortilla chips, eat it quickly so it doesn't solidify. I suppose it's a bit like a mexican fondue.

The land of inspiration.

I have long had a love affair with America and American culture and someday I plan to move here, but I'll settle at visiting friends for the time being.
I am overwhelmed by the amount of baked goods that are available here in the states and when I was in the Austin Flagship store of Wholefoods, my passion for alchemaic baking was fired up.
These images were taken with my iphone so maybe not the best quality but you get the gist.

1) These were vegan cookies and cream cupcakes, now my forays into the world of vegan baking have met quite a bit of success. When I was researching a recipes for a layered mousse cake I came across a vegan layered mousse cake and decided to make it in my bunt tin. It was moist and delicious and the inclusion of vinegar, whilst at first a disgusting idea, turned out to leave no trace of a taste. Vinegar is turning out to be a bit of a bakers best friend in fact, one tbsp in pastry can tenderise the gluten strands and break them down to make the pastry even shorter.

Back to these cakes, they seem like something I could adapt to include a range of British biscuits, maybe even an orange vegan cake, with chocolate frosting and a Jaffa Cake on top... or maybe a vanilla sponge with an orange cheesecake filling and then chocolate frosting on top, like a black bottomed cupcake. That would be the Jaffa Cake of kings!

2) These are fuzzy but they are brandy snap baskets filled with creme and topped with glazed fruit. 

 My journey into the bake-off led me to practice making ginger snaps, they were something I always feared as being very difficult to make, but I was mistaken. They were amazingly easy.

You just make the mixture, which if i remember rightly was mostly flour, butter and golden syrup, and then blob it on a baking sheet and then pop it into a hot oven. They only take a few minutes and they'll spread out into a disc shape, take on the typical ginger snap appearance and then when you let them cool for a moment they will be cool enough to manipulate into you desired shape, I rolled them over a rolling pin to form a tube shape.

I filled them with squirty cream, but I can see how, like at Wholefoods, you could make a basket by moulding them over a cup and then fill with some kind of vanilla creme patisserie, top with fruit and a clear glaze, or a coffee cream and then dust with chocolate covered coffee beans and cocoa, delicious!

I will add more photos of baked goods that I have found soon enough, along with some recipes when I have time to type them up. 

Rhubarb and Custard Meringues

These meringues came about as a result of some alchemaic discussion at work. 

Intially I had made some custard cream biscuits (the recipe from a Nigella Lawson book).

I had received an audition for the British Bake-Off where I had to make a sweet and savoury baked good that would wow the judges (Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood) and was hoping to take these along, they were melt-in-the-mouth delicious. Rhubarb and custard are a classic combo so I thought about piping some rhubarb compote into the centre of each biscuit and then surround it with the custard butter cream to create a jammy dodger type deal.

That same week though I had taken some meringues to work too, as I felt I needed to practice making them. 

They went down a treat and it was my indecision about which to bake for the audition that brought about the conversation about filling the meringues and that married the two concepts together.

Bake a meringue, using the method where you dissolve the sugar into the egg whites over a pan of simmering water and then whip them up.

Pipe them onto a lined baking sheet and bake them until they are dried out and crisp. Using an apple corer, drill into the base of each meringue them and once cool, pipe in your filling. 

I used a baked rhubarb compote and some butter cream in mine.

Mary Berry said she was initially disappointed as they didn't look 'WOW' and Paul Hollywood agreed initially, however after they bit into them they were pleasantly surprised. Telling me they had never seen anything like it before and it was very original. Paul enjoyed them so much he ate two, I went away from that experience very pleased with my first dabbling into alchemaic baking!

Starting from an end.

This blog is all about the alchemy that is baking. Following an unsuccessful attempt to get on The Great British Bake-off season 2 (I got down to being a standby) I felt that all the hard work I did making up dishes mustn't go to waste. So the idea of this place is to post recipes that I have developed and also upload images of tasty treats that are out there, with the idea of discussing how you could adapt and create your own version of it; that's the alchemy part of the blog.

These were my stuffed meringues, recipe to follow!

Anyway, enjoy and I hope I can keep this blog up to date.