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.