Baking and burgers

Oh hey!! 
Apologies for my very long hiatus. I've actually been quite a busy bee.
Firstly, one of my friends got engaged and asked me along with four of our other school friends to be bridesmaids!! She's also asked me to make their wedding cake! So I organised a shopping trip to Birmingham and with the help of a personal shopper, all five of us, plus two of Emma's other friends now have stunning dresses. Now we're on a mission to plan the worlds best hen-do (got to keep it a secret though- don't want the bride-to-be finding out all of our little ideas).
Next, I got a new job!! I'm now a reservationist at a De Vere venue. Been there a month now and loving it. All the girls in the office are lovely and I like to think I'm picking everything up quickly. I'm hoping that it'll lead to more event planning opportunities but currently I'm enjoying the new challenge.
Lastly, I bought my first car!! It's a little red VW Up that I've named Una and I love it!!

Cooking wise I've not been too crazy. I've spent some time perfecting my lemon cake recipe ready for making Emma's wedding cake. Fellow bridesmaid Emily had her birthday recently so I made a batch on teeny tiny lemon cupcakes.
Using my trusty all-in-one method with 1 egg to 50g each of self raising flour, caster sugar and butter plus a 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder. I used three eggs so 3/4 teaspoon of baking powder and 150g of everything else. 
Add the zest of two lemons and the juice of half.
Spoon into your desired size cupcakes cases and bake at 160oC fan until well risen and golden.
Leave to cool before making the butter cream.
250g icing sugar
100g soft butter 
zest of a lemon
2 tbs lemon juice.
Beat the sugar butter and zest together until the mix resembles crumbs and then add the juice and beat till it all comes together. 
Spread or pipe onto the cakes. Ideal time to practice those piping skills.

Next, if you recall my foray into orange curd? I decided to use it up in a Sunday afternoon orange Victoria sponge cake. Classic sponge mix - 6 eggs, 300g flour, sugar and butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, zest of 2 oranges and 1 heaped tablespoon of orange curd. Beat until smooth and spread into two sandwich tins. Bake at 160oC for 25-30 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tins for ten minutes before turning out to cool completely. 
It's completely up to you how you fill this cake- you could just use the remainder of the jar of curd to sandwich them together, or, as I've done, whip up a small amount of plain buttercream icing and use that, as well as the curd. Dust the top with more icing sugar and sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy.

I also made turkey burgers which were lush. Turkey thigh mince, an egg and an assortment of herbs and spices, grilled and served in a toasted bun with salad, grated carrot and lashings of ketchup and mayo.

These have me dreaming of summer when I can barbecue them instead of grilling.
I promise I won't leave you all so long without my words of wisdom again.
Much love!

Nutella Biscuits

I LOVE NUTELLA!!

In fact, most people do. The only person I've met who doesn't like it has a nut allergy and I'm pretty sure that if it wasn't for the reaction she'd have she'd probably love it too.
I've experienced many a nutella-based recipe in my time - my brothers girlfriend makes a sublime nutella cheesecake but I'd never done my own experimenting. 
So, in a haze of post-bake off sadness, I reached for a jar of nutella and added it to my standard chocolate biscuit recipe. 
You'll need:
1 cup butter
2/3 of a cup soft brown sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1/3 cup nutella 
In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the nutella and egg and beat until well combined. Mix the flour, cocoa and baking powder together in a bowl and gradually add this to the butter mix. Beat for a good few minutes until the dough is well mixed.

Split the dough in two and wrap each half in clingfilm. Form into disks and chill for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180oC. Once chilled, roll out one of the chilled disks of dough to half a centimeter thick. Use any shaped cutters you like and place the shapes onto lined baking sheets.

Bake for fifteen minutes. The biscuits will feel soft but will crisp up as they cool.

I felt like being a bit adventurous with my biscuits so I finely chopped some hazelnuts I had left from Christmas and mixed them with the remaining nutella in my jar. I used this mix of deliciousness to sandwich half the biscuits together.

The other half are decorated with a little melted mink chocolate and some more chopped hazelnuts.

Now for the remaining dough. Roll out, cut and bake as before. Then to sandwich them, make up a small batch of thick chocolate butter cream, like you'd get in a bourbon.
100g icing sugar

30g icing sugar

10g cocoa powder

All mixed together. Arrange the biscuits so that they match up in pairs. Use 3/4 of the using to pipe a ring if icing onto half the biscuits and sandwich with a plain one. 

Mix the remaining 1/4 of icing with a tablespoon of chopped, toasted hazelnuts. Spread a small about of the mix on the top of each biscuit sandwich. 

Now melt 100g of dark chocolate over a bain Marie. Dip the top of the iced biscuit into the chocolate and leave to set. Et voilà- biscuits of joy!

Orange and cranberry meringue pies and Croque Monsieur cake

Hello!!
So, I didn't get on to this years Great British Bake Off. I'm not going to go into details of the audition process partly because I signed a confidentiality agreement but also because I think some things are secret for a reason. And also I'm still a smidge on the bitter and twisted side that I didn't get to the next round and talking about it makes me sad. 

I got great support from the chosen few who I told about the audition, including the above picture which my oldest friend, Abbie sent me on the morning and my best friend's mum sent me some official GBBO bunting which I'll hang in my bedroom to help keep the dream alive for another year. 

But anyway!! Moving on. I applied because I love baking and so for my audition I decided to go a bit mental and make things I've never made before.
Now, I have made a large, lemon meringue pie before but I decided that I needed to be a bit different so I opted for individual orange and cranberry meringue pies (hence the recipes for orange curd and cranberry puree on my last blog).
Likewise, I've made cakes before - many, many cakes - but never a savory cake.
So for the pies you'll need a jar each of orange curd and cranberry puree.
For the pastry:
225g plain flour
110g cold butter cut into pieces
enough cold water to bind (around 75ml)
You'll note the lack of sugar - because the filling is very sweet and the meringue is also sweet, I didn't want a sugar overload so I kept the pastry sugar free but if you want to make a sweetened pastry, just add 50g caster sugar.
I used the lazy short cut of a food processor for the pastry using the excuse that I didn't want the heat from my hands to melt the butter. Of course, the old fashioned method works just as well.
So put the flour and butter in the processor bowl and pulse until you have what looks like fine breadcrumbs. Then VERY slowly drip the water through the funnel with the motor running, pausing every few seconds to see if the dough comes together. You'll hear the processor start to strain against the dough before you see it so be careful about adding too much water. Let the dough form a ball which will clean the inside of the processor bowl nicely leaving minimal washing up.
Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes. 
Once it's chilled, pre-heat the oven to 170oC, flour your work surface and roll out to 2mm thick and use your mini pie cases as a guide to cut out circles of dough. I make the circles bigger so that the pastry can overhang to avoid shrinking when its blind baked.

Line the cases with grease proof paper and fill with baking beans. Bake for ten minutes then remove the beans and bake for a further 5-8 minutes until the pastry is lightly golden.

Wait until the pastry is completely cool before trimming off the excess pastry and filling the cases with the orange curd and cranberry puree. I wanted to see layers of filling so I spread two teaspoons of the the cranberry over the bottom of the pastry case and topped it with three teaspoons of orange curd. You don't want to over fill the cases else the filling will leak out when you bake the meringue so if your cases are 2cm tall, you only want 1cm of filling.

Turn the oven down to 110oC. Make sure you don't put the meringue in until it's reached this temperature. Leave the oven open for a minute or two to cool down.

For the meringue you'll need:

5 egg whites

250g caster sugar (general rule is 50g sugar per egg white)

1 tsp corn flour

My Kenwood comes into its own with meringue. I just turn it on and wander off while it whisks away. You're looking for a thick, shiney mixture which forms a straight peak when you lift the whisk out. 

Working quickly, pipe or spread the meringue over the pies and whack them in the oven. The longer you leave meringue to its own devices the more air it looses and it loses its structure.

Bake at this low temperature for two hours. The meringue should form a dry, crisp outer shell. Once baked, turn the oven off but leave them in there until completely cooled.

Sadly, the batch I made to take with me for the big day, had a list of issues including, leaky filling which caused the pastry to stick to the tins, sticky meringue which was chewy rather than crisp and, the worst of all, the pastry on the bottom of the pies was.... was... SOGGY. Yep. I had soggy bottoms. 

So that was what let me down - annoying as my previous efforts had been near perfection. But such is life. 

And so we move on to the savory cake. I call it my Croque Monsieur cake as it has cheese and bacon in it.

You'll need:

100g cubed pancetta

Handful of black olives coarsely chopped

75g coarsely grated parmesan cheese

400g all-purpose flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt

fresh ground pepper

100g cubed reblochon or other semi-soft cheese

2 tbsp freshly chopped herbs (such as parsley, thyme, and sage)

200ml milk

40g tbsp melted butter

1 large egg

175ml creme fraiche

Pre-heat the oven to 170oC.

Begin by browning the pancetta cubes and then allow them to cool.

Line a loaf tin with grease proof paper and sprinkle half the Parmesan in the bottom. 

In a bowl mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne, herbs, salt, pepper, pancetta, olives and cheese. Allow the flour to stick to the cheese cubes so they they won't sink in the cooking cake.

In a large jug, beat the egg with the creme fraiche, milk and melted butter. Pour the wet mix into the dry and slowly mix together, wither with a wooden spoon or in your stand mixer on a slow setting. 

When it's well mixed, spoon into the prepared tin. I find that with this mix, it's easier to use my hands to spread it into the tin. To avoid it sticking to your hands, rub a little oil onto your palms and then press the mix into the tin. 

Finally, sprinkle the remaining Parmesan onto the top of the cake and bake in the pre-heated oven for between 1- 1 1/2 hours. The cheese keeps the cake moist and also makes it difficult to tell if it's cooked or not but a skewer should come out clean when it's done.

Fruit curds and purees

Hey there!
This one isn't quite a bake but they can lead to bakes. 
A really good, homemade fruit curd can make the world of difference to anything it touches.
Lemon curd tarts, passion fruit curd with cream to sandwich a sponge cake together or a lime curd on freshly baked bread. What could be better?
Today I've gone for orange curd because it's one of my favourite fruits and also I had the urge to make orange meringue pies.
It's a simple little recipe that takes little adaptation for different fruits:

Zest of three oranges

350ml fresh orange juice

150g sugar

30g cornflour

100g butter

3 egg yolks, lightly beaten

In a small saucepan whisk together the sugar, cornflour and orange juice. Add the egg yolks and put the pan over a medium heat, whisking continuously. After ten minutes or so, the mixture should be thick and bubbling. At this point take it off the heat and stir in the butter and orange zest.

Pour it into sterilised jars and seal them whilst they're still hot. This recipe makes two jars - I filled one and used the other half to fill my individual pies.

Both lemon and lime curds are made in exactly the same way or, for a extra citrusy burst, use half lemon juice and zest and half lime juice and zest to make a lemon and lime curd- delicious with a lemon cake.

To make the same quantity of passion fruit curd, you'll need 11 ripe passion fruits. This sounds like a lot but this curd keeps beautifully and so lasts longer than any fresh fruits. Strain the pulp off the juice and set the seeds and pulp to one side. Make the curd as before with the sugar, juice, eggs and corn flour and then at the end add in the butter and passion fruit pulp before pouring into jars. 
For cranberry puree (a more sophisticated option for Christmas dinner perhaps?) put 340g of fresh cranberries in a saucepan with 60ml of water and cook gently until the cranberries start to burst. 
At this point, pour into a heat-proof blender or use a stick blender and puree the fruit. Pass the fruit through a sieve to get rid of any skin or large pips and put back into the saucepan with 150g of sugar. The mix will become very liquidy at this point but don't worry. Allow the mix to come to a rolling boil for 1 minute before taking it off the heat and adding the juice of a quarter of a lemon.
Allow the puree to cool slightly before pouring into jars.

This recipe works equally well with most berries and even soft fruits such as apricots, plums and peaches. 

Enjoy!

Christmassy cooking!!

Merry Christmas, Bloggers!! And I'd also like to wish you a Happy New Year!!
I had a lovely Christmas this year. I got the present I've been wanting since I was 10, a Kenwood mixer! An excellent present for me and my baking!!

I love this time of year. It's the only time you can stuff your face full of delicious things without anyone judging you. You can drink from 9am and continue drinking till the early hours, you can have pudding for breakfast, you can pop off to the kitchen and come back with a plate piled high with cheese, ham, pickles and a cheeky slice of cold turkey with nobody batting an eyelid- in fact they're jealous of your plate and go and assemble their own.
And so, while this Christmas is now drawing to a close, it's never too late to whip up some sticky toffee puddings, glaze a ham or make a pork pie. 
I'll start with the glazed ham as it keeps the longest. It will quite happily sit in your fridge for two weeks just waiting for late night nibblers to come and hack off a slice. It's delicious hot and cold so you could have it hot with some chive mash and a little apple sauce and then you can have the rest cold.
Start off by boiling your joint in water for 20 minutes per half pound plus an extra 20. Add in a cinnamon stick, bay leaves, pepper corns and juniper berries to enhance the flavours. There are many recipes kicking around where you cook your gammon in coke or apple juice or ginger ale and while I'm sure these all taste beautiful, I'm not one to spend money where it's not fully necessary so I stick with water and aromatics.
Once it's boiled, remove it from the water (but keep it as this hammy water makes a delicious stock to enhance gravy, soups and sauces). Remove the skin carefully with a sharp knife an then score the fat. Stud with cloves if desired (my mum hates cloves and so I don't but they will add extra flavour). Place the joint in a deep roasting tin. Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.
To make the glaze, mix together 2 tablespoons of mustard (English or French is fine but not wholegrain) with 4 tablespoons of honey and the zest and juice of an orange. Pour all of this over the joint and use a pastry brush to get the glaze into the scored lines. There will be a lot of glaze in the bottom of the pan but this will reduce in the oven and be used to baste the ham. Cook the gammon in the oven for half an hour, basting every 10 minutes with the glaze in the bottom of the pan.

The honey will caramelize and create delicious blackened bits that while they don't look the most appealing, definitely get fought over.
Onto pork pie! We love a good pork pie in our house and we've made one at Christmas for the past few years. We change the recipe every year, trying to find our favourite. This year we used pork shoulder, smoked bacon and sausage meat along with herbs and seasonings inside a hot water pastry crust:
450g plain flour 
150g lard
50ml milk
50ml water
Salt and pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.

Place the lard, milk and water into a small pan and heat until the lard has melted.

Sift the flour into a large bowl and season with salt and black pepper and mix well.

pour in the warm lard mixture to the flour. Mix well to combine, until the mixture comes together to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes, then form into a ball and set aside.

For the meat, you'll either need an incredibly sharp knife and lots of patients or a food processor along with:

A small bunch of sage leaves

3 anchovy fillets

400g pork shoulder

50g smoked bacon

50g sausage meat 

1/2 teaspoon all spice

1/2 teaspoon ground mace

Firstly, add the sage and three anchovy fillets to the processor bowl and finely chop. Then gradually add the meat and then the spices along with some salt and pepper.

Line a 7 inch tin with 2/3 of the pastry. Fill with the meat and then make a lid with the remaining pastry. Decorate and glaze with egg wash. Bake for an hour.

The meat will shrink within the pastry so you can make up a pork jelly to fill in the gaps (1/2 pint hot stock- perhaps from the gammon above- with 1 sachet gelatin) but this isn't strictly necessary.  

And now, my signature bake, little sticky toffee puddings.

I've been making these beauties since I was thirteen and they're a family favourite. I have to make double quantities of the sauce on request for my brother as it's so good! 

For the puddings:

175g stones dates, chopped

1/2 vanilla extract

2 tbs coffee extract

3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

75g butter at room temperature

150g caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

175g self-raising flour.

Preheat the oven to 180oC.

Begin with the dates which need to be put in a bowl with the vanilla, coffee, bicarbonate of soda and 175ml boiling water. Leave to one side.

In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Gradually add in the eggs, beating well between each addition. Then fold in the flour before adding the date mix, including all the water. 

The mix will look very sloppy but this is correct - the wet mix is what makes the puddings so light and moist.

Divide the mix between 8 greased metal ramekins, place them on a baking tray and bake for 25 minutes.

When you're ready to serve, release the puddings from their tins and place in a serving dish. Place the dish under a warming grill. For the sauce:
25g chopped pecans
175g soft brown sugar
110g butter
75ml double cream

Melt the butter and sugar together with the pecans. Once it's all dissolved and bubbling, add the cream and whisk. Take the now warm puddings from the grill and pour over the sauce. Knock any nuts off the tops to stop them burning. Return the dish to the grill and let the sauce begin to bubble. 

Serve with pouring cream.

So there you have it!! Three little beauties to have in your back pocket for any occasion. 

Hope you enjoy!!

Merry 2014 one and all!!!!

Chocolate, orange and hazelnut biscotti

Howdy blog fans!! Hoping you're all well and enjoying the festive season!! As always, I'm well into the Christmas spirit- as you can see from my very lovely hat!

I've been baking again, this time for my lovely colleagues at the wedding venue. I put a tin of this biscotti next to the kettle in the staff room and three days later it was all gone. Much as I love everyone there I'm looking to leave in the new year to get started on my career but I'll probably still go back on odd weekends to help out. I feel that they will definitely miss the stream of cakes and goodies I take in with me!!

So, biscotti!! Versatile little Italian biscuits that can be flavoured with any fruits, nuts, spices or even herbs! Go mad!! This is my favourite flavour combination for biscotti though.

You'll need:

280g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

250g caster sugar

3 eggs, beaten

50g dark chocolate, melted and cooled

50g chocolate chips

30g chopped hazelnuts

Zest of 1 orange

A few drops orange extract

For the dough, mix together the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl and add the eggs to form the dough mixture.

Add the tepid chocolate and mix thoroughly before adding the chocolate chips, nuts and the orange.

Knead the dough gently before forming into two logs and placing on a lined baking tray. Bake for 25 minutes in a pre-heated 160oC oven (don't use a fan oven).

Remove from the oven and slice the logs into 1 1/2cm slices. Return the slices to the tray and bake for ten minutes. Then turn them over and bake for another 10.

So there you go! A few words of warning though- if you decide to leave the melted chocolate out, decrease the flour to 250g or your dough will not bind. There are literally thousands of different flavours you could do- the only think I'd say is be wary of fresh fruit as they'll make the biscotti soggy and you want a lovely crunchy biscuit. Dried cranberries, pistachios and white chocolate is a lovely festive combo, or maybe almond and lemon. Get creative!! The basic dough will be a vessel for your creations!!

I'll be back soon with little sticky toffee puddings!

Merry Christmas bakers!!

Homemade edible gifts

So, as promised, I come bearing literal gifts. Edible gifts! 
I've got three recipes for you, all of which have now been extensively tasted by various family members and are relatively simple to make and a delight to give out as gifts (as well as have a quick nibble on yourself).
So firstly, I've got some cinnamon candied pecans for you. I found this recipe on a blog called Brown Eyed Baker who's based in America and has loads of really lovely recipes but this is the one I had to share with you! 

You'll need:
250g shelled pecan nuts
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
100g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
In a large zip-lock bag, shake together the sugar, salt and cinnamon.
In a bowl, whisk the egg white with the water and vanilla.
Tip the pecans into the bowl and stir around until coated in egg.
Using a slotted spoon, move the nuts from the bowl and into the bag. (Don't try to do this in batches or the cinnamon sugar will become clumpy and wont stick to the nuts). Seal and shake the bag until all the nuts are coated.

Using the slotted spoon, take the nuts from the bag and spread them over a grease proof paper lined baking sheet.
Put into a 130oC pre-heated oven for one hour, stirring every fifteen minutes.

Once out the oven and cooled, I sprinkled with gold luster dust (for a bit of festive sparkle) and packaged into individual cellophane bags. You don't have to use pecans- any un-roasted nuts will work!

Next, Florentines! My mum loves these almondy delights smothered in dark chocolate. I made some teeny, bite sized ones for my gifts. There's loads of different florentine recipes around using different fruits and nuts, but this is my version:

You'll need:

25g butter

75g caster sugar

10g plain flour

65ml double cream

100g flaked almonds

25g glace cherries, washed

25g mixed candied peel

25g crystallized ginger

100g dark chocolate

Start off by putting the butter, sugar and flour into a saucepan and heat gently until melted. Then gradually add the cream and stir until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined.

Remove from the heat and spoon teaspoons of mixture onto grease proof lined baking sheets.

Bake for 7-12 minutes depending on the size - mine were tiny so took very little baking.

Allow to cool and harden on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack. Once completely cool, melt the chocolate and spoon and spread blobs of it over the bottom of each biscuit. Leave to set before packing into boxes or bags.

And finally, some simple yet visually lovely fruit and nut chocolate coins.

 For these you'll need to temper your chocolate, which isn't as tricky as you might think. I used 400g of dark chocolate. So, chop it all up into very small pieces and reserve a quarter of it. Melt the chocolate over a bain-marie until it reaches 118oF or 48oC. Take it off the heat and using a wooden or plastic spoon (not metal) stir in the reserved chocolate until it reaches 89-90oF or 32oC. This is called seeding. Chocolate is now ready to use. I got my tempering method from this website: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Temper-Chocolate/#step2 so full instructions are available there.

Now for the toppings I've used all kinds of nuts - pistachios, hazlenuts, brazils and almonds. I also used some candied peel, dried cranberries and little fudge chunks. Spoon small circles of chocolate either onto a mold like I did (mine is actually a macaroon mold but it works a treat) or onto grease proof paper and then top with whatever you fancy and then finally, sprinkle with edible gold stars.

My mum and I set up a little production line of making gift tags for all my gifts so I could give them to my family at out annual Christmas gathering.

So there you go!! Edible gifts!! I hope you enjoy them and I hope anyone you give them to enjoys them just as much. 

Merry Christmas!! xxx