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!!

Coffee disaster

So I've baked a lot this summer, but I will put that on another post.
Right now, it's time to laugh at an awful excuse for coffee cake.
What happened- I put a well made Hummingbird recipe into the bottom oven of the aga... And then I watched outnumbered and Anna Karenina. Whoopsies.

But, it didn't burn because it was on a silly low lovel of heat. So essentially I didn't bake it, I dried it. Result? A very solid cake.

In an attempt to save it from the bin, I came up with the idea of coffee drizzle, with the intention of restoring some moisture in the 'sponge'.

It did not work.

Brownies!

This is the first time I've actually made some successful brownies! May have something to do with the hummingbird bakery's recipe being great....

Housemate envy: 10/10... deffo should make more

Presentation: 7/10 - put no effort into it

Yummy points: 9.5/10 - might add chocolate chips

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!!!

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!

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.)

Peanut butter balls

The americans always go on about these in blogs, so I decided to make some today to see what the hype was about.

I made it up as I went and the recipe was:

1. Plop 3 tablespoons of smooth peanut butter in a bowl, then microwave until more pliable. 
2. Mix with 1 tsp honey, and 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder.
3. Add enough rice crispies until it seems about reasonable. 
4. Roll into balls about 2cm in diameter. (there were about 12 for me)
5. Put in the fridge to set.

Points:

Housemate envy: 9/10 (Their size and childhood-appeal definitely saw these disappear. I think it would be 10/10 but we don't have a full house today to judge by)

Presentation: 6/10 (They're cute, but I really need to start making pretty things!)

Yummy Points: 10/10 (These are DANGEROUS. Small, great textures, fab taste. They are all gone!)

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.

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! 

Cup cake experiments

Today I experimented with icing - I made 12 lemon infused cup cakes (Ruddy good sponge if I say so myself!), then played with icings. There was a chocolate and brandy ganache, a lemon glacé icing, a lemony cream cheese icing, and then a few were made into lemon drizzles. They don't look like much, but they were pretty perfect, I'm proud.

Christmas tree cutting

So, today we cut our Christmas tree. Cameron climbed up and took the top out of what was once a Christmas tree itself, which has grown to be about a 40 footer! Cam took the top 15 feet off the top, and I stood as supervision. It is so rainy and gross outside. POO.

Some Jammy dodgers I made a few days ago

Tree before...

....Now with a hefty gap.

Our poor neglected play set. 

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!

Cakes and Models

So, I've got back into baking this last week, and here are some things I made earlier (excuse crap phone camera skills!)

Victoria Sponge with beautiful Farm Shop
 'Plum and Mulled Wine' jam.

Little model

Cupcake mould working a treat on a birthday cake

The top all iced ' with a cherry on top'

She was very happy with her surprise birthday!

It's been a fun week. For architectural fun times see architectureandi.blogspot.co.uk and for my recent running and fitness adventures check out Every Day is a Good Day when you Run

Ciao Belle!!