Wednesday 19 February 2014

Week 7 - Chocolate - Chocolate cupcakes


Ahhh, chocolate. You just can't beat it. A bit of an open-ended baking theme though. So I decided to keep it simple with some basic cupcakes. I adapted the recipe from here and it made 48 cupcakes. We're going to turn into cupcakes if we eat any more. 


Basic cake ingredients: plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, eggs, sugar, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and cocoa powder. 


 Chuck it all on the bowl in one go. I love recipes like this.


Mix until combined and then add just enough boiling water to make the mixture really smooth. What you end up with is a glorious bowl of chocolate heaven. 


Plonk it in cases, hopefully a bit more neatly than I managed.


First batch (of four) out of the oven. They tasted alright straight from the oven but by the next morning they had become more moist and gooey and much more delicious. This is not a good thing when you have a tin of 48 sat on the kitchen counter. 

Next time, the theme is gluten free. I may possibly attempt French macaroons, if I can summon the courage. 


Wednesday 12 February 2014

Week 6 - Bread - Garlic and herb focaccia

Hello again. This week my baking skills have been put to the test with the challenge of baking some bread. I do not enjoy making bread, although I love the end result. After last week's post, kind reader Sabrina suggested that I might get on with this recipe for no-fuss focaccia. And I most certainly did!


For the first time this year, I had all the ingredients already in my cupboards. This boded well I thought. 


Flour, yeast and salt. 


Mixed up with the water. I think it could have used more water, didn't seem loose enough really. 


Next I was supposed to drizzle olive oil into the bottom of the greased and lined tin. I did a bit more than drizzle, and ended up with a big puddle of olive oil. I soldiered on. 


After leaving the dough in my airing cupboard for an hour it looked like this. Promising I felt. 



Ah, then a slight problem became apparent. The recipe said to poke dimples all over the bread, but I couldn't do this as the dough simply clung onto my finger for dear life. I eventually worked out that I could do it using the handle of my pastry brush. 


Then I drizzled (read poured) on yet more olive oil and sprinkled it with oregano and dried garlic. Looking good, but I think it should have spread out to the sides a bit more. 


Out of the oven and looking great. Could it be that I had finally overcome my bread curse?



Well, yes and no. On the plus side, it tasted fab and had a good texture (what Paul Hollywood would refer to as a "good crumb"). On the not so positive side, the excess oil had caused the baking paper to become welded to the underside of the loaf.  We had to choose between eating some extra fibre in the form of baking paper, or peeling off the bottom crust completely. 

So there you have it, I'm not completely useless when it comes to baking bread, just partly. 

Next week - chocolate! Should be a good 'un. 



Sunday 2 February 2014

Week 5 - Chinese New Year - Sesame cookies

Here we are at week 5 of the Reddit 52 Week Baking Challenge. Another tricky one this week - Chinese New Year. I'd have loved to have done steamed pork buns, but there was lots of debate going on over at the subreddit as to whether steaming really counted as baking. Also, I don't own a bamboo steamer. So I found these sesame cookies on Google and they looked simple enough. Better yet, the only thing I needed to buy was sesame seeds.

No step-by-step photos this week (because I forgot!) but they were really just a normal biscuit recipe (that's cookies to my American friends) rolled in egg and sesame seeds before baking. I used this recipe and halved the quantities. Turns out halving a beaten egg is tricky, so my dough was a bit wetter then it should have been.


In the photo on the recipe page, the sesame seeds are evenly distributed over the cookies. Mine decided not to do that. I blame the egg. 


They taste... interesting. Somewhere in between savoury and sweet. Not the best cookies I've ever baked. 

Next week, I'll be taking on bread. Having never successfully cooked an edible loaf before, it should be interesting to say the least.