Category Archives: Baking

Jam and Jerusalem

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There has been so much on the TV recently about the centenary of the WI, I decided to take a leaf from their book and use up the remaining blackberries to make some jam! I always thought this would be a difficult process and would need loads of extra ingredients and equipment. My neighbour said it was dead easy to do and I should give it a try. So I did a bit of research on the internet – You Tube is amazing for tutorials – and thought I would have a go.

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So out came all the washed blackberries, a large bag of sugar, my largest pan, masher and pots for the finished produce. Everywhere I found on the internet called for added pectin with blackberries, but my Delia book doesn’t mention it. As this was my first go at jam making, I decided on the simple approach – fruit and sugar.

Firstly I mashed the blackberries a bit in the pan, then added the sugar, stirred with my trusty wooden spoon and then brought them to the boil.

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Here they are on the hob, nicely boiling away. I removed some of the bubbles as they boiled and kept a watch on it to check on thickening up.  It didn’t take long, and then I left it to cool, whilst boiling my pots.

I was amazed at just how much jam I made.  I finished the day with six pots ready for the fridge.  I hope they last as I don’t think we’ll get through it that quickly on toast – oooo, that’s made me think of scones, maybe I shall have to have another baking session again soon.  Watch this space!

Happing crafting
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Season of Mellow Fruitfulness

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Last weekend the weather here was glorious, so we decided to head out for a family walk and forage around Holcombe Hill.  It was lovely to get out in what’s probably going to be the last of the really warm weather up here.

The hill was popular with other walkers and foragers too.  We met quite a few people filling bags with the abundance of blackberries.

P1240393I decided to see if we could collect any of the late whimberries as well – I must have been affected by the heat!

This has to have been the longest walk up Holcombe Hill ever!  It took us over 2 hours to get to the top.  Mind you we were laden down with quite a lot of fruit.  I just about managed to fill a small pot with the last of this years whimberries, but the blackberry box was ridiculously heavy!  I think it’s been a great year for blackberries.  There were loads and they were big too, not the usual little ones.

We stopped for a quick snack at Peel Tower then went back down the hill in record time – we were all starving and we hadn’t thought ahead enough to bring a picnic!

Here’s a picture of some of the fruit before it was washed and sorted out.  We had over 3kg in the end, so it was no wonder we were struggling with the boxes!!

P1240403I decided on an apple and blackberry crumble to go with Sunday dinner.  Which was delicious – a great dessert to follow our traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding main course.  But it left me with a very large crop of blackberries, so it was time to get the thinking cap on and decide what to do with the rest.

As I hadn’t had a practice at my shortcrust pastry for a while I thought I’d risk it and have another go!  I didn’t really have enough whimberries for a large pie and my lack of a large pie plate somewhat limited what I was going to be able to make.  So it was time for some individual fruit pies.

I remembered my Mum teaching me the ‘half fat to flour’ rule for pastry, but I still got out my Delia book as an extra support for the pastry process.  The last time I tried pastry I made jam tarts and the pastry was too think, so I tried to roll it out much thinner this time.  The first batch of pastry managed to make a dozen pie cases and 10 lids!  I rather stuffed the whimberries into 10 cases.

So I had to make another batch of pastry to cope with at least some of the blackberries left waiting in the fridge!   They all looked good in the tins and I did remember to add some caster sugar to the top of the second batch of pies!

Unfortunately I learnt the hard way not to overfill the whimberry pies, as they all burst through the lids and stuck to the sides of the tins.  But they still tasted nice with some ice cream.  The blackberry pies though were lovely and I will have to make more in the future.

P1240404As we had rather a lot of pies, we took them round to a couple of the neighbours to share, a perfect excuse to pop round for a chat!

I’ve frozen a few small bags of the blackberries to use in crumbles later in the year, and I’ve shared some with Mum too.  Now I just have to decide what to do with the rest of them…..

Happy crafting
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Holiday Baking

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This weekend we were invited to a friend’s annual summer barbecue party. As usual they were providing all the food, so I suggested I would take something for dessert as they hadn’t decided on anything yet! So it was an early start and out with the baking things.

I thought about scones, but settled on a Victoria Sandwich and some biscuits. I didn’t know how many people would be there so I needed something easy to divide up.

As I was going to be pushed for time, I decided on the all-in-one sponge mix from my Delia Smith book. I started with the basic vanilla sponge, splitting the mixture across two cake tins.

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As I still had plenty of ingredients left, I thought I ‘d make another sponge, chocolate this time. I also added some extra chocolate chips to the mixture. I have watched quite a few baking shows recently (being a fan of cake is great with the GBBO back again for another series), and have picked up the tip of rolling fruit in flour before adding it to a mixture so that it doesn’t sink when baking. So I rolled the chocolate chips in flour before adding them to the mixture. It certainly seemed to work as they were pretty evenly distributed in the sponge. Again I decided to make this into a sandwich cake and split the mixture across two tins.

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While the four sponges were baking I started on some raisin biscuits, using the Easter biscuit recipe we all love. I didn’t have a lemon, so they were minus lemon zest, but they are equally as tasty.

So here’s the baking after everything came out of the oven.

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Next it was time to prepare the fillings for the sandwich cakes. My vanilla one was to have raspberry jam and vanilla buttercream, while I decided on chocolate spread and vanilla buttercream for the chocolate chip cake. I thought I had split the buttercream in half, but I obviously wasn’t paying attention as the chocolate cake ended up with twice the amount of the vanilla cake!

Anyway, I finished them both off with a dusting icing sugar, and here’s how they turned out.

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They might not win any prizes on Bake Off, but they are most definitely the best sandwich cakes I have made. And I am pleased to say they went down pretty well at the barbecue too. I managed to get sixteen slices out of each cake. Just the right size! I did manage to snaffle a piece of each and they tasted pretty good too. My daughter loved the Victoria Sandwich and Hubby loved the Chocolate Chip Sandwich – I liked them both, but then I love cake!! As it’s my husband’s birthday next week, I can see another baking session coming on, it will save on buying a cake covered in icing which he hates!

Baking Therapy

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Just as I was starting to feel relatively back to normal, my daughter gets sent home from school!  Coinciding with the hot weather too.  So I have spent the last few days looking after her and worrying.  It turns out she had a virus and she’s pretty much back to normal again now.  So, to cheer me up a bit, I thought I’d do some baking for a change.

With not being able to have any fat in my diet for quite a while, I haven’t done any baking in ages.  And as it’s almost time for the local community group summer fair again (this Saturday coming) I needed a baking fix.

I decided to make some scones.  As we had some cheese left over in the fridge, I used that to make these delicious little cheddar cheese scones.

Cheese Scones

Then I thought I needed a sweeter fix too, and I found some chocolate chips in the baking cupboard.

Chocolate Chip Scones

As the scones take so little time to make, I started to hunt through the recipe books and came across a recipe to use up over-ripe bananas.  I have an old recipe for a banana and bran loaf which is fabulous, but I didn’t have any bran in the cupboard, so I thought I’d try another recipe, this time for a banana and walnut loaf.  I was given this recipe by someone at Bury Council Recycling Team and it’s quite different to any other cake I’ve made.  I’ve never added bicarbonate of soda to warm milk before – great scientific experiment!

Banana and Walnut Loaf

The loaf took only 40 minutes to bake and is so light and moist.  It may take over as my new favourite way to use over-ripe bananas.

The house smelt amazing after that little baking session, although as there’s only 3 of us at home I think I may have overdone it a bit!!  At least I have something in if I get any surprise visitors.

My husband has kindly said I will make the scones for the cream teas at the summer fair on Saturday, so it’s time to make sure I have enough ingredients in.  If you have a cream tea do you prefer plain or fruit scones?

Happy crafting
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Easter Holidays

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Easter holidays are tough for me this year as I love chocolate and cake and I just can’t have any!  But baking is also one of the best activities for the school holidays.  So with my daughter eager to make something for her friends and family, I helped her out with her idea of making chocolate nests.

This has got to be the easiest ‘baking’ ever!  I let her be in charge and tell me what I needed to do.  So she broke up shredded wheat into a bowl.  I was tasked with melting the chocolate over a pan of hot water and once melted I poured it into the shredded wheat bowl.  She then mixed it all together.  I had bought some Easter themed cake cases and little sticks from a local pound shop and they set the cakes off a treat.  The little nests were then made in each case and some chocolate eggs added to complete the nest effect.

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They looked great once they had set and I believe they tasted pretty good too.  We were certainly popular amongst the neighbours on Easter Sunday!

Now just another 2 weeks of holidays to fill!

Happy crafting
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Half Term Baking

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This half term holiday has been a real whirlwind, from a funeral and birthdays to swimming lessons, hospital visit, Chinese New Year and a couple of family days out.  So there hasn’t been a huge amount of time for crafting.

But we did manage a little bit of baking for Mum’s birthday.  My daughter, now 6, loves to help and she really wanted to make something for her Grandma.  So on the way home from a funeral , we stopped at a Lakeland shop, which only sold kitchen accessories.  It was a great shop and lovely to browse around.  I could have spent a small fortune but was sensible!  We bought some chocolate cupcake frosting, pink wafer flowers and small chocolate beans.

Once home we decided that some cupcakes would be the perfect gift.  I chose the simple, all-in-one sponge recipe and we made two different flavours – vanilla with cherry, and double chocolate!  The smell in the kitchen was delicious.

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Once cooked and cooled. we had great fun decorating them. I used some ready-to-roll icing and an imprinted roller and then cut them into circles to top the vanilla cakes, my daughter then finished them off with the pink wafer flowers. The chocolate ones I topped with the chocolate cupcake frosting, which came in a tube with a piping nozzle! Of course they had to have small chocolate beans added. I think they looked great. We chose the four best and presented them in a lovely cupcake box.

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Mum enjoyed them too and we shared the remaining cakes around. A lovely little crafting session.

Happy crafting
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Winter Baking

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I made my Christmas cake several weeks ago now and it smells amazing whenever I open the tin to feed it it’s weekly slug of brandy. But every time I open the tin it makes me want to sneak a nibble! So I decided to get out the Paul Hollywood book that hubby gave me for our wedding anniversary. Wow what a fabulous choice of cakes in there.

I’ve made 2 Ripon Spice cakes so far. They are a great alternative to the full fruit cake with a lot less fruit and light sugar. But it smells divine when it’s cooking filling the whole house with a spicy aroma. It’s a fabulous tea loaf and Hubby likes to spread it with butter. I’m quite happy just with the cake a brew!

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We’ve also had a go at some of the bread. Here’s my husbands’ first go at the Crusty Swansea.

Crusty Swansea

I can thoroughly recommend this book. The recipes are easy to follow and the tips for kneading are great.

I’m making myself hungry again now seeing these pictures. I was going to start crocheting a snowman but I might have to bake another cake instead!

Happy baking
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Half Term Baking

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Half Term is upon us again. We have an extra day due to staff training, so we decided to put it to good use and do some baking. My 5 year-old loves being in the kitchen, although she does lose interest after a while.

So today we did some Mum and daughter Halloween cakes and biscuits, some paw-print biscuits and I made my Christmas cake!!

We started off with a very simple all-in-one sponge mix with added cocoa powder. My daughter chose to also add chocolate buttons and mini marshmallows to the mix for extra goo! She loved measuring everything out and adding the ingredients. I have to say she’s much better at cracking eggs than I am!!

Chocolate cakes

We let them bake for about 15 minutes then put them on the side to cool on a rack while we started on the Halloween biscuits to take to a Halloween party tomorrow. These are a really simple butter biscuit recipe. Instead of using castor sugar I used a bag of spiced sugar from a spiced apple juice kit that I’d been given (there was no way I would ever make 2 gallons of spiced apple juice, so what better way to use up the sugar!) The dough needed to rest in the fridge for around 20 minutes before rolling, so to keep her attention, out came the rich tea biscuits. I made a small amount of white water icing to top each biscuit and she added giant and ordinary sized chocolate buttons to make a paw-print on each one. I think they are lovely. So effective and they taste fantastic.

Paw-print biscuits

When the biscuit dough had rested, I rolled it out and my daughter had great fun choosing the spooky shapes to use. She settled on bats, cats, stars (large and small) men and Mickey Mouse! A fun half hour of rolling and cutting followed, with me on a bungee between the table and the oven!. Here’s a peek at the first batch once they had cooked.

Halloween spiced biscuits

They have a very subtle spicy flavour to them from the sugar. Very moreish. I think they will go down well at the Halloween party.

Once all the biscuits were cooling, it was time to decorate the chocolate cakes. Buttercream was the choice, so I made a batch, splitting it in half and adding orange food colouring to one half and green colouring to the other. Very spooky! Then it was little one’s turn to get creative with the decorations, and for her, more is most definitely more!

Halloween Cakes

The overall effect is great though. Very spooky and just right for Halloween.

Happy Halloween fun
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Feel good baking

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With being off my feet for a few days, I really needed a pick-me-up.  So I thought I’d see if I could manage to do a bit of baking.  We didn’t have much in the baking cupboard, so it was  a case of making do with what I could find.

I started off with a basic all-in-one sponge mix and added some vanilla essence and fresh blueberries.  The second batch was another all-in-one sponge mix with cocoa powder, m&m’s and mini marshmallows!  They only take a few minutes to bake in the oven and were lovely and moist.

For the icing, I combined vanilla essence with a little water and icing sugar for the blueberry buns.  The chocolate buns are topped with chocolate spread and Halloween hundreds and thousands.

 

Chocolate and Marshmallow

Vanilla and Blueberry

They may be simple, but they do taste good. And they certainly cheered me up (and the rest of the family).

Happy baking
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Great British Bake Off

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In homage to the Great British Bake Off, I decided to do some baking today.

The cupboards were well stocked with chocolate chips and raisins, so it was time to make some scones again.  I used my old recipe and made mixed fruit scones, chocolate and raisin scones and sultana scones.  Plenty to keep us going for while!

Chocolate Raisin Scones

Such a lovely treat after tea!

I can’t wait for bake off now.

Happy crafting
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