Where have I been?

So I said in my last blog that I would be blogging again soon.  This promise hasn't surfaced. 

My life has massively changed of late and I'm just trying to ride the storm at the moment.

I have experienced bereavement twice since February. The first was the passing of my Grandma. The second wasn't technically bereavement. But it certainly feels like it, even though that person is alive and well. 

Anyway, enough of the cryptic clues. I'll be back to baking when I'm back to normal. However long that will take.

Bye for now fellow baking enthusiasts.

 

xoxo

 

I'm back after a long break

Okay, so here I am, back to blogging! I have been away for a long time and I feel that I need to get the reasons why on a post to explain.  Time flies doesn't it?

It's pretty simple really, I got a new job at the start of December - same company, just a different role altogether.  I was completely ecstatic when I heard I had got it as it was exactly what I needed - a new challenge and a job that would make me think and use my brain.  I get restless in jobs if I can't use my creativity or my brain...

So basically, I've been focussing all of my efforts and energy on my new job.  By energy I mean that on weeknights I'm almost asleep on the sofa at 8pm! It's a tiring job and my mind works overtime.  Or if I'm not falling asleep at 8pm, I'm completely unwinding watching my new favourite TV show, Breaking Bad - has anyone else watched it?!  So baking has come at the bottom of my priorities of late, which will hopefully change.

I thought that a quick post would be best and then I'll post a baking blog very soon.

Look what the postman brought me today!

Art Attack Cake

I was asked to create a cake for my colleague's daughter who was turning three and loved Art Attack and Mister Maker. I jumped at the cake at making an art themed cake, knowing that it'd be a lot of fun to make. Organised chaos sprung to mind!

I was told that her favourite colours were pink and purple - a little girl after my own heart! So I decided to cover the cake in a deep pink colour, with the theme of purple elsewhere. I knew that I wanted the cake to have an artist palette, paintbrushes and paint tubes on the top of the cake.

I used and coloured royal icing for the paint on the palette. I was so pleased with how paint like it actually looked, especially with the squeezed out effect with the peaks. I dipped the end of the paintbrushes in the royal icing that left a really realistic look of paint – looking a little messy and thick just like the real thing. The palette was made purely of flower paste to ensure that it dried hard. 

 The paintbrushes were constructed in three parts. A long sausage shape made out of flower paste with a small amount of sugar paste mixed in. A small rectangle for the metal between the handle and brush and a tear shaped tip for the brush. I coloured the handle with some caramel colouring and once air dried for a short while, I scored it to give the affect of wood grain. To make it look more like wood grain, I made a thin brown paint (water consistency) so it could be painted on to give a varnish affect. It worked as desired as the scored areas were darker and trapped the colouring beautifully.

The picture stood at the side was one of my favourite elements and was inspired by a cake I found online. It was made purely of flower paste and I painted the background of the picture first and then sketched the family afterwards. I thought that this was a endearing addition to the cake, especially because I drew it like I thought a three year old would and ensured that it was a representation of the family the cake was for.

I marbled some of the sugar paste decorations to give it a swirled look, rather than a block colour. I used a swirly embossing sheet and a quilt affect embossing tool to create some the decorations. I loved how they looked once placed on the cake. I think it added just enough texture and creative edge for it to be both girly and arty.

I loved how the paint tubes and leakages looked on the cake. This was the epitome of messy and fun art to me! I was so impressed with how amazing the royal icing leakages looked. 

Peanut Butter Squares

This recipe is taken from Lorraine Pascale’s new book. It’s a lovely book and I’ve made three things so far. Two main meals and this beautiful sweet treat.  I could say many superlatives regarding these morsels of sheer genius, however I just need to stress that if you are a peanut butter fanatic like I am (as you know!) then you must make them.

It’s a brilliantly easy recipe and takes very little preparation – peanut butter, digestive biscuits, melted butter, brown sugar, chocolate, vanilla and chilled in the fridge when all combined. Easy peasy. It’s extremely indulgent, calling for most of a jar of peanut butter, however it does make 16 squares. They are quite large squares too so you could down size even more if you wish. I didn’t want to because they were so moreish and I do have quite a high threshold for sweet things. 

The next time I make these, I am going to cover them in white chocolate instead of milk chocolate. The recipe calls for dark chocolate but I went for milk, simply because I prefer the saltiness from the peanuts against the smooth, sweet milk chocolate – yum! 

I would say that these squares are a hybrid between a biscuit and a Reese’s peanut butter cup. 

Simply fabulous!

Banana and Date Loaf Cake

I made this classic beauty on Tuesday to celebrate the final of The Great British Bake off (I already miss it and it's not 8pm on Tuesday yet!). Whilst I'm on topic, what did everyone think of the final? I was so elated with the outcome and I think all three gentlemen did amazingly well. As James said, it didn't feel as though there were any losers or runners up.

This is essentially Mary Berry's banana loaf recipe (which can be found in her Baking Bible), but I made a few tweaks to be more tailored to my taste buds. I have made the loaf around three times, sticking strictly to Mary's instructions – I can't argue with her now can I? She is a legend and just such a lovely lady. She would be my number one dinner party guest or afternoon tea partner – I think she'd be fascinating.

 

I added one more banana than the recipe states and around 100g of dates as I believed they could evoke a lovely, toffee like edge in the cake. It tasted as I'd hoped and gave it a different texture, richness and depth. I was ridiculously pleased that the dates baked consistently throughout the cake and didn't sink. I embraced the classic technique of rolling them in flour first and it must really work. This method was truly a baking myth for me, as it had never worked in the past with some fruits, but worked beautifully in this instance.

I added a honey glaze and walnuts to the top of the loaf, as although the cake isn't dry in any way, I simply wanted more decadence.  Additionally, I know that dates and walnuts work in harmony just like mascara enhances our eyelashes for example. 

I made the glaze with around 4-5 tablespoons of Acacia honey and 60g of butter. All you have to do is melt the two together and it soon becomes thick and cloudy. Once you visibly see this sticky matter changing like this, take it off the heat and leave it set for about two minutes and drizzle accordingly.  Add as many walnuts as you like, I think the nuttier the better!

I could have easily devoured this all by myself, but I took most of it to work to share with my friends.  It received excellent reviews and certainly perked them all up at 3pm!

Welcome back Autumn

What does autumn mean to you? Me as a child says chestnut picking and walks in the woods with my family. Me as an adult here and now says, leaves on the ground, jumper dresses and dark lipsticks.

I seem to remember as a child having an unlimited supply of these wonderful nuts. Or a shopping bag full at least! Walks were an integral part of my childhood and I most definitely romanticise chestnuts. They make me gleam with happiness and nostalgia, but they aren't as they used to be. They appear to fall off the trees too early and haven't had the opportunity to become the huge tear drop esque nuggets that I remember fondly. Or were they ever that big? You know how things seem huge in your tiny child hands? Creme Eggs included! 

I wanted to bake something that both looks like autumn and has autumn in the ingredients (chestnut of course!).   I decided to bake something new to me, a torte. After flicking through a few baking books and searching the internet, I settled on Edd Kimber's Chocolate and Chestnut Torte. He describes it as basically a cooked mousse. I have been attracted to tortes in the past due to the lack of flour, but always picked something else as the ones I had seen on television always dipped in the middle. But then you see some fabulous tortes in Paris for example! 

I decided to show what's inside on the outside.  So me and Joe took to our park, which luckily we have just a few minutes away from our flat, to find leaves from chestnut trees to showcase on top of the torte.  We also picked various leaves to set the scene and mood of this autumn inspired blog.

This was a lovely after dinner dessert. Not too heavy, very rich and satisfying, so second helpings were not on the cards for me. It contains 70% cocoa Green and Blacks chocolate so I knew when I had had enough (my waistline was thankful for that for once!). The chestnut created depth to the torte in my opinion, similar to how coffee is with chocolate cake for example. You cannot necessarily taste it, but there is enough to create more depth and intensity. 

I bought a tin of chestnut purée from Waitrose, it wasn't sweetened like the recipe called for though, which I was a little apprehensive about. So I just added milk and icing sugar to the purée (which was stiff in and out of the tin, so needed to be loosened up) to hopefully make it sweeter. I did exactly the same to make the soft peaked cream.

Both cream and torte were delicious.

Grasshopper Pie, Hummingbird Style

A few weekends ago, Joe trotted off to London for the weekend to see his friends. As a result, I was at home with lots of relaxing to do. This meant three things - Americas's Next Top Model, Breakfast at Tiffany's and baking. I had to make something Joe really wanted - he needed rewarding since he did lots of washing up during the week when I couldn't be bothered or was too tired. What a star!

Grasshopper Pie was the obvious choice to me. Always a fan of mint chocolate, whether it's my mint choc chip cupcakes or After Eights. I made it the Hummingbird Bakery way set out in Cake Days minus the huge dollops of whipped cream on top. He's a lover of the cream, but I had a bit of a kitchen nightmare when my Kmix overwhipped the first 300ml of the cream, meaning I only had 300ml left for the filling! I got distracted with colouring my milky marshmallow mixture a perfect mint green. Mint is the main event and I thought that the extra whipped cream could have muted it. This was my convenient reasoning at overwhipping the cream anyway!

I made the biscuit base with humble bourbons (or you could use Oreos if you prefer). I'm so used to ginger or digestive biscuit bases and using bourbons is much better in many ways! For example, the melted butter in the processed bourbons made it look like soil (and I'd rather be in the kitchen with my 'soil' than in the garden!). I was a mucky mess by the time I had pushed the crumbs into the flan tin.

Melting the marshmallows into the milk was incredibly relaxing. I love seeing food melt, or change consistency right before me. This became a luscious velvety mixture after around five minutes of consistent stirring. The recipe tells you to fold in the cream to this minty mixture, but I had real trouble with this. I had to abandon this technique by just whisking it in. It seemed to work better for me than trying to fold it in. This green mass of matter was then dolloped into and completely filled my perfectly set soil case.

I loved the pie and so did Joe. The filling was light and the only thing I could compare it to is mousse, but it was a lot denser than mousse. The marshmallows must have given it the light texture. It had a wobble to it, like a baked cheesecake would. The bourbon base was addictive - I couldn't get enough of it! I would sit next to Joe, putting on my best eyes (like a cat would when they want something you have, almost stalking you until you give in) waiting for a morsel of the base. 

 I urge anyone who loves mint chocolate to make this.