Lemon butter biscuits

It’s Mothers’ Day, and despite the fact that I’m not seeing my mum today, I thought I’d do a spot of baking and make something I know she’d like – I think if she reads this post I’ll have to make some to take home with me the next time I visit!

 

Today has been a lazy one, a day when I hadn’t prepared to do any baking but as it’s worn on and I’ve run out of recorded tv to watch, the itch to bake has started up again. I scoured my baking drawer, the fridge and the cupboards and gathered together a lemon, a slab of butter, plain flour and some caster sugar – lemon biscuits it is I thought, though I didn’t have a clear recipe in mind!

So I googled various biscuit recipes and chose this one by Rachel Allen  from the Good Food Channel - it seemed easy, used all the ingredients I happened to have in the kitchen and would make tasty biscuits – just what I was craving this afternoon!

This recipe does what it says on the tin – my biscuits, while they don’t look quite as professional as the ones on the website, are delicious, melt in the mouth and were really easy to make – I would definitely recommend trying this one! They have a slightly shortbready texture and they crumble deliciously when you eat them! The only addition I made was to use the juice from a lemon and blend it into the sugar and butter mix. This gives the biscuits a fresh citrusy taste which I really like. To make them a bit more decadent I might use some of the lemon curd I have leftover from my cupcakes and spread on the biscuits – yum!

P.S. I just tried one with some lemon curd . . . oh my goodness you have to try it too – so tasty!

Plaited Loaf with a Spoonful of Honey

Tonight Tom made his world-famous . . .ok . . . family-famous chili for dinner – it’s delicious and he is becoming a true pro at making it! We usually have a few dishes of extra toppings to go with the chili; cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips and bread for dunking; you’ve got to mop up the scrummy chili sauce, it can’t be left to go to waste! Unfortunately, we’d run out of bread but everything was ok, I had some of my amazing mixed grain wholemeal flour left – luckily the perfect amount required to make a plaited loaf from the Great British Bake Off cookbook.

I’ve been excited by the prospect of making this recipe as it looks so rustic and delicious – the recipe uses wholemeal bread flour mixed with hazelnuts, apricots and honey, however, my luck with ingredients didn’t go that far, so I just used the flour and honey. The loaf still tasted amazing but I will try the full recipe next time as I think it will be even better!

The honey in the recipe adds a delicious sweetness to the loaf which I can imagine is complimented really well by the hazelnuts, but it isn’t too overpoweringly sweet so would go well with cheeses and chutneys or, as we used it, chunky bread for dunking! Other flavours that would work well in this loaf recipe are a good strong cheddar with roasted red onion, cashew nuts instead of hazel and olive and sundried tomatoes.

 For the full recipe see The Great British Bake Off How to Bake cookbook – it’s worth investing in, it has so many easy to follow, delicious recipes and it just looks gorgeous!

Lemon curd filled cupcakes

Today I made lemon curd filled, lemon icing covered, lemon sponge cupcakes – and they’re so yummy!

I followed the sponge part of one of the cupcake recipes from my favourite baking book of the moment – The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days, and edited it slightly by adding lemon juice. I also used a simple buttercream icing recipe which I added more lemon juice to. And, as if that wasn’t enough lemon, I also added Sicilian lemon curd to the middle of the cupcakes. This was really easy to do – just cook the cupcakes as usual and then once they’re cool, cut a circle in the top of the cake and pull out the round of sponge. Spoon in whatever filling you fancy; I used lemon curd for this recipe, but you could also use strawberry jam for a victoria sponge-esque cupcake, custard or chocolate cream to go with a chocolate sponge; and then replace the circle of cake.

I am really pleased with how these turned out – I definitely feel I am mastering the art of baking cupcakes – and I was definitely better at adding the icing this time – there was a lot less icing on me and more on the cakes!

Baked egg bowls and chocolate eclairs

This weekend has turned in to a bit of a bake-a-thon all in all!

As well as making mini quiches yesterday, I also made some wholemeal seeded bread rolls for Tom who wanted to try this recipe I found on Pinterest – the Noble Pig’s Baked Eggs in Bread Bowls. Tom brought me home some wholemeal seeded flour which I got probably far too excited about using but it was such nice flour and made a nice change to the usual plain white bread flour I use! The rolls turned out really well and I’ll definitely be making them again – they’d be perfect for soup or with some cheese or pate.

        

I also decided to try making eclairs this weekend as I was craving chocolate and so I thought I’d give choux pastry a go – it sounded very easy from the recipes I read beforehand.

The recipe I used can be found here and was very easy to follow. The only step I would change would be instead of slicing down the length of the eclairs, make a hole in the end instead. Then pipe the cream filling in the hole in the end rather than trying to scoop the filling down the middle – I think it might work out a bit easier and less messy!

Here are my first attempt at eclairs, they taste great but look a little on the rustic side – with practice I should get them looking neater!

An aside about baking in film:

When Tom gave me the wholemeal flour he’d bought me this weekend, I was reminded of one of my favourite scenes from the film Stranger than Fiction, when Will Ferrell’s character presents a box of different flours to Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character who he really likes. I think this is the cutest take on the usual presenting of flowers to someone you like and I may have to rewatch this film soon just for how lovely this scene is!

Improvised mini quiches

Earlier this week I made a pie to use up some leftover chicken and ended up with leftover pastry – we never seem to avoid having something leftover in our flat!

Anyway, this was the result – some mini leek, red pepper and onion quiches – so tasty!

I used mini tart cases for this recipe but you could also make one large quiche.

Ingredients:

ready-to-roll pastry
3 eggs
half an onion finely sliced
half a sweet red pepper finely sliced
half a leek finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic
grated cheese – a good handful should do but if you love a cheesey flavour then feel free to add more!
seasoning 

I lined the tart cases with the pastry, added some baking paper with coins (I am yet to buy some baking beans but they’re on my list) to keep the pastry from rising and popped in the oven at 180 degrees for my fan oven (200 degrees non-fan) for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. I removed the mini quiches from the oven and turned the temperature down to about 140 degrees.

For the filling I added the finely chopped pepper, onion, garlic and leek to a pan with some oil and gently fried until golden and soft. In a bowl I cracked the three eggs and gently whisked, to which I then added the cheese. Once the leek, pepper, onion and garlic was ready I mixed this with the egg and cheese until combined.

I divided the egg mixture between tart cases and popped back in the oven for half an hour or so until they were golden and the filling had cooked.

The result? Delicious, full-of-flavour mini quiches!

P.S. this was the chicken pie!

Afternoon tea with a twist

This Christmas, the majority of mine and Tom’s presents were food related (which is no problem at all!). We got a wok, salad servers, bread sticks, an Italian food parcel, serving dishes, cupcake cases, oils, jams and chutneys, plus far too many cookbooks to count. My favourite one was a gift from Tom’s aunty, the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days recipe book. I am in love with this book – it’s stunning and makes you want to try your hand at all of the recipes.

    

This weekend I decided to turn my hand to their Earl Grey cupcakes. I was hoping I would find the same thing as my enjoyment of coffee, in that, I don’t like to drink coffee, but I love its smell and I love coffee cake. I don’t like to drink Earl Grey either but I was intrigued to see how the flavour would taste in cupcake form.

The begamot orange flavour turned out to be quite subtle and gave the sponge and icing a delicate floral flavour which I found really tasty. Having these cakes as part of an afternoon tea would be great as they incorporate the two key elements of such a meal – refreshing fragrant tea and delicious iced cakes.

    

The perfect white loaf

Someone once asked me, “if you could only have one of the following, which would you choose? Bread, pasta or rice?”

Now, I mean come on, what kind of a question is that to ask a person?! I eventually, somehow, came to a decision: bread. It has to be bread, every time.

Despite the deliciousness of pesto pasta, and the tastiness of a chicken korma with rice, for me, bread will always win-out. Bread or toast is always the thing to settle my tummy if I’m feeling ill; it’s great as an after-work, pre-dinner, snack; it’s the perfect partner for soup, pate, boiled eggs, baked beans; and, well, where would lunchtime be without the noble sandwich?

As I hadn’t baked anything since my Victoria sponge I thought I’d turn my hand back to bread-making, something I have found a slightly up-and-down process so far. The key thing I have found that seems to alter how well my bread turns out is the amount of time I spend kneading the dough. With that in mind I spent longer than usual and it seems to have worked – my dough rose well and had a smooth texture.

I used a different technique when baking the bread this time (mainly because I fully read the recipe) – when I put the dough in the oven I added a cup of water to a pre-heated tray which gave a burst of steam and helps with the bake. Halfway through I rotated the bread to give it an even colouring and this is the beautiful outcome (though I say so myself):        

Nothing smells so good as freshly baked bread, especially when you have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve made it yourself – and this is why I will always choose bread over rice or pasta!

Dinner chez Jess

Greetings fellow bloggers, and a Happy Valentine’s Day to you. Firstly, here are a few pretty photos of flowers to go along with the romantic theme of today . . .

      

. . . now that I’ve got that out of the way, I shall turn my attention to today’s mini, super-speedy, blog post!

In a few weeks’ time, my teeny tiny flat will be host to 8 friends for a delicious evening of dinner and drinks. I have decided to share my chosen menu with you, as it took me some time to decide upon*, and, well, if I had thought to search for blog posts on menu ideas it may have helped me come to a decision sooner!

Keep visiting back to thelittleblogofbaking for an update on how the dinner turns out, and some snaps of the meal!

*when you have 8 different people’s tastes to fit into one menu, it can take quite a while – I’m hoping I’ve succeeded . . . only time will tell!

Nibbles:

Crisps & Olives

 Starter: 

Spiced Carrot & Lentil Soup
with

Home-made Bread

 Main:

 Creamy Pesto Chicken with Roasted Vine Tomatoes

Roasted New Potatoes

Green Beans

 Dessert: 

White Chocolate & Cranberry Cheesecake
Strawberry Daiquiri Cupcakes

 Drinks: 

Wine & Cocktails

A birthday request

Since I have been making the lovely people I work with try all of my recent attempts at baking, it was only fair that as it was the birthday of Sam, one of the girls in my team, I bake her the cake of her choice. She asked if I could make a Victoria Sponge (thank goodness I thought, one I’ve made before) and so last night I whipped up this delicious, cream and strawberry jam-filled, cake.

* There’s just one thing, which my boss pointed out to me today – “You do know this is the new precedent - you’ll have to bake a cake for everyone in the office now!”
Orders already placed include whoopie pies, cookies, a chocolate sponge cake with chocolate icing and a banana and walnut sponge! 

A little bit of whimsical baking

Tom is out for the evening; I’ve run out of recorded programmes on Sky+ to catch up on; the flat for once doesn’t need tidying; there’s only one thing left to do – some whimsical baking! Turns out for once I can actually go ahead with my desire to bake on the spur of the moment as I have all the ingredients I need in my baking drawer to make chocolate chip cookies – flour, chocolate, bicarb of soda,  butter, sugar, vanilla extract, milk.

It’s nice during the week to be able to whip something up quickly, with no planning required, and have a delicious treat at the end of it! I usually bake on Sundays, when I have time to look up a new recipe, go and buy any extra ingredients I need, and take the time to learn any new techniques, but tonight I got the baking buzz and couldn’t ignore it. So, I now have a heavenly smelling plate of cookies sitting in my kitchen!

On a cold, rainy, grey day it’s so nice to sit on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket in front of the telly, with a cup of tea and a warm, melting chocolate chip cookie – perfect!

Ingredients:

half mug of brown sugar

roughly chopped bars of milk and dark chocolate

quarter of a mug of milk

2 mugs of flour

1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda

110g of butter

splash of vanilla essence

pinch of salt

Method:

Cream together the butter and sugar, then add the vanilla. Bit by bit add in the milk and mix together.

In another bowl mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.

Slowly add the wet ingredients into the dry, combining well. Add in the chocolate chunks and mix again. 

Using your hands mould the dough into small rounds, not too big as the cookies will spread slightly. 

On a tray lined with baking paper, space out the cookies and place in a preheated (190 degrees, 180 fan) oven for 8-10 minutes, until they are slightly golden at the edges. 

The cookies will be soft in the middle but will harden up once out of the oven. If you keep them in too long they won’t have that delicious gooey-ness we all love in a good cookie!