It's been a long time....

What can I say, it's been a long time since I've visited this blog let alone updated it with anything, not that I've stopped baking over the last few years as the pictures below will testify.

My cake making skills haven't improved much they still look home made but half the fun is making them the other half is eating them. My plan for the coming year is to start posting more on here.

First Christmas bake of 2016

Christmas Baking

This year I managed to get plenty of time off over the Christmas break, so no excuses not to do any baking. Not the fine baking one sees in fancy shops but every day baking, apple pie, panatone, mince pies and bread of course. The panattone was such an easy recipe, throw it all in the mixer and leave it to rise overnight, knock it back and leave it again for several hours in the tin and bake. It did take longer than the recipe stated to bake but just a matter of checking it every ten minutes or so. There are pics of course:

Still Going

Yes I'm still baking away even  though I haven't published anything on my blog for an age despite promising to do so. I could excuse myself by saying that I have been far to busy at work, decorating the house or just been on holiday too much,  all of them are true but I have found time to bake a few things every now and again.

Just a few things baked:

Start Again

New year, new post. well thats the theory anyway, it's been a long time since I wrote anything on here so apologies for that and yes I know it's february. It's not that I haven't been baking anything just haven't had time to blog about it since they stopped us accessing Blogger at work. Okay I know poor excuse. I have been baking all the usual stuff, bread, biscuits and the odd cake or two but nothing really fancy apart from a halloween cake that came out rather well also a little charity bake at work for the British Heart Foundation. raised a modest £72.00 pounds which for a few cakes wasn't too bad.

My Cherry Ring

Easter has come and gone with plenty of the usual treats, hot cross buns and Easter eggs. In addition I made what I thought was going to be a small fruit ring as a desert for Sunday lunch, it turned out the size of a dinner plate. The original recipe I followed was for a Swedish fruit ring but the dough was far too wet and I had to rescue it by adding another 100g of flour and another teaspoon of yeast, the result was a batch of dough that made rather a large cake. This turned out not to be such a bad thing as the cake was demolished almost in one sitting. The filling was a a mixture of pecans and hazelnuts with raisins and glace cherries, to the sugar I added a teaspoon of nutmeg and cinnamon, once baked I mixed up some lemon icing and then studded it with more cherries.

My Cherry Ring

A link to the original recipe I used:

http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/2353/swedish-cinnamon-pecan-tea-ring.aspx

New Toy

Well it's been awhile since I wrote anything for this blog so I thought it was about time I did an update. I've not really had any time of late to do any baking apart from the odd loaf here and there but I had a bit of luck last week, I managed to buy myself a Brod & Taylor Folding Proofer and it has kick started my interest in baking bread again. I have already tried it out on my standard bread recipe and it worked a treat. It's supposed to be folded up and put away when not in use but I can see it being out most of the time.

This is the bad boy out and being used, dough rising nicely

On another note the lovely Tasha (a work colleague) was leaving to have a baby, she asked me to bake a cake, I have to say I'm not a good cake baker but I had a go.