Christmas Baking

In the run up to the Christmas break from work I have a tendency to go in to a baking frenzy, by baking I mean making cakes, sweets and all manner of things. This year is no exception with Chocolate Fudge with Pistachios, Fruit and Nut Chocolate an Coconut Ice being a few of the items on the list. As always it seems to be a mad rush to get everything made in time but despite all the office parties and late nights I managed it.

Chocolate Pistachio Fudge

Triple Chocolate Fruit & Nut

 

Biscuit Tree with Lemon Icing

No Lead in these pencils

As the title of this blog suggests my pencils are lead free. One Sunday a few months ago I was invited to a very delightful lunch in Richmond. Having arrived a little bit early I had the opportunity to browse some shops, on passing a charity shop I noticed in the window a book about biscuits and as I am known to have one or two cookery books I thought one more wouldn't hurt. The book was all about baking and decorating biscuits, surprisingly easy and so many different ideas, I picked one of the least difficult ones and gave it a go. The resulting biscuits came out rather well, they didn't stay on the plate long anyway!

Rather annoyingly Blogger seems to have added adverts to random words in my blog. Please ignore them!

That's Shallot

Okay, first an apology for the badly titled post, I couldn't help it. Sometimes it's really difficult to think of a title, baked, baked again, more baking... see what I mean there's only so many ways to say 'Yes! I have been baking again, anyway I've not been baking this time rather I have been pickling, my one and only follower on here expressed a desire to pickle some shallots and I thought why not have a go as well. I've not made pickled onions for years and I had forgotten what an eye watering experience it is. In this case it was shallots but the method is the same.

2.5Lb's Shallots/Onions
Salt
Vinegar
Pickling spices

You can also add bay leaves, dried red chillies and mustard seeds to the jar when you place the shallots/onions in there.

Place the shallots/onions in a bowl and pour boiling water over them, when they are cool enough to handle, top and tail them, peel the outer skin off and place in another bowl. It was at this point that my eyes began to water, fortunately I wear contact lenses which seem to stop the worst of the effect of peeling so many shallots. once you have your shallots/ onions peeled you need to soak them in a brine solution for about 24 hours. The brine solution is made up by adding 2.5 grams of salt to every pint of water required to cover the shallots/onions.  Weigh the shallots/onions down by placing a plate on top of them. When you are ready to pickle you will need to have a  hot sterilised jar prepared. Place the vinegar in a non corrosive pan along with any spices you wish to use, these are best kept in a small muslin bad so that they are easy to fish out when finished with. Heat the vinegar slowly, remember to have the extractor fan going or the windows open as once the vinegar begins to boil it will make a strong smelling vapour cloud.  Wash the shallots/onions in cold water to remove any of the salt and place them in the sterilised jar, bring the vinegar to a boil for about five minutes, fish out the spice bag and pour the vinegar over the shallots/onions, seal the jar. They should be ready to eat in about four weeks, keep the jar in a cool dark place.

I weighed the shallots down in the jar by putting a sterilised glass ramekin dish on top, otherwise they would have floated, I'm looking forward to tasting these in about a month's time. The shallots weren't the only thing I've been making, mango chutney and lime pickle were also on the production line.

Lemon curd

I have to say that Lemon Curd is not one of my favourite things, however I know one or two people that love it. I also wanted to have some in the cupboard as one or two of the recipes I've been looking at call for it, so there was nothing else to do but make some. A fairly straight forward recipe the most time consuming part of it was grating the lemon peel, oh and stirring the curd for about 35 minutes!

6 lemons (grated rind and juice)

150g Butter

5 Eggs, beaten

400g Sugar

Put the lemon rind and juice in a small pan with the sugar, heat gently until the sugar has dissolved. Add the butter and stir until melted.

Transfer the mixture to a bowl placed over a pan of simmering water, sieve the eggs into the mixture and stir for about 25 to 40 minutes (until the mixture coats the back of the spoon)

Pour the curd into warm sterilized jars and seal. allow to cool and keep in the fridge.

New Tin

This may be a bit strange but after what seems like ages I have finally managed to get my hands on a proper bread tin. As you will see from the pictures below they are a little bit different than the 'loaf' tins that are readily available in most supermarket stores or even specialist cooking shops. I used my ordinary white loaf recipe baking the dough for 25 minutes at 200 degrees then raised the temperature to 230  degrees for another 10 minutes. The results was a loaf that is nice and brown on top and doesn't seem to have gone soft when it has cooled down.

Basic White Dough

600g white bread flour
350ml warm water
1tsp salt
1tsp dried yeast
1tbsp vegatable fat

I use a bread machine to knead the dough and give it it's first rise, I then shape it as required (bread tin, freeform, rolls etc.) by using the bread machine I know it's going to be properly kneaded.

 Still a bit pale but not too bad.

Cupcakes

Every now and again some of the ladies in the office I work with hold a charity event, this usually takes the form of a cake and raffle sale. As I'm known to be fond of baking a cake or two I'm often asked to contribute, this time I was asked to make something but not 'the Green Thing' which was my last offering. The green thing in question happened to be a Grasshopper Pie, one of Nigella's recipes. With that in mind I thought I would keep it simple and just make some cupcakes. Even though I posses enough books on baking to fill a shop I thought I would use a recipe I found online, Raspberry Cupcakes. An easy recipe and I think I nailed it pretty well. This was my first major go at making cupcakes and I'm pleased with the resuslts.

This is one of a dozen that seemed to go down rather well, I did make some Lemon and Poppy seed cupcakes but didn't take a photo.

Latest Offerings.....

Okay,okay I know I've been bad about updating my blog but in my defence I have been rather busy. I work for a large construction company in there finance department and it has been the companies year end, so it was one mad rush to get things finalised. That's not to say that I haven't been baking anything, far from it, as you can see from the pics below and I even tried my hand at some cupcakes the other day using a recipe by Dan Lepard, the cupcakes turned out really well but the butter cream icing was a different matter. I think I need to try out a few different recipes and I know I'm going to need a lot more practise before they look as good as I want them to. So here are some of my latest offerings:

Stilton & Raisin Bread

Green Olive Bread

Onion Bread

Hot Cross Buns

Weekend Treats....

This weekend I decided to make one of my favourite cakes, Belgian Buns, Whenever I'm asked what cake would I like it would 9 times out of 10 be a Belgian bun, I'm not sure what it is about them, the sweet icing, the raisins or the cherry on top (always saved for the last bite). I trawled the net and was surprised to find only one or two recipes, having made my choice I found I was only missing one ingredient, raisins and they were easy enough to get hold of. So Saturday afternoon saw me throwing the ingredients in to the mixer and an hour later I had some well risen dough, a little bit sticky but workable none the less, so having flattened it out to a nice rectangle, brushed it over with some melted butter and topped it with raisins it was time to roll it up and slice it into, what looked like to me rather small portions. The yeast did it's usual magic trick of expanding the dough and 40 minutes later I had what looked like a decent sized cake. I popped them in the oven for twenty minutes at 200c, the recipe called for a much higher temperature and a longer duration, I'm glad I ignored it as they would have been burnt to pieces, all I had to wait to do then was ice them and pop a cherry on top. Lucky for me a few people were coming over for tea so I didn't have to eat them all myself.

Dodgy Jammers

Once again while salivating over perusing my books on biscuits I came across a recipe for jammy dodgers and as I have never made them before decided to give them a go, this was the weekend before valentine's day so I thought why not give them a bit of a better shape, so here they are:

Six for Dinner...

Well actually it was seven but who's counting. Every now and again I throw a dinner party just to test some of my cooking skill's out on some poor lucky people, on the menu this time round was:

Mushroom And Lemon Soup

 Melanzane Parmigiana with a crisp Salad

Lemon Tart with Creme Fraiche

Six Cheeses and Biscuits

All pretty easy to put together and and I have to say the results spoke for themselves, empty plates all round and every dish finished off. The Melanzane came from the BBC Goodfood Website, it was an easy to follow recipe and put together in under 30 minutes, the Lemon Tart also came from the same site, again easy to make, though never having made one before I was watching it like a hawk through the oven door. It seems everyone had a good time and I think we ended up drinking about five bottles of wine along with numerous gin & tonics. A good evening, now all I have to do is plan what to make for the next one.

Birthday Baking Day

The weekend just gone saw me in a baking frenzy, bread rolls, a Chocolate cake and a Treacle and Ginger Cake all produced on Sunday morning. Sunday was my mum's birthday so my family had a very impromptu get together to celebrate. An article in the Sainsbury's magazine by Mary Berry on tray bakes had caught my eye earlier in the week and given the number of people turning up it was the ideal thing. I like the recipe's as they are an all in one method, just whizz it up in the food processor and pour it into the tray, 40 odd minutes later it was all done. they both turned out really well, the Chocolate one was scoffed in minutes, the Treacle & Ginger one lasted for another day as it was for a birthday being celebrated on Monday. Both cakes not helping my diet one bit.

Forgotten Cake

I forgot about this one, it was a Halloween cake, I got the recipe off the BBC good food guide. It was fun to make and didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned but I'm told it was delicious, there was so much of it people were taking it home.

Graveyard Chocolate Cake

Sunday Baking Day

I finally managed to get a Sunday where I was not rushing around or doing any decorating, I still have plenty to do but my next project hasn't kicked off yet, so I decided to do some baking. Surprise, surprise it was baking bread, my first loaf was a disaster, some beer bread that failed to rise when proving. Okay it did rise but not very much, I baked it anyway and used it for toast. It still had a really good flavour so was not a complete loss. The next loaf was an ordinary white that turned out rather well and the third was a 50/50 (white/wholemeal) that was the best of all, probably the best loaf I've ever baked, perfect rise, nice crust and lovely soft crumb. The taste was excellent , my only problem will be to try and equal it and if ever exceed it.
   Also on the agenda were some coconut macaroons, well I would call them pyramids but that was the title given in the cooking book (The Great British Bake off) they turned out okay, if a little well toasted. I can never fathom out how they make them into such perfect shape, do you think they used some special mould to shape them? Maybe it's just years of practice, all I know is that I had dessicated coconut stuck everywhere.  They did taste pretty good despite being in the oven a little longer than recommended.

New Year, New Start....Well sort of

A belated Happy New Year to anybody reading this, as per normal I'm way behind in posting anything to this blog. I did make my self a promise that I would start the year by trying to keep this up to date and it's the 7th of January already so as resolution's go this is a bit of a failure. I had intended to catch up on all the items I've been baking and making over the last few months but haven't managed to post, numerous loaves of bread, cakes and even a gingerbread house, if I can find the photo's I'll attach them at the end of this. With all my decorating complete just in time for New Year's eve I can now relax and start to concentrate on my baking efforts, part of the decorating was installing a bookcase to house the large number of cook book's I seem to have acquired over the last year, having them all in one place is going to help as it will save me time trying to remember where I've seen that elusive recipe I want to bake.
       I'm planning on baking and making a lot more this year so the I promise I'll try to spread my efforts to as many as possible so as not to inflict too much bad baking on anyone. At the moment I am making some beer bread and have a Herman friendship cake given to me by the gorgeous Jenna, it seems to be a sweet sourdough that has been passed on for over a hundred years, all I have to do now is find five friends to pass it on to. I will try to be better about posting stuff on here and if I don't feel free to give me a slap and post something.