Vegetables in baking

Vegetables are undergoing a bit of a fashion revival at the moment I feel, teaching 5 year olds I was amazed when we did our topic on healthy eating and they came up with a whole multitude of veg that they enjoy. Exposure to more unusual veg through farmers markets and organic box schemes like Riverford and Abel and Cole have helped this somewhat. Even my personal food hero Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is championing the eating of more vegetables in our meals. 

In fact watching River Cottage Veg Everyday has got me to thinking about how I can use more veg in my baking. I tend to bake only sweet things so it is really is an area of alchemy ripe to explore. 

I'm tempted to try this recipe avocado chocolate tart, it seems really easy and looks delicious. I can totally see how avocado would make a smooth and creamy chocolate ganache. No cooking involved either and no dairy or gluten too! Apart from the walnuts in the base it's quite a good dish for intolerances. I may suggest making it instead of the chocolate truffle torte I usually make at Christmas.

I have a feeling my upcoming allotment will feature heavily in an increase of eating vegetables in my diet after xmas. I can feel a second blog coming on too perhaps...

Recipe

Courgette cake

recipe from hummingbird bakery cake days

This couldn't be simpler, in fact there's not even any butter in it so there's no fussy creaming to do. 

In the bowl of an electric mixer, with the paddle attachment (or in a bowl with an electric hand whisk)  mix together 3 large eggs, 300ml of sunflower oil, 1/2 tsp of vanilla essence and 300g of soft brown sugar. Beat until well combined. In another bowl, sift together 300g of plain (allpurpose) flour, 1tsp bicarb, 1tsp baking powder, 2tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg. Add this to the oil and egg mix slowly and in two batches. Then when it's all mixed in, add 300g of courgettes peeld and grated and 100g walnuts chopped. 

Divide the mix evenly between three 7inch sandwich tins that have been lined with baking parchment. Bake in an oven at 180C for 30 -35 minutes or until the cakes have slightly come away from the sides of the tin and when you touch it lightly it springs back. 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tines slightly (this makes the cakes easier to remove) then cool completely on a wire wrack.

Assemble your cake using a good cream cheese frosting, putting a couple of table spoons between each layer 

Then frost the sides and the top, smoothing out with a palette knife. 

A dusting of cinnamon at the end is optional, as was the purple edible glitter that my flatmate added afterwards. This was for a birthday cake for my flatmate's mum and it went down a real treat, considering that the idea wasn't one that was intially taken wholeheartedly. 

I do recommend you try it out!

What vegetables have you used in sweet baking and how did you use them?

That's all from me for today, a shorter post I know but next time will be more xmas baking!

Christmas is a coming!

Well I can, honestly and thankfully say my journey with the GBBO is over. I had a phone call yesterday with "not good news" and they gave some scripted feedback of " the quality of candidates was very high, yadda yadda yadda, range of repertoire blah blah blah" to be honest I wasn't listening, I was just letting it sink in a bit. Not only did I get so far last time, to being a standby, they then badgered me to apply this time, raising in me that false sense of hope. At least I know I'll have some sort of normal life for the remainder of this academic year, and I'm a true believer in things happening for a reason. It wasn't meant to be and in the spirit of my good, and very supportive friends, onwards and upwards.

The best things to come out of all of this are my blog and my expanded repertoire of baking. I'm not scared of trying something new, knowing that actually nothing is impossible if you truly believe it! Also I'm not going to forget the praise Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood had for my baking when I met them earlier this year; great pastry and wonderful meringues!

Recipes
Two recipes today, which I made as a stuff you to the GBBO last night in a bid to move onwards and upwards. I can't claim they are my own creations, but they are very tasty and well worth sharing with you.

Jamies mince pie cookies


250g unsalted butter at room temperature and soft
140g caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
300g of plain flour
1 jar of mincemeat (411g)

Making these made me realise that a cookie recipe is basically a cake recipe minus the raising agent and so much egg. Cream the butter until it's light a fluffy with the caster sugar, it really does take about 3-4 minutes in the Kenwood electric mixer, and the change is quite amazing. I always used to cream butter until I was bored (back in the days of using a wooden spoon) but now I have the Kenwood, I know it is much more. The butter does get paler, and the volume increases until it's like stiff cream!
Mix in the egg yolk and sift in the flour. This should make a thick paste which you can fold in about 3/4 of the the mincemeat. Take a tea spoon (the regular kind not the measuring kind) of the cookie dough and plop it on to a lined baking sheet. Add a smidgen o the reserved mincemeat onto the top of each cookie ball before baking in an oven that has been preheated to 180C for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Dust with caster sugar and let cool on in the tin for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire wrack.

These would be amazing sandwiched with a boozy, brandy buttercream!

They went down a treat at rehearsals and the mincemeat flavour really came through!

Nigella's Almond Macaroons

If you like coconut macaroons and marzipan then these are the treat for you, and amazingly easy to make. The recipe is one that I have already committed to memory too it's so simple!

200g ground almonds

200g caster sugar

2 large egg whites.

Basically mix all of the above into a dough and when it comes together break off bits about the size of a walnut and roll them into a ball. Put them onto a lined baking sheet and stud the top of them with a blanched whole almond. Press them down slightly and bake them at 180C for 10 minutes until they just start to take colour.

They were slightly chewy and very delicious! I can see pistachio, hazelnut and other ground nut varieties of this recipe! 

Mary Berry's Christmas Cake

Yes, I know, can you believe it? This year has seen a surge in supermarkets doing their own version of a Christmas Cake kit. Tesco have Mary Berry, Waitrose have Delia Smith and Sainsbury's have their taste the difference version. I think it's great to get people to challenge themselves with their baking, Chrimbo cakes are quite a commitment to get right! 

I wish I had the time to try them all out and review them (I'm not sure I could stomach that much fruit cake though!). I'll stick with the family recipe for the time being.

Cinnamon Buns!

I have applied to the third series of the British Bake Off but having signed a form to say I can't discuss it I won't be mentioning it on here, however I will say this, I'm going to do my damnedest to get on to it this time (after last time being so close!).

In other baking news, I've practised my hot water crust pastry, which I can only compare to a warm clay when it comes to working with it. I followed Paul Hollywood's recipe for it from here and used beef dripping instead of lard (which is apparently a pork fat I thought it was generic animal fat). I tried to roll out the pastry but it proved too tricky to manage; it decided to stick to the work top and refuse to be peeled off so I had to research other techniques to make the pie crust, and this is where my analogy to clay comes from.
Delia recommends taking two thirds of the dough for the pie crusts and reserving the remaining third for the lids, then to use your fingers to shape the crusts. This method worked really well.

I took the 2/3, divided them into 6 equal balls (I didn't weigh them to ensure absolute equality, that is going a bit overboard I reckon), and popped each ball into a muffin pan hole.

My usual muffin pan was set to one side in favour of this funky new contraption I found in Lakeland here. I heartily recommend it for dishes such as this, the greatness of it is that it has straight sides and loose bottoms! This made it from perfect pork pies, or in my case layered vegetable pies.

Using my fingers I pulled and shaped the dough to fit the tin, pushing it into the corners to give a crisp 90 degrees. I made sure to pull the dough up over the top of the case to help form a decorative seal when the lids were put on. My fillings were various layers of roasted vegetables, that I had cooked before hand so they had shrunk already, and then I took 1/6 of the reserved dough and flattened it between the palm of my hands to make a disc for the lids; sealed it up and brushed with egg wash. I used a knife to make a hole in top which would let the steam out and also allow me to pour in a jelly made with vegetable stock.
These photo's show you how they turned out! The layers were, courgette, aubergine, roasted red pepper, onions, mushrooms and a sun dried tomato at the top. They were fantastic and I recommend you have a go at making them.

The one below is an example of where it didn't work, the vegetables were raw when I put them in and as they cooked they shrank. This left a massive hole at the top of the pies filled with nothing. Cooking the veg before hand helped solve this.

Alchemy

This weeks alchemy is based on that traditional recipe of a cinnamon bun. Instead of a the plain cinnamon and muscavado sugar filling, I decided to up the ante and change it to sour cherries, pecans, cocoa powder, cinnamon, ginger and muscavado sugar. This produced a rich, gooey, treacly filling which went down a storm. That was lucky too as I didn't actually try it before I unleashed it upon the unsuspecting!

Glazed with an apricot jam glaze, they were very very delicious.

Recipe: 

For the dough

275ml of luke warm water

5g of dry active yeast (not that instant yeast you get in sachets, this is the yeast you may find in a little tin).

4 tbsp of granulated sugar

600g strong bread flour (white works best, wholemeal is nice, but the buns are very heavy)

1/4 tsp salt 

175ml warm milk

75g of room temp, soft butter

To make this dough weigh the water and the yeast in a jug (1ml of water weighs 1g which is handy!), hitting the zero button between each addition. Put one of the 4 tbsp of sugar in to the lukewarm water (stir to dissolve it), along with the yeast and set it to one side to allow the yeast to activate and start frothing away. In a large bowl, stir the flour, remaining 3 tbsp of sugar, salt and also the butter (which should quickly rub in due to its soft nature).

When the yeast has frothed up and proven it's alive, pour this into the flour mix. using your fingers mix it all up and add enough of the milk to just make sure you get all the rest of the dry ingredients. You may not need all of the milk.

Turn the dough out on to a floured work top and start kneading. Knead for about 10 minutes by pushing away from you with the heel of your hand and pulling it back towards you with you fingers. What you are doing when kneading is activating the gluten. Gluten is a lovely molecule, key to baking. In bread you want it to form long elastic strands which give an airy texture to trap the CO2 made by the yeast as it feasts on the sugar; this is the opposite of pastry where you want to minimise the gluten activation!

The way I tell if the dough is ready is by gathering the dough into a ball using the outer edges of my hands turned inwards. I scoop and turn from the bottom of the dough which pulls the top down taught like a drum skin. Then I press the top with my finger and if it springs back quickly you know it's about ready. 

After this, place the dough ball into a lightly oiled bowl and turn it so as to cover all the dough with a light sheen of oil (flavourless oil for this sweet dish). Leave it somewhere to double in size, the temperature will affect the speed this happens at. 

Preheat the oven to 200C and line a deep baking dish with paper. Take your risen dough and knock it back by punching it! Then stretch your dough out with your hands into a large rectangle (I'm not sure how big really, but maybe 30cm long and 20 cm wide). Then melt some butter and brush on to the dough (this helps the sugar mix adhere). 

in another bowl mix up sugar, sour cherries, pecans, cinnamon, ginger, cocoa and a little salt to taste. Sprinkle this over the buttered dough and then roll it up and if you run out make up some more. Roll up from the longest edge closest to you, keeping it tight and trimming off the edges if they flay all over the place. Once rolled tightly, cut it into about 12 thick slices and place them close together int the tin. Use the off cuts to fill in gaps if needed; they also work well as tester balls to see if the buns are cooked.

Bake until cooked and brown then take out of the oven and serve asap.

A long overdue update

Hello dear readers, I'm back now that my laptop is fixed and I have a whole host of updates to share with you. I've kept up with my baking, especially since the Great British Bake Off series 2 has finished and I'm trying for the 3rd series now. I have decided that I need to practise making puff pastry, choux buns and croissant dough.

Baking
My most recent bakes include two dishes that I took to a halloween party at the weekend. I made a Red Velvet Cheesecake from the Outside Tart baking book,

Sadly the middle wasn't cooked as much as the edges and this was due to it being too full when I put it into the oven. The recipe made SO much filling for a 9inch pan (the recommended pan size). It tasted amazing though and to be honest, for a halloween party it was great; I called it a blood cheesecake.

I also made come carrot cake whoopie pies, from Outsider Tart, but I didn't put frosting on them and served them as carrot cake cookies really.

Recipe

When I was in London town recently I went to Mitsukoshi, which is a Japanese department store. In its basement is a Japanese book shop and I decided to buy a Japanese baking book. he great thing about Japanese cook books is that they use photo's for step by step instructions. Using my rudimentary Japanese reading skills I was able to pretty much get the recipe for a basic vanilla pound cake.

Here's the book, 

The first set of photos showed me how to perfectly line a baking tin.

First take some greaseproof that wraps up both sides and along the base.

Fold it up the sides and crease.

Fold it up the ends and crease too.

You should have basically a grid like this and then you can cut it as shown below.

Fold the sides up and the end so there are three flaps overlapping at the ends. Then slot it into the tin and bingo you have a perfectly lined loaf tin!

Pound Cake
100g butter
100g sugar
2 eggs
100g plain flour
1/2tsp baking powder

One thing that I added, for flavour was some vanilla extract too. The interesting thing about the recipe was the meticulous detail that the writer went to with every step. Even showing how they smooshed the egg through a fine sieve to remove the lumps.

It does make for a smoother egg which mixes easier into the batter. 

Method.

Sieve the flour and baking powder onto a piece of greaseproof paper. Whisk the butter until smooth and pale, about 2 minutes with an electric hand whisk. Then add the sugar and beat for a further 2 minutes. Scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula to ensure it all is incorporated. Next add the egg 1tbsp at a time, use a balloon whisk to mix it 20 times after each tbsp of egg.  Mix in the flour and baking powder using a wooden spoon, being careful to mix all of the flour in thoroughly, though not over mixing (the book recommends 30 stirs). 

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bash it against the work top to level the mixture out.  Pop it into the oven which is set at 180C. After just 10 minutes open the oven door and using a very sharp nice cut along the length of the cake then put it back into the oven to continue cooking for a further 20 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted into the middle comes out clean. What the cutting does is allow the cake to rise up through the middle, giving it that traditional pound cake look.

 Now I'm not a fan of basic sponge cake, but this was a great recipe and made a delicious vanilla pound cake!

Alchemaic Baking

This book goes on to suggest different things to do with the cake. Being Japanese it suggests mixing green tea powder into it, anko bean paste and cocoa powder. There are some other interesting combinations too though, like slicing a pear on to the top of it, making a marble cake with half of the batter being one flavour and the other half being vanilla. 

Once you have a basic batter, you can really add anything to it! hmm ginger might be nice, with a gingery glaze on top too....