Playing Catchup

Today's efforts on the baking front were, I must say, somewhat half-hearted. It's not through lack of desire to complete the challenge or even through detestation of the idea of baking, I am in fact surprisingly still enjoying it!

But Alas, a weary teenager struggles to really get stuck into making a cake after a terrifically long day out... shopping with the girlfriend. Guys out there will be nodding in agreement and girls will be shaking their head in a disapproving way. Guys simply just don't have the stamina for a full day's shopping without constant encouragement, feeding (includes sugar/caffeine rich drinks), comfort breaks (this can include trips into shops of a non-clothes nature) and of course, the all important victorious end result (when the lovely girlfriend finally tries on a piece of clothing she: A) Was looking for B) Likes & C) Is not too pricey.

So after a tiring day wandering many of the shops in Peterborough (most of which were explored twice at least!) I got home and could barely stand let alone whip butter and sugar into a frenzy! Yet, my mind switched on suddenly and screamed at me: "DON'T YOU DARE GIVE UP NOW!!" Yesterday, I had decided to forgo the baking and catch up another day but it was clearly going to be a massive effort to catch up by baking three day's worth of recipes in just one day, so my mind engaged with the task afoot and I began whipping butter and sugar into a frenzy.
Today the task was a Spiced Apple and Currant Cake - I think Apple-Currant Cake sounds better but apparently my book sucks at coming up with recipe Names aaaand recipes (see "Almond Cookies with a Cherry on Top" for more uninspiring recipe names!) - and also a small task to finish off the rest of my Hazelnuts and also complete yesterday's recipe "Hazelnut Bars."

In my last post I teased about a potential "mini-challenge" in built in my other challenge, and today's task of baking two seperate things in one day was a sort of challenge which could help me prepare for that... And I must say that it was rather a lot easier than I expected. Yes, there was an issue finding extra ingredients and weighing up and whatnot but the main area in which I provided useful was on the washing up front. It was so easy to re-use some bowls from one recipe to another, after all butter and sugar won't spoil a recipe involving butter and sugar!

I also successfully practiced the art of mini baking (ie Baking with recipes 1/4 so there is only enough for one or two people.) with the help of my mother's handy 1/8 of a teaspoon measuring spoon I could successfully get super accurate divisions of awkward measurements, woo! And once again, I have had literally no other problems to report, remarkable considering the chances of error were doubled with my quantity of recipes!

The Results:

Mmmm Appley

Mmmm (insert pun about nuts) -ey

As you can see, they look pretty damned good! The apple cake was especially delicious, it was so very moist and juicy yet not soggy (don't ask me how on earth that works!) and although the hazelnut bars were a little underwhelming in comparison, they really did work well. Though I was a little surprised at the result, which resembled a tiny sponge cake in consistency, I fully expected a biscuit like tecture but it was far closer to being lots of square cupcakes. But I am thankful for finishing the last item with hazelnuts as a main ingredient; I have pretty much run out of Nut related puns, towards the end there I was really scraping the bottom of the sack for them...

Raisin the bar for biscuit baking...

I must say that successes have been few and far between on this blog and I really don't know why. Although I am obviously an "Amateur" baker that doesn't mean that I'm by any means a complete novice, I have baked successfully in the past and have always been complimented on my "mad skillZ" (well perhaps never that exact phrase, I sincerely hope someone does say that to me at some point though!) so it's really hard to understand why I have had quite so many failures already. 

Of course, I'm not complaining! After all, they have all been edible so they can't be that bad! Plus a disastrous baking adventure is far more enjoyable to read about and write about that a wonderfully successful one would be - just imagine how pretentious and overly descriptive it would get - however it is clear that I am going to run short of disasters any day now. Suddenly the transformation will be complete and I will no longer be amateur but a Master-Baker (careful how quickly you say that one!). So what then? What will I waffle on about?!

I've decided that soon I am going to embark on a challenge which is in conjunction with this one - to those gamers out there, it would be a mini-quest or mini-game inside the main game - I will still be doing the 100 recipes in 100 days but I am going to introduce an added element to help judge the success of each baked good. Because let's face it, I am a bit of a biased judge & so are my friends and family! But More on that as it develops and becomes a reality rather than just another insane idea I have in my head.

Today's challenge was Raisin and Nutty Oatmeal Biscuits, and remarkably they are probably the first biscuits I've made which I am actually very proud of! They may be a little small (yet again I halved the ingredients in order to save some pennies and some arteries) but other than that they came out perfectly. 

They are neither too powdery nor too doughy or burnt! It's as much of a shock to me as it probably is to you! These are definitely the quality of biscuits I would expect in a really fancy "Gift Box" from one of those expensive market stalls you sometimes get popping up in the streets of posh shopping districts. Except they were made by my good self in the comfort of my old family home. Perfect!

The Result: 

Bana-noooooo! Loaf

After Yesterday's powdery Shortcakes I decided I wanted to tackle something soft and moist today. Also, because I'm home from Uni now there is a lot more fruit here (I buy bags of lots of clementines or satsumas and literally nothing else) and of a much wider variety. Also, because I really dislike bananas it seems sensible to make Banana Loaf when A) I have people who can eat it other than  me! & B) I don't have to waste bananas buying a whole hand of them.
So I got to work mashing the horrible yellow fruits (don't you dare be nitpicking about herb or fruit!) into baby food, the smell was surprisingly pleasant. I can't say I've had a banana in many years of course, but I thought that the smell was a promising one; perhaps I would actually like this recipe...
It's a relatively simple recipe (I will post it up eventually, I will upload most of the less complicated & the best ones up here before the end!) which was a relief because I really didn't want to be slogging away separating yolks or carefully moulding anything which I knew I probably wouldn't like!

DISASTER STRIKES. Ok, that may be tabloidising it a bit but a frustration or mild annoyance did occur. Looking in the spice cupboard I realised we only had cinnamon sticks, no ground cinnamon... Why!? WHY!!?!

- Sorry to be over egging this disaster a bit, but when you write about baking everyday somehow it becomes rather a lot less eventful, I've got to take advantage a little and try and work in some exciting prose! -

So I got a knife and crushed the end of the stick a bit until it was a bit finer - not exactly an irreversible problem!

However, a less reversible problem crept up on me about 45 minutes later: distractions. The Loaf was meant to be cooking in the oven for an hour exactly. Naturally I wasn't going to sit around staring at it slowly cook in the oven but the problem was that my usual task of washing up took 15 minutes, about the amount of time a lot of the recipes I've cooked take in the oven. Today I got distracted...

I wandered upstairs (having set a timer on the oven) and took to my laptop. I fiddled around on various social medias for about five minutes but then I fatefully decided to check my eBay account. I've recently been selling my broken iPod so I decided to check its progress ( £2.20 at this moment in time!) but of course - as many shopaholics will know - it's not as simple as just checking eBay like that, no, I just had to search for an iPad. In fact, I've caught myself doing right this very second. I checked it to find out that price for you and now I'm already trawling through lists of glorious looking Tablets I'm still not sure I want and definitely not sure I need (Ok that's not true, I definitely want an iPad!)

And now I'm distracted by talking about it! Anyway *baking blog, baking blog, not tech blog*, this untimely distraction meant that the banana loaf was in the oven a bit too long...

The Result:

Mmm, Burny...

So there you have it, one burnt banana flavoured baked good... Possibly the worst thing I could ever imagine eating! Yet, it really wasn't half bad! Thought the outside looks burnt it's more burnt in the same way shop bought loaves of bread are (they always have a black top) the inside was very spongey and , well not very nice for my bananaphobic tastebuds. But others seem to have enjoyed it, so all in all, not a terrible disaster!

Viennese Jam Snore-Cakes

You know when you have a lie down after a long day's work, and it just feels so fantastic? Well that's what happened yesterday, I worked from 10-5 at the Maud Foster Windmill in Boston. I lugged flour about, filled bags with flour and mixed baking powder with - you guessed it - flour to make self-raising flour by the sackload. Although it may not have been the hardest day ever it was following on from a busy weekend out in the sun and travelling hundreds of miles, and that can be tiring.

So my little lie down was so very good... that it turned into a snooze. Then that snooze turned into a fully fledged hour long nap. Suffice to say that this did not leave me with very much time between work and going off to see some of my friends yesterday evening. Hence why I'm posting yesterday's blog today.

On waking up an hour before I was intending on heading out I jumped off my bed with surprising athleticism for someone who's been baking every day for the last three weeks and who'd just had a nap! I rushed downstairs to begin baking the most basic thing I could remember seeing in the book I hadn't already done. Viennese Jam Shortcakes are little cupcake style shortcakes which blur the line between biscuit and cupcake quite cleverly... and in my rush to do them I ended up over cooking them slightly.

Thankfully this was the only error in an otherwise easy recipe. Thanks to a friend of mine (and avid reader) I now know how to use a piping bag a little more efficiently and successfully squeezed mixture into cases without so much as a drop of unbaked goods anywhere on the surfaces (shocking I know!).

The Result: 

So they do look rather nice and dainty as one would hope, perfect for a lovely outside picnic in this lovely summer weather we've been having... Well, the weather we had this weekend anyway - As I read someone say recently "Summer was my favourite day this year..." -

But unfortunately, though they look rather delightful and cute looking, to my increasingly high standards of baked goods I just don't think they cut the mustard. The taste was lovely but I thought they were a little powdery for my liking, perhaps it was down to leaving them a little too long in the oven because of my rushing about or just because the recipe book I'm using is terrible and the recipes crappy. Who knows... 

Later, Banana Loaf, which should be fun considering I dislike Bananas...

Aww nuts, these flapjacks didn't go too well...

It's been a couple of days since I wrote a post on here but don't worry, yet again I have still been baking as much as ever. And naturally have a couple of anecdotes to update you on, we all know nothing ever seems to go according to plan with me!
Yesterday I attempted to bake some Nutty Flapjacks and of course that is certainly easier said than done...
The eponymous nuts in the recipe were Hazelnuts and my book recommended chopped hazelnuts which I had a look for in the supermarket but to no avail. Perhaps it simply meant buy whole Hazelnuts and then chop them... But regardless it took a while for my sun stroked brain to comprehend this idea! So I left with a bag of unchopped hazels.
In the style of Homer Simpson's inventions, I thought that I could think of a quicker way in which to chop said nuts. I say chop, I really mean pulverize into a powdered form! I put them in a plastic bag and used my masculine delicacy to destroy them with a rolling pin. Result: trapped air in the bag meant it exploded, sending nuts flying across the counter. The lazy man's way turned out causing a lot more hassle and tidying up for myself; I guess that's Karma for you!
In my infinite wisdom and careful planning (*ahem*) I had decided to bash on with these flapjacks before I'd even decided on what kind of tray I'd bake them in. Of course, as it turned out, I needed a square/rectangle inch deep baking tray... Something I do not own! But far from letting that bother me, I delved into my cupboard to find my cake tin and ended up with a circular flapjack pizza (cut into triangles of course!).

The Result:

Mmmm, Crunchy!

So as you can see they can't be that bad ( I ate most of it before I remembered to take a photo!) but there are a couple of recommendations I would like to make. First, If you decide to make nutty flapjacks make sure the nuts are thoroughly chopped and/or crushed. The fact they were still quite whole means that the mixture doesn't hold together as easily as it could do. Also, be wary about halving recipes. I halved this one because I didn't have many nuts (and by gum are they pricey!) but I didn't consider that in doing so i'd be making the mixture spread more thinly in the baking tin, so not only did I end up with very thin flapjacks but also, they were far harder than the traditional gooey ness of the pinnacle of flap & jack based cooking because the cooking time wasn't reduced accordingly. I make the mistakes so you don't have to!

Tune in tomorrow morning to find out how I got on with today's recipe, Viennese Shortcakes...  

Macaruins?

Macaroons are something I had never even heard of until this challenge. Though I understand that they are rather a lot more widespread than I thought when I discovered them. To those uninitiated - like my good self - they are basically tiny meringues sandwiched together with a filling of some sort.
To my absolute terror and shock, they are the very first thing in my challenge which has had zero dairy products... That's right, no butter, no cream, no thing to make my heart whimper and suffocate as I choke down those extra calories. Though I must say, the heart aches at the absence of butter from today's diet, I feel a little emotional about it... Well, as emotional as one can get about food!
Another first on today's challenge was that it was the first time I'd ever had a chance to use a piping bag. I sincerely hope it will be the last as well, I think that it might have been the most useless cooking tool I've ever had the displeasure to use. Although when full of mixture it did an excellent job of making lovely rounds of macaroon mixture when it was running low it just created a mess... Literally, I had nut mixture all over my hands, two spoons were unrecognisable from the mess and a spatula was really feeling the strain of usage. In short, I don't think I've ever had a less useless kitchen implement ever. For a start, it took an absolute age trying to spoon the mixture into the bag to begin with, and I'm lucky I had my lovely Sous Chef ( My beautiful girlfriend) to help. On my own it would have been pretty much impossible; how on earth are you meant to scoop something into a paper bag without it losing its shape and flopping all over the place. Macaroon mix was on the outside of the bag, the inside of the bag, my hands, cutlery and of course all the surfaces I'd even come anywhere near to touching. In short, I wish I'd just spooned it onto the baking sheets!
However badly this process ended up being, somehow everything went swimmingly from there onwards. Thankfully I carefully followed the recipe and left them to settle at room temperature for half an hour ( two weeks ago I may have misread that and cooked it for thirty minutes instead!) before baking for the last ten minutes.

The Result: 

Ok, let's face it, they aren't exactly the most aesthetically pleasing baked goods I've ever made and they certainly aren't quite as circular as the picture in the book looked. yet, they taste absolutely delicious, they are far softer and dainty than I had imagined, they certainly aren't biscuits or cakes but are, I think, far better than both! I am looking forward to making the vanilla macaroons (coming to a blog post near you soon) but there's something nicer about scraping the nutella into these knowing that they are going to taste gorgeous! They're a real treat! 

Irish So-Duh bread & Cinnamoan Cookies.

My apologies for being absent over the last couple of days, it's been a busy time for me but don't worry and don't lose faith, I'm still baking and getting through the recipes as planned! Yesterday was my last day at uni for this year so was a mixture of emotions (largely celebratory) and resulted in a mad dash to finish assignments - one such assignment was written ferocity in one sitting... on the loo - and of course cramming for my final exam. So naturally blogging about my various baking adventures dropped to the bottom of my list of priorities; no matter how much it hurt to do it!
But baking has been consistent, starting with the Irish Soda Bread I made on Wednesday evening. Soda bread is probably the best thing ever. Why? Because baking bread is pretty fun, kneading is therapeutic and the end result makes the house smell wonderful. But with normal bread, as opposed to Soda bread, there is a lot of waiting around for the yeast to start working ("Proving") here there was no such annoyance, a bit of bicarb and some buttermilk ( no, I'd never heard of that before either in case you wondered!) and it went straight in and then out the oven all in under an hour!
The Result: 

Mmmm, easy....

What came out of the oven was a very unusual type of bread. The butter cream clearly plays a massive part in making it taste so different, it is creamier and richer tasting than the average loaf of bread. Great with a bit of cheese or butter (if you don't mind injecting your arteries with kilos of fat...), and certainly a good loaf to try as a first attempt at baking bread. (It's literally just mixing 450g of flour with 300ml of butter milk and teaspoon of salt and bicarb and kneading it into a round shape, then cooking for 25-30 mins at 220c!).

Today's adventure was a bit of a haphazard one. I had originally intended to catch a train this morning to leave uni but as a result of way too much "celebrating the end of year" (which here roughly translates as alcohol!) I missed my train. Frustration doesn't even cover it. Nor did it help that I had an enormous headache to remind me of the reason I'd missed it...

But - for some reason - I found solace in the fact that I now had time to bake before I left! Not the most normal form of hangover cure but the cinnamon scented chocolate cookies certainly helped distract me and I always find that doing something is the best way to cure a hangover, so why not!

These tasty little ideas came out a bit disappointingly actually, perhaps it was my tastebuds being numbed by ehanol but they didn't seem to be as exciting as I had hoped. And they were definitely a little (a lot) too crumbly. They didn't have the "cookie" texture I'd hoped for, that beautiful doughy property the best cookies have. 

But I can hardly complain too much, I barely had any myself and everyone else seemed to really enjoy them! As someone cleverer than myself (not hard) once said "You are your best critic."

More exciting adventures to come tomorrow!

Mmmmm, Ingenious homemade cooling rack...