Baking books

I dreamt last night that I baked 20 different things in 2 hours, I don't remember what it was but I do remember being very stressed by the whole ordeal. Perhaps not being in the Bake-off is for the best this year.

Herman
Herman is now dead, I baked him into a cake and split him up to give some away. The only issue with Herman is that not many people are too keen on the idea of having a living, seething, growing bowl of cake in their kitchen so the bowls sat on the staff room table for a few days. It was a fun experiment but I shan't be repeating it anytime soon. The cakes weren't particularly sour either, maybe I'll have more luck with bread if I try that again.
I have got photo's of Herman being baked, but for some reason, they aren't coming up in my iphoto folder even though I did import them so this will be a photo free post. I'm sorry, I know that photo's really help with a baking blog.

Anyway, I have had some exciting baking developments recently. I visited Outsider Tart in Chiswick, having bought the book written by the owners. I took a friend along to sample their treats and was not disappointed. Having gone to Cox Cookies and Cakes anything would be better really.
The owner was working that day and my friend and I sat at the bar inside, despite it being a sunny day, I wanted to chat baking with him and it was a great conversation. I ate a snickers brownie and she had a pecan cheesecake, and we talked about the best way to make brownies fudgey and to get uniform sized whoopie pies; take the brownies out of the oven early and use an ice cream scoop for the pies. Also sat at the bar was a radio DJ who had just interviewed Ed From last years Bake-off, which was a very cool coincidence and I was able to talk about the show and my experiences too, overall it was a great visit and I heartily recommend you go and visit.

When I got home I made the Hepburn brownies form the book along with banana whoopie pies (which I filled with a slightly cinnamon cream cheese frosting).  They were very delicious and the brownies turned out very well, I took Dave's advice and took them out of the oven before they overcooked and set them over night in the pan in the fridge. The next day they came into work with me and were demolished by my co-workers and they were amazingly fudgey!

Baking books I own and recommend


Baked Explorations: Classic American Deserts revisited.

This book has some extremely tantalising dishes in it, I've yet to try them but when I look through it I get lots of inspiration. It's well written and the recipes are mouth watering.

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking

By the same authors as the other Baked book, again I've not explicitly used the recipes contained in it, but they do inspire me. Much the same as the other book.

The Whoopie Pie Book

This book started my journey into baking whoopie pies and the basic chocolate pie along with the marshmallow filling were the recipes I chose. Whenever I've picked this book up I've been inspired. It's truly great and all the recipes work.

My thoughts on whoopie pies are that basically any cake can be made in to them, just use an ice cream scoop to portion the batter onto a baking sheet (it helps them stay uniform in size). I have a grand idea of  developing a shop where you can choose which flavour pie halves you want to put together with a choice of filling, a make-your-own pie shop... One day I'll get there. Perhaps I'll bake a huge batch of multiple flavours and then open a market stall in Bromley.

Bourke Street Bakery

Everybody needs to own this book. Extremely comprehensive recipes and techniques, this book taught me the secret of good pastry and meringues both of which got me through to the final audition stage of the Bake-off. I just wish the bakery it was written out of was in London not Australia, but then again that's an excuse for a visit.

Kitchen

Nigella's cookbooks are always a good buy. Her recipes really work and my favourite from this book is her chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've yet to find one to best it and they come out looking exactly as they do in the pictures. I've even mixed up the flavour combo's in them and they still work well. The book has recipes other than baking ones and these other dishes turn out just as well.

Hopefully next time the photo's I wanted to upload this time will work.

My friend Herman, Gin, Cox Cookies and Cakes.

Herman

At the start of the year I dabbled in culturing wild yeast when I looked at making sourdough bread. The result was quite a success and something that I recommend everyone to have a go at as it was ridiculously easy to do! The bread I made with the sponge was, well, sour and it was quite a solid loaf but a success nonetheless.

Here's a picture of the culture bubbling away.

Upon arriving back into London this week a friend called to say they had a mysterious present for me that they needed to deliver sooner rather than later. We hastily arranged a drop off time and that evening I was presented with Herman. Herman came to me in a little plastic bowl, looking a little cold and in need of a feed, I had just been presented with my first sourdough cake starter.

It's the same concept as a sourdough bread starter but instead of feeding and discarding, as you would with the bread, Herman keeps growing with each feed, until you divide him up, give some away and then bake the sorry remains into a cake. There's even a book full of Herman related recipes, The Best of the Herman Sourdough Herald and apparently my mum was given Herman by a friend of the family way back in the 80's so the concept isn't new. I was very excited by it though; alchemaic baking in its most primal form.

Here's a photo of Herman as he stands in the kitchen, fed and happy and bubbling away,

Check back in 4 more days to see if he managed to survive and make it to being a fully fledged cake!

Sloe Gin

Not strictly baking I know, but when my Dad told me the sloe berries were ripe early this year I jumped at the chance to gather a few. Growing up in the Forest of Dean I learned where the best blackthorn bushes were and so I set off to gather. I managed to pick about 2lb in the end, leaving plenty for the birds to feast on as the weather gets cooler. 

Traditionally you are meant to pick them after the first frost, as this allows them to develop a fuller flavour, but by that time they are usually all gone so I cheated and put them into the freezer.

Once frozen I washed them (resulting in a frozen lump of sloe ice, I recommend washing and drying before freezing) and weighed out 1lb. 

I poured these into a 1litre Kilner jar and then using a rolling pin I 'muddled' them. 

Muddling is a word which best describes the act of mashing up fruit or herbs when making cocktails.

I added 150g of sugar to them, and then 5 cloves and half a stick of cinnamon.

Then came the gin, 750ml of it. 

I poured it over the top and then added 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract. The jar was sealed and shaken with gusto at the thought of the resultant liquor. I wrapped it in newspaper and put it in a cupboard. 

Now all I need to do is give it a shake every now and then and in three months it should be delicious Sloe Gin.

Cox Cookies and Cake

No alchemaic baking in this post, however I bought a new brownie pan from Lakeland yesterday and also bought Baked in America which has some good recipes I want to try out in it.

I also looked at some other books and in one found a great decorating idea.

Take some bubble wrap, wash it and dry it and then pour tempered chocolate over it. Once set, peal off the bubble wrap and you have a really interesting negative of the bubble wrap, in the chocolate. Brush with edible gold dust and adorn you favourite cupcake with this and it will be quite special. I got the idea from this book, Cox Cookies and Cakes a cook book based on the cake shop by the same name down Brewer Street in Soho. So inspired by this decorating method I decided to not buy the book and pay the shop a visit to sample their cakes and see the decorations for myself. Now Cox Cookies and Cakes is a shop developed by Patrick Cox a shoe designer and Eric Lanlard an award winning patissier. With those two at the helm I thought highly of the cakes they would produce. 

I settled on a classic and bought a red velvet cake, parting with 2.75 (even though the menu said 2.50) and, with my treasure in a little box, went to Green park to eat it (and take some arty fart shots with my phone).

Looks nice huh?! In the box, on the grass, oishi so desu ne!

Still tasty looking, nestled in the grass with the deck chairs in the back ground. A little crumb of some  pallid orange coloured cake on top as decoration. It was at this point I was beginning to doubt the redness of the cake and fear for the velvety texture that the name promised.

As you can see, my fears were well founded. This cake was neither red, or velvety. In fact it was as you see, some poor excuse for a red velvet cake, the colour barely there at all. The texture was even worse, it had some massive air bubbles in it and overall the cake had a plasticky feel to it. It reminded me of a cake made with oil as opposed to butter. It was spongey but not in a victoria sandwich way, more of a Savers multi-buy plastic bath sponge way. The flavour was good, a basic vanilla sponge really but not the red velvet cake it should be that being a rich cocoa flavour.

I was very disappointed and won't be going back, and I urge you to not bother either. The shop is incredibly gimmicky and they seemingly put more style into their cakes than substance, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Similarly I popped into a previous favourite of mine, the hummingbird bakery, and the cakes on offer were also disappointing. It seems like they have become stuck in a rut and their drive to develop new and interesting cakes is on sabbatical. I hope this is a blip and they pick up soon as they do know how to make a tasty cake.

I will be looking to visit the Outsider Tart cake shop of the Baked in America book fame, and I hope to be able to report a more pleasing experience.

Wow, when did my blog become a review blog... I promise baked recipes next time!