My New Magimix!

I have been lusting after a new food processor for some time. I have been using my sister's which only has a 1.4l bowl - so when doing a simple sponge mix of 6, 6, 6 and 3 (for those not so familiar with this I will explain later), I had to split the mix in half.  Try splitting an egg in half - its not easy!

So I invested in a Magimix 4150 the other day and today it arrived. Joy of joys!

This is the new vs. the old:

Quite a size difference!

To celebrate (and test the machine out) I whipped up some vanilla cupcakes. 

Recipe:

6 oz self raising flour (I never sift the flour - I once saw a TV programme that proved it made no difference if you sift it or not, so why waste time?!)

6 oz caster sugar

6 oz butter (however I always, always use flora light - it gives a much lighter texture)

3 medium eggs (these should also weigh 6oz - if they weigh more/less just adjust the weights of the other ingredients)

I'm a huge fan of the all in one method.  I can't be faffed with creaming the sugar and butter first, then this, then that... Just pile the ingredients into a food processor and blitz away until smooth:

Then pop the mixture into cake cases or cake tins lined with baking paper.  Have the oven preheated to 150 degrees C (for fan assisted ovens), 170 for non-fan ovens and bake until it looks golden on top, and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.  Tip: don't open the oven for the first 10-15 mins else your cake will not rise properly.

Cool on a wire cooling rack, and let it cool completely before decorating.

Happy new year everyone, I'm looking forward to a 2013 filled with lots of baking, and getting to know my new Magimix :)

Summer Fruits Pavlova

I wanted to make a light dessert for Christmas Day - so I decided to make a pavlova.  It was quick and easy to prepare and bake and slipped down nicely after a full on lunch :)

I used a handheld mixer to whip up the egg whites in to soft peaks:

I added half the sugar and cream of tartar, one spoonful at a time and whisked until it became stiff peaks.  I then folded in the remaining sugar with a metal spoon and then spooned it onto a prepared baking sheet.

It was then baked on a low heat (120 degrees centigrade fan oven) for about an hour.  After it has been baked, turn off the oven and leave it in there to cool.  I did this on the evening of Christmas Eve so it could cool in the oven overnight. 

After the meringue was done it was a simple case of whipping up the double cream and preparing the fruit.

Easy peasy!

Who's Lorraine? Quiche Lorraine

The in-laws arrived last night but the food shop isn't due till tomorrow (Ocado - anything to avoid facing the supermarket at this time of year!) so I had to pull together some sort of lunch.  I hit up the BBC Good Food website and came across this recipe (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2868/ultimate-quiche-lorraine) for a quiche lorraine.

I kept forgetting to take photos so apologies that they are a bit sparse in this post!

I blitzed the pastry ingredients in the food processor and then blind baked as instructed.  It looked like this:

After frying off some lardons, dicing some Gruyère, and blending some double cream, crème fraiche and eggs we were good to go.  I didn't tip it into the pastry case all in one go - I topped it up when it was level in the oven to save on spillages!

Here is it cooking:

It took about 40 minutes, rather than the suggested 25 minutes - but it was worth the wait.  I forgot to take a  picture of it fresh out the oven, and before I remembered, it had been mostly wolfed down at lunch.  It was ever so light and really quite tasty though - I would definitely recommend anyone give it a go.

Here is what was left:

I've also been busy this week desperately trying to jazz up our frankly naff xmas tree, with these hand made cuties:

They cost about 25p each to make and are a doddle to make.

Happy Christmas everyone, hope you all have a great day.  I'll have a few more posts over christmas - I'm intending to pull together a pavalova (or a "pav" as nigella calls it) as well a few other bits, but for today that is it from me.

Welsh Cakes

As promised, today I made some Welsh Cakes.  The "christening" of the plank took most of the day to be honest! Putting it in the oven for half an hour... waiting for it to cool... washing it... putting in on the hob... scrubbing it with salt... waiting for it to cool... washing it.... But at least now the process is done and next time I use it I can just get it out and get cooking!

I've got to admit, the mix was so yummy, I couldn't help having a nibble even before it had been cooked.  Dan's Mam's top tip was to have the mix on the dry side so that was my aim:

I rolled it to about 1/4 inch thick and used a round cutter to make the cakes. I already had the plank on a low heat so I was ready to get cooking.  

My main problem was getting distracted by cutting out the next cakes while there were cakes on the griddle. The result - burnt welsh cakes :( They just seemed to cook a lot quicker than what I was expecting.  I think next time I would definitely cut them all out and then cook them in batches - watching them the whole time!  The ones in the middle were definitely the worst as it was a hot spot so for the rest of the cakes I avoided the middle of the plank.

These were some of the least burnt ones:

And with a sprinkle of caster sugar to finish:

For not many ingredients I made about 50 so will definitely be taking some in to work tomorrow so Dan and I don't scoff the lot :) 

Wedding Present Pasta

As I mentioned a few post's ago, we received a pasta maker as a wedding present from some lovely friends.  We've had a busy few weeks so have only just got round to using it.  I know making pasta isn't technically baking but I shall blog about it anyway!

So the ingredients are pretty simple - '00' flour (an extra refined flour) and eggs. The dough didn't come together very well so I added a little water to acheive an "homogenous" dough (the recipe's requirements).  The dough was ever so tough that I was starting to   wonder if I had gone wrong already!  But I ploughed on.

I set up the machine by clamping it to the work surface - this wasn't easy, as unless you have a breakfast bar I expect most people have cupboards directly under their work surface. So a bit of bodging later, we had a secure machine - there is no way you could do this without clamping it down!!

As I hadn't use the machine before, I had to use a bit of the dough to clean the machine.  This involved rolling through a sheet of pasta a few times - which I then had to throw away.

The general process was roll it through on the thickest setting about 8 times (folding the dough in between rolls), before slowly making the thickness setting thinner and thinner.  Some of the pieces of dough got incredibly long and difficult to handle so needed to be cut in half.  (An extra pair of hands also helped!)  I didn't take many photos as with one hand turning the handle, one feeding the dough in the machine, one taking it out, I was already one hand down!

After it had got to the right thickness, and had dried a little, it was time to cut it.  The machine came with two cutters (a fettuccine and a spaghetti width I believe) so we decided we wanted the fettuccine one.   Straight through the cutter rollers and we were almost there.

After laying out the pasta over every flat surface in the kitchen to dry it all, I can understand why people have pasta drying racks.  This was just a very small amount of the pasta drying:

After it had dried, it was ready for the pan - I cooked it for about 2-3 minutes but that was slightly too long in retrospect.  But it was lovely - definitely worth the effort.  

Top tip: enrol an extra pair of hands to help!

Tomorrow -> welsh cakes :)

Tis the season for... Mince Pies!

With only 17 days to go until Christmas, today I have only just made my first mince pies of the season. Shocking I know.  Traditionally I have been quite lazy with mince pies and I was always a ready made pastry and a jar of mincemeat kind of girl.  This year, I am changing my ways, and doing my own pastry.  I found this recipe:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2174/unbelievably-easy-mince-pies?pager.offset=240 after a quick google search and it had rave reviews so thought I would give it a go.

The first thing I noticed about this recipe was that the pastry was very very short! I whizzed the butter and flour in the food processor before adding the sugar and salt.  It looked like this:

I pulled together about a walnut sized piece, rolled it into a ball, and squidged it into the bun tin.  There was no way this was going to roll out!  For once in my life I actually managed to make exactly the amount the recipe said I was going to make.  I did however, use much more mincemeat than the recipe suggested - I used 411g (a jar) of Robertson's mincemeat split between the 18.

I added a tiny bit of water to the remaining dough to make it of rolling-out consistency.  I then cut stars and christmas trees out of the remaining pastry with cutters.

A little egg glaze and 20 minutes in the oven later, ta-dah!!

I only lost one to the cake tin, through sticking - grease your tins well my dears!

They tasted divine - a combination between shortbread and shortcrust pastry.  Will definitely be making more of these over the festive period!

Welsh Cakes are on the cards!

After a family wedding in South Wales I was finally given the family welsh cake recipe from Dan's Mam (grandma).  She makes the most amazing welsh cakes - I have never found any others that come even close (not even M&S!). So I now have a plank (lovely wedding present), and the sacred recipe - I just need time to make them now!

We seem to be in the midst of wedding season at the moment so time is very limited for baking! Welsh cakes are on my bake list not this weekend but next so stay tuned for my post on them :)

Not a soggy bottom... Argh!

So on Thursday I made a treacle tart for the dinner party we were going to on Friday. I've made one before but it had a soggy bottom, so I was determined not to have the same problem again.

I made sure I rolled the pastry nice and thin, added enough breadcrumbs to the golden syrup so the mixture wasn't too wet, and when I put it in the oven, I put it on a super hot baking tray.

But alas, another soggy bottom! A bakers worst nightmare!

But despite all this it tasted lovely so not all was lost. And the lattice work on top was pretty good, if I may say so myself (top tip- put the lattice pastry in the freezer rolled out for 10 mins before assembling. It means you can manipulate the pastry without it stretching and becoming mis-shapened.)

(Recipe taken from the great British bake off show stoppers recipe book and also in Mary Berry's baking bible)

P.s. forgot to take a photo before it got devoured so only have a pre-bake shot.

At said dinner party we received a pasta machine as a wedding present from some lovely friends - so exciting. So whilst not technically baking, hopefully I will be trying my hand at homemade pasta sometime soon. Watch this space...

Croissants - Délicieux

A few weeks ago, I attempted croissants.  I had been dying to do them for ages so couldn't wait to get started.  It was a two day process and I have no idea how the french have them ready for breakfast - mine were ready at 3pm on Sunday!

So I started on Saturday evening making the dough.  I combined them quite quickly and didn't really work the dough very much so as not to overwork it.  I clingfilmed the bowl and waited for it to rise.  I don't know if it is my house, but everything always seems to take a lot longer to rise than the recipes say. So about 3 hours later (not 30-45 mins as stated) my dough had doubled in size. I knocked the dough back and put it in the fridge to chill to the morning.

In the morning, I started to "bash" the butter.  It had to be cold but pliable.  This would moulded into a square to go into the middle of the dough.

The 'flaps' were then folded in to seal the butter in, and the first of 3 roll-fold-chill processes were begun.  Now I got this recipe from the second GBBO cookbook, and I think there are some flaws in the recipe.  I'm fairly sure when you fold a 60 x 30cm rectangle into 3 lengthways, you aren't going to get a perfect square.  So I had to freestyle it a bit, but I think it wrked out all right in the end.  So after folding, the dough had to be chilled for 30 minutes before the next roll and fold.

So this process was carried out three times before I could roll it out for the final time.  It had to be rolled out into a rather large rectangle (clear the decks! my worktop was just big enough to cope with everything taken off it).  It seemed every time I rolled the dough it seemed to shrink back again  - it was a very elastic dough.  But I persevered and got the required dimensions in the end! 

Now for some precision cutting of triangles.  Out comes the ruler!

The recipe also said that all my triangles should fit on two baking sheets.  I don't know how big their baking sheets are but I needed four! And I made 20 croissants just like recipe said, so that is another mystery.  Never mind, I made do with what I had, and chilled again.

After the final chill, it was time for the roll up.  This was the fun bit, to finally see them come together.  They were a bit smaller than I thought they would be, but they still had another rise to go before baking.

3 hours of proving later (was supposed to be an hour) and I'm still sure that they hadn't doubles in size as they were supposed to but I couldn't wait any longer.  So after an egg glaze they went into the oven.  And a little while later... ta-dah!

Nom nom nom! They were delicious :)

Until my next bake...

The Blog Begins...

So, I've decided to write a blog.  I'm currently on a journey to broaden my baking horizons and so I want to document it all somewhere. My mum suggested a blog, so here it is.  I'll start with some pictures of some of my historical bakes.

This was the birthday cake for my mum.  I had a lot of fun with sugarpaste on this one.  There is something quite therapeutic about covering a cake.

These were my first attempt at macaroons.  I used the Mojito Macaroon recipe from the second Great British Bake Off recipe book and they were amazing.  They didn't keep very well though so definitely one to make and eat as soon as possible.

Victoria sponges are my ultimate go to.  They always get me out of a sticky situation and they have never failed me yet.  I love these mini ones, finished with a sprinkling of icing sugar.

This was a croquembouche that I just knocked up one day :) A batch of choux pastry buns, filled with a lemon pastry cream and assembled with caramel.  Looked lovely assembled, but looked a mess as it was started to be deconstructed! 

This was Paul Hollywood's eight strand plaited loaf (GBBO book 3).  I started to plait the dough but it wasn't quite right so I undid it and started again and I was pretty impressed with the end product.  It made for a great ham sandwich :)