Bakewell tart

One of my favourite sweet treats is a bakewell tart, especially the little Mr Kiplings ones. I thought it would be fun to give my own a try. 

This actually didn't turn out how I wanted it too, but I still thought it was worth sharing. I followed a Mary Berry recipe which can be found here. 

A think the main problem was that I used a slightly bigger tart tin than specified, a lesson to always carefully read and follow the recipe! Because I used a bigger tin I over cooked the pastry and it became a bit hard. 

I think another mistake was being a bit too over generous with the jam. Sometimes less is more. 

A positive I can take from this recipe was the almond filling. It was absolutely lovely. 

As you can see the jam split through the middle a little.

The final iced bake well tart. 

Thanks for reading x

Christmas cake

I made this fruit cake last year for christmas. I took as my basis a classic Mary Berry recipe found here, but made a few small changes. You can make this a couple of months in advance of christmas and then add alcohol like brandy (or orange juice if you want to avoid alcohol) to the cake weekly until you are ready to decorate it.

Ingredients

200g Glace cherries
300g Raisins
350g Sultanas
150g Currants
70g dried mixed berries
200ml brandy
Zest of 2 oranges
250g Butter
250g Light muscovado sugar
4 eggs
1 tbs treacle
100g chopped almonds
75g self raising flour
175g plain flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp mixed spice

Method

1. Place the dried fruit in a bowl with the orange zest and pour over the brandy. Cover and leave to soak for up to 3 days stirring each day. 
2. Preheat the oven to 140ºC/Fan 120ºC/Gas Mark 1.
3. Grease and double line a 23cm (9in) round cake tin. Cover the outside of the tin with brown paper to prevent the outside from burning.* 
4. Weigh out the butter, sugar, eggs, treacle and almonds into a bowl and beat with a hand mixer (or by hand). Mix in the flour, ground almonds and mixed spice followed by the pre-soaked fruit. Pour the mix into the prepared tin.
5. Bake in the middle of the preheated oven for 3½-4 hours. Check your cake after 2 hours and if it's already well browned cover with foil. The cake should feel firm and be browned on top.  The cake is ready when a skewer or knife placed into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool.
6. Once the cake can be handled, remove it from the tin and make holes all over the cake with a skewer. Pour brandy all over the cake (approx. 3-4 tablespoons). Wrap well and store in an airtight tin. 
7. Add extra brandy approx. 2-3 tablespoons each week until you are ready to decorate. 

*I didn't do this and the outside of cake got a little over done. There is a helpful tutorial on protecting your cake in Delia Smith's christmas cake recipe here. 

Now on to my favourite part which is decorating the cake. First up I needed to add the marzipan layer. In order to get a flat top to the cake I used a method demonstrated by Dan Lepard on the BBC website which can be found here. Instead of just placing the marzipan over the cake like you would icing, he does the top first followed by the edge. There are detailed instructions in the link and it will probably make more sense to watch Dan Lepard's video but to briefly summarise:

• Roll out the marzipan to approx. 1cm thick and larger than your cake. Brush the top of the cake with some melted jam. Place the cake upside down on the marzipan and gently push down. 
• Cut the excess marzipan leaving a 2cm border around the cake and use a palette knife to press the marzipan into the edge of the cake. It should look like the first photo below
• Brush the edge of the cake with melted jam. Add a strip of marzipan around the cake.

After I was happy with the marzipan I added the fondant icing.

Once I had completed the icing I began my favourite part which is creating the fondant decorations for the top. I used snowflake plunger cutters, which you can get on eBay or similar sites. I made the penguins with the left over white icing and Renshaw ready coloured icings in black, red and yellow. To secure the decorations to the cake I used a very small amount of water as 'glue'. Once dry the decorations should be stuck securely.

The final completed cake. 

Thanks for reading x

Lemon meringue pie

Here's my first try at a lemon meringue pie. We had some lemon curd that needed to be used up so this seemed ideal.

Thanks for reading x

Castle Birthday Cake

This is a cake I made last year which I thought I would share. My niece loves her disney princesses at the moment so I thought I would try a princess castle cake. I took some inspiration from the book 50 easy party cakes by Debbie Brown. She used swiss rolls as cake towers. I liked this idea but I wanted to actually bake a full cake so I decided to take the swiss roll idea and place it on top of a cake I had made and iced myself.

Madeira cake recipe (10 inch)
350g butter
350g caster sugar
6 medium eggs
350g self raising flour
175g plain flour
lemon juice and zest

I lined a 10 inch tin with grease proof paper, using a bit of spray oil to help the paper stick to the tin. I mixed together the butter and sugar using a new electric handheld mixer. I have never used an electric mixer but I would recommend it as it really helps speed up the process and creates a light fluffy mix. I added the eggs one at a time continuing to mix. Once combined I folded in the flour with a metal spoon, mixed in the lemon and baked at 160 °C for 1 hour 20 minutes. I covered the cake with foil for the last 20 minutes of cooking.

Next was the butter icing. 

Butter icing
125g butter
400g icing sugar
3 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

I mixed the butter up with the electric mixer until it became pale and smooth and then added the milk, vanilla before gradually adding the icing sugar while continuing to mix.

I split the cake in two and added a layer of strawberry jam and a layer of butter icing before sandwiching them back together. I then covered the whole cake in a layer of butter icing and popped it in the fridge.

You might not be able to get the butter icing completely smooth, but after chilling in the fridge you can use a palette knife dipped in hot water to help smooth any lumps. I was worried about covering the cake with the icing thinking it would be really difficult but it wasn't too bad. I wish I had got the cake a bit more level.

I also wanted to try and make my first fondant person so I tried making a little princess to look like my niece. She has gorgeous red hair. It was a little fiddly, the eyes were so difficult! For a first try I think it is ok.

With all that done all that was left was to decorate the cake and the swiss rolls. I found covering the rolls in fondant surprisingly tricky. I used a big roll for the centre tower and mini rolls for the two side towers. As the cake was not completely level it was difficult to get the towers to stand up straight. 

The crown candles are from hobby craft

If I did it again I think I would do a few things differently but for a for a first try I think it is ok. I think next time I need to work a bit on the finishing touches. The two small towers didn't survive the car trip and needed to fixed on arrival. I think I need some sort of dowelling if I attempted this again.

Thanks for reading x

Lebkuchen

Lebkuchen are spiced german biscuits which are a little bit like ginger bread with a soft cakey texture. I wanted to have a try making my own this year and I also made some for christmas gifts as well.

Lebkuchen (makes approx. 35)

Ingredients
100g Honey
100g Treacle
20g butter
1 egg
1 tbs lemon juice
zest from 1 lemon
250g plain flour
100g ground almonds
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Method

Heat up the honey and treacle until it reaches boiling point and remove from the heat. (I think just honey would also work, or golden syrup but I had some left over treacle from making a christmas cake.) Stir in the sugar and butter until melted, followed by the lemon juice, zest and egg. Mix well until all the ingredients are combined.

Finally stir in the dry ingredients of flour, ground almonds, bicarbonate of soda and the spices. It will look like a gooey, brown mess.

Don't worry if the dough seems a bit wet, place in a food bag or bowl and pop in the fridge overnight.

The first run of making these I tried using christmas shaped cookie cutters but the dough is very difficult to work with and roll out. If you have more patience than me, feel free to try rolling out (with plenty of flour) and give cutters a try, but it was too time consuming and awkward for me. I found it best to make small balls of dough (approximately 20g each) using a little flour to stop them sticking to my hands and then patted the balls into round cookie shapes.

Place the cookies in a preheated oven 180 °C for 8-10 minutes until lightly browned. The cookies may still look a little soft when you get them out the oven but they will harden as the cool. Allow to cool on the tray for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack or plate to cool completely.

Once cool you can eat them as they are, or you can add icing or chocolate to them.

Do you like baking for christmas? What are your favourites?

Thanks for reading x

Bread Pudding

I thought I would start off with a simple recipe for bread pudding I came up with recently and share some of the recipes which inspired it. I decided to make this as I have left over dried fruits from making a christmas cake. Not to be confused with bread and butter pudding, a bread pudding soaks stale bread with tea or milk before being mixed with dried fruits, sugar, egg and spices and baked. My late nan used to make this and I think it's a recipe that comes from not wanting to waste anything, an attitude that was common particularly with older generations who went through rationing during and after the war.

My nan's recipe was never written down as I think it was just one of those things she knew intuitively how to make. Therefore I needed to make a decent recipe which would resemble the one I remembered from my childhood whilst also putting my own stamp on it. The only thing I knew about her recipe was that she soaked the bread in tea, which confused me when I first started googling as most of the recipes I found involved soaking the bread in milk, although I soon found some tea based recipes as well as ale.

The first recipe I found which looked really yummy was Nigel Slaters, which can be found here. I really enjoy the passion for food he expresses on his tv show and I think anything he puts is name to should taste good. His recipe involves using bread, milk, brown sugar, marmalade, mixed spice, flour, eggs, butter and mixed dried fruits. I suspect my nan's recipe was much simpler than this one, but I like the sound of it.

Delia can always be relied upon for a good recipe, which can be found here. Her variation on the recipe involves soaking the fruit in brandy and like Nigel Slater, she also uses milk to soak the bread.

The first recipe I found that involved the tea was by Dan Lepard and can be found here. He suggests using either ale or tea. He also only uses currants rather than a mix of dried fruits.

The final recipe I thought was worth sharing was one from the Morrisons website here. This one soaks the dried fruit in tea and the bread in milk.

I decided to keep with the tea soaking as that felt more traditional to me. I took the marmalade idea from the slater recipe. I also decided to soak my fruit in rum, like Delia had soaked hers in brandy. In the spirit of it's invention I would not buy anything special for this recipe, just use what you have in the fridge and store cupboard.


Bread Pudding Recipe

Ingredients

250g dried fruit (I used 150g raisins and 100g currants)

Zest of a large orange
4 tbs Rum
225g stale bread

200 ml tea

50 ml milk
80g caster sugar
1 tbs marmalade
1 egg
mixed spice
50g butter

Method

Firstly place your fruit in a bowl with the orange zest, pour over the rum and leave to soak.

Tear the bread into small pieces and pour over the tea and milk. Stir well and leave to soak for ~30 minutes

Preheat the oven to 170 °C. Melt the butter and mix with the marmelade, sugar, egg and mixed spice.

Combine this mix with the bread mixture

Stir in the soaked fruits

Place in a lined tin. Mine was a little big 20 x30cm but it was all I had available, I would recommend a smaller tin approx. 15cm x 20cm. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 30-40 minutes, a deeper tin will need longer approx 40-60 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

Voila! Bread Pudding.

Future improvements

-Invest in a smaller deeper tin to make thicker pudding.