Tag: baking

Yelly Eats

First bake!

Yelly

I did say that my goal was to bake more so that I could blog more.

The first bake of the year is my take on the traditional stollen.  A stollen is described as a yeasted cake containing dried fruit and marzipan.  I love stollen!  While it is a joy to bake (the smell of dried fruit and mixed peel soaked in brandy is amazing!), sometimes, one needs instant gratification and a store-bought one provides the instant pleasure.  I was gutted however, when I found out that Lidl had run out completely of stollen AND stollen bites.  I don’t know about anyone else in the UK, but I think Lidl sources great stollen and panettone!  I’m not sure where they source their stollen from, but whoever makes that stollen, they have a cracking recipe.  The lack of store-bought stollen necessitated the baking (which wasn’t such a difficulty because baking stollen is a pleasure!).

I used Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe from his second book Say It With Cake (I have written about Edd Kimber’s recipes before.  I love his blueberry crumble pie and his red velvet cake recipe is to die for!).  Edd Kimber’s stollen recipe is probably my favourite recipe from all the stollen recipes so far.  I’ve been relatively successful with it (lately!).  But this year, instead of rolling the marzipan into a log to fill the center of the loaf, I’ve rolled the dough into a log with the marzipan forming a swirl pattern when the loaf was sliced.  I thought it would be good to spread the marzipan all over the bread to distribute it better so that you didn’t get a huge lump in the middle of the bread.  And I think it works!

I think this means I’m going to bake stollen again.  It doesn’t have to be Christmas for me to bake stollen, does it?

Stollen with marzipan swirl

Yelly Eats

The Cake Book Challenge Paused

Yelly

I am pushing the pause button on the Cake Book Challenge and I’m going to be realistic.  I can’t cook through a book in the amount of time I originally said I would.

I still have 47 recipes to cook through.  And I will.  But only at a more realistic phase!

So it is with a lot of sadness that I step away from the Cake Book for a while.

Yelly Eats

Watermelon cake anyone?

Yelly

We had a summer themed charity Bake Off at work.  I procrastinated (as is usual for me these days) with the Cakebook Challenge and put off my baking.  I need to get back into baking through the book.  I’ve lost so much time!  But I digress.  So at work we had, what I’d call a charity bake sale.  The theme was summer.  So I thought what would be better than a watermelon cake eh?

Watermelon cake

I thought it would be really cool to decorate a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and make it look like a watermelon.  I thought that putting in chocolate chips would make the chips look like the pips.  The idea is that when you sliced the cake, it’d look like a real watermelon because the inside would be red and the chocolate chips would look like pips and the whole thing would resemble half a watermelon.  Or so I thought.  I may have gone a bit overboard with the red food colouring and it turned out to be a really dark red.  I had a little batter leftover so I thought I’d make a few ice cream cone cupcakes.

Inside the watermelon cake

I got second prize for best tasting cake.  But the afterthought cakes aka the ice cream cone cakes won best decorated!  Sadly I don’t have any pictures of the ice cream cone cakes.  I must make them again.  Soon.  After I surface from the Cakebook Challenge!

Can I just say though that sometimes I wish it was easier to transport cakes to work.  There has to be an easier way…but that entails spending a shedload of cash on a car.  Sigh.

Yelly Eats

Blueberry cheesecake cupcakes and fruit goo

Yelly

I love it when a plan comes together!  I managed to tick off 2 recipes from the book.

I made blueberry “fruit goo” (page 34).  It was necessary because the fruit goo was going to be the topping and filling for the cupcake recipe I was going to attempt.  The recipe was so very generous and there is still half a jar of the fruit goo in my fridge.

Blueberry fruit goo

The cupcake recipe I attempted today was the blueberry cheesecake cupcake (page 62).  I haven’t been able to taste it because I’ve had too much of the fruit goo and the cream cheese icing, but Alan says it tastes and smells like a cheesecake and I trust his food opinion!  So it passes the Alan taste test.  It was quite fun to do this though because you built up the cupcake in stages: first you had to put together the biscuit base (like any self-respecting cheesecake, this one, too, has a buttery biscuit base), then put in the cupcake batter, bake the cupcake, then fill the middle with the blueberry fruit goo (for more fruity goodness, I think), and top it with a cream cheese frosting and swirl through even more fruit goo!  I had fun doing this.  I really did.

Blueberry cheesecake cupcake

So, as far as today is concerned, I only have 47 recipes to go and 22 weeks to finish cooking through the book.

I can do this!

Blueberry cheesecake cupcakes ready to go

Yelly Eats

25 weeks left!

Yelly

I told myself I’d cook through The Cake Book.  That would mean that 50 recipes in 26 weeks.  That was last week.

I have not done any baking at all!  Well, except for that batch of brownies this week, but that brownie recipe wasn’t in the Cake Book!  I now have 25 weeks left!  I really, seriously, must bake 2 recipes a week!  Egad!  The pressure’s certainly on!

25 weeks.  50 recipes.

Game face on.

Oh dear.

Yelly Reads

The Cake Book Challenge!

Yelly

I am doing a Julie Powell!  This challenge that I’ve taken on is getting more and more daunting as I think about it.

I have decided to cook through this book:

The Cake Book

It’s a book from Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube series (I also have the BBQ Book too which is excellent!) published by Penguin Books.  The book is called The Cake Book.  The recipes are written by Jemma Wilson who is the wunderkind behind Crumbs & Doilies.  If you’re into street food, you’ll know that C&D offers a really good range of lovely (heavy on the lovely) cupcakes.  I love the mini cupcakes that they offer the most because they are bite-sized pieces of heaven!  And they look so cute and dainty, almost too good-looking to eat.  Almost.  I thought to myself, well, if these are Cupcake Jemma’s recipes, well, they are definitely worth making!

There are 50 recipes in The Cake Book.  There are 26 weeks left in the year.  If I manage 2 recipes each week, I will have cooked through the entire book at the end of the year!  I am thankful that I can bring the cupcakes to work or share them with friends.  Because my blood sugar would not appreciate the increase in sugar intake!

I like that I am in the same situation as Julie Powell was when she started the Julie/Julia project.  I have a full-time job and a long commute at both ends of the day (mind you, I’m not sure how long Julie Powell’s commute was!)!  Am I crazy?  Definitely.  Is this self-inflicted project bigger than I think it is?  Probably.  But am I excited?  You betcha!  There are so many interesting recipes in the book.  I am looking forward to making brittle!  If Julie Powell can do it, so can I!

Yelly Writes

Surviving hump day!

Yelly

It’s only Wednesday and I am completely shattered!

I told myself the fatigue was probably because I’ve allowed myself to go full throttle this week on the work front.  I have been taking it slightly easier than usual at work because I’ve been recovering from a nasty throat infection (which I ignored at first because I thought it was hayfever!).  Monday morning was my last dose of antibiotic and the prescription meds seem to have worked.  My tonsils don’t look so huge now (I did say at one point that my tonsils were so big they needed their own post code!) but every now and then I still feel a twinge of pain and I must admit, I am worried that I haven’t quite kicked the infection yet.  I must remember to book an appointment to see the doctor again, to just check.

I got home slightly late today because a teenager stupidly drove his motorbike through the railway.  Just as the train was passing through.  He wasn’t hurt but was obviously shaken.  I think he was thrown from his bike.  Because when I looked out the train window, his bike was lying VERY near the tracks and he was about 3 feet away from said motorbike.  He also looked very afraid.  Afraid enough to yell at the driver, in a very worried voice, “I’m sorry!”  Even through the closed windows and doors of the train, you could hear the tremor of fear in his voice.  He suddenly looked very young, ringing his hands and his face flushed bright red.  The poor thing.  It makes you shake your head really.  Why do kids do stupid things like run a motorbike through a railway track?

In other news, I have broken the unofficial baking embargo by baking tonight.  It will be coconut and jam slices.  I am excited!  I am baking again!

Yelly Eats

Pecan and chocolate banana spice muffins

Yelly

I’ve been looking back at the first 53 days of the year, I haven’t really baked much.

So the first bake for 2014 is banana muffins.  I love banana loaves and treasure my banana bread recipes.  My favourites are those that translate into wonderful muffins.  Most cake recipes will be great cupcake or muffin recipes anyway, with a little ingredient tweaking and oven watching as cupcakes and muffins, obviously are smaller and will bake quicker.  I’m sharing another one of those “tweaked” recipes.  This recipe happened because I was a little too enthusiastic with random inclusion of ingredients.  I was a bit worried about how the spices would work with the dark chocolate, but according to my lovely taste-testers at work, the chocolate studded spiced mixture works!  Hurrah!

Now, if you’re brave enough to give my little concoction a try, here’s the recipe!  What’s great about this recipe is it’s a little lighter because I don’t use butter but vegetable oil.  This also makes exactly 12, count em, 12 regular sized cupcakes.

Ingredients

  • 220g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powderPecan and choccie banana spice muffin
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 3 bananas (preferrably at least medium sized), mashed
  • 100g chocolate chips
  • 150 g chopped pecans
  • 150g caster sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 75ml vegetable oil

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 190°C (180°C fan).
  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt together and set aside.
  3. In a mixing bowl, mix oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and the mashed banana together until the mixture is smooth.  I love my mixer (my nearly 3-year old Kenwood Chef) because I can just bung everything in (including unmashed bananas! the lovely machine does it all for me!) and it gets mixed beautifully!  Add the chocolate chips, pecans and the flour mixture and mix until well-incorporated, scraping the sides of the mixing bowls occasionally.
  4. Spoon the mixture into a muffin tin lined with muffin cases.  For more evenly sized cupcakes, I use an ice cream scooper.  Bake for 18-20 minutes.  The muffins will be ready when a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
  5. Take the muffins out of the oven and leave to rest in the muffin tray for 5 minutes before letting them cool completely on a wire rack.
  6. Makes 12-14 muffins, depending on the size of cupcake cases that you use.
Yelly Eats

Baking pan de sal!

Yelly

The pan de sal is ubiquitous (HUGE word alert!) in the Philippines.  It is sold in every corner bakery, in every panaderia, in various shapes and sizes.  It is bread that has been enjoyed in the Philippines for centuries, as apparently, it was introduced by the Spanish conquistadores in the 16th century.

Since moving to the UK, I have been looking for a British equivalent and there have been near misses, but not quite like the real thing.  Pan de sal, when translated from Spanish, means salt bread.  Funnily, it is more sweet than savoury.   I wrote about baking pan de sal last year and since then I’ve been trying out various recipes from online sources.  Now, though, I can finally say that I’ve perfected my version of the Philippine bread staple.  I’ve tried several recipes and have now found that putting the recipes together in a system that works for me does really work.  Here’s my take on the pan de sal:

Ingredients:

  • 500g strong bread flour (can also be substituted with whole wheat or gluten-free flour)
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 75g butter
  • 150ml milk (full fat, semi-skimmed or skim milk)
  • 70g sugar
  • 1 packet active dry yeast (or 7g)
  • 1 egg
  • 15ml vegetable oil
  • 1 cup bread crumbs (or dry polenta/corn meal)

Directions:

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.  Mix until well combined (I use a balloon whisk to do this because I find that this mixes the ingredients quickly) and set aside.
  2. In a sauce pan, heat the milk over low heat.  Add the butter and sugar and mix until the butter and sugar are melted.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool until lukewarm in temperature.  Once lukewarm, add the yeast and stir until the yeast is dissolved into the milk mixture.
  3. Add the egg and oil to the flour mixture and mix well.  Mix the milk and butter mixture with the flour until a wet dough forms.
  4. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.  If you’re kneading by hand, this should take about 8-10 minutes.  Steps 3 and 4 can be done in a free-standing mixer with a dough hook attachment with step 3 in the lowest speed setting and turning up the mixer to the next speed to add the butter and milk mixture and knead the dough for about 5 minutes.
  5. Place the dough in an oiled bowl and allow to proof for an hour or until the dough has risen to double its size.
  6. After proofing, punch the dough to deflate it and turn it out onto a floured surface.  Knead the dough by hand for 5 minutes then form it into a ball.  Cut the dough in half using a pastry cutter or a knife.  Form the dough pieces into a ball and repeat until you have 8 dough balls.  Once you have 8 dough balls, cut each in half and roll in bread crumbs.  This makes 16 large rolls but the recipe can make up to 20 rolls.
  7. Line a baking pan with parchment paper and place the dough pieces cut side up on the pan.  Allow for enough space for the dough ball halves to expand.  Allow to proof for another hour or until it doubles in size.
  8. Preheat the oven to 190ºC (375ºF).  If using a fan oven preheat to about 160ºC (320ºF).  Place the baking pan in the oven and bake the dough for 15 minutes.

Pan de sal

Yelly Eats

Fig squares

Yelly

I’ve been under the weather for quite a while and it’s been a very difficult week.  I was admitted to hospital overnight on Monday night for observation.  But they didn’t find anything, so that, in itself, is a relief.  I still have my headache though, which is a bit worrying.

My favourite thing to do when trying to comfort myself is baking.  Sometimes how I feel affects my baking results, but more often than not, I find comfort in the baking process.  I felt the need to bake yesterday and I had dried figs in my cupboard that needed using.  I intended to use the dried figs to make fig bars ala Fig Newtons but I wasn’t sure if I had all the ingredients.  So my fig squares were born.

They are lovely and squidgy and crumbly at the same time.  They remind me slightly of Fig Newtons which made me excited to go home because I’m sure my mum would love them (she absolutely loves Fig Newtons!).

I’m being very careful with my sugars so I’ve only had one tiny piece (yes, really) of the fig squares.  But I’m happy to share the love, so here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

  • 150g all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 175g brown sugar
  • 125g unsalted butter, softened
  • 250g dried figs, chopped

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
  2. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder together with a balloon whisk until well combined.
  3. In separate a mixing bowl (am using a free standing mixer but you can also do this by hand with a balloon whisk), combine softened butter and sugars and beat until the mixture is smooth and fluffy (about 4 minutes by mixer and about 7-10 minutes if beating by hand).  Add the eggs one at a time, making sure that the egg is well-combined before adding the next one.  Add the flour mixture in quarters.  It will look like you don’t have enough batter but it will be fine, I promise!  Add the chopped figs and mix until everything is well-distributed.
  4. Spread mixture in a greased 17.5cm x 26.5cm (or thereabouts) pan lined with baking parchment (I learned that lining the baking pan with parchment is good because it makes it easy to release the cake from the pan) and bake for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  This recipe makes up to 24 squares.

This recipe will also work with prunes, dates and raisins.  If using raisins, it would be best to soak the same amount in about 75ml of water overnight until the raisins are plumped up.  If you want a boozy version of the fruit squares, soak the fruit in about 30ml of either brandy or rum and add the fruit (with the brandy or rum) to the mixture.

Figbars