Week Twenty Seven – Mary Berry’s Chocolate Eclairs & Profiteroles

Posted on Mar 26, 2013 by kimsideas

Choux pastry was the order of the day this weekend and as both Mary Berry‘s eclairs and profiteroles are made form the same pastry method, I decided to make both…or I will never get to the end of this challenge!

I read Mary’s baking bible carefully and got out a medium size saucepan, and weighed out the butter and measured the water and put the pan on a low heat. Once the butter had melted and the mix was beginning to boil, I added the flour and mixed it together until it formed a dough ball that came away from the sides of the pan.

Mary tells you to allow it to cool a little before adding the 2 large eggs and then mix it together to form “a smooth shiny paste” and I used my electric mixer for this.

Then the fun part, trying to put this lovely mix into a piping bag without making a mess- I failed dismally at this part…but what’s a little mess when you are cooking? Mary recommends using a 1cm piping nozzle, I didn’t have one of these, so used the largest plain nozzle I had, the eclairs kind of resembled caterpillars!! Anyhow, I piped some eclairs and some balls for the profiteroles and then into the oven they went, on a higher temperature for part of the bake and then a lower temperature for the rest of it.I took the goodies out of the oven and cut them to allow the steam out.

Then while they were cooling I whipped the cream and made the chocolate icing topping. Although Mary uses dark chocolate for this, I don’t like dark chocolate very much so this is where I decided to put my own twist on it- with GALAXY chocolate! It looks much lighter than the traditional topping but it was very yummy!

Week 26 – Mary Berry’s Hot Cross Buns

Posted on Mar 17, 2013 by kimsideas

As promised, the Easter recipes begin here, and with hot cross buns. Yes I know it’s technically not the right time to make and eat them but any excuse for a bake! This bake has taken the longest of all my bakes so far, because it involved yeast and rising time so it took most of the day to do.

The dough itself seemed easy enough to mix together and the 10 minutes of kneading it seemed to fly by and it’s very therapeutic taking out your frustrations on a piece of dough! I then needed to leave the dough to rise in a warm room – in our house, that’s not so easy but after looking on the internet, it recommended putting your oven on low, with the door open and rest the bowl on the open door which is what I did, and the kitchen felt cosy too. After an hour and a half, the dough had doubled in size and was ready for the next step. Mary then asks that you knead it again for several minutes then divide into 12 and place on a tray, and cover with clingfilm and leave to rise again for half an hour.Usually at this point, I find that Mary’s estimate of how many can be made out of a batch are often optimistic but on this occasion, I found that I had 16 hot cross buns!

While the buns were rising again, I made the small amount of pastry needed to add the cross to the top of the buns, as I felt that just marking the top of the bun with a cross was not traditional enough. I then rolled the pastry out and cut it into strips ready to go on the buns.

Finally, the buns were ready to have their cross, and then into the oven they went for 15 minutes. I set the timer and five minutes before they were rady, I made the glaze by dissolving sugar into water and when the buns came out, they had a liberal coating of the glaze.

For my first foray into making buns with yeast, I was quite pleased with the way they turned out!

As you can see, my usual two baking fans were in their usual spot waiting to see if there were any left overs or anything dropped , but sorry guys, no dried fruit for you too, it’s like chocolate, very dangerous for dogs , so you can have a doggy treat instead today!

Week Twenty Five – Mary Berry’s Butterfly Cakes

Posted on Mar 11, 2013 by kimsideas

This weekend I had loads to do so I needed a quick and easy recipe that would fit in with what I needed to do so I got out Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and found the Butterfly Cakes. As it was also Mother’s Day, it reminded me of when I was small and my mum made these quite regularly and when I spoke to her, it reminded her of when her mother, my nan used to make them.

The basic cake recipe was fairly easy to mix together and divide between the 12 cake cases, they baked evenly and I left them to cool. Then the fun came with cutting the top off the cakes to pipe the butter icing on, then cut the offcut in two and artistically place like a butterfly on the butter icing!

Then when I had piped and swirled and cut and artistically made butterfly shapes, I then finished them with a dusting of icing sugar. I was pleased with the way they looked.

Happy Mother’s day mum, hope these bring back the lovely memories of Nan that you gave to me.

Happy Mother’s day too to my other mum, hope you enjoyed your fresh off the press cake!

Next week I may begin to tackle some of Mary’s Easter recipes…watch this space….

Week Twenty Four- Mary Berry’s Deep Treacle Tart

Posted on Mar 4, 2013 by kimsideas

Week Twenty Four and the parkin from last week is sitting there “maturing” so what to make for this week? I decided that a pudding might go down well and treacle tart brings back warm memories of school dinner puddings so off I set on this venture.

The pastry went together well and the flan tin was soon lined and ready to go.

The next dilemma was that the recipe called for breadcrumbs, and preferably of the fresh variety, not the “longlife” buy them in a packet supermarket variety. So I salvaged my Kingsmill 50-50 loaf which was on the turn and cut off any bits showing signs of mould. I then put the rest in my food processor and a quick whizz of the blades and hey presto – I had a big pile of beautiful breadcrumbs! These were added to the mleted treacle, lemon juice and rind and then this was poured into the flan tin and into the oven it went.

The result, doesn’t look all that good but it was rather scrummy on it’s own or with custard, although the lemon flavour is rather strong in it.