Week Ninety One – Mary Berry’s Honey Glazed Walnut Bread & Glazed Lemon Tart

Posted on Aug 26, 2014 by kimsideas

Week ninety one and I obviously had a bit of a “glazed” feel to this weeks bakes! I dipped into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and was inspired to try another bread recipe after watching the efforts on The Great British Bake Off for bread week. The honey glazed walnut bread sounded scrummy and Mary assures you in the recipe that it also makes fantastic toast (If it lasts that long- take note please chief tasters!!) I added all the ingredients into a bowl, added the dough hooks to my mixer and set it off. Mary says allow five minutes mixing/kneading for a machine or 10 minutes by hand. This is where it was all going so well….until plumes of smoke were coming off my machine! The dough was too much and the motor had burnt out so the machine went to the electrical scrap heap in the sky and I finished the kneading by hand. I left the dough to prove and set about getting the other recipe bits together.

The proving time was done and I put the bread into the oven to bake, the recipe makes 2 good sized loaves. 25 minutes later, they were done and had that hollow sound when tapped on the bottom!

The second recipe was the glazed lemon tart. Firstly Mary asks you to make the pate sucree pastry- its a sweet shortcrust pastry. Then line a flan tin with it and chill while making the topping. Add the other ingredients together and beat well. ( with no mixer, I developed muscles I didn’t know I had!) Pour the mix into the pastry case and bake until brown and set.

While this is cooling- and Mary says you can eat it like this if you like, thinly slice a lemon, remove any pips, boils some water and sugar, add the lemon slices to this, boil again and leave in a bowl to cool for 2 hours. Then drain the lemons, arrange them on the tart, and glaze with some apricot jam that has been warmed through.

This looks and smells lovely and we will be eating some after dinner later!

There have been some strange goings on in my garden lately. It has all become a little overgrown with the bamboo I had planted some years ago, pretty much taking over the garden and with the recent rain, you could barely see up my garden through it all. I looked from my kitchen up the garden recently and found that the local wildlife had diversified somewhat from the native species! I know who to thank for this and will ensure that your garden enjoys a similar experience!

I was also sad to say goodbye to my trusty mixer- it was the best of both worlds, I could detach the mixer and use it as a hand mixer or attach it to the stand and use with the bowl which could rotate if I needed it to.

I threw it in the chief taster’s trailer to go to the tip ( yes- it went in dirty- it’s going to the tip!) and waved it goodbye.

Eek – I think my fairy god mother is looking after me…..I was telling the sorrowful tale of my mixer and with BIG thanks to one of my chief taster’s. I have a new mixer on the way- YAY!! xxx

Week Ninety – Mary Berry’s Pecan Pie & Walnut & Apricot Sandwich Bars

Posted on Aug 26, 2014 by kimsideas

Week ninety and things had settled a little at home so I settled to this week’s bake with a little less stress than last week. The first bake I chose from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible was Mary’s Pecan Pie. This recipe involved making a shortcrust pastry, allow it to chill in the fridge for a while, roll it out and line a flan tin with it and line the pastry with foil, add beans and blind bake for about 20 minutes, then remove the foil and beans and then bake for another 15 minutes.

To prepare the topping, lay the pecan nuts in the pastry case and add the other topping ingredients into a saucepan and heat through until mixed, then pour into the pastry case and allow to cool and set. I thought this was a rather yummy pudding but hubby wouldn’t try it as he doesn’t like pecans…..or walnuts…..or most other nuts!

The second recipe was Mary’s walnut and apricot sandwich bars, firstly you need to cut up the apricots and boil them in some water and sugar until soft and squishy (technical baking term!) and then mix together the other ingredients, mainly, butter flour , oats and syrup. Add half the mixture to the square tin and flatten down, add the apricots and again, flatten down and finally the remainder of the mixture and flatten for the last time.

Bake in the oven and when ready, cut into bar shapes while cooling. I have eaten various breakfast bars in my life and found these to be quite stodgy, I think it was adding the flour to the mix that did this. They weren’t overly popular in our house and the remainder ended up in the food recycling bin.

I have been watching the Great British Bake Off with interest and now am showing interest in two or three of the contestants- I like Martha, the young girl who seems to have no fear or nerves, Like Luis the star baker of the week and I Like Nancy….lets see if one of these wins, I liked Frances from the beginning last year-and she won!

Week Eighty Nine, Mary Berry’s Almond & Cherry Tray Bake & Florentines

Posted on Aug 16, 2014 by kimsideas

Week 89 took over where week 88 left off, halfway through managing hubby’s leg burn and various trips to hospital for leg dressings and caring for him at home. I used Mary Berry’s Baking Bible as a bit of respite and my challenge as an excuse to do something normal for an hour or two. I chose Mary’s almond and cherry tray bake and the Florentine biscuits. I had caught up on the Great British Bake Off and saw that they contestants would be making Florentine biscuits so thought I would give them a go as they were in the bible and I hadn’t done them yet.

I started with the tray bake which is the usual Mary’s easy recipe of throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix and pour! I put the tray bake in the oven and sat and read the Florentine recipe carefully.

The tray bake baked well and smelt amazing. I left it to cool while getting on with the biscuits.

Mary’s Florentine recipe asks you to put the sugar, butter and golden syrup into a pan and heat gently, allowing it all to melt. Allow to cool slightly and add the rest of the ingredients and stir well.

Add spoonfuls of the mix to the baking trays and bake. Watch the biscuits carefully as they can go from under baked and a bit soft to burnt very quickly- this didn’t happen to me thankfully but Mary adds this warning to her recipe! Once bakes, allow to cool slightly and transfer to a baking tray. Then melt some dark chocolate and spread over the back and make a zig zag pattern with a fork in the chocolate.

I watched the Great British Bake Off this week and thought that they all did a cracking job with the technical challenge of Florentines and was pleased that mine had gone well- the only downside was that hubby and I didn’t like them very much!

Week Eighty Eight – Mary Berry’s Come and Come Again Cake

Posted on Aug 16, 2014 by kimsideas

No apologies for this late blog I am afraid other than life gets in the way and it has been a pretty bad two weeks but I don’t want to get into that now , it will distract you from the bake! We were going away in our caravan with the hairy hoolies and I wanted a bake that I could take with me so Mary Berry’s Baking Bible had this come and come again fruit cake which i decided to make.

It’s one of Mary’s easy recipes with the directions of put all the recipes in a bowl, mix and bake! I love these! I set the timer and went off to pack all the stuff needed for our trip. I always have the plan to take minimal stuff and the car is always packed to the ceiling….sigh! The timer pinged and the cake was done. I let it cool down and then cut a quarter for my chief tasters -(after all, they are on strict diets!) and put the rest in a tin to take with us. I must say that although it was a nice fruit cake, some of her other fruit cake recipes have been nicer. It was a great bake for a van though and went down well with a cuppa once we had set the van up!

I only managed one bake this week due to …umm I want to put due to our holiday but it turned into a rescue mission. Without going into too much detail, hubby dropped a kettle of boiling water over his leg, major trauma, taken to local hospital to where we were staying, there for about 8 hours, transferred to Bristol burns unit, kept in over night, I had to manage dogs and caravan and then do a 140 mile round trip to collect him the next day, pack up the van and tow home…… I felt like this:-