100 Recipes in 100 Days!

That's it. Sweet mother of holy hell, I'm done! I've spent hundreds of pounds, worked tirelessly for countless hours, finished work and baked myself to exhaustion but finally I have finished. With 23 and a half hours still left on the clock! In the last two days I have not only worked for fifteen hours at a windmill, attended (and solved!) a murder mystery evening - which involved rather a lot more alcohol than was wise - , i've welcomed my brother home and went out for a meal with my family but somehow I've also managed to squeeze in enough time to bake seven different things for my challenge. And these weren't any old seven baked goods, they were the final seven and by god am I glad I pulled it off.

Was there a part of me which thought I couldn't do it? Oh definitely, I have never been particularly good at sticking to my plans, I've had attempts at doing many different long term ideas or projects and most - if not all - have fallen through in some way. This was my way of proving to myself that I really can do something which takes time, effort and forward planning ( we will ignore the fact that I had to bake non stop for the last five hours to meet my deadline!). And I certainly can do those things!

Has there been any point in doing it? I suppose not, it was mostly for my self gratification. I wanted to bake, and I wanted to write about something new. But the blog side of things was really my way of making sure I finished it; if there was no proof of me doing it all then I would definitely have not finished! I guess if I wanted people to take any sort of message away from my challenge then I have a couple of points to make.

DO NOT EVER TRY THIS. That's the main one! Ok, it shan't been that difficult, but I have become rather sidetracked by it. I've been a very irritating person to live with and spend a lot of time with in the last few months because my prolific baking. I apologise for that, especially to my lovely girlfriend, Weezy, who has put up with the stress of post-baking-disaster-Me and for my time spent on the challenge. All I can hope is that the baked goods have helped assuage the pain! 

But, on a more positive note, there is nothing quite like proving people that you can do something they thought was ridiculous, or impossible or a pipe dream. I'm not going to be preachy about it - then proceeds to be preachy...- but as far as I'm concerned, if I can bake 100 recipes with very little initial know-how then I'm fairly sure anyone can do anything they put their mind to! Don't let people boss you about, accept their help of course, but stick to your guns. No body knows yourself like you!

And with that, adieu!

 Many thanks to you for reading, for my family and friends for eating a lot of cake, my boss at work for buying them off me to sell and of course my wonderful Weezy who was both the catalyst for the challenge and the biggest help of all!

The Final Results:

Then Disaster Stir-ikes

I can't decide what has been worse about this challenge, for the most part it has been an absolute joy but obviously 100 recipes in 100 days is no mean feat!

The main problem I have encountered, which has affected me the most has almost certainly been the monetary factor. A friend pointed out to me the other day that whenever he looks through a recipe book he looks at all the fancy recipes and thinks "ooh that looks good... But oh wait, I don't have that, this or that... Damn, I'll settle with a Victoria sponge!" Unfortunately, I can't simply settle with a Victoria sponge so I have had to get all those this's and that's and by god are they expensive! 

But money isn't too big of a deal, especially considering I used to spend a lot of my money on eating anyway! No, the most difficult bit has definitely been the time constraint. Now I know it has all bee self inflicted but irregardless, 100 days is not easy. I've allowed myself no opportunity for breaks or rests, one per day, no more no less. It's very difficult! It has tested my drive and commitment almost to breaking point. I'll be first to admit that about halfway through I was fed up and wanted to stop the challenge but I knew that I'd never forgive myself if I couldn't finish it. 

So here I am, the morning of the last day of the challenge. Tomorrow is the deadline (and I'm actually away all day and night, so have no time to bake tomorrow!) and I have still got five things to cook. Something I thought would be do able up until yesterday afternoon. Whilst at work I discovered, to my horror, that I had written down my dates wrong and am actually working today. Til five o'clock. I am crushed, I have five things to make and all of them will take an hour or so to do, just how am I going to fit them in? I have no clue, but I can tell you one thing for sure; I won't let you down.

Ill part with a gallery of all the baked goods I've made in the last week or so... Yeah, it's been a busy week! 

The Results:

Whoopie doo, I'm almost there!

In just under two weeks my challenge will be over, and though a significant part of me is relieved that I'm coming to the end of what has seemed like such a significant effort in my summer it must be acknowledged that I have achieved a great deal. When I started my challenge I was ok at baking, I certainly wasn't the novice I may have made myself out to be but I certainly wasn't a "Baker" I dabbled in cooking and usually only the same few things. For example, I used to always make the same sponge cake, scones, bread and flapjacks almost every time I baked. 

The main thing I've discovered about myself during this challenge is that it is remarkable that all it takes is a little drive and you can do anything. Us human beings are funny old things we're so diverse; knowledgeable, comitted, happy, excitable, foolish, lazy, sad, impatient, focused,

 scatterbrained and self-contradictory...And that's all just one person, me! 

The thing is, this challenge was part of me just trying something new. I've been writing a lot about different topics over the years, particularly about films, and really I just wanted to see whether I could do something other than that. Having been so focused on being that film critic for years and years its hard to suddenly lose the desire for it anymore, but that's what happened. So maybe if I could bake a hundred recipes in a hundred days I could prove to myself that really, if I put my mind to it then I can do anything.

But it's not just about me, it's about everyone. Anyone leaving uni, school or college really can do anything they want, you've just got to have the desire to do it, the get up and go attitude to make it happen and if you're lucky, some friends and family to help make it worth it.

The last few days of baking has gone pretty darned well if I may say so myself. I've done many flapjacks, Chocolate whoopie pies, butternut squash and orange cake, carrot cake and some hazelnut and chocolate cookies. All delicious! 

The Results:

Mmmm flappy

Mmmm Whoopie...

Mmmmmm Butternutty

Mmmm Carrot-ey

Mmmmm On Display in the Shop...

My time is meringue-ing out...

So, what have I been playing about at for the last few days? Yet again it's been almost a week since my last blog and the strain is really showing now. Although I only have 28 recipes left in my book there is only eighteen days until my challenge is over - crikey, 80 days really does fly by! - and though that may sound pretty easy to complete for a hardened baker such as myself it is definitely not!

I have had a quick glance through the remaining recipes left incomplete in my Home Baking: From the Oven to the Table book (still available for only three pounds in my local The Works) and I audibly groaned... Despite being alone at the time! Among the recipes yet complete are A bundt cake, stollen, a five layered almond and chocolate cake, chocolate whoopie pies (with home made marshmallow), pumpkin (how I will find a pumpkin in August I'll never know!) plus no end of tarts which Look gloriously  tasty... And fiendishly tricky to master!

It's true, I've obviously become more confident with my baking skills over this time - so much so I'm confident people buying cakes and biscuits from me won't be disappointed - however nothing I've done yet will prepare me for the coming days worth of baking. Twenty Eight ridiculously tricky cakes and tarts and breads in a week and a half. Expect just as few blog posts in the next few days, because I'm going to be exhausted and almost drowning in all the washing up ill be doing!

But I have to leave some pictures of this weeks fine creations! I must admit that I forgot to take a picture of my white chocolate and coffee gateaux - for shame! - but believe me you aren't missing out on much... It looked more like a sticky toffee pudding than a gateaux! And tasted, by my friend's judgement, "bland"... So much for supporting one's friends! I guess I better pull my finger out if I am going to bake that many layered chocolate cake!!

The Results:

Mmmmeringue pie (with lemon!)

Mmm Onion bread

MMM Tupperwarey

I biscotti get a move on!

Since I last blogged I took my baking produce to my workplace to sell and I must say that I did rather well selling them myself, all but one of the packets of goodies had been sold by the end of my shift ( and I'm pretty sure my boss will sneakily take that for his pudding!). Although I obviously had confidence in my baking -it's really looking a lot better these days! - I was still surprised at how easy it was to sell them for the price my boss had given them (£1.50 per pack of two flapjacks or five cookies)  this was mainly because of the struggle I had selling cake at the car boot sale a few weeks back. 

But it got me thinking about the audience of the food and how it can make a difference. My boss really likes to live the high life at almost every opportunity he can so when, on a recent visit to London, he decided to pop into the savoy hotel he simply couldn't resist buying tea and biscuits. First, lets bear in mind that in the shop he owns he sold six vanilla macaroons for £1.50 (made by yours truly) which he paid £1 for .... Which I made for approximately 30p for the six! He went to the Savoy and paid £18 for a - paltry if you don't mind me saying! - dozen Macaroons. Wow! So by my maths, the savoy has made an approximate £17.40 profit from those macaroons... It just shows how the location can make a difference; at a carboot they're worth 20p each unwrapped, at a shop £1.50 for 6 wrapped up and at one of the poshest hotels in London you are clearly paying the money to be allowed to walk into the place... The macaroons are more like a free gift for being wealthy enough to afford entry! 

Today's produce - also being baked for my boss to sell on - are Almond Biscotti, Date Pistachio and Honey slices and Apricot Flapjacks.

The biscotti are particularly good I must say! It's been a while since I made a truly satisfying crunchy biscuit, but by god do these have some crunch to them, and they taste absolutely gorgeous, just another nut based thing definitely worth giving a try yourself! The Date Pistachio and Honey Slices are really quite well made... I say this mainly because they definitely are not my thing. Dates taste absolutely awful, even when mixed with sugar and honey! They are clearly one of those things which are only ever eaten by the elderly to ensure one's bowels are working efficiently - sorry about that one if you're currently eating some form of chocolate! But I have definitely made them particularly well, the pastry which sandwiches together the date, honey and pistachio mix is done perfectly and really what more can you want!? Oh yeah, a tasty end product! The Apricot Flapjack is... well, it's flapjack with bits of apricot in, hardly worth explaining!

 And if I'm honest, it's barely worth mentioning in terms of the cooking process. I have finally got batch baking down to a tee, there really is no way easier to do it than leave the oven going and switching things round and using the same bowls to weigh things. It saves an enormous amount of time on washing up and also seems to be more worth taking the time to do. In recent weeks I've slowed down because it takes two hours out of my day to simply do one baked good. Whereas now I can manage to do three baked goods in the same amount of time, and sell them all on! It's a win win situation! And there's even no disasters to report... Boring, I know! 

The results: 

Mmm Crunchy!

Mmmm Good for the bowels..

Mmmmore Flapjacks!

A-muesli-ngly Done

That's right, I'm writing another blog post! Imagine it, someone doing a hundred day challenge and actually writing for two days in a row after 60 days, it must be unheard of! And today is just one of those days where I've really taken advantage of the summer sun and enjoyed almost every minute of it!

Too long have I been a typical uni student and gone to bed in the small hours of the morning and then woken up at midday, the last few days I've begun to get myself out of this holiday cycle I'm stuck in. I must admit that things like driving lessons and work have ensured that I am up early every now and then but for the most part early is around about ten o clock... And I rarely woke up 'early'! 

I suppose the heat has helped, I just want to take the best advantage of that lovely morning sun and not be stuck in my bed - which is almost unbearable in the morning heat anyway! - and honestly, I love it. I have been so proactive in the last few days that I have developed a quite good routine. Ill get up in the morning and have a glance at the news and various social networks whilst eating my breakfast and drinking my cuppa before settling down to paint a little bit - not the really artistic pretentious kind but the more lame/geeky toy soldier variety! - Then it'll be around 12 and ill get baking, by lunch everything's in the oven and I can rest before enjoying the afternoon doing some more energetic and less claustrophobic activities. 

There just feels like there's so much more day time now. It's fantastic, I would highly recommend giving it a go yourself... Well, at least until the English summer ends (in a few days undoubtedly!.

In my baking today I attempted some muesli cookies (made with almonds and mixed dried fruit and oats) which were absolutely delicious. Although I reckon they were closer to being circular flapjacks, in terms of consistency, they still made lovely cookies and went very well with my post lunch cup of tea (which to my utter dismay had been made with milk 6 days past the sell by date! Yet it still tasted fine...). Probably more suited to the winter months but still a tasty treat!

The second recipe ( there's absolutely no way I can finish without doing two recipes or more almost daily!) was definitely more suited to the summer months; a Herb Foccacia. I have to admit, I have no idea what a Foccacia actually is, but to me it just looks like a circular bread with holes in it for decoration - which were made by just poking a greased up finger into the dough a few times! When making it I had quibbled the amount of herbs required (it asks for 4 tbsp of mixed herbs for a 400g loaf) and decided to go with around three in the end (basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme) the smell was extremely pungent. I worried that I should have used a bit less yet, in the end the taste came out rather subtle and improved what is essentially a normal white loaf into one perfect to accompany summer salads. All in all, a great success!

The Results:

Mmmmmuesli Cookies

Mmmm Herby (No, not the car!)

Tardy Tart Tatin

I suppose you could say that time got the better of me. Or you could say that I've been lazy. You could say I've given up. But none of these are true, in reality I've just been enjoying my summer holidays in the sun and amongst the company of my wonderful girlfriend and my lovely friends. It has been over two weeks since I did a blog post and honestly there hasn't been a moment in which I've had the desire to do one either.

Again, you could call me lazy but the reason I did this challenge was so that I could enjoy writing about something in my summer months whilst completing a fun challenge. I have enjoyed both aspects but I certainly won't do it til I actually hate doing it or if it gets in the way of spending time with those important people I don't get to see all that often anymore!

Alas, poor reader, don't weep into your keyboard or frustratedly tap your tablet screen in anger because I have finished. No, I certainly haven't finished! There are still nearly 40 recipes to be baked and just under a month to do it! Can I do it? Oh I've no doubt that I will but whether ill be alive at the end I just don't know!

I the past few weeks I have been baking I can assure you this, I have even begun selling some of my produce to my place of work (a local Windmill) at a profit and shall be taking even more in this coming Wednesday. I have another car boot sale planned in the near future and a lot of the more difficult cakes and tarts left to do. But don't worry, I still haven't had any awful disasters in a long time so the future is looking bright for those dastardly looking challenges. 

Today's recipe though was a particularly exciting one, mainly because it looked absolutely dastardly. A Tart Tatin is essentially an apple tart made with melted sugar and butter, the apples are then simmered  in the toffee esque sauce before being covered over with puff pastry and baked. The tart is flipped out of its tin before serving. It looks so very impressive I could hardly believe that it worked so well. I was so sure I'd be facing a bit of an embarrassment which I could easily not mention (after all, my break means that I didn't have to mention burning a few things!) yet to my astonishment it slid out of the tin easily and was, and I quote my father, "the best thing yet" (My dad is a fan of tarts... Though hopefully not the kind out in the local club on a Friday night!).

The Result:

Mmmmm, Toffee Apple (Tart Tatin)

Here is a collection of some of the cakes I've made in the last two weeks, I have definitely done more than just these but unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of some of them. Hand on heart though, they were completed! 

Mmm Burnt Cherry Pie!

Mmmelting Cream Palmiers

Mmmalted Chocolate Biscuit Slices

Mmmacaroons... Vanilla Style!

Carbake sale/ Cakeboot Sale

As you may have noticed,my blog has been a little quiet of the last couple of days. Yet, I have been far from lazy in terms of my baking challenge. I fact yesterday I completed the historic halfway mark in my challenge in a spectacular (ok, that may be a bit hyperbolic but still...) way, I went to an enormous car boot sale to sell my cakes to passing punters... And I made a profit!

It all began on Friday morning when I set off on my dads bike - it was built in the nineteen fifties - because my bike had a puncture to go and get ingredients to bake the four things I intended to sell. 

The choices were: chocolate fudge cake, because let's face it who doesn't like that?!; clementine cake, whilst not an obvious choice it was very cheap so I figured I'd get a few wanting numerous cheap slices; crunchy nut cookies, they looked great and had a lovely honey filling sure to go down well; and lemon and chocolate whirls, pretty looking, interesting and cheap to make!

Although very nervous, it was an exciting prospect to actually finally make some money back off this challenge. I've been spending a vast amount of my ever increasing overdraft on flour butter and nuts and this just seemed like an obvious way to solve the problem. Why not try? The least that could happen was that I wouldn't sell anything and that I'd have still baked four recipes I needed to for the challenge anyway! 

So, laden with a rucksack full of ingredients and a carrier swinging on my handlebars I slowly cycled the two or so miles home... In the rain. I got soaked.

But still, the rest of the afternoon was spent in front of the oven swapping cakes about and generally working up a sweat so I soon dried off. But I spent four hours baking the two cakes and two sets of biscuits, and in the end I was very very impressed with how they went. My previous attempt at baking in a rush didn't exactly go to plan but here they all turned out miraculously well! The cakes looked fabulous and the biscuits very tempting. So prospects looked good for yesterday's boot sale, even the sun had made an appearance whilst slowly setting on Friday evening. 

After a restless nights sleep (mainly due to expecting it to be time to be up already) we arose at five thirty in the morning - my girlfriend had kindly offered to chauffeur me to the car boot sale... Bless her she must be crazy but I love her for it! - and set off beneath the grey skies for a challenge to sell cakes.

After a slow first hour or two - I suppose people don't want to eat cake early in the morning - things picked up and we began selling biscuits to passers by, then the chocolate cake started going, before we knew it a few hours had gone by and we were left with only a few biscuits and almost half of the clementine cake ( much to my surprise, people just didn't care much for the slightly healthier cheaper option). I was in my element; hailing down families and tempting them with offers of freshly baked chocolate cakes and biscuits. I love the environment of trying to sell something I've put so much effort into for a profit (no matter how small!).

I the end, we returned with only half a clementine cake and no biscuits left. We'd made a profit on the day and the evening's baking. Admittedly I'm hardly going to make a living on it just yet, but it's something! At 50p an hour I'm earning way less than minimum wage but in terms of enjoyment and excitement I feel like I'm a millionaire.

Then, it was to bed for the afternoon.

The Results :

Mmmm, Carbooty

Frosted Orange Biscutes

After yesterday's disastrous pastry attempt I decided I'd "take it easy" and try my hand at frosted orange biscuits. Lets make it clear right now though, there are literally no easy options left in my book I'm almost exactly halfway through the challenge so there is no longer the option to "take it easy" it is all go right now!

I have to say that these biscuits are easily - meant to be - the best looking biscuits in the book. The picture I have in front of me shows some beautiful cutesy looking flower shaped chocolate biscuits with a white icing centre topping in the centre and a drizzle of chocolate icing over the top... Mine clearly don't look quite like that! 

Perhaps it's my fault for being a bad manager of time; I must admit, it has never been my strong point. But after waking up at nearly midday (gimme a break, I'm used to the student life, not the bakers' life!) I ended up fiddling about for about twenty minutes or so 'waking up' - which to me is simply getting my social network fix, having a look at the news and dragging myself downstairs for my second fix (this time caffeine!). By the time I am actually ready to do anything productive in the day it is almost half past one and today I needed to run some other errands first, so baking finally came into sight at 2.30.... Only an hour before I needed to be at the cinema to watch a film with my lovely girlfriend. Cue mad rush to bake the prettiest biscuits I have to make in the challenge. Rushing whilst attempting to be neat doesn't usually go well together unfortunately!

Yet in the end it seemed to pay off pretty well, although the chocolate took longer to set than anticipated, what I ended up with didn't look too far off from the pretty biscuits shown in the book. Well, the carefully chosen ones for my picture certainly didn't, the others... Well, I think it's best that we don't bother mentioning the others! But hell, they still look good!

The Result:

Mmmm, pretty!

Apple Poor

"Part of me wants another disaster because it would be way more fun to write about..."

Those were my words in yesterday's post, following an out and out success with my cheese and mustard scones, and by god do I regret saying because it seems that there is someone up there granting my desires to come true... Well only in this case! 

Today was meant to be so easy, an apple pie certainly doesn't sound like an overly difficult task, yet it was far more of a trial than I could have ever imagined. It began with the small task of shopping for the ingredients, things like buying cooking apples shouldn't be so difficult! My girlfriend and I went to pretty much every single fruit and veg market stall in the centre of (market town) Boston, which I call my home, and yet every time we got to one they'd either ran out of these seemingly precious fruits or had never stocked them. 

- how can they be so precious?! I'm pretty sure we used to have a cooking apple tree in the back garden ( and so did the neighbours) but we got rid of them because the apples got everywhere, surely we didn't have the last one in my humble little town?! -

But finally we found one place with a few left and so I eagerly hoarded them in my bag in case someone else was in search of this green and bitter treasure...

As we arrived in the kitchen with flour, the precious apples and lard - something I almost forgot to buy so had to turn round and add an extra mile on the journey to get ( at least it helped working off the pie I'd soon be guzzling!) - the baking began.

And not for the whole of the challenge have  I been so distraught and frustrated by any single recipe. It was just pastry, and yet it just wouldn't bend to my will! It wouldn't stay together - even after the half an hour in the fridge - and every time I attempted to roll it just stuck to the surface, despite almost covering the entire kitchen - let alone the surface - in flour. In other words it just wasn't going my way today, the pastry ended up being more like a dough which I had to squash into the dish and hope that it would work. I fact I became so sure that it would ultimately fail that I even kept some filling back for the retry.

Alas, it came out of the oven after nearly an hours worth of baking looking... Messy - that's the first word that comes to mind! - but it was still clearly edible, and really quite edible in the end. The pastry was very crumbly, as expected, but it certainly tasted good, and when covered with custard, cream or ice cream no one would bat an eyelid at how destroyed it was by simply lifting it out of the dish! 

Not one to have to retry, but still, it certainly came close!

The Result: 

Mmmm, oh dear god, that looks horrific!

I mustard done well this time!

True to my blog yesterday I almost didn't bake again today, it certainly wasn't the top of the pile of jobs to do today, though in my procrastination I did find out a remarkable fact about my baking. The cost.

I mean I knew that it was an expensive endeavour when I began doing it. Even buying the cheapest cake you can every day for one hundred days would be expensive. At the minimum it would be about a hundred pounds! Yet obviously a baking challenge like mine doesn't just bake a basic sponge every day... I've had double chocolate gateauxs, spiced apple cakes, cheese cakes and everything in between. Although I've saved money by buying discount butter, flour and eggs you really can't save that much on things like glacé cherries or nuts. They're damned pricy! In short, I did some maths yesterday and discovered that the cake I baked yesterday cost me about seven quid to make, and that was with value flour and butter, it wasn't cheap!

Regardless, the challenge continues in spite of the ever deepening hole in my pockets. Today's challenge was going to be something more exciting than the Cheese and Mustard Scones I ended up making but I will have a proper day or two dedicated to baking soon, I've promised myself!

But the scones, which somehow jumped out at me, ended up being one of the most straightforward I've done in a while. It was almost literally weighing up the ingredients in any ole order and then whacking them in the oven! Unsurprisingly, absolutely nothing went wrong and they came out almost perfectly. Not only were they surprisingly tasty - lets face it, mustard and cheese don't scream out "yummy!" - but they were also so light and fluffy; perfect scones. Part of me wants another disaster because it would be way more fun to write about... But the other part me realises that at seven quid a cake I really can't afford any more disasters!

The Result:

                                Mmmm, lonely... 

A Cherry Good Cake

I'm almost halfway through my baking challenge, which may seem quite odd to those who've been following my various endeavours and writings on this blog, it certainly doesn't seem like this long has passed already! Yet, as expected it is getting exhausting now, keeping up with the daily pace of baking is really taking its toll on me. It's not in the actual baking or even the eating the foods - that is becoming easier as I find more and more people willing to take cake home with them - but it is actually just my enthusiasm for it. 

Of course I love baking, I always have, but right now I have lost most of my desire to keep up with the challenge; I am falling behind. But that certainly doesn't mean I'm  going to stop, I'm not one to give up.I did a bit of maths earlier and discovered that I am almost a week behind on the challenge. It's not because I've not tried (the last few times I've baked it's been two items at least!) but because I have quite an active social life at the moment, home from university means seeing my old school friends I don't really see in term time. And I have a few groups of them! Also my lovely girlfriend is at home and she definitely doesn't want to be my scullery maid - no matter how many times I've asked her - which also reduces opportunities to bake. 

This weekend I went to Glasgow to see my cousins who I spent a great weekend with sampling scotch and seaweed flavoured beer... There wasn't really time to bake a batch of cookies! So I came back and immediately set to baking myself a cake. A Classic Cherry Cake, which has turned out rather well  (except for a few minor errors); it was a normal cake. A simple bit of sponge mixed with cherries, lemon and almonds. My girlfriend has remarked to me that the recipes in this book of mine are very nut heavy, something I'm not particularly bothered by, I love nuts (make the jokes you wish from that!) which made me think, actually she's right - "You sound so surprised!" I hear her shouting at her laptop - so I decided to look into the book and see how many actually do have nuts in.

It turns out that 40 out of the hundred recipes I am working through have nuts in, surprising I suppose because these days I get the impression that nuts aren't really in many baked goods I buy. I can't remember the last time I bought something with hazelnuts or something in, they're almost entirely absent from many people's diets. Maybe it's because nut allergies are quite coming these days or - stoners, prepare for your mind to be blown - it is the other way round and we are allergic to nuts because they're not as common in things any more... Woah, man.

Anyway, back to that cake after a rambling. The cake went very well, I must admit, but it fell down at the final hurdle because - yet again - I didn't fully commit to this challenge by buying the correct equipment ( or account for the fact I had the wrong equipment in the cooking time). I used a nine inch baking tin rather than an eight inch one, not a problem on its own but the spreading out of e mixture meant that I should have adjusted cooking time suitably, and I didn't. A rather more brown cake came out than I'd hoped, it also is a little less moist than you'd like but then again, with a nice brew it goes down perfectly! 

This evening gone I also decided to make pizzas with my own good hands to knock another number off the list without overloading on sugar. I was surprised at just how simple they were up until the cooking stage. You'd think the hard bit would be the dough right? Wrong. It is simple bread dough ( well, simple to someone who's given that a go before) simply rolled flat once you've finished proving it. But once loaded up with toppings (and by god do I love my toppings!) it is an absolute bogger to slide into the oven! It is recommended to use either a proper pizza stone or an upended baking tray - guess which I used! - but unfortunately you really have to scatter a vast amount of semolina on all surfaces before you put the toppings on. It may be easy to move when dough on its own but you soon start distorting your face and worrying when there is the potential for cheese, tomato sauce, pepperonis, veg and chillies to give your kitchen floor a makeover! Semolina underneath the baking tray you cook it on and the plastic board you use to roll it out and as a surface for putting toppings on simply must be well semolinad up!

Still, it came out looking absolutely brilliant! 

The Results:

Mmmmm a lovely "piece a" cake

A lovely Pizza great!

Peanut Butter Lazy Time

Have you ever had one of those lazy days where you have literally sat around the entire time doing nothing but still somehow feel exhausted? Well I just had two of them, admittedly I am still feeling a little bit ill from the other day ( I'm pretty confident that in one of my coughing fits my lung is bound to fly out of my mouth!) but that hardly gives me an excuse to literally lie down ALL DAY. Today I haven't spent more than a few minutes away from some form of television other than trips to the toilet ( which, now I have an iPad, might actually start including tv!), don't get me wrong television is great if you just want to sit back and not engage with life in any sort of way for a while; everyone needs down time. With the exception of some forms of tv - news, documentaries, tv dramas etc - it is, for the large part, simply brain melting. 

Even shows which I really enjoy ( I'm a sucker for American sitcoms) eventually wear me down so much that I can barely string a cohesive sentence together in conversation. I've heard of people doing challenges in which they decide not to watch tv for a week or month, but honestly I think I'd find the opposite more difficult. Just picture sitting there on a sofa for 12 hours of your day, every day, for an entire month. It's what I would call hell. Especially day time tv. Assuming we're avoiding the slightly higher brow bbc breakfast, it starts with gmtv, then this morning then loose women and Jeremy Kyle and then come dine with me (ok come dine with me is not bad at all) and then it descends into quiz shows and sitcoms before night time tv gives into an actual variation in programming day by day. Does that sound in any way appealing to anyone?! 30 days of that? Because I think I'd prefer to run head first into the tv non stop for thirty days than actually soak that drivel in to my brain!

So after my lazy day I finally decided to get off my Harry shaped dip in the bed to do some baking. It's amazing how good it actually felt to do something (even if it is something I've done every day for almost fifty days now!). Mixing butter and peanut butter gave off a heavenly smell and mixing in the oats and flour just made it look so delicious.

These have certainly been some of the better cookies I've done. Admittedly not as good as my gingersnaps but still exceptional, I've never had peanut butter cookies before but by god are they good! 

Now I've finished, what should I do for this evening... I'll see what's on tv I guess... 

The Result: 

Mmmm Peanut Butter Cookies

Aww Jeez(cake) Part Two

Two days ago I promised you the second half of my gargantuan New York Cheesecake challenge,min which I would reveal whether my hardest challenge yet was a success or a failure. However, before I could finish it, I became quite ill with a horrible sickness/sore throat type bug thing my dad has been spreading round the house with his quite charming lack of mouth covering. So here I am tucked in bed  after a night attempting to clear my throat of whatever the hell is going on in there hoping to enlighten you on this second part of the cheesecake challenge.

I must be honest that writing a blog when feeling distinctly under the weather was never something I intended to do whilst completing this challenge. For one thing I genuinely never thought I'd get sick - the last time I was properly ill was almost a year ago when I was struck down by the dreadful freshers flu, undoubtedly caught from those "studying" media studies (if you can truly call media studies a real subject) my journalism course shares rooms with - but also that I'd haves to be mad to actually bake whilst ill; I seriously doubt the lurgy is a good topping to any cake! 

Yet I suppose today is a easy opportunity to take advantage of, it's not often I'm confined to my room with nothing but my (new and shiny) iPad for company and plenty of time to mull over my baking failures or successes. 

You may recall that i had left you with the potential disaster ridden cheesecake, I had completely forgotten to possibly the most important ingredient for any cake; flour. Yet, with a cheesecake made - unsurprisingly - mostly from cheese and cream I thought I might get away with it. There were only two tablespoons of it in the recipe after all!

After a night sitting at the bottom of the fridge (something my mother was not happy about considering its significant size!) it looked pretty much the same as it did when I put it in there; like a jelly before it sets. Yet, thankfully, when I lifted it out it was clear it was solid. HALLELUJAH! A far as I'm concerned it could taste terrible, at this point it was clear it was at the very least a "cake"! 

The result: 

It tastes very good, I must admit that. Is it perfect, definitely not but it does taste very nice (for a cheese cake anyway, they certainly aren't my favourite) I definitely think that whenever orange zest is asked for in recipes that I would always go for satsuma peel instead, it is far sweeter and so much tastier!

Though it certainly wasn't perfect, for instance the digestive biscuit base decided to stick to the base of the tin....not the cake! Still, you eat a cheesecake for the cheese cake bit not the "buttery biscuit base!" 

So there you have it, one pretty much successful cheesecake, proving that not only do you not have to be a very good baker but you also don't even need to put all the ingredients in to have a successful cake! 

Awww Jeeez(cake)

Today's gargantuan task was to make a New York Cheesecake and though I must admit that it was certainly not the most simple recipe I've ever made, it all seems to have gone rather well so far. But here's the catch, it isn't finished yet. Before I began the baking process I didn't realise this was a whole night job, it requires extensive cooling (both in the slowly cooling oven and in the fridge) for at least twelve hours. So I had to really hurry to try and make sure I had done something for today's eager baking fanatics too.

Unfortunately though today was just one of those days. I had intended to bake in the afternoon so that I wouldn't spoil my lunch by eating numerous cookies (I could spoil my dinner instead!) so wasted my morning doing other miscellaneous activities

- the sort that makes you think you are making good use of your time whilst doing it but then later look back on the day and realise that actually, you could have done infinitely more useful and exciting things -

when actually I should have been preparing for the epic task which was the afternoon's baking extravaganza. I had already arranged for a friend to join me in this particular endeavour mainly to make sure I wasn't quite as lonely as usual but also to take advantage of his wonderful four wheeled contraption (something I am sadly not qualified to operate). On the way he kindly picked up a Kilo of cream cheese (ironic that Philidelphia is used for a New York Cheesecake!) for the Cheesecake; something I'm sure he relished, after all, who doesn't want to be stared at by a judging till lady for eating such vast quantities of cheese.

But having forced the poor fellow to embarass himself because of my lack of preparation I also realised that I neither had enough eggs nor the correct baking tin for the job. So off we went in his (now I think about it) far from wonderful four wheeled contraption, held together by duct tape and with a wobble when the speed exceeds 50mph! To fetch said baking tin from my rather confused girlfriend and some eggs from our nearby shop.

After that it was merely a simple task of slowly adding everything into a food processor in the right order. Sounds easy right? Well not to someone as simple and unfocused as me! Somehow I managed to miss the flour out of the recipe (something I only noticed following 30 minutes of baking!) how could I be so stupid to miss out the flour from a cake!? I can't believe it!

Though whilst I make out that this is such a failure, in reality it may prove less so. There are only two tablespoons of flour in the whole recipe, so I'm hoping that the lack of it will barely make a difference. Only time will tell, tomorrow's blog post will hold the answer...

Because I couldn't disappoint my readers with such a cliffhanger I decided to make some Coconut and Cranberry Cookies as well. And they turned out rather well indeed! Smiles all around!

The Result:

Mmmm Not a cheesecake if you're wondering what went wrong!

Lame-ington Cakes

The last time I wrote a wonderful baking pun filled blog post was almost a week ago now and I feel I have the obligation to share with you the numerous wonders I've created in those days. Admittedly, the fact that I've been very busy means that I have missed out on a couple of day's worth of baking but I'm sure I will catch up in the very near future.

A few days ago my attempt at making English Breakfast muffins went about as well as you could possibly hope for something as uninspiring and boring sounding as breakfast muffins. What I was amazed by is that they are not - as I had assumed - made by baking them in the oven like any other kind of roll (or muffin for that matter). But are instead fried in pan once they have risen to about as much as they can. It does explain why they do sometimes come out with the griddle marks on them, but for some reason this just never clicked in my mind! They are very tasty and the best bit is I get to make myself eggs benedict, a treat I've always been too hungover to manage to get from a Wetherspoons on a weekend out!

The Result:

Mmmm.... Umm Plainy?

The next baking misadventure which crossed my path in the week was the weird and wonderful world of cookies and biscuits. Last time I tried making biscuits I ended up with the most beautiful gingernut biscuits I've ever had, and I mean PERFECT (See for yourself here), they looked shop bought and tasted far better than shop bought ones so it was a wonderful evening for all! Yet, here only a few days later I tried Chunky Apricot and Nut Cookies and the results were, let's say, not as successful.

On the one hand, they were very tasty and were well cooked and the rest of it. On the other hand they look like devil's spawn. I seriously do not understand just how cookie companies can get cookies to look the way they do so regularly, I mean just look at these abominations! They are misshapen, malformed, malposed misfits... even though they do taste rather marvelous. I would say it is luck but it clearly isn't if manufacturers are managing it just right every time, what on earth is their secret to the perfect art of cookie making!? Perhaps only relentless and daily baking will solve this problem... How fortunate for me!

The Second result:

Mmmmalformed

Which is brings us to this fine summers Sunday afternoon (which just so happens to be father's day) on which I suddenly realised that I ha barely baked at all for the last few days. Yes, I had traveled from here to there for a few days of drinking & debauchery and returned in time to squeeze into a suit for a wedding but there should always be time for baking and so I simply had to get cooking as soon as my increasingly unwilling body was ready to take another dose of sugar, eggs and butter. 

- It is with extreme sorrow that I say that my once willing body is now not only lacking the desire to eat such large quantities of baked goods but it is also scarily addicted to them. I literally cannot manage a day without a daily (and usually large!) dose of some form of unhealthy food. My once healthy body has become a chugging, lumbering, butter fueled behemoth. I'm not even halfway through this challenge God help me! -

So I decided to try out Lamington Cakes. These are essentially a form of sponge cake (though it is certainly not one I've ever encountered before!) which is made from furiously whisking a few eggs with sugar whilst gently heating them over hot water. When I say furious I mean that this whisking session was brutal. Not only was it a lengthy and painful whisking but it also barely made the product I was aiming for ("something pale a fluffy but which had some body to it"... No, I have no idea to make something fluffy and have body to it!).

Finally having almost permanently paralysed my right arm whisking I went straight to sieving the plain flour into it (another recipe misnomer; why not self raising?) which promptly made my "fluffy" egg and sugar mix sink into its original form. So basically, thoday hasn't gone well!

Yet, after half an hour or so in the oven it came out looking pretty solid (suspiciously so I would say...) so I wasn't too fussed. Dipping them in chocolate icing and then rolling them about in dessicated coconut was also a difficult process and certainly nowhere near as enjoyable as it sounds. Essentially I got chocolate icing everywhere; on my fingers, arms, face, trousers, elbow, hair, work surface, fridge. Yet I ended up with some rather pretty looking Lamington Cakes!

The Result:

Mmmm, Coconutty

They may have been way too hard in the middle (I can only attribute this to either my lack of arm muscles in the whisking process or -less likely - that it should have been self raising flour not plain for the recipe), they cerainly weren't the spongey morsel I'd hoped. However,the icing on the cake (pun intended of course) was the delicious layer of chocolate and coconut on the outside something which worked tremendously!