Pastry, schmastry

So, following on from making some mini cupcakes for my mother-in-law's drive-in at the golf club, she asked me if I could bake 70 mini mince pies for another do there.

Leigh spotted a 24 hole mini tart tin in Lakeland, so we bought this in preparation and it also comes with a handy dibber tool to press pastry into the right shapes. I tried a sample batch last weekend and despite a bit of dibber sticking to the pastry, they actually came out okay. Not so for the real run last night.

Yesterday afternoon I put a batch of the mince pies in to try and save time in the evening - 24 spaces in the tin, 3 batches should do it. For some reason, I deviated from my previous batch and used spray oil to grease the tin and cooked the pies at a higher temp for a shorter time. They stuck. Not disasterously, but still didn't come out as cleanly as the sample batch.

Still, I thought, should have time to do another 3 batches in the evening. As the pastry was so short, I thought that this might be causing the problem. So tried another pastry recipe with half butter, half lard. Still no real success, and come 10pm I still had a third batch to prep and bake. The second batch had not come out cleanly either, and thinking it might be because I wasn't leaving them long enough to cool, I left them to the next day. Feeling a bit disappointed, I decided to leave them and the final batch to the next day.

So this morning I removed the last half of the second batch from the tin. Really stuck this time! The third batch were prepared and baked, and stuck even more! Out of the 24 little pies, only 7 were even half acceptable!!! Fed up is not the word. But, still short on mince pies, I made a final fifth batch in the afternoon and went back to my original recipe. I greased the tin with butter and used my fingers to really get the tin as covered as fully as I possibly could.

Pastry still delicate but came out much better than before. Fortunately this meant that out of my 5 batches of 24 I did in fact manage to salvage 80 mini mince pies and finish the process feeling a bit less depressed!!! They're not as good as I had hoped, but neither have I had to spend the entire evening tonight as well baking mini mince pies. Which is a relief.

The annoying thing is that all along the pies tasted great even though the pastry collapsed. I think that if they had been burnt or underdone I might not have minded redoing them so much, but I just could not work out what was going wrong! Still, hopefully this recipe will work again next time and I can try and make the pastry better again.




(Oh yes, and please ignore my incredibly rubbish dredging with icing sugar - there are certain things I really should not be allowed to do!)

Added extras

I've added some extra detail to Leo's towel (nuts in the corners and a loop on the hood), and after a few days' trial have made the hood slightly smaller so that it fits better. It even survived its first wash in the machine. Fab.

More crafting!

More hooded towels actually - a robot towel for Leo (still a work in progress - it needs something else on the hood and perhaps some 'hands' on the corners?)






and a Gruffalo towel for my brother-in-law's nephew

Leo is 2

My baby boy is 2 - well...not til Tuesday really, but we had a party for him on Saturday. I can't really believe how quickly the last 2 years have gone and Leo is a tremendous little boy. He's really into robots at the moment, so our creative inputs for this year are a crocheted robot from Leigh (now named Robert!) and I tried to make his birthday cake look like Robert...mostly successful. It took a surprisingly large amount of black food colouring to even get to this shade of grey - given my propensity for heavy-handedness when it comes to somewhat delicate cooking techniques I was very cautious adding the colouring, but it turns out I could have been much more slapdash and reached my desired colour a lot quicker!!!

Crunchy Raspberry Oat Slice

Another delicious recipe from Time to Cook Online – I think it’s quickly become one of Leigh’s favourites! I didn’t have any plain wholemeal at home and refused to buy a 1.5k bag just to try this recipe so we made it with half plain white flour and half wholemeal strong flour. Also we used pear and vanilla butter as filling the first time and damson cheese the second to use up some of our cupboard preserves. Delicious each time!

90g demerera sugar
125g wholemeal flour
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
125g rolled oats
125g butter
250g seedless raspberry jam

1. Preheat oven to 180C/160C fan.
2. Grease a 20cm square cake tin or slice tin and line with baking parchment
3. Put all the ingredients except the jam into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the butter is incorporated and the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs. NB it is better to use the machine in a series of short bursts rather than letting the blades run for a minute or so to avoid over-mixing – you need to keep some texture.
4. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin.
5. Put the jam into a saucepan and warm gently. Pour the warmed jam over the base mixture and spread evenly.
6. Scatter the remaining oat mixture over the top of the jam and press lightly.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes or until lightly browned.
8. Allow to cool before removing from tin and cutting into bars.

D.I.S.C.O.

How wrong is this - I took my 3-year old son to his first school disco this week! I am getting so old!

It really took me back though and it was great. Zachary had a fab time and is quite the groover if I may say so myself - he even won a disco game they played (a bit like musical chairs but with mats). I didn't realise how competitive I was for him...it started off easily with about 40 children playing so I wasn't too bothered the first few rounds. But as the number dwindled and then became less than 10 I began thinking he might just win it and got really nervous and competitive for him. And he won it! Amazing.

What I liked most though was watching 3,4 and 5 year olds dance without a care about who was looking or how cool they danced. The main dance move seemed to be jumping up and down - on your own or holding hands with a friend, male or female, no discrimination or embarassment here. A few boys were also trying a bit of break dancing (well...bending over, touching the floor and then attempting to spin round in a circle!) and the whole thing was actually rather lovely. It did bring home to me how fast Zachary is growing up though, and while that is a little sad, it's also exciting to think about what brilliant things (staying positive here!) lie in store for him over the next few years.

Men in tights...

Those of you with a nervous disposition (well about men in tutus anyway!) should look away now!

Leigh Mum is to be Lady Captain at her golf club for 2012 and Wednesday was her Drive-In event where she is welcomed as the Lady Captain after making a bit of an entrance and she makes the first tee-off from the first tee. Then there's general drinking, bit of golf and buffet later. Annie's chosen charity for her year in office is Breast Cancer Research and she thought that as her 'entrance' she'd do a Race for Life-type thing, running up from behind the tee with her entourage who were all to be men dressed as ladies (because Race for Life is a lady only thing). Cue much buying of pink costumes for all concerned and some rather tasty "ladies" joining in the Race. I helped out by making 100 mini muffins (to my surprise, only needed 5-egg mix to make this many!) decorated with the pink ribbon symbol. Here are some of the highlights

Kransekake

This is one of Leigh's bakes but it's so great I had to post about it! Leigh spotted a Kransekake pan for sale in Lakeland at the bargainous price of £9.99 and the cake itself looked a bit of a challenge to make but impressive so we thought we'd have a go. Kransekake is a traditional Norwegian cake made of rings stacked in a tower.

Leigh reports that the cake itself is actually quite easy to make - you make one lot of dough and then use that to make all the layers. The pan does a lot of the work because it works out all the sizes you need for the layers! But that's not to take anything away from Leigh - it is delicious!!!

So here we have...Leigh rolling out the dough to sausage shapes and fitting them in the pan



Handy helper number 1 who was greasing and flouring (well, semolinaing) the pans



More dough in pans



Handy helper number 2 who's main contribution was sitting nice and quietly eating a biscuit while all the work went on!



Dough ready to bake



Completed Kransekake!



Recipe :
1 lb / 454g ground almonds
4 egg whites (slightly beaten)
1 lb/ 454g icing sugar
plain flour/semolina for dusting

1. Add the ground almonds to a large bowl and then add 1 egg white to form a thick dough.

2. Sift in the icing sugar and add the remaining egg whites and mix.

3. Place the mixture in a pan and using a gentle heat warm the dough. Stir continually. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and store in a fridge until the next day.

4. Pre-heat the oven to 205C/Gas 6. Roll the dough into the thickness of fingers long enough to fill the tins. Thoroughly grease the forms with cake release (we used spray oil) and dust with flour or semolina.

5. Fill the rings with the dough, then butt and pinch the edges to form a perfect circle.

6. Place the forms onto a baking try and bake for 10 minutes.

7. Allow to cool completely and then remove the Kransekake from the forms.

To build the cake :
On a platter drizzle some icing and then place the largest ring onto the icing. Pipe icing in scallops (using a small round tip) onto the ring. Place the next largest ring on top of the icing and decorate in the same way. Continue to stack the rings in this way. The icing will help to hold the rings in place but to ensure that they are thoroughly secured, slide toothpicks between the layers.

Can decorate further with more icing sugar, glitter, sprinkles...

Hide and Seek

We were planning to put Leo into a big boy bed at around his second birthday (about 3 weeks away), however due to a small incident where I witnessed him climbing successfully onto the top of his cot, we brought it forward to last weekend!

Leo is having a little difficulty adjusting to the fact that he can now wander around at night in the bedroom, but we think we're making some progress getting him settled at night.

Picture the scene this morning though. Half 5, Zachary starts calling. He's had a bit of a cough all night so I decide to give him some medicine and go into the boys' bedroom to get it. I look over to Leo's bed, it's empty. He's not in Zachary's bed and I can't see him on the floor between the beds. Stop, listen. Okay, I can hear him breathing and follow the sound to find...Leo curled up fast asleep under Zachary's bed!!! He wasn't there when Leigh checked them at 10 last night....how?....why? I think some mysteries may never be solved!!

PS

As a PS to my last post (and with apologies it's taken me so long to do this), I soon realised why the doctor was running 35 minutes late when we got into the appointment. It's because he's one of those lovely doctors who take their time with you and you feel as though they're really taking an interest and are asking all the questions they need to and listening to your concerns. So I find it hard to be annoyed about the 35 minutes late because we had such a satisfying appointment. Bah!

Leo, the spirit of water

I have long since grown accustomed to Leo's fascination with running water at home - for instance he has a penchant for flushing the toilet, whether or not anyone is presently seated! But I had a bit of an overload at the doctor's surgery this week.

The appointment was for Zachary - the doctor was running 35 minutes late (which of course you never know before you get there) so I had 35 minutes of joy trying to keep the boys entertained and out of the water dispenser. Zachary used the toilet twice - each time while Leo was either a) desperately trying to get behind Zachary to flush it, or b) running the tap as fast as he could before I got there and turned it off, sticking his hands under it and then turning to me and telling me he was wet as though he had absolutely no idea where the water had come from!!!

I also had to drag him away from the water dispenser several times - the button was far too easily accessible - but then he changed tack. Leo then tried to get the paper cups from the top of the water dispenser, which sadly he couldn't reach while standing on the floor (okay, can you guess where this is going??!). He marches over to the table of magazines, where the surgery have also kindly provided small children chairs, picks up a chair and marches back across to the water dispenser at the far side of the waiting area to use it to help him get to the cups. Far too inventive for my liking! I honestly didn't think he'd manage it the first time he tried.. silly me.

The difficulty was that I was trying to read a story to Zachary at the same time - needless to say I got plenty of exercise running across the waiting area catching Leo before any more water was spilt!

Finally, Zachary had to provide a urine sample. So there we are, back in the toilet, me trying to help Zachary aim into the tiny specimen bottle, meanwhile Leo has spotted I'm distracted and has free rein at the sink. One. Wet. Boy.

The most cobbled together rabbit costumes ever!

I've been taking Leo to a music group on Tuesday mornings since Zachary started nursery. They had a half-term Halloween fancy dress session this week which I was dubious about taking the boys to for 3 reasons - 1, the cost. One session for Leo is £4, so I was expecting £8 for the 2. 2, it's usually absolutely rammed with children so I was anticipating even more at half term and 3, I don't really do Halloween and was reluctant to buy costumes for the boys which they'd only wear once and didn't want them to be the only ones without.

I ummed and aaahed about it but finally decided we'd go and just use the rabbit ears the boys had at Easter. Then on the day I upped the ante and took my eye pencil to draw on noses and whiskers, put them in white t-shirts and made some bobtails with pairs of socks and flannels!!! It's a rough and ready costume, but the boys loved it!!!

(btw my worries were totally unfounded - it was only £1 extra for Zachary, there were actually fewer children there than normal and there were one or two children without costumes)

Two lovely things I've tried recently

The first thing I tried was a recipe from Rachel Allen for a rustic (it had almost won me over already in it use of this word - rustic to me means 'doesn't need prettying or presentation skills!') cheese and bacon loaf. I found it when I was trawling her book looking for the lovely coconut macaroon recipe that Leigh's made a couple of times.

Here it is fresh from the oven



And cut open.



I wasn’t sure this would actually rise, but it did! Leigh suggested it’s probably a bit more like a savoury version of a loaf cake than proper bread (possibly because it doesn’t toast well!), but it’s still delicious and was good on the second and third day after baking.

320g plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper
100g Cheddar cheese, grated
100g bacon lardoons, cooked until just crisp in a little sunflower oil and cooled
200ml milk
2 eggs
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
60ml olive oil

2lb loaf tin

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4/170C ish fan. Lightly oil and line the loaf tin with parchment paper.
2. Sift all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the grated cheese and the cooled bacon lardoons and mix well.
3. Pour the milk into a large measuring jug, add the eggs, mustard and olive oil and whisk to combine.
4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and slowly pour in the liquid, stirring all the time until it is fully incorporated, to form a fairly liquid dough.
5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 50 minutes. Remove from the tin and allow to cook for a further 10 mins on the oven shelf to crisp up the bottom.
6. When cooked, it will sound hollow when tapped on the base. Allow to cool on a wire rack before eating.

The other baking was a recipe for 'Breakfast Bars' from Nigella. Leigh has recently been on a trip to Essen for a few days and wanted a snack to take that would last longer than cake. He took some flapjack as well but had seen this recipe which I tried out. I didn’t have a tin the size of the one suggested in the recipe so I used one with slightly bigger surface area. The bars came out okay but a little on the dry side – possibly due to shape of tin? But even when just mixing the condensed milk in, there just didn’t seem to be quite enough for the amount of dry ingredients I had. It’s convenient because the recipe calls for 1 tin, but as I usually keep a squeezy bottle of condensed milk in the fridge over the winter for porridgey breakfast mornings, I could just add a squeeze or 2 more next time I make these and see if it makes any difference.



1 x 397g can condensed milk
250g rolled oats (not instant)
75g shredded coconut
100g dried cranberries
125g mixed seeds (eg pumpkin, sesame, sunflower etc)
125g natural unsalted peanuts (I thought I’d be able to get a pack of roasted, unsalted nuts fairly easily in the supermarket, but could not get any for love nor money! Settled for red skin covered unsalted, which taste fin)

1. Preheat oven to 130C/110C fan/gas ½, and oil a 23 x 33 x 4cm baking tin or use a throwaway foil one
2. Warm the condensed milk in a large pan
3. Meanwhile, mix together all the other ingredients and then add to the warmed condensed milk, using a rubber or wooden spatula to fold in and distribute
4. Spread the mixture into the tin and press down with the spatula, or better still, your hands (wearing disposable vinyl gloves to stop you sticking), to even the surface
5. Bake for 1 hour, then remove from the oven and, after about 15 minutes, cut into 4 across and 4 down to make 16 chunky bars. Let them cool completely.

3-year olds

Having a 3-year old is at times incredibly infuriating but also completely amazing. Today I was overseeing Zachary and Leo painting. Zachary was painting a tiger - head done, I helped with the outline of a body which he filled with stripes, and then he added 4 legs. I tried to prompt him as to what might be missing from the tiger (how quickly can you guess what happens next??)...by using, what I now realise was a slightly inadequate (incomplete?) description; 'it's attached to its bottom.' Zachary added a willy. THEN a tail.

Just call him Houdini

Leo has learned a fab new trick - how to remove his nappy. He has been putting this to particularly good use in the early morning just after he's done a poo. Great. I have now learned (the hard way) that when Leo starts calling us at around half 6, it's best that someone attends him immediately to change a dirty nappy!

So, to try and prevent this happening a third time (I know, I don't learn quickly enough!), we safety-pinned his pyjama top to the bottoms - just at the back as I was concerned that he'd play with the pins if they were in front. Come 6.30 the next morning, Leo's calling again. I go in to find him sitting in bed, in the process of undoing his nappy. Pyjama bottoms are off - although still attached to his pyjama top!

Yesterday we put him in a vest that has poppers under his bottom and pyjama trousers. Come this morning, Leo calling, but hurrah, no items of clothing had been removed.

Vest on again this evening. Leigh went to check on the boys at about 9ish and came down to report that Leo was lying in bed naked apart from his nappy. When we tried to dress him again (whilst still asleep), we discovered that the poppers on the bottom of the vest were still done up! It would appear he had performed some kind of very effective shimmy and managed to get the vest off by sliding the whole thing down his body! Feeling slightly nervous about the morning...

Cherry Bakewell Cupcakes

I'm trying to refine my cherry bakewell cupcakes and tried making them today based on my cherry bakewell big sponge. So to a 2-egg basic cupcake mix, I added about a tsp of almond extract, 50g ground almonds in 134g of self-raising flour, but no extra baking powder.

When the cakes were cooked and cooled, I took a chunk out of the top of each (with an apple corer - all very easy and neat!) and then added cherry jam to the hole, before replacing the top part of the cake removed to hide the jam. Iced with white water icing and then topped with toasted flaked almonds. Yum!

We made them for the visit of my Mum and other family today, but knowing that 2 visitors don't like almonds, Zachary helped me make a 1-egg batch of vanilla cupcakes which he then iced with lurid green icing - here he is, all proud!



(I should note that I keep typing 'cheery' instead of 'cherry,' - still very appropriate though!)

Moving up

Zachary started a new nursery last week - it's a preschool nursery attached to the Infant School we hope he'll be attending next September. Apparently going to the nursery doesn't affect your chances of getting into the school, but we're in catchment so hopefully as long as I get my application in on time, we should stand a good chance of getting him in.

So the first week back after the holidays wasn't too bad - a few tears a couple of mornings, but nothing drastic and he always came home happy and full of what he had been doing.

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag though and it caught me off guard really. I was expecting problems last week so was prepared then, but I guess Zachary realised this week that this was going to happen on a more permanent basis! Monday he argued with me about going in the car and I had to half drag, half carry him to nursery because he would not walk, and then had to be peeled from me when we got there. Tuesday we got there okay (despite a tantrum at home before we left) but again had to be peeled from my leg. Not good, although he was still coming home happy.

Wednesday I changed the morning routine a bit to fit in some cartoons before we left and that did seem to settle him more. I also gave him plenty of warning that we would be walking, and had a much better drop off. Thursday too so I feel as though we've got a bit more sorted. Zachary does seem to be enjoying himself though - he's brought home some paintings already, and is always very chatty about what he has been playing with. I think he might also be making some friends.

Other than nursery, the week has been generally good but with a few pockets of crapness. Zachary has had some major tantrums this week over seemingly nothing, and has a couple of odd nights, but I'm really hoping that it's all part of the settling in process at nursery and that things will quieten down once he gets more used to the new routine, and feels more confident about what's happening. But I'm really good at trying to assign reasons for his and Leo's behaviours and a lot of the time it's just them being boys and trying to cope with growing up. We'll see how it goes!

Sticky Toffee Pudding with Toffee Sauce

I've been wanting to try a sticky toffee pudding for ages - we had friends over for dinner on Thursday so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I've got a recipe for this in my Great British Baking book so I had a look, but it seemed to involved a bit of faffing around with dates, boiling water and bicarbonate of soda, so I tried James Martin's Desserts book. That also involved the use of dates and bubbling up of stuff...but did also direct the pureeing of the dates which I thought might be nicer in the sponge so went for that recipe.

The sponge went well although the boys managed to have a crying/screaming episode just at the point that I was dealing with boiling water and bicarbonate of soda! Also, I was using a 20cm tin (not 23cm) and after noting a faint smell of burning at 35 minutes cooking (!), I found that it was slightly overdone on top. Not to worry, top removed, sponge tasting good, although it did look rather suspiciously as though I hadn't quite done the final stage of mixing terribly well...



Then on to the sauce. The sauce recipe in the book sounded really easy - at this stage I should have backed away! Butter and sugar (used caster sugar) melted, cream in and brought to the boil. And it boiled and boiled but didn't caramelise! About 15 minutes later it was incredibly thick, barely browner than when it had started and still tasted of cream and sugar. I poured it into a tin and it hardened into a weird chewy yet powdery substance...



With hindsight I think my mistake was to stir the mixture while it was boiling so I'll have to experiment with this next time. Yesterday though, time was short and I had all the ingredients so I just whipped up a batch of Nigella's butterscotch sauce which worked well.



On reflection, it was tasty, but quite a bit of work making the elements separately rather than a self-saucing pudding - must find new recipe to try!

75g soft butter
175g dark brown demerera sugar
200g self-raising flour
1 tbsp golden syrup
2 tbsp black treacle
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
200g pitted dried dates
1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda

For the Toffee Sauce –
100g sugar
100g butter
200ml double cream


1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/400F/gas 6. Grease a 23cm tin thoroughly with 25g of the butter, then dust the inside of the tin with flour.
2. Using a food mixer, blend the remaining butter and sugar together. Slowly add the golden syrup, black treacle, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter mixture and continue mixing. Turn the mixer down to a slow speed and then add the flour. Once all the ingredients are combined, turn off the mixer.
3. Place the dates in a saucepan with 300ml water and bring to the boil. Puree the water and date mixture and add the bicarbonate of soda. While it is still hot, quickly add this mixture to the egg mix. Once the mix is combined, pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until the top is just firm to the touch.
4. Remove the pudding from the oven and allow to cool, then turn out of the tin and cut into squares.
5. To make the sauce, melt the butter and sugar together in a small pan, add the cream and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes until the sauce reaches the desired consistency.
6. The sponge and sauce can be made in advance and the sponge can even be frozen. Both can be plated up and reheated in the oven.

Photo of the Melting Moments

As promised!

Mary Anne's Melting Moments

I have been avidly following the current series of the Great British Bake Off and one of your favourites is Mary Anne. Lovely big home-style baking - the Ploughman's loaf in particular looks fab!

Mary Anne has a blog - Time to Cook - and has been posting up some of her competition recipes including the lovely looking Melting Moments from the biscuits episode.

The recipe is here so I'm not going to copy it out for the blog. I thought the biscuits came out reasonably well, although we had some interesting moments along the way. Essentially it was a two-handed experiment again - I made the biscuits and Leigh made the (quite fabulous) depression-era buttercream.

So for the biscuits, I started off on the wrong foot I think by using butter from the fridge rather than at room temperature! I microwaved it for about 10 seconds to soften and then beat it in the Kitchen Aid with the icing sugar for the full 5 minutes. It felt very soft at the end of the 5 minutes, certainly soft enough to pipe, but then I added the flour and cornflour and the whole thing ended up just far too stiff to pipe. So, note to self, start with butter at room temperature!

Leigh suggested adding some milk to the mix which I did and it did soften enough to pipe reasonably. The next hurdle was that I couldn't see any indication on the blog post as to how big the biscuits should be. So I guessed, drew round an egg cup and then when I found I was barely going to get 15 biscuits out of it rather than the 24 suggested by the recipe, that I must have been going too big! Never mind, into the oven and they looked good coming out, although on eating later we found that some of them had not cooked through completely, and that they perhaps weren't as crisp as they should have been - all probably due to the issues with the mix and that they're bigger than Mary Anne's obviously were.

But, not disasterous. Leigh made the buttercream, which to be honest looked iffy after the cooking stage, but once it had been whipped up for 10 minutes, looked fab and tasted lovely. It was left in the fridge overnight as I wasn't going to put them together til the next day.

We sandwiched with the buttercream and lemon curd (delish!), although had I been patient and waited for the buttercream to soften out of the fridge before trying to spread it on the biscuits, I could probably have got more in - as it was, at least half the mix was left (not that anyone ate any of it with a spoon from the mixing bow.l or anything...).

I have got a photo to put on, although not to hand at the mo. But I was quite pleased with the first attempt - and there's certainly lots to work on for the next batch!