Wet Weekend

There is nothing like a wet weekend to make me want to hole up in the kitchen and make comfort food.  Equally, nothing says comfort food like hot bread slathered in butter. This weekend, after having helped out on a charity bike ride by sitting in the car in the middle of nowhere waiting to make sure mad cyclists hadn't disappeared in the mist and wet of the Peak District, we stopped off at a garden centre.

The Riverside Herb Centre just outside Hathersage is a very small garden centre specialising in (yes you may have guessed it) herb plants.  It has plenty of other plants too but is a small plot with a small selection.  What it also has, is a deli and cafe so I spent as much time inside as I had outside with the plants.  The fist thing to catch my eye was a display of bread flours and I had to try a couple.  Sadly, they have gone for a Wessex brand rather than anything milled more locally but that didn't stop me buying.

I thought I would try a loaf of each and mixed the dough up to the recipe on the packet using the kenwood. Both doughs rose beautifully, although the Honey and Seed was a  little more reluctant.  The Six seed made a light and high rise loaf which is delicious (it is the prud loaf at the back of the picture below).   The Honey & Seed was a denser affair and wasn't as sweet as I had anticipated.  You would certainly be able to use it a salty soft cheese such as a goats or even a milder blue such as dolcelatte.  It had odd tiny globules of what must have been some kind of honey so there was a hint of the flavour here and there but if i had tested it blindfold I don't think I would have guessed the honey content.  I might try the next loaf with some fresh honey added and maybe some apricot.

As you can see from the picture above, I also had a bash at the Sticky Toffee Tray Bake recipe form Sarah Randall's "Weekend Baking" which was delicious.  I am not a fan of jarred ginger, so substituted sultanas where that should have been.  If I had had any dates available, they would have gone in instead in true sticky toffee stylee.  It was truely lovely.  Can't help feeling it would have been nicer hot with custard for some reason.  Also pictured are smokey cheesey scones.  About which more another time......

A bit of a round up

Whilst I never seem to be too busy to fit in a bit of baking, taking time to write about it is a bit more tricky.  I can always squeeze a small bake of biscuits into an evening after work or a lager cake in a quiet afternoon, but sitting down and typing about it is a discipline I struggle with.  All of the romantic notions of what it must be like to be a cookery writer certainly get a different perspective when you realise the effort it takes to write things up.  Regular food bloggers have my utmost respect for the their perseverance!

So, for the last few weeks, writing has taken a back seat so this blog is a catch up of my favourite bakes since my last post.

Firstly, a cake inspired by a article in the Observer Food Monthly, possibly 2 months ago now.  It was an interview Chrsitina Tosi, a chef at the Momofuku Milk Bar in New York.  This is a lady whose sweet tooth makes me look positively abstemious when it come to sugar.  But, her cakes looked fantastic so i thought I could have a go at baking something that looked similar.  This was the result.

The basics were just a victoria sponge, chocolate ganache and a plain vanilla butter cream but the effect was made by putting the cooled cakes back into a springform tin lined with parchment.  This is what gives the stright sided look.  The bottom layer was then loaded with maltesers, chocooate chips, marshmallows and chocolate covered raisins, all kept in place by a covering of the ganache.

Next was the butter cream, spread right out to the sides to give a flat effect then topped with more buttercream and whatever sweets were left from the middle.  This one made it into work where the consensus was that it was almost overwhelming in its sweetness.  However, that didn't stop everyone finishing their large slice!

Pretty in Pink

Every now and then, I come over all dainty (well in attitude if not in physical manifestation) and get the urge to bake something small and pretty.

This week, as well as feeling dainty, I must have felt like a challenge because a desire to bake macarons (or macaroons) came over me.  There is something about the almondy meringue that is always a treat.This has only happened twice before with mixed success and it hasn't exactly been a relaxing exercise.

The first attempt which were supposed to be pale lilac in colour came out like splodgey grey disks with not even a faint resemblance to the beautiful discs I had bought in Paris several years ago in L'aduree - the home of the macaron.

A second attempt fared much better after following the great step-by-step instructions of Jose Marechal in his book "Irresistible Macaroons".  This follows the Italian meringue base so requires a sugar thermometer and he also recommends sieving your ground almonds.  I plumped for a lemon curd filling and this time, with a bit of patience, I produced something pretty close to my aim.

My latest attempt probably falls between the two.  I had seen a recipe for raspberry cheesecake macarons on the website of The Extraordinary Art of Cake when trawling the internet for inspiration.  This is the lovely website of a Brighton based baker who specialises in cupcakes but sometimes does something a bit different.  You can find the recipe at http://www.theextraordinaryartofcake.com/2012/03/amazing-raspberry-cheesecake-macarons.html

They are made of a traditional macaron shell but filled with a cream cheese filling and small dollop of raspberry jam.  My shells were the part that made this attempt a bit of a mixed bag.  Some of them came out pretty perfect, others had erupted slightly and the shells were cracked.  This doesn't affect the taste at all but isn't really the polished finish I hoped for.

Thankfully, there were enough unblemished shells to make it worthwhile and although I think I still need some practice, these were still good looking enough to get a few "ooh"s when unveiled at a family gathering. They tasted pretty fine too and I would use the filling recipe again in other recipes.

I like to pipe the filling as it gives a bit more control as to how much goes in and if you pipe in dots around the edge of one shell and then fill the middle of the ring of dots, you get a fluted edge to the filling which I like.  Overall, my self assessment would be "could do better" but not so bad as to out me off trying again.

Souper Cupcakes

One of the lovely things about being a keen baker is that friends and family can be very keen to share recipes. This is particularly fun when the recipes are ones that are so kooky that the friend concerned hasn't taken the plunge and tried it out themself.

Several weeks ago, a very good friend said that she had lots of recipes that had been given to her in just this way and that she would e-mail one or two on.  Her first offering raised an eyebrow in our house as it was a cupcake recipe calling for a tin of tomato soup.  Not, I think you will agree, a conventional cupcake ingredient.  She had warned me she thought it was form the 70s and probably American.

It has taken a few weeks to pluck up the courage to try the recipe out, but what better excuse than a very wet weekend to give it a go?

The recipe starts conventionally enough with creamed butter and sugar and then the addition of eggs but then the flour and soup go in turning the mixture a slightly off putting orangey colour rather than the vibrant orangey red I was expecting.

Not one to be deterred, into the oven they went.  What came out was a bit of a disappointment.  I have never managed to produce lopsided cakes before.  Sunken, yes. Exploded, yes.  But lopsided?  No.

But how did they taste?  Well not bad.  They were not as sweet as normal cupcakes and had a texture that looked and felt similar to a malt-loaf just slightly dryer. An almost rubbery spongey texture but not at all unpleasant.  You could almost compare them to a cornbread in terms of sweet/savoury or even a bland savoury muffin.  However, they are definitely the ugly sister of the cupcake world and I am not sure I would make them again other than for the novelty factor of telling people what went into them.

Spot the Difference

Both my sister and my mum have recently started buying bread mix from Lidl and raving about the bread they have made.  Having tried the sunflower bread, a dark bread packed with sunflower seed flavour I could see their point.  Easy and really tasty.  They do four flavours in all but the one my sister was most positive about, the ciabatta mix, has never been in stock when I have popped in to try and get my hands of a bag.  Mum to the rescue and I am now in possession of this prized mix.  I wanted to see just how good it was so what else could I do but a taste test?

Armed with Paul Hollywood's "100 Great Breads" and an afternoon to myself, I shut myself in the kitchen. Home baked ciabatta is not a thing to be undertaken in a hurry.  You set off by making a "starter" of a very wet dough made with bread flour, yeast and water.  This has to be left for at least 4 hours and preferably over-night. At this point, you really get a feel for the liveliness of yeast.  The mix bubbles away and begins to look like a lunar landscape.  By now, I have mixed the Lidl mix and they were both sat happily proofing,

As you can see, they look dramatically different, with the home made starter on the left.

After this proving, the mix was slapped on to a baking tray and left or another 40 minutes before being baked in the oven for 25 minutes.  The home made version is mixed with  more flour, some olive oil an more water and whisked for 5 minutes.  When I say whisked, I mean stabbed, poked and pulled about with a whisk.  It was not exactly a whiskable texture!

The dough is then left to rise again before going through a similar process as the packet mix.  The finished products were both pretty decent but how did they compare?  Well, on a blind tasting, you could not tell any difference in taste at all.  The packet mix had a very slightly more open texture but they were both recognisably ciabatta.

The real difference is the time involved.  The packet mix took less than 2 hours from opening the packet to tucking into the warm bread.  Making a loaf from scratch was an eight hour task.  So, if you are in a hurry for some Italian bread, I would recommend the packet mix but it is still tremendously satisfying to know you can do it yourself.

Spring is sprung....

A beautiful Friday afternoon up North, Friends visiting this weekend and Mothering Sunday too.  What better excuse to bake some flowery cupcakes?

I was rather taken with some new silicone cupcake cases in Lakeland and they popped into my shopping basket almost without me thinking about it.  I'm not a big fan of silicone bakeware generally.  It doesn't seem to keep its shape while it cooks and I have had some almost rugby ball shaped loaf cakes with one piece I own.  However, these cases are shaped like flower pots so were just begging to be iced to within an inch of their lives!.

I used the usual chocolate cupcake recipe and a basic vanilla buttercream coloured with Wilton's Leaf Green food colour paste.  The bit that took most of the afternoon was cutting out the leaves and flowers to go on top.  I used a combination of stamp cutters and small flower and leaf cutters and coloured some ready to roll icing to make the shapes.  It doesn't dry quite as firm as sugarpaste but I find it much easier to work with as it doesn't stick to everything it touches.

I was really pleased with the result

It was also great to get out into the garden to take the photos.  Cakes always look better in daylight and this is a sure sign that spring is truly on the way.

Still Way Out West

Well the holiday plans are definitely taking a turn towards the South West so, thoughts still facing that way, it was time to try a home made Cornish Pasty.  Unlike the saffron buns, I have enjoyed many a pasty in Cornwall, many handmade and all heaven.  Goodness knows I can even enjoy a microwaved Ginsters on occasion!  Yes, I think I can say I love a pasty in almost any form.

These home efforts are not, technically,  real Cornish Pasties as apparently they have to be assembled in Cornwall to claim that name, but this is the closest I can get in South Yorkshire.

All the traditional ingredients are here - a puffish pastry with vegetable shortening as well as butter (should probably be lard but I didn't have any in), swede, potato, beef skirt and some onion - recipe courtesy of the Great British Book of Baking again.  I have never made these from scratch before and was not all convinced that all of those ingredients could possibly be cooked in the time it take to cook the pastry.  Some kind of magic happens though and what came out of the oven looked like the real deal and smelt fabulous.

They also tasted pretty good.  If improvements are to be made, I would put a bit more beef in next time and quite a bit more salt and pepper - the taste was not as bold as I would have liked.  I think my crimping could also do with some finesse but it got more handsome as it cooked so ended up looking decent.