Week Thirty One – Mary Berry’s Special Shortbread Biscuits

Posted on Apr 28, 2013 by kimsideas

This week I wanted a quick easy bake, I will tell you why a little later…. so I decided to do Mary Berry‘s Special Shortbread Biscuits as I always have a weakness for shortbread.

I needed just three ingredients for this, plain flour, butter and light muscovado sugar. Mary “just” says put the flour and sugar in a bowl and rub in the butter and form into a dough….sounds easy huh? Well, I tried ….and I tried…..but it was so crumbly , and I managed to get it into a dough but then it fell apart when I tried to roll it out. Luckily, I thought I would take a peek at Rising To the Berry blog to see how Anneliese got on with this. I was thankful that she struggled with the crumbly mix too. I eventually put the mixing bowl in the microwave and put it on high for 10 seconds. I allowed the butter-which had been at room temperature already to soften a little further and keep the dough together. I managed to roll it out and cut out the biscuits. Even with the smallest cutter, I struggled to get the amount Mary says out of this. At the end of the recipe Mary recommends other varieties including cherry and walnut. They both sound delicious but when your hubby is one of the tasters and doesn’t like either of these, I had a little look in my cooking box and found pistashio nuts. I thought perhaps one or two biscuits topped with pistashios might be different but again hubby wasn’t so keen.

Into the oven they went and I set the timer. After the timer went ping, I checked them and to my surprise they were all a golden brown with a fairly even bake so I was pleased! I will even go so far as to say that the pistashio shortbread was lovely!

Next week is hubby’s birthday so I feel another Mary Berry “special” cake coming on.

Week Thirty – Mary Berry’s Large All-In-One Victoria Sandwich Cake

Posted on Apr 22, 2013 by kimsideas

Welcome to week thirty. It seems a bit of a milestone and it still only seems like yesterday that I began this challenge, inspired by Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, The Great British Bake Off and the lady who undertook this challenge before me and wrote her blog “Rising to the Berry“. I read about her in the newspaper and often look at her blog when I choose a recipe to see what she thought about it.

After last week’s cake that took up quite a lot of time, I wanted a recipe that was quick and fairly easy as I didn’t have the time to give to much else this weekend. This recipe, Mary tells you to put everything in a bowl, mix together and spread between two tins, what could be easier?

I weighed out all the ingredients into a bowl and used my electric hand mixer to make short work of it all. Then I lined both my sandwich tins and divided the mix between the two and levelled each one as carefully as I could. Then they went into the oven and I set the timer.

After the allocated time, I checked the cakes and gave them a little longer as they weren’t quite so set in the middle. Then finally they were done, I removed them from the oven, allowed them to cool slightly, took them out of their tins and put them on the wire rack. when they were cool, Mary suggests filling them with Jam but I was a little indulgent and put some double whipped cream in with it too! A small dusting of icing sugar on the top and I was done for this weeks challenge.

Week Twenty Nine – Mary Berry’s Divine Chocolate Birthday Cake

Posted on Apr 14, 2013 by kimsideas

Greetings! Week twenty nine , just a little late in happening because hubby, the hairy hoolies and I managed to get away last week in our caravan for a long awaited chill out time and we stayed on a lovely site called Fairlight Woods. A beautiful small site with woods all around and doggy heaven! We were only 2 miles from the beach so I was happy too- I find the beach and the waves crashing onto the shore soooo relaxing and the dogs loved it too.

Anyhow, back to the bake….as it was my other mum’s birthday, I chose the divine chocolate birthday cake recipe. I got all the ingredients and set off, thinking it would be just another twist on the usual sponge mix. How wrong I was. Mary asks for 5 eggs, 4 of them separated into yolk and white. You put the 4 yolks, a whole egg and the caster sugar in a bowl and whisk until thick and fluffy…..with me so far? Then melt the huge amounts of dark chocolate , add a spoon of hot water with a spoon of coffee granules, allow to cool slightly and add to the egg yolk mix with some ground almonds…..getting interesting isn’t it…….not a jot of flour in sight…..then whisk the egg whites until firm but not dry- an interesting phrase Mary! Then fold this into the mix and pour into the lined cake tin. Bake for 50 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean , allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out on to the rack to cool. I can honestly say this is the most peculiar recipe I have followed to date and wondered quite what would come out at the other end- I still had time to do a supermarket run to get a birthday cake if it was a disaster!

I must say, it didn’t look too bad when it came out and when I got it out of the tin, it retained it’s shape and had a lovely chocolatey aroma.

The icing was a breeze in comparison, oodles more dark chocolate ( not my favourite- so I resisted a nibble!) melted, with butter added, allow to cool to get the consistancy and then cover the cake in it and allow to set. Decorate if you like. I had some pretty icing roses I added to it.

I took the cake to the birthday takeaway with some sparkler candles- I put five on the cake, and they were so difficult to light,then burned so quickly, we laughed so much just trying to get them done and “Happy Birthday” sung!

Week Twenty Eight – Mary Berry’s Bunny Rabbit Cake & Easter Biscuits

Posted on Apr 1, 2013 by kimsideas

Week twenty eight and the Easter theme continues. Mary makes a bunny rabbit birthday cake in her book but I thought it would make a nice easter cake and funnily enough, in my search for a bargain, I found a silicone easter bunny cake in my local Lidl and it inspired me. Mary’s recipe for making this cake is pretty much throw it all in a bowl and mix it together until smooth, so that’s exactly what I did!

The fun came when pouring the mix into the silicone bunny and ensuring it went into all the nooks and crannies! Then into the oven it went and the timer went on. While it was baking, I looked at how Mary suggested decorating it. She suggests dessicated coconut, but I thought grated chocolate might be more in keeping with Easter (that’s my excuse…..!) so I grated some milk chocolate, white chocolate, pink chocolate buttons and orange chocolate buttons and made the butter icing.

I had also decided to make some Easter biscuits so I made this dough which was easy enough, and rolled out the dough. I didn’t have any easter cutters so I used a heart cutter.

The cake came out of the oven and was left to cool a while before I took it out of the silicone shape. It came out really well and I left it to cool completely. The biscuits went into the oven at this point. My hubby likes this point as he gets to have “first dibs” on the leftovers in the bowl and if there isn’t anything in it that is harmful to the dogs, they often get the last lickings before it goes in the dishwasher!

The decorating of the rabbit cake was trickier than it looked. Having to put on the butter cream and then the chocolate shavings and trying to keep any bits that fell on the floor away from the dogs- in case anyone doesn’t know, chocolate , raisins, currants etc- VERY bad for dogs, can even kill them so please don’t let them anywhere near them.

Finally the cake was finished, the tidying up of all the shavings, bowls and surfaces took forever.

The biscuits, I decided to put an icing cap on so I rolled out some fondant icing, and used the heart cutter to cut the toppings. I have some pretty cutters so I pressed these into the topping and then allowed the icing to set before using food colourings to paint them to make them look pretty.