Posted in Bread, Chocolate, Christmas, Fruit/Veg, tagged Chocolate Orange, christmas baking, panettone on December 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »
As chocolate orange is one of my absolute favourite flavours I couldn’t resist making these as a treat for breakfast in the run up to Christmas. I knew the girls would love them too, the only problem was that one just wasn’t enough! Click here to try this recipe.
(more…)Posted in Chocolate, Christmas, Tray Bakes, Winter, tagged chocolate, chocolate brownies, christmas baking, pretzels on December 14, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Although this one isn’t strictly a Christmas recipe, everyone loves a chocolate brownie and these are really good, the salty pretzels add a yummy crunch and using these Christmas ones adds a festive touch. Click here to see the recipe.
(more…)Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, Christmas, Fruit/Veg, Nuts, Winter, tagged biscotti, Chocolate Orange, Christmas, christmas baking on December 11, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I’m a bit late getting going with the Christmas recipes this year, I’m not really sure where the time has gone! But I have been busy baking, so I have plenty of Christmas recipes to share over the next couple of weeks. Here’s the first recipe, one of my favourite flavours – chocolate orange. Click here to see how to make this chocolate orange and almond biscotti.
(more…)Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, tagged chocolate caramel biscuits, GBBO, GBBO Technical Challenge, homemade twix on November 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Oh yes, it’s caramel week! Our favourite flavour! We all love caramel here, whether it’s salted carmel ice cream, cake or in a biscuit bar, it’s a winner. So we weren’t going to pass on this weeks challenge. Click here to see how I got on.
(more…)Posted in Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, Other Cakes, tagged chocolate cake, GBBO Technical Challenge, Prinzregententorte on October 25, 2021| Leave a Comment »
We all love chocolate cake in our house and especially a cake with lots of buttercream and ganache! So we were very happy to try this recipe out this weekend. It also made the perfect pudding for our friends who came over for lunch on Sunday, both the grown ups and kids loved it. Click here to see how we got on.
(more…)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!
Gloverly Cupcakes 