Picking your own & Preserving

Your probably wondering why I have written a post about preserving fruit on a baking blog. I like to think that baking and making pots of jam go hand in hand in more ways than one. Firstly, I think that people who bake are generally quite a nice bunch! Isn't baking all about giving and sharing? Making people happy with something thoughtful? I think preserving has the same connotations. I mean, it's a known fact that people who preserve end up giving jars and jars to friends and loved ones, partly because they like to show what they have made and partly, and more importantly because they know it makes the recipient happy.

I will never forget the time a man came to cake club. The only time in our three years that that has happened! The theme was Seven Deadly Sins and he bought a Victoria Sponge with homemade plum jam. He said it was to represent jealousy as he would be jealous of all our cakes because his was so simple. He couldn't have been more wrong. We were all blown away by not only how well baked the sponge was but by how yummy the simple jam filling tasted. The fact he had made the jam himself was even more impressive. Such a simple cake but so lovely to eat. It's another reason I think preserving and baking go hand in hand. Like baking anyone can have a go at preserving. Even if it's not quite right it's will still, on most occasions be edible. With practice it's something you will get better at and I am far from an expert, or even very experienced, but as someone who loves baking I get an enormous satisfaction putting my own jam or curd in a cake.

Homemade lemon curd and marscapone Swiss rolls

 Fresh fruit, particulary berries are very expensive, especially if you need a couple of kilo. This is where pick your own farms come in, so much cheaper and can be a great day out with the children.

       Team effort picking strawberries

When I was little I remember going to one, we spent a lovely afternoon picking strawberries in the hazy sunshine. It was a case of eat one, pick one! The taste was unbelievable, and as someone who grew up in the suburbs of London being in the country was something I savoured. It was one of those memories that made me always know that I would never be a city girl. Once I had children I knew I wanted them to have memories like that.  I'm am now lucky enough to be able to easily give them to them. The children love coming with me, especially Hudson whose seven. He's so inquisitive and wants to know as much as possible. I think I have a budding gardener on my hands! 

     Hudson helping me with the rhubarb

At the moment I have strawberry and black currant jams and raspberry curd, fruit all picked by myself and my little helpers. 

Making preserves this way is obviously seasonal but in my opinion makes it even better. After all, preserves where invented to preserve the glutton of fresh fruit so they didn't go to waste. 

 It's reassuring to know that not only will I always have a last minute gift sitting in my cupboard, but that I will always be able to whip up a simple cake at the last minute and be able to make it a little bit more special.

Cakes, Bakes and TV

It's been awhile since I last posted, but inbetween the builders starting our extension and the children being on school holidays I've actually been a busy little bee.

 Shortly after I made the Cookies and Cream birthday cake I had the opportunity to be in the audience for 'An Extra Slice'. If your unfamiliar with the programme, which I doubt unless your reading this from Mars, it's an extension of the Great British Bake Off, in where the most recently booted off contestant gets interviewed by Jo Brand and a celebrity panel talk about the programme. Members of the audience can also bring their bakes and some of these appear on the show. 

 As a member/organiser of the Clandestine Cake Club I was lucky enough to be invited by the production company to organise a group of members to bring to a filming! As a complete fan of the programme I was beyond excited. We were asked to come for the first week and the theme was 'cake', which obviously fitted us very well. I decided to make a reworked version of the Cookies and Cream cake. Because of rules regarding advertising and just incase they wanted to feature it I couldn't put Oreos on it, therefore I made my own, or should I say Bouchon Bakery's version of, they call them TKO's, it's a recipe I had wanted to try for a while and now I had a good excuse. It was a monster of a cake, and I was having kittens about transporting it on the train to London. I left it in the fridge overnight so the frosting could firm up and hold the biscuits in place. I gave a huge sigh of relief when I got to the studio and handed it over to the production team in one piece! It was pretty obvious that my cake was very ordinary compared to some others that where bought. When a lady unveiled her Tomato Soup Cake I knew it would feature. I was happy I chose this cake though, and it is slightly unusual as it has Trex in the icing, something you don't normally see. I'm really into these large layered cakes and this cake tastes delicious. I'm not going to lie though  after a day in the sun, studio lights and a train journey home it wasn't looking quite that lovely. But it still tasted amazing and the builders liked it!  

 An unexpected bonus of making this cake was that as I had a load of blitzed Oreos left over from the filling I decided to see what they would be like in marshmallows. I added them into my usual Vanilla recipe. Well viola! Cookies and Cream Marshmallows!! Complete success. The kids went crazy for them. 

 I am constantly thinking of new recipes and have so many ideas swirling around in my head. At the moment I've been busy devising them for both a Passion Fruit Madeira cake and an Apple and Tonka bean Frangipane Tart, both inspired by challenges on the Great British Bake Off. I am so nearly happy with them and when I am I will share with you, so watch this space! 

      Passionfruit Madeira in the making

 

Cookies & Cream Birthday Cake

There is no denying that we love an Oreo in our house, packets are fought over with passion. Therefore when my friend Michelle made an Oreo flavoured cake for one of our Clandestine Cake Club meetings I knew I had to bring a large slice home or none at all. It proved to be a hit and my then six year old son declared he wanted this cake for his birthday. Well yesterday was his birthday and I was only too happy to oblige!

Firstly if you would like to make this cake yourself here's the link for the recipe

http://sweetapolita.com/2015/05/midnight-cookies-cream-cake/

 As you can see it's an American recipe, so if your unfamiliar with the terms here's some decoding for you....

 All purpose flour - Plain Flour
 Superfine sugar - Caster sugar
 Heavy cream - Double Cream

 Black Cocoa - This is cocoa that has been Dutched. This means it has been through a process where the acid has been stripped from the cocoa. You can buy Black Cocoa from Amazon and if you want a true Oreo experience you should buy Black Onyx Cacao, which has been heavily dutched. However Green & Blacks cacao has been dutched and works perfectly well. It's also easily available and won't break the bank! 

 High Ratio Shortening - Having done some research I decided that Trex was probably the nearest, easily available product that would match. When my friend made this cake she used all butter and the frosting was delicious, so if you don't want to use Trex it's not the end of the world. I decided to use Trex, after all if it didn't work it was only family I would be making sick! But luckily it works a treat. This is a revelation to me, it's only a vegetable fat and completely tasteless so nothing to be frightened of, it also has less saturated fat than butter. I'm definitely going to be using it more.  

 This is a true American style cake. It reminded my family of cakes that we have bought while holidaying in the States. It's a perfect party cake and a real crowd pleaser. The sponge is moist and the frosting is light. I'm calling it frosting because that really is what it is! 

 When Michelle made it she added no colour and it looked very Cookies & Cream, while in the original recipe the outside frosting is coloured pink. I thought this made it look more party like and decided to colour our one blue, for obvious reasons! Not sure I would do it again, not only did the children go a bit hyper, but I think white frosting with sprinkles running through it would be nicer, but that's just a personal preference! 

 The family raved about this cake and it will be a regular I'm sure. My sister-in-law even declared she wanted it as her wedding cake. I said 'Maybe not in blue?' and she replied 'No, definitely keeping the blue, I love the blue!' And she was serious.....

Baby Steps into Bread - Baking Breadsticks

The thought of baking bread scares me a little. I have baked bread quite a few times with varying success but I'm just not confident with it. We've been eating and baking it forever and it's made of so few ingredients, it should be fairly straight forward! But the reality is that a really good loaf takes skill that I don't possess right now. I've had a mental note to find time to bake more bread for the last bazillion years, well ok maybe not that long but it definitely feels it!  I'm pretty confident baking anything else, so I'm hoping that by starting this blog I'm going to bring my bread making skills to the same level.

I have acquired quite a few books on bread making over the last 3/4 years and dipped in and out of them, trying a recipe here and there, without full commitment to learning the craft properly. 

This week my son has had Chicken Pox and we have been in quarantine at home, so what a perfect time to bake some bread! I picked up James Morton's Brilliant Bread book and found his recipe for breadsticks, and as I had Taramasalata in the fridge I thought I'd start with these, especially as they looked easy with the only ingredients being flour, water, yeast and salt.

When making something new I always read the recipe at least twice. With this one, even though it's a very straight forward recipe I read it through over and over as I was going through each stage. So after mixing, kneading, proving, dividing, rolling, proving again & dealing with the tricky art of getting them on the hot stone without knocking them back I was flummoxed when I realised there was no instruction on how long they should be in the oven. How did I miss that? This is clearly a mistake and I've never seen it in a book before. Can you believe I've managed to choose the one recipe without timing instructions! This felt like a Great British Bake Off moment, you know where they are given basic instructions and have to use their intuition. I made a guess at 10 minutes and eventually I left them in for 14. I don't think they were absolutely perfect and as I used my dough hook on my mixer to knead, I could be accused of cheating, but I was really happy with the result. Crispy on the outside whilst fluffy on the inside and delicious eaten whilst still warm, even my sick toddler, who hadn't eaten hardly anything for days devoured one. The remainder were fought over by the rest of the family and as they are so easy to make I'm going have them as a regular in my repertoire. I will probably have to double the recipe as 8 doesn't go far in a family of 6, and one is just not enough.....

Bailey's Marshmallows

You will find that I have a thing for homemade marshmallows. They are so different from the pink and white ones that we know so well. I have so many ideas for flavours and a lot of them include alcohol, oops! Marshmallows are fairly easy to make, you just need a sugar thermometer and a free standing mixer. 

These Bailey's Marshmallows would be great as Petit Fours, although I made these for no other reason than I just fancied them.....

                                                       
INGREDIENTS

FOR THE PAN 

                                      

200ml Baileys                                              

300g Caster sugar                     170gGlucose

FOR THE MIXER

100ml Baileys                    
170g Glucose 

ALSO

120ml Water   

40g Leaf Gelatine                                           

50g Icing Sugar     50g Cornflour

          

METHOD

Firstly grease a tin or dish that is approximately 20 x 28 x 5cm deep with a flavourless oil, I use Grape seed oil. Then line with cling film and grease the inside of that too. 

Place all the ingredients for the pan all at once in a large pan. Put on a low heat to gently dissolve the sugar. 

In the mean time place the mixer ingredients in the mixer and put the gelatine and water in a microwaveable bowl. The gelatine needs to soak for at least 5 mins and turn the sheets over so they all soften up. 

Once the sugar has dissolved turn the heat up, pop in the sugar thermometer and boil rapidly until it reaches 114 degrees C.

When you are nearly there start gently melting the gelatine in the microwave. I do it in 10-20 second bursts as you don't want to burn or over heat it.

Once the pan mixture has reached 114c turn the mixer on slow and gradually pour it in. Be careful and take your time as the mixture will be very hot. 

Add the liquid gelatine and turn the speed up to fast. Leave it mixing for around 5 mins, by then the mixture should have at least tripled in size, become thick and dreamy and cooled down.

Pour into the dish and cover with another piece of oiled cling film and leave to set for at least a few hours. 

To finish, mix the icing sugar and corn flour together, cut up the marshmallow slab into around 3cm square pieces and toss into the flour/sugar mixture until thoroughly coated.... Enjoy!

Vanilla Chiffon Cake

So yesterday was my monthly Clandestine Cake Club meeting, in which you are given a theme and then you bake a cake to bring. Our theme this month, as it's now officially Summer (yay!) was 'Ice Cream Flavours'. What a great theme as there are so many interesting possibilities, so I even surprised myself by going for Vanilla. This is no ordinary Vanilla cake though, a Chiffon sponge and the use of Tahitian Vanilla in the syrup and meringue buttercream make this cake light and heavenly to taste. I used Peggy Porschen's Vanilla Cloud Cake recipe from her book Love Layer Cake as a basis for my cake and changed the design to fit with the Ice Cream theme. This recipe is absolutely delicious, although it wasn't straight forward as I had to change the method by adding the milk before the flour, yes that's twice I made the sponge batter! I had a feeling it wasn't going to work but I had visions of being told off by Paul Hollywood for not following the recipe, Haha! I'm not saying that the recipe wouldn't work for others but if you ever make it and think there's not enough liquid to fold the flour into add the milk first, it worked for me. Its not a necessary ingredient but I do think it was made even more special by the use of the Tahitian vanilla. It's so good in buttercreams, if you can get your hands on some try it. I used a little Squires Kitchen food colouring in Soft Beige to the buttercream to enrich the colour and the sprinkles are currently in Waitrose.
I have to admit that my teenage daughter loves this cake so much that she did have a small slice with her breakfast this morning and has requested it as her next birthday cake. I have a feeling that I maybe making this, or versions of, a lot more than that though.....

Tahitian Vanilla

Hello, well here I am on the blogger sphere! I never thought my first post would be on a product but as I'm going to be using this vanilla in my next cake I thought I'd give it a mention. 

It's no secret that we in the UK are a nation of baking nuts, so I find it extraordinary that this product is not readily available. I bought this while on holiday in the US. I was so excited when I stumbled across it, I felt like Xmas had come early! Stupid eh?! 

Tahitian Vanilla is more delicate than Madagascan and has floral notes. It lends itself to cold desserts, like ice cream, mousses etc. I use it a lot in buttercreams, I love it. It's more expensive but for those special cakes & desserts I think it's definitely worth it.