I couldn’t resist baking one last thing for 2020, despite it just being Rich and I for NYE I really wanted to make a Christmas log. We all love gingerbread in our house so when I saw this recipe in the Christmas Olive magazine I added it to my list of Christmas recipes. Click here to see the recipe.
Continue Reading »Posted in Christmas, Puddings, Spices, Winter | Tagged christmas baking, Christmas log, Gingerbread Buche de Noel | Leave a Comment »
Last week was a busy week of baking and here is another delicious Christmassy recipe that we made. I haven’t done a lot of gluten free baking recently as Rich is no longer following a gluten free diet. But these sounded good, especially the pastry made with marzipan in it. Click here to see the recipe.
Continue Reading »Posted in Christmas, Fruit/Veg, gluten-free, Nuts, Pastry, Winter | Tagged christmas baking, Gluten free baking, mini clementine Bakewell tarts | Leave a Comment »
Each Christmas there’s always one recipe that stands out above the rest and this year it’s these blondies. Super gooey, nutty and a wonderful caramel flavour make these blondies really special. I cut the recipe out of Olive magazine last year as I didn’t get round to trying it, so it was top of my list this year. Click here to see the recipe.
Continue Reading »Posted in Chocolate, Christmas, Nuts, Tray Bakes, Winter | Tagged Baileys Pecan Blondies, Blondies, christmas baking | Leave a Comment »
I absolutely love making and decorating our Christmas cake each year and spending the time looking at ideas of what to make. I came across this design and thought it looked really good fun. And luckily I had the opportunity to make a second cake for our friends Matt and Beckie and their two kids Ellie and Freddie as their Christmas pressie again this year, so this was the perfect excuse to make it.
Continue Reading »Posted in Celebration Cakes, Christmas, Figure Modelling, Iced Cakes, Spices, Uncategorized | Tagged christmas baking, Christmas cake, Rudolph cake | Leave a Comment »
One of our favourite treats for breakfast at the weekend are homemade cinnamon buns! I’ve tried quite a few different recipes and spotted this Christmas version so thought I’d give it a go for breakfast this weekend. I have a huge jar of homemade mincemeat in the cupboard still, so this was perfect for using some of it up. Click here to read more.
Continue Reading »Posted in Bread, Christmas, Spices, Winter | Tagged christmas baking, Christmas cinnamon buns, mincemeat and marzipan cinnamon buns | Leave a Comment »
Last year after Christmas I was sitting down having a cup of tea in a rare quiet moment and thought I would browse Pinterest for a bit, I came across a lovely Christmas gnome cake and thought it looked a bit different so I would do something similar for Christmas next year. Little did I know how popular Nordic gnomes would become this year! I am sure I say this each year, but this is my favourite Christmas cake – until next year! Click here to get an insight into how I made it.
The original idea for the cake can be found here. I made my Christmas cake with two 5” fruit cakes and one 4” fruit cake and went back to using Delia’s recipe again this year. I covered them in marzipan then coloured some sugar paste pale brown. I rolled it out and cut strips that were about 5-7mm wide, I painted the tops of each strip with slightly watered down dark brown food colouring. I took one strip and starting from one end started to wind it up a bit like a snails shell, once I had reached the end I got another strip and kept going till the diameter was almost the size of the cake. I then rolled it gently with a rolling pin to flatten it a bit, then carefully placed it on top of the cake and smoothed it into place. I coloured some more sugar paste dark brown and rolled it out into a long strip big enough to wrap around the outside of the cake, then used my silicone oak mat to make the bark texture before putting it onto the cake. I then used some dark brown petal dust to add some definition.
I made the gnomes body using Rice Krispie treats which I rolled into a ball then covered with grey sugar paste. I made the hat in the same way and squashed the Rice Krispie treats around a thick florist wire that I bent into shape. I then covered it in chocolate ganache before icing it.
I made some royal icing and added some grey food colouring then began piping the beard. To get the beard effect I piped from bottom to top, without sticking the start of the piping to anything, I piped upwards in mid air then just pushed the piping bag to the bottom of the hat to complete each line. So each line was dangling down and not touching anything at the bottom. Once done I used some white sugar paste to put around the edge of the hat.
The girls absolutely love the little gnome, there was lots of shrieking from Chloe when she first saw him! Just a shame this year we can’t have friends and family round so no one will get to see it. But we are definitely going to appreciate having him sat on our sideboard this Christmas!
Posted in Celebration Cakes, Christmas, Figure Modelling, Iced Cakes, royal icing, Spices | Tagged christmas baking, Christmas cake, gonk cake, Nordic gnome cake | Leave a Comment »
We have been super busy baking at home this week! So this is the first of my Christmas baking blogs, hopefully plenty more to come. I tried to pick recipes this year that the girls could help with to keep us busy at home. These were really good fun to make and look very cool too. Click here for the recipe.
The recipe was from November’s Sainsbury’s magazine – mince pie tiffin bites. We all love rocky road in our house, so this festive version will definitely be a favourite. Here is the recipe:
Mince Pie Tiffin Bites
100g skin on almonds
85g glacé cherries, quatered
55g dried cranberries
2 tbsp brandy or orange juice
125g butter
100g golden syrup
20g cocoa
Zest of 1 orange
150g dark chocolate
275g mince pies (roughly 5)
For the topping:
200g milk chocolate
3 tbsp double cream
16 chocolate covered pretzles
8 red glacier cherries
Small amount of white and black fondant for the eyes
Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, Christmas, Pastry, Spices, Tray Bakes, Winter | Tagged chocolate tiffin, christmas baking, rocky road, Rudolph Rocky road | Leave a Comment »
This years bake off final really was super exciting and I was so happy for Peter to win, he thoroughly deserved it! Emily enjoyed it so much this year too and was quite sad this week when she realised there was no bake off to watch when she got home from school. But we still have one technical to do at some point as we never got round to making the eclairs. But for now I am looking forward to doing some Christmas baking! So here’s the last technical challenge and they certainly saved a good one till last! Click here to see how we got on.
Prue’s recipe for the walnut whirls can be found here. The girls helped make the biscuits and the ganache, then the rest was down to me. Unfortunately my ganache didn’t really firm up, even after several hours in the fridge, so when I piped it I ended up with a puddle on the top of each biscuit. I ended up putting it in the freezer and managed to squish it into roughly the right shape on top of each biscuit. Luckily my marshmallow hadn’t set too much in the piping bag so I was still able to pip around the outside of the ganache.
Covering them with chocolate was pretty messy! The recipe made about 3 times the amount, so I just kept remelting the chocolate to cover the rest and we had plenty of left over marshmallow too. They were super yummy, probably my favourite technical along with the doughnuts! We’ve had so much fun again this year and really enjoyed trying a few things that we wouldn’t normally attempt. Now time for some Christmas baking!
Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, GBBO Challenges | Tagged GBBO Technical Challenge, Walnut Whirls | Leave a Comment »
I can’t believe that the final of the Great British Bake Off is tomorrow, this series has gone super quickly and we’ve really enjoyed trying all the technicals again. When we watched last weeks episode I really wasn’t too sure we would manage to make it, it really did look like a super hard challenge! But I love a challenge, click here to see how I got on.
I made the biscuit dough with Emily and Chloe after school on Friday and left it in the fridge over night till Saturday afternoon when we had some free time. Emily didn’t really want to help, so while she was busy playing with her lego I shaped and rolled all the biscuits and baked them. They all cracked quite a lot but smelt pretty good! The recipe can be found here.
I tempered the chocolate and piped the swirls, I found the chocolate much harder to pipe than royal icing and much messier! I piped loads of extra swirls as i could see it was going to be very fiddly to stick them on without breaking them. Once the biscuits were cooled I piped on the royal icing then left them to dry.
Unfortunately the only time I had left to assemble them was while I was trying to get the girls tea ready and also get a chicken curry prepared and in the oven, so it was a bit messier and more rushed than I would have liked! I also found that where the royal icing was piped on the top of the biscuits the caramel didn’t want to stick making assembly quite tricky. I got there in the end and it held its shape while I carefully stuck the chocolate swirls on, plenty of them broke, but I had just enough. The biscuits tasted really good and were perfect the next day with a coffee! I would definitely make the biscuits again, but not in a horn shape!
Posted in Biscuits, GBBO Challenges, Nuts | Tagged Danish Cornucopia, GBBO Technical Challenge | Leave a Comment »
I am sure plenty of people will agree with me that this weeks technical wasn’t really the most appealing, but I wanted to give it at go and I could see that the flavours should be pretty tasty. Luckily I had some suet in the cupboard as I was planning on making my mincemeat for Christmas this weekend. I ran out of time to bake with the girls, so this was my first solo challenge, click here to see how I got on.
I decided that we really didn’t want to make the whole recipe, Rich really wasn’t keen and I also didn’t have the right sized pudding bowls, so I used a small metal one instead and made just under half of the recipe. The full recipe can be found here. The recipe was easy enough to make. But I was not paying enough attention and forgot to line my tin, I had greased it though, so hoped that would be enough.
I didn’t time it very well as the 2 hours was up on the steamer while Rich was on a work phone call and we hadn’t even eaten dinner yet, so I left it another 20 mins before getting it out and having a go and turning it out. Unfortunately it wasn’t very easy to remove from the tin and broke, making a big puddley mess on the plate, just like most of the bakers! I think this is my first proper bake off fail! Amazingly it tasted much better than it looked and the lemon inside was soft and it was a bit like eating a sweet marmalade pudding. Emily and Chloe had a small bit to share and they really enjoyed it. It’s not really something I will be making again though!
Posted in Fruit/Veg, GBBO Challenges, Pastry, Puddings | Tagged GBBO Technical Challenge, Sussex Pond Pudding | Leave a Comment »
