Posted in autumn, Biscuits, Chocolate, GBBO Challenges, tagged bonfire night, GBBO Technical Challenge, Halloween baking, s’mores on October 23, 2022| 1 Comment »
Halloween week might have been a week early on the GBBO, but we definitely didn’t mind and couldn’t wait to make the s’mores! Rich and the girls love marshmallows and I haven’t made any for ages, so perfect excuse! Keep reading to see how amazing these are.
(more…)Posted in Biscuits, Chocolate, Fruit/Veg, GBBO Challenges, tagged Biscuits, garibaldi biscuits, GBBO Technical Challenge on September 23, 2022| 1 Comment »
This week was biscuit week on the GBBO and we really enjoyed the episode. I loved the idea of making a biscuit mask and might try it one day with the girls, I think they would really enjoy decorating their own masks. I have never made garibaldi biscuit so we were looking forward to trying them out. Click here to see how we got on.
(more…)Posted in Biscuits, Christmas, Spices, Winter, tagged christmas baking, gingerbread, mince meat stuffed gingerbread on December 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »
I saw this recipe in the Waitrose magazine last Christmas but didn’t get round to making it. It’s a recipe from John Whaite (who won GBBO in 2012) and it’s a perfect Christmas flavour combination of gingerbread and mincemeat, yummy! 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 Biscuits, GBBO Challenges, tagged Biscuits, GBBO, GBBO Technical Challenge, Jammy Biscuits on October 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »
After the success of the malt loaf last week the girls were keen to have a go at making the jammy biscuits after school on Friday. Emily loved watching the GBBO again and is already planning a gingerbread biscuit construction for Christmas! Click here to take a look at our attempt at making jammy biscuits.
(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 Biscuits, GBBO Challenges, Nuts, tagged Danish Cornucopia, GBBO Technical Challenge on November 23, 2020| 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, 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 