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....

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.