baking Archives - Page 4 of 5 - A Bond Girl's Food Diary

Pistachio and Apricot Macarons

31st January 20172nd February 20172 Comments

Yes, I know my last blog post was also a macaron recipe. I spent a little while worrying about this, before I remembered that this is my blog and I can put whatever I like on it, and if I want to do seventeen variations on macarons in a row and never post a thing about vegetables again, then no one will really care. Except maybe my dentist (sidenote: I used to think I didn’t have a problem with dentists, until I had to have a wisdom tooth removed a couple of months ago. Now I understand why people fear dentists).

Anyway, these were experimental macarons, partly because I have never done macarons with a nut other than almonds in the shell before, and partly because I had a pack of apricot leather leftover from teaching a class and wasn’t sure what to use it for. Apricot and pistachio sounded like a pretty delicious combination. And thus these little babies were born.

Notes (my standard macaron notes):

For this, you will need at least three baking sheets (I sometimes go onto a fourth) and parchment to line them, a sugar thermometer, a food processor, an electric hand whisk or a stand mixer, and a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain nozzle, as well as the normal bowls and scales and stuff. Sorry, lots of kit I know, but that’s just how it is for these.
This recipe makes around 50 shells, or 25 paired macarons, although this obviously depends on how big you pipe them.
I don’t personally think you need to bother ageing your egg whites unless they are stupendously fresh to start with – perhaps you have your own chickens or something, who knows – but I do always make sure mine are room temperature.
I am not awesome at piping, and so my personal preference is to line my baking sheets with disposable parchment and, using a cookie cutter, draw circles onto it in black Sharpie as a guide, then flip it over ready to be piped on to. You can also buy templates that are already on silicone mats (which I should do but I am cheap) or print them off the internet, or just pipe freestyle if you are confident. You want to end up with something like this.

Ingredients:

for the shells

200g white caster sugar
75ml hot water (from a hot tap is fine, but boil a kettle if you like)
200g icing sugar
100g ground almonds
100g pistachios
160g egg whites (divided into two bowls of 80g each)
Pinch of salt

for the apricot filling

apricot leather – I lazily bought mine, but you can make it, or substitute a thick apricot gel or jam, or flavour buttercream with apricot jam, or use something else entirely. I can’t tell you how to live your life.

Method:

Get out three baking sheets and line them with parchment (or silicone), and create a template if you need one. Pop your water and caster sugar in a saucepan, stir it gently together with a wooden spoon, and put the pan on a low heat to dissolve the sugar (starting with hot water speeds this up). While that’s happening, pop your pistachios with 2 tbsp of the icing sugar in a food processor and blitz for about 2 minutes, or until you have a very fine pistachio flour. Add the rest of the icing sugar and the ground almonds, then blitz again for 1 minute. Scrape the sides down, then blitz for an additional minute. Pass the sugar and nut powder through a sieve into a large bowl. You might be left with some chunkier nut mixture in the sieve. Don’t force it through – you want smooth macarons – but save it to sprinkle over the top of the shells once baked, if you like.
If your sugar has dissolved into your water (the liquid shouldn’t feel gritty), turn up the heat on your syrup, stick your thermometer in it, and start to bubble it up to 115 degrees celsius (which is your target). Meanwhile, mix 80g of egg white into your sieved almond pistachio mixture with a spatula to make a thick, stiff paste. It will look like there isn’t enough liquid, but keep working it and it will come together. Pop the other 80g of egg white into a clean glass bowl with the pinch of salt and whisk to stiff peaks.
When the sugar syrup hits 115 degrees, pour it into the whisked egg whites in a thin stream while still whisking them on high speed. The mixture will become shiny. Once all the sugar syrup is in the whites, keep whisking for five minutes or so while the bowl cools until you have your stiff meringue mix. Whack 1/3 of the meringue mix into the almond pistachio paste and beat it in any old how to loosen it.
Now gently fold the remaining meringue into your macaron batter with a spatula. You need to make sure it’s well incorporated and there are no streaks, but the more you mix it the more air will be knocked out, and the looser the batter becomes. If you don’t mix enough, there will be unincorporated meringue and the batter won’t smooth out when piped. If you go too far, it will run everywhere when piped. You want to be able to lift the spatula up and draw a trail of batter across the surface of the bowl and leave a line which stays there for around 10 seconds, but then gradually disappears back into the body of the mixture. People say it is supposed to look like lava but that’s totally unhelpful to me as I don’t know what lava looks like. Go slowly, one fold at a time, and keep checking it. If in doubt, go for under rather than over mixing, as the process of piping the batter will knock more air out too.
When you are happy with your batter, put half of it into your piping bag and begin to pipe out your rounds. I find it easier to only use half the mix at once or the weight of it makes it come out of the bag very fast, which is tricky to pipe. Piping these just takes practice. Give yourself space, pipe directly down rather than at an angle, move quickly and get into a rhythm. Your batter will spread a little so aim for batter circles slightly smaller than your template circles. Once you have finished piping, pick up each tray, lift it a good few inches off the surface, and drop it straight down. Do this a couple of times. You need to knock out any air bubbles that have accumulated. After this is done, leave your macarons to rest for around half an hour. Once rested, they should have a slight skin. Leaving them for longer – up to a couple of hours – shouldn’t hurt them.
When your macarons have rested, heat your oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3. Bake your macaron shells for around 20 minutes. This is obviously dependent on your oven and the size of your macarons, so keep an eye on them. Check after 17 minutes. When your shells are cooked, they should lift off your baking parchment without leaving much residue behind. If they are leaving lots of very sticky mixture or not lifting off, give them more time. If they are completely dry and hollow then they are over-baked (but will still be yummy when filled). When they are done, get them on a cooling rack and once they are cool enough to touch, take them off the parchment.
Match the shells of your macarons into pairs of similar sizes. Using a cookie cutter, stamp rounds out of your apricot leather and place between your pairs of shells – or, if you are using an alternative apricot filling, simply pipe rounds of it onto the bottom shell and gently sandwich on the top. If using, sprinkle with the leftover pistachio and almond mix.

Really, you should store macarons in the fridge in an air-tight container for 24 hours before eating them to let the shells soften into the filling but my willpower isn’t always up to this. Regardless, they keep very well.

Sun-dried Tomato and Olive Focaccia

9th January 20179th January 20172 Comments

Sometimes I think there wasn’t much point in my going to culinary school, because all anyone really ever wants me to make is brownies and bread. Seriously. Those are the things that I get asked to make the most often, and those are the things which always inspire the most delight among the people I cook for. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand it. Brownies and bread are delicious. But they are also easy. So easy! I could make these things before I expended vast amounts of time and money and effort getting a culinary diploma. Still, at least now I know in my heart that I could make a blackcurrant souffle. Even though no one ever asks me to.

If you are ever going round to someone’s house and you want to bring them something a bit special, then I really recommend that you bake some bread. People go absolutely nuts for the stuff and they will think that you are amazing, even though really all you have done is mix flour and water and yeast together and then let them do their thing. I am now pretty much obligated to make focaccia for family gatherings, because I did so once and it’s like when we fed the teeniest, tiniest bit of gammon to the cat and now that she knows about the existence of gammon she cannot be happy unless she is actively eating gammon.

When I bake bread from scratch for something, someone always says ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with making bread. Doesn’t it take ages?’ Well, yes and no. Yes, the time from starting the bread-making process to starting the bread-eating process is a couple of hours, but in those couple of hours you will have about fifteen active minutes in which you have to do things to the bread. For the rest of your time, feel free to be gainfully employed in plumbing the depths of Netflix, alphabetising your spice cabinet, or trying to placate your gammon-crazed pet.

Notes:

I’m not going to lie: this is much easier to make if you have a mixer with a dough-hook. I did not have one until last year and owning one has now made me magnificently lazy. With normal bread dough, ten minutes of kneading by hand is no big deal, and can actually be pretty satisfying (plus I always count it as my exercise for the day). With focaccia, though, the dough is really more like a batter because it is so wet, and kneading a batter is a bit trickier, so it’s much easier to shove it in a mixer. The high water content is what gives the bread its light texture and irregular crumb structure: the water in the dough evaporates as the bread bakes, leading to that classic focaccia look. That said, I made this at my parents’ house at Christmas, and I had to do it by hand because they don’t have a mixer with a dough-hook, and it was fine. Although I did whinge about it a bit.

Obviously you can substitute other things for sun-dried tomatoes and olives if you have anything interesting lying about. I have done this with feta, artichokes, red onion, prosciutto, and various herbs. You can see from the pictures that I had some artichokes in the fridge, so in they went. It’s all good, and it would be fine with just salt and olive oil too.

Ingredients:

500g strong white bread flour
2.5 tsp salt
2 sachets dried fast action/ easy bake yeast (don’t worry too much about what it says on the packet – anything that comes in 7g sachets will be fine)
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil (if your sun-dried tomatoes or olives come in good olive oil, you can use that for extra flavour)
400ml cold water
more olive oil, for drizzling
fine sea salt
handful of sun-dried tomatoes
handful of olives
fresh rosemary

Method:

If you’re making this in a mixer, pop your flour, salt, yeast, oil, and water in the bowl and start mixing on the slowest speed. Once it’s all combined, turn it up to a low-medium speed and let it mix for around 5-7 minutes. When you’re finished, leave the dough in the bowl and cover it with cling film. If you’re doing it by hand, put all the same ingredients in a large bowl but only use 300ml of the water. Mix it together with a wooden spoon to begin with, and when it comes together as a batter, gradually add your last 100ml water, working it in. Then you’re going to have to move to hand-kneading – I find that coating your hands in olive oil first stops the dough from sticking to you so badly. Knead it in the bowl for about five minutes, by stretching it up to shoulder height. When it starts to come together you can tip it out and knead it on an oiled surface for another five minutes. After you have finished, oil the bowl you started with, pop the dough back in, and cover it with cling film. Either way, leave in a warm place for an hour.
Line a large baking tray with parchment paper and then grease it with a little olive oil (I use a 33x20cm brownie tin for this, but size isn’t too important as long as it’s fairly large. You can also make two smaller loaves if you prefer). Oil your hands, tip the dough onto the baking tray, and flatten it out so that it reaches all the corners and sides. Cover and leave to prove for another hour.
Heat your oven to 220C/ 200C fan/ gas 6. With oiled fingers, poke your sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and sprigs of rosemary into the surface of your dough, pressing them right down so they don’t spring out during baking. Drizzle the whole thing with plenty of olive oil, sprinkle it with salt (the good stuff, Maldon or Cornish), and then bake it for around 20-25 minutes or until it’s golden and risen with a firm crust and the smell of fresh bread is driving everyone in your house crazy.

Double Chocolate Banana Bread

30th October 201630th October 20163 Comments

It’s very weird that it’s taken me so long to post this recipe, because this chocolate banana bread is the thing I bake more often than anything else. Even more than brownies. James’s work snack of choice is banana bread, and every couple of weeks I made a this loaf, slice it up, and freeze it so that he can take a piece out every morning. I actually buy more bananas than I know we can eat for the purpose of letting some of them go past their best in order to turn them into banana bread. I fear I am missing the point of fruit.

Banana bread has sort of gained an unearned reputation for being a healthier choice. I do have a recipe for spelt banana bread which is sort of ‘healthy’ (as it uses spelt and wholemeal flours, greek yoghurt, and maple syrup, rather than white flours and caster sugar) but it’s still, inescapably, cake. Banana bread, you guys, is cake. Let’s not be fooled by the fruit contained within and the sober sounding ‘bread’ in the title. Baking it in a bread tin does not make it bread. It’s no more virtuous than a Victoria sponge. Especially not when you do what I have done here and stuff it with chocolate. But why wouldn’t you? It’s so tasty.

It is a delight of a cake. It’s moist, decadent, and full of flavour. It’s very easy to make, and would be a fun, simple one to do with kids. It keeps beautifully, even if you don’t freeze it. You can make it with whatever chocolate you like, or mix it up and add nuts. None of the ingredients are obscure. I’ve drizzled the pictured banana bread with melted white chocolate, but this step could certainly be skipped.

You could even keep up the charade and pretend it’s healthy because it has bananas in it, if it will make you feel better. I won’t tell.

Source: Recipe adapted from the ever-excellent Smitten Kitchen.

Notes: This, and indeed any banana bread, will not work unless your bananas are very ripe. They can be over-ripe, almost completely black-skinned, but they can’t be firm and green.

You can use any type of chocolate for the chunks in the banana bread, but I love baked white chocolate and like the contrast between the dark cake and the pale chocolate here.

Ingredients:

3 large ripe bananas
115 grams butter, melted
150 grams light brown soft sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
125 grams plain flour
40g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
100g white chocolate

50g white chocolate for drizzle (optional)

Method:

Put your butter on to melt gently. Heat your oven to 170C/ 150C fan/ gas 3. Grease a non-stick loaf tin. Mash your bananas in the bottom of a large bowl – if they are ripe enough, you should just be able to attack them with an electric hand whisk. Whisk in the melted butter, light brown soft sugar, egg, and vanilla. Place a sieve over the bowl and weigh the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt into it, then sift them over the wet mixture. Break your 100g chocolate into squares and add to the bowl. Fold everything together until only just combined, but do not mix further.
Pour your batter into your loaf tin and bake for around 40 mins, or until the banana bread is risen, firm, and passes the skewer test. Let cool in the tin for around 20 mins, then turn it out to cool completely (or just cut chunks off and stuff it into your mouth when it’s warm, as I definitely do not do every time). If finishing it with more white chocolate, simply melt the chocolate and drizzle over the cake, then leave to set at room temperature.

Crumpets

13th October 201613th October 20162 Comments

I didn’t realise it, but crumpets seem to inspire strong feelings in the general populace. The yeasted crumpets we know and love today are a gift from the Victorians and, as such, everyone has had plenty of time to form very definite opinions about them. I told a friend – a generally good and reasonable person – that I had made and was eating ridiculous amounts of crumpets. Upon hearing I was eating them with jam (shock! horror!) he was scandalised at the notion that I was adorning them with anything other than plain butter, and I’m not sure he’s entirely forgiven me. He is a purist who insists that crumpets + melted butter = perfection, and I am a heathen for messing with this equation. Unfortunately for him, I also love crumpets with a layer of Marmite, topped with a layer of cheese, and grilled until melty golden and delicious (try it, thank me later).

My butter-loving friend is not the only one with strong feelings. I gave some sample crumpets to a couple of other friends of mine after I’d made my first batch, as even I struggle to eat ten crumpets solo. One of these friends posted a picture of one of the crumpets I’d made on Facebook to say thank you, and a person I don’t know commented, saying ‘That looks suspiciously like a pikelet…’. I just love the use of the word ‘suspiciously’. As if it were a spy in disguise, infiltrating batches of baked goods, pretending to be a crumpet when it was only a humble pikelet. There’s a pikelet vs. crumpet debate to be had (although, frankly, who has that kind of time?), but as far as I understand it, pikelets are made without crumpet rings and thus tend to be shallower and more freeform as a result. What I made, then, are technically crumpets. Not that it matters at all, really, as both things are delicious.

I know crumpets are a fairly unusual thing to make, and I can’t deny that it is (a little) easier to simply buy a pack of them in a shop than it is to make them from scratch. But these fine specimens, hot from the pan, tender with gloriously buttery crisp edges, are much nicer than any shop-bought crumpet I’ve ever eaten. Yes, you do have to let the batter sit for an hour once you’ve made it, but it’s a very simple mixture made from cheap ingredients you probably have in the cupboard already, and it will take you literally five minutes to throw together. Also, because no one really makes crumpets from scratch, you will feel like an absolute rockstar for whipping up a batch for appreciative family or friends on a lazy weekend morning.

Notes:

The batter makes 10-12 crumpets, depending on how generous you are with depth and size.

This recipe is very unlikely to work properly if your bicarbonate of soda is out of date. I bake near-constantly, so I finish tubs of bicarbonate of soda and baking powder every month and am constantly purchasing new ones. However, if you turn out baked goods at a more sane rate then it’s perfectly possible that you have bicarbonate of soda that’s been sitting at the back of your cupboard for a couple of years. That stuff does go out of date. Check the label.

Normal people don’t tend to have crumpet rings. They are fairly cheap to buy, but if you don’t plan on making crumpets regularly I can see why you wouldn’t want to bother. But fear not! Just as with American pancakes, you can simply dollop the crumpet batter into a pan and it will cook away perfectly happily. Your crumpets will probably be a little flatter and more irregularly shaped (so technically pikelets, I think, but let’s not get into that), but they will still be completely delicious. Alternatively, if you have sets of cookie cutters (metal, not plastic, for obvious reasons) they will do the job too. Or you could just fill the pan and make one massive crumpet and slice it up, pizza style, to feed a brunch crowd. I haven’t actually tried this as the thought has only just occurred to me, but I can see no reason why it wouldn’t work and actually sounds pretty awesome.

Ingredients:

100ml water
275ml full fat milk
250g strong white bread flour
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Butter, for greasing

Method:

Heat the water and milk together in a saucepan until hand-hot. Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the yeast, caster sugar, bicarbonate of soda, and salt. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and gradually add the milk and water, beating with a wooden spoon, slowly drawing in more flour from the edges of the bowl as you add liquid until it is all smooth and incorporated (this is called the batter method, and is the best way to make a batter for crumpets, pancakes, Yorkshire puddings or whatever without getting lumps). Cover the bowl with cling film and leave the batter in a warm place for around an hour.
Your batter should now be thickened, obviously risen and full of bubbles. Grease crumpet rings with butter (if using) and melt a knob of butter in a non-stick pan over a medium heat until gently foaming. Place the rings (if using) into the pan and dollop around 4 tbsp of batter into each (until the rings are nearly full).
Lower the heat and cook the crumpets for around 10 mins. You want the crumpets to rise, form bubbles on the surface, and dry out all the way through. If your heat is too high, the bottoms of the crumpets will burn before they cook through. Remove the rings (with tongs, they will be hot) and flip the crumpets and cook for a couple of minutes more on the other side until golden.
Repeat until you have used all of your crumpet batter. Eat immediately, toast later, or even freeze and toast to defrost when crumpet cravings hit.

Easter Brownies Two Ways

27th March 201627th March 20164 Comments

Childhood Easter egg hunts are the very stuff of dreams, no? They’re one of those experiences that are utterly magical when you’re small, and it’s the sort of magic that, sadly, cannot be replicated as an adult. Never again will dashing around the garden, crazy high on sugar and looking for your next hit, basket clutched in sticky hands, hold the same delight. Now I am unlikely to run for anything unless being chased by something genuinely dangerous, and I have the means to simply go out and buy chocolate of my own accord. These developments are welcome, but they sadly come at the expense of the exhilarating Easter egg hunts I once knew.

Just a quick post today with a very simple idea: Easter brownies for kids and adults. I love brownies and I go on about them on here all the time, but so far I have only posted one recipe, so now it’s time for me to start slowly expanding my archives. Here, I’ve taken one basic brownie recipe, inspired by the standard in my Leiths textbook, and have suggested two completely different variations. For kids, a lighter chocolate, pieces of toffee, and an assortment of bright eggs. For adults, rich and dark 85% chocolate, homemade marzipan, cherries, a hefty dollop of kirsch, and some white chocolate drizzle. I mean, in theory, one was for kids and one was for adults, but there’s nothing to stop adults eating the kid version, as James proved when he took them into the office. Er, maybe kids shouldn’t eat the adult version though, because they’ve got quite a bit of booze in them.

So it’s just a quick post today, because I have eaten a horrifying and wonderful amount of chocolate and I need to go and have a lie down. Whatever you are up to on this Sunday which is both sunny and stormy (somehow), I hope you’re having a lovely time and enjoying some shameless decadence.

Source: My base recipe is adapted from the one in the Leiths book, which I use on a daily basis.

Notes: This recipe will work best in a 20cm x 20cm square tin. They keep very well and freeze excellently (simply zap a frozen brownie in the micowave for 30 seconds in a chocolate deprivation emergency and enjoy a gooey treat). I always undercook my brownies so that they are fudgy and delicious and, when hot from the oven, almost spoonable, but feel free to leave yours in the oven for an extra 5 minutes if you are looking for something a little bit more robust.

The method is the same for both versions, with slightly different additions.

Ingredients:

200g chocolate (60% for the kid version, 85% for the adult version)
140g butter
225g golden caster sugar
2 large eggs, plus 1 extra yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
90g plain flour for kid version, 120g plain flour for adult version

For kid version

2x 90g packets of little eggs (I have used Cadbury and Galaxy here, but anything will work), half left whole and half chopped roughly
3 Creme Eggs cut in half (I find a knife dipped in hot water best for this)
50g toffee pieces

For adult version

100g marzipan, cut into roughly 2cm chunks (I made my own but shop bought is fine – let me know if you want a home made marzipan recipe and I am happy to post one)
4 tbsp kirsch
100g pitted cherries, chopped roughly (I used tinned here)
50g white chocolate

Method:

Break your chocolate into pieces and chop your butter into rough cubes and place them both in a glass or metal bowl over a pan of gently simmering water and leave them to melt, stirring occasionally. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4. Grease your square tin. I line the base too, because, you know, belt and braces, but if you have a good non-stick tin or one with a removable base then you can get away with not doing that.
While your chocolate and butter melt, mix your eggs with your extra yolk and your vanilla, and weigh out your sugar. Chop and prep whichever additional ingredients you are using. When your chocolate and butter have completely melted, beat in your sugar (I use an electric hand whisk), followed by your eggs. Sift the flour and salt over the mixture and then beat that in too. For the kid version, stir through some chopped and whole eggs and half your toffee pieces. For the adult version, stir through your cherries, marzipan, and kirsch. Pour the mixture into the tin, smooth the surface, and bake for 25-30 mins or until done to your satisfaction. You want a crisp and crackly top, but remember they will firm up a bit as they cool.
For the kid version, grab your brownies out of the oven 5 minutes before they are due to be done and press the Creme Egg halves and remaining mini eggs into the surface of the mixture, then continue to bake for 5 mins until they are slightly melted into the surface. For the adult version, melt the white chocolate while the brownies are cooking and let them cool for five minutes before drizzling it over the finished product.

Chocolate Vortex Muffins

1st March 20166th March 20163 Comments

This is a ridiculous name for a recipe, and yet it’s what I have always called these muffins, and now, try as I might, I can’t seem to think of another name for them which works for me. I think that once you have moved past chocolate, and double chocolate, and triple chocolate, you are not really supposed to start calling something quadruple chocolate: the thing has surpassed all the normal chocolate categories and become something else. If we can think of a vortex as something regarded as drawing into its power everything that surrounds it, then the title of this post doesn’t seem so odd, at least to me – I was certainly drawn into the power of these muffins and somehow ate three in a row without really thinking. It also sort of reminds me of one of my favourite things on the whole entire world wide web.

I feel like muffins have been slightly forgotten in the cupcake craze of the last decade, which makes me sad. I love a cupcake, as evidenced by the many cupcake recipes on this blog, but I still have a great deal of time for the lesser-spotted muffin, delicious as they are unadorned with pretty frosting and edible glitter. Muffins are solid, dependable, a vehicle for all manner of loveliness. Their pleasing heft and straight-from-the-oven gooey warmth should not be underestimated.

Baked white chocolate is a wonderful thing. I know a lot of chocolate lovers who spurn the white stuff, insisting that it’s ‘not real chocolate’ and is vastly inferior to the stuff with actual cocoa solids. While I know they are technically right, I don’t mind white chocolate – although it’s certainly not my favourite – and would quite happily gnaw away on the better quality varieties. However, white chocolate becomes truly lovely when baked. I don’t know why (maybe because the sugars caramelise?), but it melts more quickly than milk or dark chocolate, turns a beautiful toasty colour, and develops a surprising depth of flavour.

I feel honour-bound to admit that I was making these in a great rush, and initially forgot to add the milk. I looked at my dry, lumpy batter in confusion for a moment before remembering, and quickly dashed in the milk, swearing and beating the mixture rapidly. The muffins came out absolutely fine, so I think it’s fair to say the batter is pretty forgiving.

Notes: These muffins are best when slightly under-baked in the centre, when they become gooey, volcanic, and irresistible, so do err on the side of caution and don’t leave them in the oven forever. They do keep fairly well, though, and are very hearty and chunky beings. You should get 12 good size muffins from this recipe.

I like to make these in the tulip muffin cases in the photos – you can get them from any supermarket, or even fold them yourself out of greaseproof paper if you are crafty – but obviously these are not essential and feel free to use whatever muffin cases you have kicking about.

I tend to keep back a few bits of chocolate from the main mix and push them into the top of the muffins once the mixture has been divided between cases, just before baking, to get the full effect of the glorious bronzed white chocolate.

Source: I got this recipe off the internet years and years ago and saved it to my hard-drive, and have since played about with it a bit. I’m afraid I have no idea where it was from originally, so if you do recognise it then please let me know.

Ingredients:

175g good dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids
325g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
70g cocoa powder – not the drinking chocolate stuff, proper cocoa powder
125g light brown soft sugar
365ml whole milk
100ml vegetable oil or other flavourless oil such as corn oil
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
125g milk chocolate – either break a bar into pieces, or use chocolate buttons, which work well here
125g white chocolate – as above, buttons work well

Method:

Get your dark chocolate melting slowly in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4. Line your muffin tin with paper cases. Sieve your dry ingredients – flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder – into your largest bowl and stir in the sugar. Make a well in the middle.
Measure your milk and oil into a measuring jug, pop in your eggs and vanilla, and whisk it all up to combine. Slowly pour the wet ingredients into the well of the dry ingredients, stirring to combine until evenly mixed. Working quickly now, fold in your melted dark chocolate and your pieces of milk and white chocolate.
Divide your mixture equally between muffin cases and bake for 17-2o minutes, or until risen and mostly set but slightly gooey in the middle. Cool on a wire rack, or shove muffins into your mouth hot, by the handful.

Raspberry and Passion Fruit Iced Buns – Bake Off Bake Along Week 10

13th October 201511th October 20156 Comments

So here we are. The Great British Bake Off 2015 has finished, and I am limping along into Week 10 of this bake along. I have had triumphs and disasters – thankfully more of the former than the latter – and I am proud to say that I baked every single week.

Did anyone else get a bit teary when they announced that Nadiya was the winner? Incredibly well-deserved, I think. When the final started I initially thought it could go any way, but it wasn’t long before it became clear that she had it in the bag. It’s always so gratifying to see someone really progress and change and grow in confidence: compare Nadiya of the final to Nadiya of Week 1. A metamorphosis.

I’ll miss having the show to watch but, although I’ve enjoyed doing it, I’m glad to be at the end of the bake along. I really don’t have time to do it any more, and although I pushed myself to finish this week it would have been the last one even if it hadn’t been the end of the show.

So, here we are. Raspberry and passion fruit iced buns. They aren’t perfect, and they look pretty messy, but they tasted delicious, and that’s all I really wanted. If anyone else made iced buns this week, I’d be interested to know how you found it. My dough was very, very wet and incredibly difficult to work with, almost impossible to knead. Part of the reason that these buns are chubby and misshapen instead of long, elegant fingers is because the dough was too wet to shape in any meaningful way. But the buns came out light and soft, and I think that’s because it was such a wet dough, so perhaps that’s the price you pay.

Here’s the recipe I used for the dough: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/iced_fingers_34133

I added my own home-made passion fruit curd, and crushed some raspberries to fold through the cream, then finished off the icing with some freeze-dried raspberries.

Thank you so much to Amanda and Ala for running this bake along and inspiring me to get involved. I’ve loved seeing all the other incredible bakes everyone else has made, and it’s been a pleasure to discover lots of new blogs over the course of the last ten weeks.

Until next year, my darlings. À bientôt, j’espère.

Malt Chocolate Banana Bundt Cake

20th August 201521st August 20151 Comment

Do you know what the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is? That sounds like it’s going to be the set up to a joke, but it’s not: I’m actually asking.

I thought I knew, until recently. I had a vague notion that introverts preferred their own company, and were often solitary and shy, while extroverts were confident and social by nature.

It turns out that definition isn’t accurate. Basically, as I understand it, introverts draw their energy from being alone, while extroverts draw their energy from being around people. An introvert, therefore, isn’t necessarily a solitary person sitting in a corner: they could be juggling fire and cracking jokes in the centre of the group while asking you to update them on that saga with your neighbour’s dog and simultaneously getting the drinks in. But not forever. An introvert isn’t likely to be in the last group of determined pub-crawlers, unwilling to stop talking and so trekking around town to find somewhere still open at 3am. An extrovert, on the other hand, thrives on the company of others: they enjoy social time and are likely to be bored by themselves.

I am a classic introvert. Even if I am enjoying an evening with a group of people I genuinely like being around, I can only stick it out for a limited amount of time before becoming socially exhausted. It will sound ridiculous, but was only relatively recently that I realised that this was okay. It took me a worryingly long time to see that it’s actually fine to be the first one to say ‘Right, that’s me! See ya!’, stand up from the table, go through the business of the hugs and farewells, and escape.

I think that our social practices tend to cater to extroverts. There’s a certain kudos to being the one out latest, to being the ‘life and soul’. When you get up to leave early, people sigh and groan and say ‘Oh come on! It’s only 10pm! Stay for one more drink’. But now I know that it’s fine not to. I have a reputation for being the first to leave, the one tucked up in bed while everyone else is contemplating round five and wondering if anywhere serves food at 11pm. I don’t mind being thought of as a bit pathetic: for me, there’s no fun to be had in staying out when all my social energy has been drained, and I know I’m not good company by that stage either.

In keeping with the practice of doing what makes you happy rather than what is expected (as long as what makes you happy isn’t, you know, hurtful to others or illegal), I made this cake.

I picked up this beautiful book, by Annie Rigg, pretty much by accident. I had twenty minutes to kill in town and wandered into the bookshop, and then mooched along to the cookery section, and then casually picked up a book and… I really wasn’t intending to buy anything, but I couldn’t leave it behind.

The book is full of gorgeous, elaborate, modern recipes, and I could have made something much more impressive if I’d had the time and inclination. But this was the cake that was calling me, so even though it wasn’t the healthiest, or the fanciest, or trickiest, I decided to do it anyway.

Source: Summer Berries & Autumn Fruits, by Annie Rigg. It’s great.

Notes: I originally made this cake exactly as it was in the book, only changing the toppings because I wanted something pretty to feed to a group. Although the cake was delicious, I didn’t get the malt chocolate flavour through as strongly as I would have liked, so I have slightly upped the quantities here. Nonetheless, besides some slight alterations and extra toppings, this is very much Annie Rigg’s recipe.

Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients: you will probably have most of them in the cupboard. In fact, the part of the reason that I chose this cake was that I was short on time and didn’t want to have to go shopping for supplies.

Ingredients:

for the cake

200g softened butter, plus extra for greasing
25g cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting
260g plain flour
40g malted milk powder (such as Ovaltine)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
125g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
4 large eggs, beaten
4 medium bananas, very ripe
3 tbsp sour cream, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
50g dark chocolate, chopped

for the frosting

100g soft light brown sugar
100g dark muscovado sugar
75g butter
125ml double cream
50g dark chocolate, chopped
pinch of salt

extra toppings (optional)

bag of maltesers
1 firm banana
25g white chocolate

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4. Grease a bundt tin with butter and dust with cocoa powder. The recipe suggests a 2.5 litre bundt tin, but I have no idea how big my tins are in litres (!?), and I only have one bundt tin anyway, so I went with that and it was fine. In a large bowl, sieve together the cocoa, flour, malted milk powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and salt.
In another bowl, cream together your butter and both sugars. Add the beaten egg gradually, mixing until it’s even. Tip your dry ingredients into the bowl with the butter, sugars, and eggs. In the bowl that you were using for the dry mix (no need to wash it), mash the bananas, and then add the sour cream and vanilla and mix to combine. Tip this into the bowl with everything else and mix it all together. Add your chopped chocolate and fold it in.
Pop your mixture into your tin, and bake for 30-40 minutes. Let the cake rest in the tin for two minutes (and no more), and then carefully turn it onto a wire rack and leave to cool completely.
For the frosting, heat both sugars, butter, and cream gently in a saucepan until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved. Simmer for 30 seconds, then remove from the heat and add the chocolate and salt. Stir until smooth, and then pour it gently over your cold cake.
If you want to get overly complicated, like I did, top the cake with dried banana slices, maltesers, and grated white chocolate.

Enjoy a piece on your sofa, alone at 10pm on a Saturday night, reading a good book, watching your favourite TV show, or simply being content in your own company.

(Then probably take the rest of the cake out to share with friends, because it’s huge).

Date, Hazelnut, Chilli, and Chocolate Biscotti – Bake Off Bake Along Week 2

18th August 201518th August 201520 Comments

So, um, remember last week when I predicted that Marie would be in the final three? My prophetess skills clearly leave a lot to be desired. No one’s going to be starting a religion in my name any time soon.

Ah well. Goodbye, Marie. You will be missed. I very much enjoyed your warm, Scottish, grandmotherly vibe.

Cake week was always going to be my best week for this bake along; it’s a shame it came first, in a way, because it’s all downhill from here. I make a lot of cake. Really, too much cake. There is indeed such a thing and you can find it on my kitchen counter. And in my fridge. And the freezer. I am now realising that I almost never make biscuits, and next week is bread week, which will be… interesting. Not good interesting. Interesting in the way that it’s interesting to watch a drunken friend flirting with an inappropriate crush: you feel like you should stop it, but a small, mischievous part of you wants to sit back and watch the fun when someone does something ill-advised.

The biscotti were an obvious choice for me to bake this week, and I am betting that the majority of people taking part in the bake along will do the same. When I started this (er, last week), I wanted to try and bake the things from the Bake Off that I didn’t necessarily gravitate towards automatically, in an attempt to expand my repertoire a little. We’re a mere two weeks in, and I have already dropped those high and mighty ideals. I was short on time this week. The Arlette biscuits didn’t hugely appeal to me – they didn’t seem to be quite worth the faff, and there wasn’t much opportunity for creativity in the recipe. As for the biscuit box, it seemed to me like a bake focused far more on appearance than on taste, which is fair enough for a show-stopper. Don’t get me wrong: I like the things I make to look attractive, if at all possible, and I really was incredibly impressed by some of the bakers’ beautiful boxes. I don’t think anyone could have failed to be charmed by that fire engine. But I’d much rather something looked plain and tasted amazing than looked amazing and tasted plain. I just don’t think I’d particularly want to eat four walls and a roof’s worth of shortbread covered in icing. Anyway, any biscuit box I made would look rubbish.

So, I skipped Biscuitception (biscuit within a biscuit… no?), and more by process of elimination than anything, biscotti it was. In fairness, I’ve never made biscotti before, so you could argue it is expanding my baking horizons a bit. And it was actually trickier than I thought it would be, mostly because I am a massive idiot and initially added too much egg, turning the dough into delicious superglue. I then decided the best way to incorporate the egg would be to knead the dough with my hands. Spoiler alert: this was a bad idea. I ended up wearing huge, sticky, dough gloves. I mean, this wasn’t the worst thing in the world, because raw dough is delicious (come on, we all know it’s true), and it gave me a legitimate excuse to eat the spare scraps off my fingers, once I’d gotten most of the dough back together with a spatula. Anyway, I added a bit more flour and it all turned out okay in the end.

Source: It seemed only right and proper to start with a Paul Hollywood recipe but I went pretty off-piste after that.

Notes: I got a bit obsessed with the concept of a chilli and chocolate biscotti, but also wanted to include fruit and nuts in the recipe. I went for hazelnuts, as they go so well with chocolate, and dates for their deep – almost caramel – flavour. I thought I chocolate dough might be overkill with dates, so I decided to dip the baked biscuits in dark chocolate instead. As for the chilli, I simply added a teaspoon of hot chilli powder to the dry ingredients, with ginger as a slight accent. This gives these biscotti a lingering warmth in the mouth rather than a full on chilli kick, which was what I was going for. If you want them to scream ‘chilli!’ at you, then add an extra teaspoon of chilli powder.

Ingredients:
250g plain white flour, plus extra for dusting
½ tsp baking powder
250g caster sugar
1 tsp hot chilli powder
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 large eggs, beaten
200g skinned hazelnuts
150g stoned dates
150g melted dark chocolate, for dipping
100g chopped toasted hazelnuts, for dipping

Method:

Preheat your oven to 160C/ 140C fan/ gas 4. Line a baking tray – I have re-usable silicone mats, which I would really recommend. Get your largest bowl, and pop your dry ingredients in there: flour; baking powder; caster sugar; chilli powder; ginger powder; salt. Mix them all together so that everything is evenly distributed.
Whisk your eggs in a small bowl, and then gradually add them to the dry mix. Really gradually. Far more gradually than I did. Make sure the egg is well mixed/ kneaded in after each addition. You are not going for a sticky dough here. If it does feel sticky, add a little more flour.
Chop your hazelnuts roughly, leaving some of them whole. Knead them into the dough with your hands. Chop your dates and do the same – the dates will disintegrate and marble a little in the dough, which makes the biscotti all the better.
Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently for a moment, making sure it’s smooth and everything is incorporated. Divide it in half. Shape each half into a log about 4cm wide and as long as you can fit on your tray. Space them apart, as the dough spreads in the oven. Bake for 30 minutes.
Take your tray out of the oven and leave the biscotti to cool for ten minutes, to help prevent cracking when you cut them. Slice the logs on the diagonal into 2cm thick slices, and move them back to the tray, cut side up. Put the tray back in the oven. Paul Hollywood would disapprove of my biscotti, because I don’t like them completely dry – I prefer them with a little chewiness in the centre. I baked my biscotti for another 15 minutes. If you want them completely dry, bake for another 20-30 minutes. Remember, they firm up as they cool.
Once the biscotti are completely cold, dip them in your melted dark chocolate and then sprinkle with chopped hazelnuts to decorate.

Chocolate Fudge Cake

15th August 201514th August 20152 Comments

I went to a small school. By the time I got to Sixth Form, our year group comprised twenty seven people. Everyone else had left, mostly to go to schools that offered either a) a greater variety of A Level subjects or b) boys.

I loved school. Of course, there were some awful times – being a socially awkward, overweight, shy, bespectacled, book-obsessed teenager isn’t exactly the stuff of fantasies – and I certainly had what we can euphemistically refer to as ‘rocky moments’ throughout my time there. But basically, overall, it was great. I was at the same school for thirteen years (the secondary school had a primary school attached), it was a five minute walk away from my parents’ house (which was excellent, as I am lazy), and I felt like I knew my place in my safe little world.

Of course, I then went off to university and became a tiny minnow in a roiling, cavernous sea and it was awful, but that’s for another blog post.

My school doesn’t exist any more, of course. I mean, the building is still there, and it still has the same name. But the school I went to is gone. I’ve been away so long that all of the students I knew, even from the youngest years, will have passed through. All of the teachers who taught me at A Level have left, either retiring or going on to new places. Even the building has changed: since we left, they’ve rebuilt the boxy little old Sixth Form centre and made something shiny and new and unfamiliar. I wouldn’t know my way around there now. If I wanted to visit, I’d have to make an appointment, and sign in at the office, and get an access badge from an unfamiliar face on the reception desk. It was like a little bereavement, realising I couldn’t ever go back to the place where I spent the best part of thirteen years.

In our final year of school, as each of the twenty seven of us turned eighteen, we celebrated birthdays together. Everyone in the year would often club together to buy a special joint birthday present for whoever was hitting adulthood (legally, anyway), and we’d go out drinking, proudly flashing our legitimate IDs. We’d all share birthday cake in the Sixth Form common room, bringing pieces to class and giving them to teachers in the hope that they’d forgive us for being especially rowdy.

Sometimes, I made the birthday cakes for my friends, and when I did, I always made this one. After a while, people started calling it ‘Hannah Cake’.

My family isn’t particularly traditional, but we do have one ‘family recipe’: this chocolate fudge cake. I am tempted to lie and say it was passed down from my German great-grandmother, my Oma, to her son, and then to my mother, who passed it on to me. However, the truth is that my mother found it in a recipe book who knows how long ago, and baked it sporadically throughout my childhood. It was one of the first things I ever learned to bake myself.

Source: Now, this definitely originally came from a recipe book, but I’m afraid I can’t cite the source as it was twenty-odd years ago and I never knew it myself. I fear it will have been lost in time, but if someone does recognise it (anyone with a specialist knowledge of 1980s Canadian cookbooks?) then do please let me know. I am going to write it down from memory, so it will be slightly altered in any case.

Notes: The cake itself is more like a torte than anything else, I suppose, lightened as it is by egg whites, with a dense and delicious base of ground almonds. It lacks the apricot glaze of a sachertorte, though, and the icing itself is not a ganache but a delicious hybrid of a thing that I have never come across in any other recipe. It’s also denser, moister, and more cake-like than a classic torte, because of the breadcrumbs. I suspect the inclusion of breadcrumbs will be frowned upon by purists, but it makes it a very stable cake and therefore practically foolproof. I am going to tempt the wrath of the baking gods by telling you that I have been making this cake since the age of about eleven, and it has never gone wrong. It’s dense and chocolatey and moist and lovely, and best served in small-ish slices for those who are say things like ‘ooh, that’s very rich’. I can eat great slabs of it.

You will also need one cake tin, preferably springform. I’ve used everything from an 18cm tin to a 23cm tin here and been fine – you just need to keep an eye on it if you’re using a bigger tin because it will cook more quickly.

Ingredients:

For the cake

225g good quality dark chocolate (I use 70%)
225g butter, softened
225g caster sugar
6 large eggs, separated
1 tsp vanilla essence
110g ground almonds
150g fresh white bread (this will become breadcrumbs).

For the icing

175g icing sugar
50g cocoa powder
110g caster sugar
75g butter
4 tbsp tepid water

Method:

Grease and line your tin (yes, you do really have to do this. Yes, even if it’s non-stick). Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/ gas 4.
First, make your breadcrumbs. Whack all your bread into your food processor and blend it until it you’ve got some lovely white crumbs. If you don’t have a food processor then good luck to you: I have previously made breadcrumbs in a tiny little food processor-less student kitchen, and we tried grating bread, shredding it with forks, and eventually tearing it by hand. Not a fun half hour.
Next, got your chocolate in a glass bowl over a simmering plan of water to melt. Keep a vague eye on it and stir it occasionally while you get on with the other stuff.
Cream your butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. If you have done your mise-en-place properly you will have already separated your eggs. If you are like me and forget every bloody time, do that now. Then add your egg yolks to your butter and sugar one by one, beating them in as you go. Add the vanilla essence, then your almonds, melted chocolate and breadcrumbs.
Whisk your egg whites into soft peaks. Take about a quarter of them and whack them in with the chocolate and beat it any old how, just to loosen up the mixture. Then fold the rest in slowly and carefully so you don’t knock all the air out.
Dollop the mixture fairly carefully into your beautifully lined tin (again, you’re protecting the precious air that you worked so hard to get into the egg whites). Use a spatula to smooth it out as best you can.
Pop it in the oven. Now, my oven is fairly vicious and I use a 23cm cake tin, so it takes about 35 minutes to cook for me. If you have a gentler oven or a smaller tin then it can take up to an hour. After half an hour, keep an eye on it. You want it springy to touch and just starting to crack along the top. Take it out, let it rest for ten minutes, then get it out the tin and turn it upside down so it’s flat-side up, ready to ice.
Once you’ve got the cake out, start making the icing. You want to ice the cake while it’s still warm so that it runs off nicely. Put the butter, sugar, and water in a pan on medium heat and heat until there are no sugar crystals left – it should be smooth, not gritty. Keep an eye on it, though, so it doesn’t turn into caramel. Sieve the icing sugar and cocoa together. Pour the liquid mix into the powder mix gradually and whisk until you have smooth, glorious, fudgy icing. Tip it onto your cake, and push it down the sides. Decorate however you wish, although it’s perfectly delicious as is.