A Quick Catch Up

Hello everybody!

Massive apologies, yet again for my lack of blogging, but don't fret, it isn't down to no baking! Hell no! I've still been baking like a trooper, and this post is just a quick recap so you can see what I've been up to and then, hopefully I shall post again straight after this (or maybe tomorrow) with my rather epic birthday cake...

First, I shall start with a few of the amazing baking purchases I've made over the last few months! I've been buying like a mad woman and have notched up another 5 baking books since I last posted, well I think it's 5 it may be more! I snapped up Cake Angels by Julia Thomas and The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns for so many fabulous reasons! For a start The Birthday Cake Book is spectacular, I bought it to be inspired for my friends birthday cake and it certainly didn't fail!! I also bought Cake Angels because it contains gluten, wheat and dairy free cakes and baking recipes which, if you've read my other posts, is something that I really want to give a go and there are so many mouth watering recipes in there that i want to try, for example the sticky toffee tray bake! One word - yum!

On the same theme of buying gluten free cook books I finally managed to buy Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache! I posted that everyone should buy this book in my last minute christmas stocking fillers post and I am so happy that I finally have my greedy little paws on it! I especially want to try the Caramel Swiss Roll with Passionfruit Cream! I class this book as not only one my favourites because of its sumptuous recipes and Harry's clever use of vegetables and ingredients, but this is one of my 'pretty' books! It's so lovely to look through and I love how the recipes have been themed to the seasons of the year! Please people, go and find this book!

Now I cannot go and buy all these baking books without buying the few that kicked my butt into truly giving baking a go and that is all down to The Great British Bake Off! I always liked baking, and was comfortable with making cupcakes galore, but after watching the second series of the Great British Bake Off last year, I finally caught the bug and went baking mad, as you can tell. So, since then I have bought Edd Kimber's The Boy Who Bakes, Jo Wheatley's A Passion for Baking and most recently, and most importantly, the brand new Great British Bake Off book - Showstoppers! This is the book to accompany the new series due to start on Tuesday 14th August, and I can't wait! I can promise you this, with the exception of one week where I will be on holiday seeing the folks I will be blogging about the baking treats this year's contenders come up with!

Now, I suppose I should stop talking about the books, (that's just the bookseller coming out in me), and crack on with what baking treats I have come up with.

I promise you I haven't been idle and just reading these books, nope I've happily made chocolate banana loaf, my first ever marble loaf and my monthly flapjacks for a start! Banana loaf or bread, is something I remember baking with my mum from a young age, and I believe it's one of my dad's favourites, so it felt appropriate that I made a loaf for when they came up to see me a couple of months ago and luckily I didn't disappoint! In fact my parents seemed rather disappointed that they couldn't take the whole load home with them. Compliment or what!?

However, I couldn't write a post of my baking exploits if I didn't mention my entry in the first competition from Jo Wheatley! I was so blooming excited! It was all tied in with the release of her new book and the challenge was to recreate her Chocolate Birthday Cake. It was like fate, I woke up in the morning intending to bake that cake for another friend's birthday and just happened to look on Facebook and saw she was putting up this competition! I couldn't believe it! I spent all day baking this and was the FIRST person to enter! I ended up getting something crazy of over 70 likes and so many lovely comments, I still can't believe it considering it was my first ever entry into a baking competition. I didn't go on to win, but honestly the level of competition was outstanding and I was just so happy that i got the courage to compete and I had such a wonderful response! Jo has since then continued to put up more baking competitions, but I haven't yet had the chance to enter another but at least now I can!

Phew, sorry for the massive ramble, but now you should be up-to-date on my baking activities! However I shall leave you with this last final comment... I HAVE A TICKET TO THE CAKE AND BAKE SHOW 2012 in Earls Court in September!!!!! I will finally see the baking queen herself Mary Berry, as well Paul Hollywood and maybe even Jo Wheartley among so many other talented bakers!

Look out for my next post on my 1920's inspired birthday cake...

Saints vs Sinners Brownies

I am like every other girl on this planet, I love a bit of chocolate to keep me going and chocolate brownies are the perfect treat! This week I bought the winner of The Great British Bake Off series 1, Edd Kimber's book, The Boy Who Bakes. Oh yes he does. And what did my eyes spy when flicking through, only the most amazing chocolate fudge brownies, so obviously I had to give it a go!

Now until today I had never attempted to make any form of brownies and thought they would be a bit fiddly, but they were the quickest and easiest thing I've made all year! However, I can not lie and say that they are the healthiest thing I've baked this year... 300g of dark chocolate, a total of 380g of light brown sugar and caster sugar not to mention the criminal amount of butter...200g! However, you can't put a price on taste, all that naughty stuff made these brownies heavenly!

Like I said, they were so quick and easy to make, but still being a novice baker I did have to do a double take at the recipe when it said to put both the butter and the chocolate in a medium pan on a medium heat. I presumed the butter would be melted separately and the heat from that would naturally melt the chocolate once combined, so I was extra careful not burn it. In fact I would say I kept it at a low heat and melted the contents very slowly, but I don't think anyone could have a go at me for that, I was just using the ol' noggin!

As the phrase goes though, the taste is in the pudding and after a few small nibbles I can proudly say that these brownies are scrumptious! Well done Edd Kimber!! My two little pieces of advice for all those attempting this recipe or any similar are:

1. They go so blooming well with a glass of cold milk! They are a bit rich, having been made with dark chocolate, and they were so moist and gooey they stuck to the roof of your mouth. And good glug of milk is definitely advised!

2. Secondly... if you are anything like me, I would say for every small piece of brownies (Ash and I only had a piece the size of 50p) have a piece of fruit! Just to combat the nagging voice in your head that you're waist wont like what you've just eaten, even though your taste buds will be having a chocolate extravaganza of a party!

Now, just before I end I should say that there are some really good if not excellent recipes out there if you love the taste of a good chocolate brownie, but without the horible calories. There are also lots of great brownie recipes for those of us out there that have a few dietry requirements, from gluten free, wheat free, sugar free....

Check out these cookbooks for some of these options:

• The Food Hospital
• Cake Angels
• Harry Eastwood's Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache

They are all fantastic recipes, including some which substitute ingrediants for vegetables, such as beetroot to keep in moisture, or simply adding prunes and apple juice with a lower calorie drinking chocolate. There are so many options out there so don't feel like you have to miss out! Infact I keep meaning to buy Harry Eastwood's book so sooner, rather than later, I might be able to try a few of the recipes and let you know what they are like!

Biscuit Bedlam and Muffin Madness

Hi guys! I am so sorry for my absence over the past month, I would go on about how busy I have been in work and all that jazz, but I am going to skip over all that boring stuff and instead fill you in on my recent baking achievements!

My first bake of the new year was some very stressful butter biscuits. I was attempting to make them into the children's character the Gruffalo, with a cookie cutter which I got from work. I was doing this because I run a pre-school book club in work and the weeks theme was surprise, surprise, the Gruffalo. However, it was so much harder than I had thought. My plan was come home from work, have tea, bake for a bit and then sit down and watch a little bit of t.v., but that didn't happen. Instead I was baking these annoying biscuits until 10.30 at night and ended up very stressed. If you can't tell already this was my first attempt of making butter biscuits and although they turned out ok, I doubt I will be making them again for a very long time. I was a little naive as I didn't really contemplate how wet the mixture would be because of the butter, and I just couldn't use the mixture. I couldn't roll it without it sticking to the rolling pin and I couldn't cut it with the Gruffalo cutter. I kept having to add more and more flour, as well as changing to a simple round pastry cutter. At this point I was very upset, so with a flash of inspiration and perhaps a little desperation I tweeted this years winner of the Great British Bake Off, Joanne Wheatley, with a cry of help and guess what... SHE REPLIED! Within 10 minutes of my tweet, she replied back with two very helpful pieces of advice: first to try chilling the mixture and then rolling it in some parchment paper, and thankfully it worked! I can't put into words how happy I was that she replied and with such great advice! I can fully understand why she won the Great British Bake Off and I would highly recommend you all follow her on twitter and to go on her website, Jo's Blue AGA, and see all the great things shes doing and baking!
I suppose the best way to end this little rant, is that although they weren't Gruffalo shaped, the biscuits went down well, in fact one of the little boys I was reading to had two at the same time and still wanted more!

The second thing I've baked this month is Lemon and Blueberry Muffins! Now I have baked several cupcakes and muffins before so this was a doddle. But what I really loved was the fact I was making this particular type of muffins, because blueberry muffins are my favourite! The recipe I found though was lemon and blueberry and I must admit I was a bit dubious about the combination, but I can very proudly say that I loved them! Especially the lemon glaze that I put on the top!! The only change I would do would be to have a muffin tray instead of a cupcake tray. The best part of making the muffins was that I could use my new two tiered display set, which I got for Christmas from my boyfriend parents! Which you can see from the picture above!

On that note I will say adieu for now, but I promise I will not wait so long to add another baking post! In fact as I'm following everyone else on the January health kick, you might see a few recipes of a healthier kind!

Children In Need Bake Sale

Sorry it's been such a long time since I posted anything new, but at least I have kept you waiting for something good! Last week was of course Children In Need and for the first time ever I decided to get creative and try and raise some money for the charity. I asked round in work if people would be interested in having a bake sale all week and I got a brilliant response! Quite a few people were keen on baking something, while a majority were unsurprisingly happy to eat the treats and donate. And no one was left disappointed!

On the first day I brought in gingerbread men, cut with my new gingerbread men cutters which I got for my birthday. I loved how they looked but unfortunately a few things went a little wrong. I made baking error 101 - I got distracted by the X Factor results and I let my second batch of biscuits burn slightly. Then my raisins, which I used to make the buttons didn't stay in place, and last but not least I tried to make a piping bag to ice the biscuits but instead I pressed it too hard and it exploded all over the place, leaving my gingerbread men a little naked and a little boring. So, as you can tell I was a little disappointed by the outcome. However, they seemed to go down quite well in work so as long as the charity gained that is all that mattered!

Now, I can't take all the credit for raising lots of money for Children In Need, lots of lovely people from work put in the elbow grease and got baking. On the first day, not only did I provide gingerbread biscuits but my colleague Ed made scrummy banana and fudge biscuits from the Dan Lepard book which went down very very well! On Tuesday another lovely colleague Kat, made chocolate brownies, and although I wasn't in work on the day to try them, my boyfriend had one and thought they were delicious! And so the week continued... Caroline made heavenly lavender cupcakes, Joel made amazing Portuguese custard tarts, Helen made adorable teeny tiny mini cupcakes and Charlotte made a loaf of very tasty bread!

When I first came up with the Children In Need bake sale the first baking idea I had was that I wanted to bake a cake. I had recently bought some cake tins, which obviously needed using, and I had also never attempted to bake a cake before, so this was my best opportunity. And I was over the moon with what I made!

It was a traditional Victoria sponge cake from the Great British Bake Off book I got for my birthday with a little Pudsey twist! I won't bore you with too many details but I can't describe how happy I was when I made it! From making the sponges to the raspberry filling and finally the Pudsey design of icing, thankfully nothing went wrong! The whole process took 4 long hours but hopefully you will agree from the picture that it was worth it! The sponge was nice and light, the icing didn't dry out and most of all my creativity actually worked!! The only issue I had with it at work was that I think people didn't want to cut a slice of cake, because they didn't want to ruin Pudsey's face!

In the end, with all the bakers contributions and all the other lovely friends from work digging deep into their pockets and eating all the treats, I am very happy to announce that we made £68. 48 for Children In Need!! I am so grateful for everyones hard work and I am ecstatic for the money we raised for such a good cause!

You too can still donate by clicking on any part of this blog that says Children In Need as it will take you to the charity's donating page!