Posted in Chocolate, Christmas, Nuts, Tray Bakes, Winter, tagged Baileys Pecan Blondies, Blondies, christmas baking on December 23, 2020| 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.
(more…)Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, Christmas, Pastry, Spices, Tray Bakes, Winter, tagged chocolate tiffin, christmas baking, rocky road, Rudolph Rocky road on December 16, 2020| 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, GBBO Challenges, tagged GBBO Technical Challenge, Walnut Whirls on December 11, 2020| 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 Bread, Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, tagged Chocolate Babka, GBBO Technical Challenge on October 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
We were all very excited for chocolate week on the GBBO, its got to be one of our favourite things to bake with in our house. And even better, the babka was a perfect treat for breakfast at the weekend. So on Friday when Emily finished school, we headed home and made the chocolate fill and the dough. Click here to see how we got on.
Once the chocolate filling was made and cooling down in the fridge, we make the dough, it was very sticky, but I kept the mixer running and amazingly it all came together to make a super soft lovely dough. Once done, I rolled it out and Emily helped sprinkle the chopped hazelnuts over the top, before I rolled it up, cut it and plaited it. It was actually relatively easy to do.
I then left it to prove, but even after 3 hours there was barely any change and I was running out of time before going to bed, so I just bake it anyway. Luckily it rose a bit, not as much as I had hoped, but when we cut into it for breakfast on Saturday morning it was beautifully soft and light and the chocolate filling was so super rich and sugary, we all loved it!
Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, Fruit/Veg, GBBO Challenges, gluten-free, tagged Coconut Macaroons, GBBO Technical Challenge on October 5, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Emily was very excited again this week to watch the bake off when she got back from school on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon and couldn’t wait for Saturday morning to make the technical challenge. Coconut macaroons are one of Rich’s favourites, so he was pretty happy too! Click here to see how we got on this week.
Luckily we had all the ingredients and even had some frozen mango which I cooked with some lime juice and zest to make a purée. The recipe for the macaroons can be found here. I used desiccated coconut instead of coconut flakes as that’s all I had, but they seemed to work ok. The mixture was far too hard to pipe for the mango curd filled ones, may be due to the desiccated coconut absorbing some of the moisture, but I shaped them into little nest shapes with a teaspoon and my finger instead.
We had a few problems with Chloe eating the chunks of chocolate before we managed to put them in the centre of the coconut mixture as captured in the photo and then picking at the coconut mixture too! Cheeky monkey!
The final macaroons were a decent size and we enjoyed trying them with a cup of tea on Saturday afternoon!
Posted in Celebration Cakes, Chocolate, Christmas, Figure Modelling, Fruit/Veg, Iced Cakes, Spices, tagged christmas baking, Christmas cake, fruit cake, Penguin Christmas Cake on December 23, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I just love making and decorating Christmas cakes, so as a Christmas pressie this year for our friends Matt and Beckie and their 2 kids I decided to make them a cake again! While we were away with them in the Peak District I was looking at pictures of Christmas cakes on Pinterest and Freddie and Ellie loved all the penguin ones, so I thought that’s what I would do. I found a few designs and picked my favourite bits to design this cake. Click here to see some more photos and info on decorating it.
Posted in Chocolate, Christmas, Fruit/Veg, Tray Bakes, tagged Bailey's Cherry Tiffin, christmas baking, Tiffin on December 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »
One of Rich’s favourite treats is rocky road, we even had the bottom tier of our wedding cake made from rocky road! So making a Christmas version would definitely be popular in our house. I cut this recipe out of Olive Magazine last Christmas but never got round to making it, so this year when I was looking through my recipes I added this one to the list. Click here to give this a go.
Posted in Celebration Cakes, Chocolate, Christmas, Figure Modelling, Fruit/Veg, Iced Cakes, Spices, tagged christmas baking, Christmas cake, Father Christmas Cake, fruit cake on December 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I wanted to do something different for our Christmas cake this year, so decided on a big Father Christmas! I found a lovely design on Pinterest and thought I would give it a go, Emily is very excited about Father Christmas this year so I thought it was perfect. This year I am breaking from some of the traditional recipes I usually make, so the Christmas cake is a new one from October’s Sainsbury’s Magazine – clementine and chocolate, can’t wait to try it! Click here to see the recipe and more pics of the cake.
Posted in Celebration Cakes, Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, Iced Cakes, Spices, tagged GBBO, Ginger Cake, Hedgehog Cake on December 5, 2019| 1 Comment »
Before we start all our Christmas baking I thought I would quickly upload some photos of the cake that Emily made for Rich for his Birthday this year. We all love watching the Great British Bake Off and also enjoy watching An Extra Slice. Rich’s absolute favourite bit is when they show photos of things that other people have had a go at baking, in particular the famous hedgehog cakes. So for his Birthday this year I thought we could make him a hedgehog cake and I would let Emily decorate it all by herself! I was secretly hoping it would be very funny leaving a 4 year old to do it! Click here to see how Emily got on.
Posted in Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, Pastry, tagged Cassatelle, GBBO Technical Challenge on October 14, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I can’t believe we are nearly at week 8 on the GBBO already! We had a very dark and rainy Friday afternoon here, so Emily and I decided it was perfect timing to make this weeks technical challenge. And luckily Chloe decided she was exhausted and had a 2.5 hour nap giving us plenty of time to get these done and in the fridge ready to deep fry for pudding as a Friday treat. Click here to see how me and my little helper got on.
