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!

You smell like a monkey and you bake like one too!

What's worse than having to bake your own birthday cake? A birthday cake is, I suppose, the most basic form of birthday present you can get - other than a card perhaps - so it is a little bit (which here means 'very') sad to spend your time on your birthday baking your own cake. Yet I knew that this would end up happening when I set out to do this challenge so I can hardly grumble.
Today, just like any other day, has seen me occupying my time by baking; it also just so happens to be my birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ME!

- I suppose that baking your own birthday cake is pretty sad but wishing yourself happy birthday is really taking the biscuit... If only I'd sent myself a card just to trump myself on the sadness scale. -

Yet, in answer to the almost rhetorical question I opened this post with, I can tell you for definite what is worse than baking your own birthday cake... That is definitely breaking it in half during the cooking process.
Yep, that's right, the last few days' baking have been largely successful and often outstanding... But my birthday cake just had to go wrong or it just wouldn't be right. So I set out to make my Chocolate Mint Sponge Cake (Mint Chocolate is my favourite) with hopes rather high, it wasn't an overly complicated recipe, just a normal sponge cake with a few bits of Matchmakers chocolate scattered in the mix and to decorate.

However, I made two crucial and devastating mistakes. One: I used cake tins without the handy removable bottom (it's just so much easier to separate it from the tin) and Two: I probably didn't grease the tins as well as I should have. One plus Two makes three... three pieces to a two piece cake. I was distraught.

I literally whined like a baby when the cake split. I may have turned twenty today but believe me, the sound which escaped my lips would be about the same as if you stole a lollipop from a three year old girl. I almost didn't know what to do, frustration could have kicked in - which would almost definitely have resulted in no cake at all and a large pile of crumbs with a rolling pin sitting in the middle - but I remained calm.

The solution was simple, I just used the icing I was about to put in the middle of the cake to glue the parts back together and then decorated it as normal. Honestly I don't think you'd be able to guess if you hadn't heard your dogs barking and cats meowing because they could hear my ultra-sonic high pitch cry of despair... or read my post!

The Result: 

Mmmm Broken

Mmmm Disguisey...

This has gateaux work well...

Today is my dad's birthday. So today's cake had to be something pretty special in order to set it apart from all the cakes and biscuits I've been practically force feeding the family for the last few weeks. That therefore means it had to be something significantly more complicated and potentially disaster ridden. The pressure to make a perfect cake today was actually a very real and tangible, I could feel it hanging over me as I mixed the ingredients and waited the almost never ending 45 minutes whilst it slowly changed from that gloopy mix to that solid looking cake. This time though, there were so many different phases in which it could go wrong...

The first phase was making the filling. Essentially the filling was cream with white chocolate blasted into it. It needed to be heated up until almost boiling so there was the first potential disaster, it has been many a time when my version of "heated til boiling" turns into simply burning... Though this time, the first hurdle was crossed. The filling then had to go into the fridge for a frustratingly long time period (it suggested two hours, I went with an hour in the fridge and 15 mins in the freezer which worked fine!)

The second hurdle (once the cake itself was cooked) was the cutting of it. In a gateaux you cook one enormous cake and then slice it horizontally into three pieces (rather than cooking separate cakes and sandwiching them together) before spreading the middle with the desired filling. Naturally, this didn't go quite to plan... My idea of a third of a cake was obviously closer to something like a sixth... which meant I had the thinnest layer of cake between sauces I think any baker has ever done in the history of the universe. Yet, with utmost care this fragile morsel of cake remained solid throughout the boisterous spreading of a nearly frozen creamy filling - perhaps the freezer wasn't the best method of cooling after all - onto the slices and when sandwiched together it all worked out fine!

The final potential disaster was the making of the icing. It required not one chocolate bar, not two but three whole chocolate bars (and another half on top of that!) melted to make 350 grams of rich chocolatey heaven. Plus extra cream and butter just to ensure that there was enough fat to cover your "Guideline Daily Allowance" in one fell swoop. This part went well though I must say there was a significant amount too much icing (which I will reserve for my next cake tomorrow) and didn't solidify as quickly as I'd hoped - this naturally caused an untold amount of mess, I still have chocolate icing on my arm to prove it was homemade - yet in the end it worked well after a little cooling and made the end product shining with deliciousness.

The Result:

Mmmm Candle-ey

Mmmm, Layer-ey

So there you have it, a successful cake for a very happy birthday boy (well not quite a boy now in his 50s!). It tasted beautiful and to my surprise the dark chocolate icing didn't make it too bitter by any stretch of the mark, obviously the hundreds of grams of sugar in the middle of the cake balanced it out quite nicely! 

Tomorrow I shall be making another for another special birthday boy...

Gingerly Confident Biscuit Baking

Considering that I have gotten just over a third of the way to completing my challenge I think I have done remarkably well in terms of not just baking some form of treat regularly but also in ensuring that my blog is updated as frequently as possible. Of course, I haven't written a post absolutely every day but then I think it would be outrageous to never give myself even one day off in a hundred days yet I've still managed to put up around thirty posts talking about this that and the other and - obviously - the baking. Yet today for the first time I've really struggled to think of a topic to open my blog with... I have it, the dreaded curse of writer's block.

I assumed that it would happen, you can't write on a topic every day without sometimes struggling to formulate an idea and of course witty stories can only be written about when you actually have a witty or interesting story to tell! So here I am, writing about my lack of ideas for the start of a post in the start of said post... How very abstract of me.

Anyway, the baking, as you may have noticed I never wrote a blog yesterday either. Perhaps it is unforgivable but personally I'm just glad I managed to squeeze in making chocolate brownies, because by god were they worth the effort it took to de-shell one hundred grams of pistachio nuts (i'd recommend buying yours de-shelled if you are to attempt a pistachio recipe!). Although I must admit that I was a little bit disappointed by the end result - the tray size meant that they came out more like small cakes than brownies - there was really very little to complain about. The inclusion of pistachio nuts is really quite ingenious because although you don't get a nutty taste from them it really adds to the texture to make them far interesting to eat. And because they don't get in the way of the gorgeous chocolatey flavour there's really no reason to not include them.

Today's recipe was Gingersnap biscuits (I know them as gingernuts but I'm going by the recipe's title!) and I am so glad that they worked so well. So far my attempts at biscuit making have ranged from hilariously disastrous (see "I Pecan't Make Biscuits") to dodgy looking but tasty (See "Bargain Hunting and Biscuit Making"). Today though, I am proud to say that not only have I successfully made biscuits which taste perfect but they also look incredible. And I mean properly professional looking, in fact so much so that it is very hard to tell whether or not they are actually shop bought or not. If it wasn't for the assortment of sizes I think I might doubt my own memory and believe that I simply imagined the whole baking escapade but alas I have finally made something I am actually very very proud of. They look great and taste great, perhaps a third of the way through this challenge I am finally getting my head round this whole baking malarkey... Well, we'll see if that lasts very long!

The Results: 

Mmm Browney..

Mmmm gingery

I've got a lovely burnt Coconut...

Whilst sewing a button onto an old pair of shorts - which had seen better days considering I was bought them as a young teen - and patching on some velcro whilst listening to some beautiful Jazz (Sample it for yourself here) I realised that I am by no stretch of the mark a "normal teenager." To most people who have met me in person I would say they might not think this remotely true, yes I am quite a quirky and happy-go-lucky kind of person when you meet me, but only once you get to know me do you realise that I have some really very unusual hobbies and ways of spending my time.

Obviously I'm not alone in being a baking fan (you, my humble reader, must have at least a passing interest in the cooking art) but it isn't my only "quirky" habit. It has been noted by people that teenagers who grow their own herbs and other plants aren't quite normal. Someone who knows how to sew a button back onto their jeans is disappointingly rare. Anyone who can repair basic household things or even have a vague understanding of technical ideas is becoming even less so. I have grown up with my father being able to fix almost anything which broke in our house (unfortunately not anything hi-tech of course) and unfortunately I never really paid attention to how he did these things. But as I've grown up I've realised that being able to do the odd job here and there is not only handy (and far easier than you'd imagine most of the time) but also saves time and money.

Really, that's where my hobbies come from, a desire to do something myself which I know is far cheaper, quicker and can sometimes yield far better results (especially when baking or growing herbs). Call me a tight-wad or a cheap scrounger all you want. But saving a few pennies here and there means I don't have to spend money buying a new towel rail for the bathroom (something I recently fixed at Uni) and can instead spend it on something I really want. That's why I don't mind being called weird or "quirky" or "odd" because to me it is far more odd to not know the basic mechanical knowledge that goes into making everything that surrounds us.

Today's recipe was by far the most easy I've had to do, mainly because it cheats and uses a ready made flan case. Part of me thought this wasn't really in the mood of the challenge which to me has a bit of a "discovering new things" and DIY vibe to it but I must say that it was a relief to not really have to put any effort in at all!

However... that doesn't necessarily mean everything went completely to plan! I think the main problem with today's challenge was actually the store-bought, ready-made flan case, why? Well naturally it isn't the shop's fault - nor the company who made said case - but mine and mine alone. Because when I went shopping for this flan case I wrote down on my list "flan case" and I came back with a "sponge flan case."  Naturally sponge isn't as heat resistant as pastry...

The Result:

Mmmm burney

So as you can see, it is a tad (a lot) blackened around the edges. Though I'll be first to admit that this is certainly not the worst disaster I've encountered on the blog it is certainly one which is very disappointing, I really looked forward to my coconut tart. Yet, when I bit into that first mouthful of coconutty tart I discovered that the overcooking had actually made... a MASSIVE difference, as much as I wish I could say that it was lovely and tasty despite the slight excessive use of oven it is clear that if only I had noticed in advance that that the flan case was the wrong kind perhaps it would have been perfect. The end result was a lovely filling and a burnt crust. Disappointing to say the least.

Apricot-astrophic Squares

Today was the most surprising baking day I've had in a long time. Why? Well everything went tits up of course! Perhaps I'd become cocky, over-confident or just a little too slap dash but somehow somewhere along the line something went terribly wrong. The challenge in question - Apricot and White Chocolate Squares - is hardly the most difficult I've ever encountered, it certainly isn't anywhere near as complicated as some of the things I'll have to be attempting in the not too distant future. Yet, the attempt landed quite severely on its face. 

Essentially all these creations are is a simple cake made with white chocolate, butter, flour and sugar all mixed together to then be cut into small bite sized morsels. I think that my main problem was deciding to halve the recipe - using four eggs just didn't seem justified for one day's worth of baking! - and therefore limiting myself to having to use a smaller (and incorrect) tin. 

Up until the cooking stage everything was going well... I say "well" in the loosest of terms because the first task I had to do was melt chocolate and butter in a pyrex bowl over a pan of simmering water. I chose my smallest pyrex bowl and my smallest pan and assumed that the bowl would be bigger... The bowl fell into this pan of simmering water, sloshing it EVERYWHERE, clearly I had misjudged my calculations in water displacement, not so much Eureka as oops-leaker, but it can't be too big of a deal right?

Then I noticed a puddle of water sitting inside my bowl of butter and chocolate! Noooooo! Well no matter, I poured what I could of the water out and carried on mixing. The mixture melted perfectly and I assumed that everything was back on track.

I had settled on using a bread tin as my desired cooking container - perhaps my downfall - mainly because it had a square bottom at about half the size the recipe asked for; perfect for my reduced quantities. Though clearly it didn't work out...

The Result:

Mmmm Salvaged...

The picture is not doing this catastrophe any justice at all I can assure you, though you may be able to see the slightly blackened edges of some of the squares... This is because of the attempts to rescue what was clearly a doomed attempt at baking. The main issue (which is really not obvious once the end result has been cut into servings) was that the cake had sunk in the middle during cooking, as if some tiny, fat, dastardly borrowers had decided to tan themselves on the middle of my slowly cooking cake. Despite being left in for the desired time at the desired heat something just didn't go right for some reason. The end result had a small cylinder of soft, gooey, yet tasty mixture in the middle of the cake. 

Unfortunately, it wasn't how it was meant to be so I tried desperately to rescue it. I cooled it down (as the recipe suggested it might have a soft centre until cooled) in the fridge to no avail. I reheated it gentyl in the cooling oven to no avail. I even put it in the oven at full temperature for an extra 15 minutes; lengthy considering the actual cooking time was only 25-30 minutes in the first place! yet still I was left with a sticky consistency. Finally I cut the middle out and was left with a fair amount fewer, slightly burnt on the edge, but at least solid squares. Though at least it's the dog who is going to be gaining the weight after him gaining on gooey goodies! 

Paying Peanuts

The recipe I decided to bake for myself - when I say myself I obviously don't intend to eat this enormous treat all by myself! -  today was Peanut Butter Squares (think flapjack style). Today has been a big test for me because it is the first time I'm going to use Asda's smart price plain flour (60p per 1.5kg), something I've really tried to avoid at all costs because I work at a Windmill which stone-grinds its own organic white flour made entirely from British wheat.

As an employee I have seen countless customers come in and buy our flour and insist it is "the best" flour around, I'm not here to promote The Maud Foster Windmill but this idea does intrigue me. Part of me believes that the customers are simply tricking themselves into thinking that "Strong Plain Untreated Organic Stoneground Flour" is simply better because it has far more adjectives at the front of it but I wanted to test this idea for myself. Is there any real difference between a bag of 60p flour and a bag for £2?

The answer is, to my surprise, Yes. Obviously I can't be 100% sure because this wasn't exactly a scientific experiment but it certainly seems that way. I'm rather adept at telling the difference between flours after working at a windmill for half a decade (A long time, I know) and the smart price stuff just didn't seem... right.

Obviously most of my experience is of the same flour so anything different would probably feel that way but in my head I knew straight away that this wasn't as good at all. There was an aspect of it which felt cheap and nasty. And the end result was nowhere near as good as anything I've made so far. Not because of some hilarious kitchen accident but because the flour didn't turn into breadcrumbs very well at all and the end result has become far more powdery and less solid than originally intended. I guess that you can cut corners all you want to try and make the product economically viable but for flour I will certainly not try anything quite this cheap again. Saisnbury's home brand plain flour (about 80p if i remember correctly) was pretty good so maybe that is a better alternative.


The Result: 

Mmm Powdery...

On the one hand, they taste very good, despite feeling very very unhealthy - I can almost feel my heart struggling to pump all the condensed milk, butter (peanut and ordinary),chocolate and nuts into my bloodstream - but the fact that they are really very very powdery really ruins them. They aren't something I think I'd be excited to eat again but I can't decide whether it is the dodgy flour or just another duff recipe... I have plenty of ASDA's finest left so we shall see!

There's no brioche, we have plenty of time!

Yesterday I realised that I was quite behind on baking. As regulars may have noticed, there have been the odd absentee days scattered throughout the last few weeks. And understandably so I'd say, fitting baking around uni, work, farewell events, birthdays, greeting old friends and every other daily surprise is fairly difficult.

But that is, of course, no excuse for being late or unable to finish the challenge. So I'm making sure that from now on I remain on top of my challenge, I certainly don't want to leave a dozen recipes to do on the final day! Having said that, doing the same to catch up now would be equally ridiculous and back breaking (not mentioning wallet breaking and coma inducing).

I have to admit the main issue with the challenge now is the small matter of eating it all. I can't eat it all fast enough!

Anyway, the actual challenges today were Brioche and Chocolate Chip Cookies. And both went extraordinarily well, by now you will know that I am certainly my own best critic so this is by no means me simply tooting my own horn! I couldn't have asked for better if I'd tried. My only quibble was that I literally have no idea what to do with a brioche.

Call me uncultured if you wish but I simply had no idea what to do with it! Do I butter it? Put jam on it? Make sandwiches or dip it in soup? I literally haven't the foggiest! In the end I ate a couple of slices plain out of the oven which were lovely but I do wonder whether I should treat it as cake or bread... A mystery! I resolved to decide another day and popped it in the freezer!

The Result:

Both treats ended up being perfect. The cookies in particular are absolutely perfect, better than store bought cookies because they have that rustic homemade taste to them but importantly they still have the doughy texture you get from the shop bought treats. Perfect. And the brioche... Well it tastes good and looks brilliant, though I'm still flummoxed as to what I should be comparing to!

The Rocky Horror Brownie Show

My neighbours are on holiday for a week - my parents have backed this information up so I'm fairly sure it's accurate - not usually a topic of interest but it became an interesting fact following my first seriously spooky encounter in my life so far...

Yesterday's summer heat came rolling through the open window, I'd been out in it all day cycling and generally making sure my English pallor of skin retained some sort of "healthy" appearance in the small window of opportunity our British summers allow. As darkness settled over the sleepy and peaceful cul-de-sac my parents live on the heat hardly changed. Windows were thrown open down the street yet there was barely a sound other than infrequent screeching owl. Come midnight - the time I finally began to settle in my bed - there was a deadly silence.

Then I heard it.

A faint but definite sound drifting along on the faint breeze. Notes being played on a piano, four or five notes, in a row played over and over. They weren't easy to hear at first, but once you heard it it was impossible to ignore. A haunting collection of notes drifting through the dark night's air.

It was obvious which side it was coming from, it was definitely my immediate neighbour, they are the only people in the area with a piano plus, their house is certainly the only one I could hear from my bedroom window. But my obvious question was, "Who is playing that piano?"

At this time of night it would be inconsiderate of anyone to be playing any sort of musical instrument on a Sunday night, let alone on a quiet summer's evening when windows are sure to be open. Also, the neighbours with the piano happen to have two young children, why would they wake said children up with the piano? They sound demonic when they're screaming at playtime, who knows what they'd be like if suddenly woken up at just after the witching hour.

Of course, I didn't know that the neighbours were away. Had I known I might never have gotten to sleep, but for half an hour - at the very least - I strained my ears to hear this basic tune. It wasn't any kind of tune I recognised, though it sounded as if it could easily have been the music to a long forgotten nursery rhyme, and it was played over and over. The notes weren't clear or sharp in any way which surprised me considering the neighbour is a piano teacher. In fact I'd say they were catching other keys as well as the intended one, as if it was played by someone - or something - with large hulking fingers...

Of course I have no idea what to make of any of this, it doesn't make any sense at all whichever way I look at it. And to top things off, just before lunchtime today, my wonderful girlfriend and lovely mother looked into the garden after hearing a strange humming noise. There was a dark black cloud of Wasps buzzing over the neighbour in question's garden, making a sound so vicious it could be heard ten metres away. The swarm covered their garden and yet there was no one there to disturb it in anyway, not even a solitary cat. Spooky...

Anyway, enough of my odd goings-ons, this baking blog won't write itself! Today's challenge was to bake Rocky Road Brownies, including nuts, cherries and tiny marshmallows for the top. Really it was very simple, other than a little of chopping this that and the other there's nothing very complicated to see here or even to recommend in terms of tips. Though I have one minor quibble, having divided the recipe in half again to save on ingredients I realised I should have made sure I had a tin which could comfortably bake a half size brownie mixture... but at the same thickness. I had to settle with a cake tin in the end but I wasn't happy with it still. Also halving the recipe is a bit of a danger because of cooking time. It certainly doesn't halve the cooking time and so you're left with the dubious mission of checking it frequently and ensuring it is fully done, really I'd always recommend going for the full recipe unless you're very familiar with how the end result should be, it's a bit of a risk ending up with a half-done or overcooked treat.

The Result:

Mmmm, Marshmallow-ey

In the end, the brownies were always going to come out good, they just have an excellent mix of ingredients. Glace cherries work perfectly with chocolate and marshmallows add such a lovely texture to the top. Though unfortunately the consistency of the brownie was closer to that of a chocolate cake (so didn't have the lovely crunchy top and then gooey middle) it's hardly a big issue when the end product is so tasty! I think having the  full recipe is important for brownies; though it is easy to to split, I think the thickness of the end product is so essential to making them good brownies so that quantity is very important!

 

I'll have polenty more of that...

Today's task of baking a polenta and almond cake began with a debate. My dad kept insisting resolutely that polenta is some form of dish he has had in a foreign country, he claims it is cheese based. HE IS WRONG!
But you know what dads are like, he kept asking my mum: "What was that thing we had in Croatia called?" No answer.
"Wait, was it Croatia? Or was it in Prague?" At this point his entire argument collapsed, not only was he unsure of how right he was but he also had zero grounding for his argument. It may come across as a son being typically teenager-esque by trying to prove a point but in all honesty no matter how intelligent my dad may be, he has an awful memory for anything which has happened in the past 5 years - he's getting old bless him...
Also, I just happen to be a relatively knowledgeable person when it comes to flour and baking ingredients (well most of them!); I have worked in a windmill for five years so I believe I have an upperhand on many people! Polenta is just another name for cornmeal/maize meal/ground corn. Though they often vary in "grade" ( how finely ground they are) they are all from maize (corn on the cob plants for the urbanites amongst you!).
Anyway, the task was underway, polenta thoroughly defined and weighed up I got started with the recipe.
Although the recipe asked for a small orange, I honestly have no idea how big a "small" orange is! For me, I settled on ignoring the Orange and went for a satsuma. Although harder to grate the rind it was juicier and whizzing the peel in the whizzer did an excellent job anyway!
I must say that I'm growing rather fond of ground almonds, they really do add to the texture of a cake, it makes it feel far more substantial and of course adds a lovely taste; handy! The end result was wonderful, ideally served warm and with ice cream almond and polenta cake has become one of the best recipes I've done yet!

The Result: