I have my life back!!!!

So Uni is over, and I've loved it but it's been stealing my baking time.

At our ball on Friday, as a goodbye gift, the New society presidents gave me a hummingbird bakery book (cake days). There was a little thrill that ran through me, which reminded me of how much I love baking.

So first post uni bake: Cornish fudge brownies

Starting with the hummingbird bakery traditional brownie recipe, I swapped out the sugar for 300 g condensed milk, and 100g icing sugar, then added 175g chopped fudge.

The result is gooey fudgey goodness. I think I would add the fudge after about 10 mins in the oven next time, as all the fudge must have sunk to the bottom at the start, so the bottoms of each brownie has a lush fudge layer. Not a problem, but not what I intended.

Recipe

200g dark, good quality chocolate (don't scrimp here, it's where money will be well spent- I used Tesco's finest swiss dark chocolate ans it's on offer at the moment!)
175g fudge - I went with Tesco's Cornish dairy, nothing special. Chop into 1cm ish sized cubes
1 tin of condensed milk (397 g)
50-100g icing sugar depending on your taste.
130g plain flour
3 eggs
175g margarine/butter

Melt chocolate and butter together in a bowl above simmering water. Take your time here; enjoy watching the transforming chocolate. 

Add condensed milk and sugar. It'll thicken and become a bit strange to stir. This is normal. Carry on.

Add in flour. Being lazy and not using a sieve is totally fine. Stir stir stir.

Add eggs one at a time, and remember to crack each one into a glass first - there is no worse feeling than cracking a bad egg into an almost-finished mix.

I hate adding eggs into brownie mix- the just never want to be absorbed easily. Persevere if you are doubting.

Stir through the fudge. Or maybe sprinkle over a part cooked mixture. Your choice!

Butter your tin (33X23 cm is recommended), pour in, and pop in the oven. I had it in for 30ish mins - it looked firm with no wobble when shaken.

LET IT COOL IN THE PAN. Then cut and lift out. They get better the longer they are left, so if you have the willpower to wait 24hrs, you'll be rewarded!!

Enjoy!!

6 weeks without baking... What's wrong with me?

I cannot believe how long it has been without baking. Between being ill and being busy, it's been difficult to get home to sleep let alone to make a cake.
Anyway, here is my comeback; The Brooklyn Blackout Cake

It is a Hummingbird Bakery recipe; a three tiered chocolate sponge, enveloped with a chocolate custard icing which was an absolute faff. 

But what a beauty!

Housemate envy: 9/10 a very anticipated cake, that didn't disappoint. Half gone!

Presentation: 8/10 Would have loved to have a more squared off shape instead of a dome. Need to sort out my rise. First ever crumb coating though - success! 

Yummy points: 9/10 Apparently a touch too much on the icing on the cake:covering ratio. Keep in mind.

Recent cakes!

Sorry I haven't been updating recently... I've been super busy with Architecture.

All food recently (including cake) has been ginger tinged - I bought SO much by accident (online shopping nightmare). As a result I have developed a ginger blindness; there can never be too much now, and it is disturbing my loved ones....

Cocktail party at Mary's - Such a great night of creating
yummy combos and getting accidently drunk.

Mary made a cake for Luke's birthday - it was LUSH

Irish Soda Bread

Gingerbread, left, and ginger 'teabag' cookie (see here for the idea)

gluten free gingerbread with chocolate!

Ginger Chocolate flapjack

Carrot and Ginger cake - AMAZING

A sign of spring at the allotment!!!

Sun rises

I had a week full of working on projects, so I was up at about 6 (hungover or not... #proud) everyday. 

There were a lot of beautiful sunrises, because it was a beautiful week of weather... of course it was; I had work to do.

Woodland adventures

I have the luck to be able to walk a gorgeous dog every saturday. Today was sunny so I took a LOT of photos...

Garden is coming into bloom. Super happy!

Gem, the wonderful dog.

Lent begins

We had a good pancake day in the house yesterday, but now its down to business.

This year I am giving up all processed foods. Which should be super good for me.

Sounds pretty simple, and I'm going to have to get creative to avoid missing out on my baking resolution, but I think I can make it. 

Some snaps of our pancakes last night:

Squiggley heart

Giant cupcake

Sussex for the Weekend

This weekend I went home. It has been very good, especially since I have horrid tonsillitis.
Also, it's raining. WAH.

The Friday night 6 hour journey was hideous,
 but the sunset over Dorset was pretty.

Piano Players in ST.Pancreas were delightful

Walk to the tiddley tiny Hatch pub with Sophie and the gang

Chai Tea with soppy

Jasmine's BEAUTIFUL Viennese swirls. 

Today I baked some chocolate orange cookies, which were definitely too crumbley for my liking, but everyone else seems to want more.

Chocolate Orange cookies baked today (sunday)

Apology cookies

On Tuesday night, I went out with my housemate. We were pretty loud when we returned in the wee hours of the morning. So I made some 'sorry for waking you up' treats.

Oatmeal and Raisin cookies.
Was still a little on the wrong side of tipsy, so it's a miracle that these came out ok. I used a Joy of Baking recipe, but deviated. A lot.

Crumbs stand as evidence that they are great warm
(there were two dozen)

Housemate Envy: 9/10 - a simple recipe that simultaneously helped hangovers and mended fences.
Presentation Points: 9/10 - I could have wrapped them up, or presented them on a nice stand, but they were too yummy to waste time doing that. They had a nice 'golden brown' going on, and soft in the middle.
Yummy Points: 8/10 - need more raisins and oil for a more gooey cookie. A real homely bake, that dangerously feels like it should be healthy. Maybe substitute sugar with apple puree? More dried fruit?

Cabbage Rolls

Don't scream 'she's going vegan' so quick - these are bloody lush. And only 381 cals.

Basically it's a load of veg (mushrooms, spinach, kale) mixed with pollock and rice wrapped in steamed cabbage leaves. And of course, a yummy amount of soft goats cheese on top.

OM NOM NOM.

Hail and Easy-as-hell Porridge

Couldn't make it into the studio today - poorly girl!

So instead, I have been working on opera house plans in my room, serenaded by hail, and with some very yummy porridge!

Master planning with porridge. Life's pretty sweet.

Little recipe for the best porridge in the world! Totally work friendly. I often take this into the studio, because porridge is bloody great and this version only needs a kettle. I started doing this after looking at the Quaker instant porridges in sainsbury's. Not only is this version cheaper, it also is not wasting packaging either. Throwing one of those pots away each time is crazy lazy. Jars? ECO POINTS.

What you need to do:

1. Find yourself a jar - mine is an old peanut butter one.
2. Into the jar goes: half a cup of rolled oats, handful of dried fruit (raisins, craisins, dried pinapple - go crazy!!!), seeds, nuts, whatever you want really. I then put in 1 tsp of peanut butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Today's was raisins and peanut butter.
3. Put the lid on
4. Take it to work (don't forget a spoon), and wait for the distracting hunger pangs
5. When you need a little foodie break, whack on the kettle, and pour boiling water into the jar.
6. Pour enough in so that the water line is about 1 cm above the oatline. 
7. Wait about 5 minutes until it looks like porridge. 
8. Dig in, and witness your colleagues' envy.

Films, Rugby and Coffee cake

The last  couple of weeks have frightened me in how fast they go. It's crazy. 

On the 28th January, I filmed a music video of my talented friend Mary Jane. We visited different locations and filmed the same song over and over. I then edited it into a very raw-feeling video, where you can hear the changes in sound in each cut:

Please also see the write up on my architecture blog!

I also made a coffee cake on Friday. I used a hummingbird bakery recipe as the baseline. But I halved the quantities, added more coffee and a dozen toffees.  My idea with shape was to make a house... Not a great success.
Nevermind, it was great and we ate it with cups of tea whilst watching the rugby yesterday.

Housemate envy: 10/10 (it got rave reviews from all of them, plus guests we had back to watch the rugby.)
Presentation Points: 5/10 (very questionable, and not how I envisioned)
Yummy Points: 9/10 (I know this is my best coffee cake yet, but I felt the sponge could have been less dense. Buttercream was a dream -no recipe.)

Gluten free fruit cake and SNOW

We didn't get any snow in plymouth, so we went to dartmoor to find some....

And I made that gluten free cake. It was a bit dense, and sour (since I did a lemon drizzle topping)

Recipe:

1. Soak 500g of dried fruit (mix of whatever you like - I had apricots, sultanas, peel, dried raspberries, currents) in a big bowl with 600ml of boiling water and 3 tea bags. I used 2 PG tips and 1 oolong tea bag.
2. Leave overnight. Go to the pub, don't worry about baking hungover; it's easy as hell, go have some fun.
3. In the morning, remove the tea bags, and mix in 200g of sugar. I used granulated because I am poor.
4. Crack an egg in, and mix.
5. Spice it up with whatever you have in the kitchen. My weapons of choice were cinnamon and lemon rind.
6. Mix in 250g of gluten free flour. I didn't see the need to sift.
7. Bake at 170 C for about an hour. Test its 'done-ness' by inserting a metal skewer/knife and see if it comes out clean.
8. Give it 5 in the tin, but while it is warm, stab it a fair amount of times, then drizzle on the icing - juice of one lemon mixed with about 100g of granulated sugar. Using granulated gives it a great crunch. 

Points:
Housemate envy: 6/10 (There isn't any left, but that might have been because there was a lot of us, and the snow makes you want to eat lots of cake. People thought it was an interesting thing - lots of questions)
Presentation points: 8/10 (Forgot to take a bloody pic of it whole. It was a bunt cake, which makes cake easier for picnics as there's no wispy bit in the middle to crumble.)
Yummy points: 7/10 (It's hard to judge as it was a bloody weird cake. But I had a fair bit as it was good enough for me.)


I also went to Exeter last night to see my friend Mary play, which was fab.

Thar be snow!

Had a play with photoshop to collage this great jump...

...and this one.

find out more on http://wordsbymaryjane.wordpress.com/

No Snow for Plymouth

I am really excited about my architecture project, which you can read about on my blog here. 

Meanwhile, it is snowing in about every place EXCEPT Plymouth. Which totally sucks! However, I'm going to the moors tomorrow with an architecture buddy, and so I am making a cake. Of Course.

It'll be a gluten free fruit cake, and it's the first time I'll be working with alternative flour. I'm a bit nervous! 

Fruit before soaking in tea - sultanas, raisins,
peel, apricots and dried raspberries.

I had a great dinner tonight - goats cheese and veg on toast.