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!!

Notre Beau Jardin

The Tulips in the garden are the ones I planted back in October. I'm so happy that they are beautiful, if a little heavy for themselves. With all the stress in my work life right now, I need something like this to remind me that I am capable of doing something worthwhile. 

Meanwhile, pretty much the entire allotment is dandelions. Whooops....

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.

Giving up on Lent, and Deadlines

Little bit nervous about my review tomorrow, but never mind.

Gave up on 'No Processed Food' - It's so difficult. It's harder than giving up sugar last year, because at least then I could eat pasta, bread and cheese.

I procrastibaked on Friday (maybe?), and made a weird fruit cake. I substituted butter for a touch of oil, and switched sugar for honey. I also added sunflower seeds.

IT WAS SO GOOEY.

... verging on "I will never be cooked".

It was kind of like Soreen, in the way that it stuck to our teeth.

It didn't last long at all....

I particularly like the gesture of leaving a little tiny bit...

Housemate Points: 9/10 - very surprising
Presentation: 8/10 - very normal, nothing special
Yummy points: 9/10 - maybe more spice!

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.

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.

Procrastination Collages

Instead of doing floor area schemes of an opera house (uni project, which can be read about here), I did my first collage-type-thing since college. How strange.

Also, this blog has got an astounding 79 views so far today.  

Cheers chaps

Procrastimaking in January

Oh dear, it's been a long time since I posted a blog. I've been having some computer nightmares.... anyway, here's what I've been doing:

An architecture project

This is the one I talked so fearfully about in another blog post, but it's over now. For submission, I took 3 photographs of my elderly relatives, showing them as they are, with a bit of text saying who they are. I wrote the supporting text and all references on my type writer. I love it so much!

All wrapped up!

A Carrot Cake

This was baked for a coffee and cake chat with my friend Mary (who sings amazingly, check it out!)

New Point System:

Housemate Envy: + 9/10 (There is a reason that I don't have a picture of the whole cake!)
Presentation Points: 6/10 (The top icing was quite thin and runny, so I constantly felt like the fairies in sleeping beauty when they make the birthday cake, see below!)
Yummy points: 9/10 (It was beautiful, three different kinds of icing in it, moist, good crumb. The bottom was a smidgen overdone though)

By the way, this film is the way to my heart. It is definitely my favourite film EVER.

A Shirt Skirt (with tutorial)

I have definitely seen this before, but I didn't save the link so it cannot be credited :(
I was super happy with this, and wore it out on friday.

Take a shirt

Chop off the arms, collar and cut across the chest
(cut across the chest at the part that matches your waist measurements)

 Then sew up the sides as necessary, hem the top. I then cut the collar in half, and sewed it on to the top as a strange belt loop. 

Belt loop at the back looking hot!

Coffee Cake vs Essay Writing

I have a deadline coming up soon. Two in fact, in quick succession. 

So of course I baked a cake this evening, whilst watching the iron lady. 

It's a strange kind of coffee cake. Again a little made up, but surprisingly sucessful:

200g butter

200g sugar

3 eggs

Coffee (made super strong coffee in cafetiere, then boiled this on the hob until it was super concentrated) 

about 200g self raising flour - enough to make it cake batter looking

Then there's a cheeky hollow in the middle with coffee buttercream in - but you can't really see it in the photos... then coffee glace icing on the top. 

New point system:

Housemate envy + 5/10 (it's kind of safe, but everyone loves coffee cake it seems) 

Presentation points + 1/10 (big fat mess - top layer may or may not have broken in two when removed from tin...)

Yummy points + 8/10  (light sponge, but not enough coffee taste)

Total points today : 14/30

Beetroot cup cakes

To celebrate being back home in plymouth, I baked beetroot cupcakes yesterday - made up the recipe and everything!

Make like a normal sponge:

175g butter

180g sugar

175g s.f. raising flour

3 eggs

1 cooked beetroot cut into small bits. 

Icing is normal buttercream icing coloured with beetroot juice.

They kind of spilled over the cup cake cases, so they are pretty big! I think next time, I will puree the beetroot in the cake mix rather than chop. 

Yum yum yum! 

New Years Resolution

I know it's a tad early, but I've made my resolution; Bake once a week.
Back in 2011, my resolution was similar but more vague; Bake More. I loved this, and so did my lucky friends. A few examples....

So now, for 2013, I've made a list of 52 recipes. I've tried to challenge myself with things and techniques I've never done before. I hope that this will allow me to establish some good recipes to play around with and adapt.

The list includes Chocolate and Raspberry brûlée, Lemon Meringue Pie, Ginger Florentines... beautiful things. I'm just going to have to run more!

And all this is in aid of..... My future career. Yes, I am training to be an architect right now, but I have been thinking about a little bakery for a LONG time. I would love nothing more than to live doing something I love. So I've half made the decision to set up a bakery after I finish my degree, instead of pursuing architecture forever.

I am encouraged by my friend Lilly, who set up a brilliant launderette with her sisters. They seemed to have fun doing it too!