Week One Hundred & Twenty – Mary Berry’s Baked Apple Lemon Sponge & Wholemeal Ginger Cake

Posted on Apr 28, 2015 by kimsideas

Week 120 – phew that’s a lot of baking weeks and I delved into Mary Berry‘s ever shrinking Baking Bible and found her wholemeal ginger cake and baked apple lemon sponge- another hot pudding.

Mary’s wholemeal ginger cake was a tray bake and after melting all the liquid ingredients together with the sugar, all Mary asks you to do is to then blend the liquid with the dry ingredients and bake. She does suggest you put the tray bake tin in a roasting tin and I am glad I did as mine over-spilled and would have made a mess of my oven! I set the timer and began to read what to do on the next recipe.

After the pinger went, i took a lovely gingery brown sponge out of the oven and let it a cool a short while before turning it out onto a rack to finish cooling. Mary then suggests you use lemon juice and icing sugar to make the icing, I decided to go with the juice from the ginger jar and cut up some ginger to decorate it with. This ginger cake has a twist in that it has some marmalade in it and you can definitely taste the orange in this cake. This was yummy and a tray bake I would be happy to repeat.

The second recipe was Mary’s baked apple lemon sponge. This is a very rich pudding involving oodles (technical term) of cream, apple slices and lemon curd. The next step of the recipe is to make a sponge mixture which then goes on top of the apple/lemon mix.

The pyrex dish then goes into the oven and bakes for about 40 minutes until the sponge is golden brown. I had to give mine another ten minutes or so as mine was still pale. Then Mary asks you to cover the dish with foil and bake for another 45 minutes or so.

I took a very lemony smelling dish out of the oven and it looked okay but smelled better. Again, like last week, it very quickly sank in the middle and didn’t look much but it tasted better than it looked. Again, I am undecided as to whether i would make this pudding again….

The countdown is now ticking loudly and has reached the heady heights of….

As the weather has got better, my thoughts have turned to my garden and trying to get it into some kind of shape for the summer for hubby , me and the dogs to enjoy. I spent most of the day on Saturday in the garden, cutting the grass, putting in edging stones and cementing them in and laying some pieces of turf left over from the Chief Tasters garden turfing . I didn’t think I had done that much but my back is telling me otherwise….If anyone has any good tips for dealing with a sore lower back/sciatica, please tell me your secrets.

My poor mum is seriously struggling with a severe case of sciatica at the moment and as she is a few hours away, all I can do is support her by phone . I want to dedicate this post to my mum and hope she feels better soon x

Week One Hundred & Nineteen – Mary Berry’s Coburg Buns & Hot lemon Souffle Pudding

Posted on Apr 28, 2015 by kimsideas

After the gluttony of last week’s chocolate fest, I looked for something with absolutely no chocolate in when I delved into Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible. I found these unusual buns and a lemony pudding.

I began with the Coburg buns. These seem quite a plain little bun that I have never heard of, they have some all spice and ginger in them and some flaked almonds. Mary suggests you make them in mini brioche tins but can make them in a bun tin which is what I decided to do. The mix is fairly easy and Mary asks you to put some flaked almonds on the bottom of each bun tin, put the mixture on top and bake.

The resulting buns rose beautifully and were a lovely golden colour . They came out of the bun tins quite easily and Mary then suggests you present them bottom up so the almond flakes can be seen. They are quite a plain bun and something I probably won’t bother with again but it’s another recipe to tick off the list.

The second recipe was a whole other story. It’s Mary’s hot lemon souffle pudding. It seemed quite a fiddly recipe. Mary asks you to beat a small amount of butter with the sugar. Once smooth, beat in the egg yolks. Add a little flour, grated lemon zest and also the juice. Then add the milk.Mary reassures you that the mixture can look curdled. Luckily mine looked okay…so far so good… The next step was to whisk the egg whites until they reached the soft peak stage.Fold the whites into the lemony mixture and put into an ovenproof dish before placing the dish into a large roasting tin. Mary then asks you to fill the roasting tin with boiling water and place in the oven…CAREFULLY! Mary says it should take around an hour in the oven. I checked it when the pinger went and it looked brown on top but didn’t look particularly appetizing. Mary says that this is a pudding she has successfully reheated.

Mine hadn’t been out of the oven too long before it began to sink in the middle so I took my photo quickly and split it between us and the chief tasters. It was okay, not sure it was quite how Mary’s would have turned out but again, another recipe under my belt.

The countdown continues and with these two done and dusted, I now have…

recipes left to go…..

Week One Hundred & Eighteen – Mary Berry’s Death By Chocolate Cake & Swiss Roll

Posted on Apr 19, 2015 by kimsideas

Week 118 and when I delved into Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible this week I was looking for appropriate birthday cake for my other mum and one of my chief tasters. Death by Chocolate definitely seemed to fit the bill!

This is a seriously chocolatey cake and the first step Mary asks you to do is grease and line 2 sandwich tins. The sponge mix has a lot of cocoa powder in it as well as golden syrup and vegetable oil. I followed the step by step instructions for mixing and poured the mix into the tins and put them in the oven. When the pinger went, I took out 2 beautiful chocolate sponges and put them on the airing racks to cool. Mary then asks you to cut each sponge in half so this cake will have 4 layers….gulp.

Next step was to tackle the icing. This is where the “death” bit comes in. Mary asks you to melt 450 g or 1 lb of dark chocolate! I have said before that I really am not a fan of dark chocolate but most of my tasters are so I compromised with 3/4 dark chocolate and 1/4 milk chocolate to try and take the bitterness of the dark chocolate away. Once the chocolate has been melted, Mary then asks you to add the 200g of butter to it and allow it to melt into the chocolate…… ( cholesterol comes to mind….lol) . Mary then asks you to sandwich each layer of the cake together with this icing and then stand the cake on a wire rack and use the rest of the icing over the top and sides of the cake! I gave it a liberal covering but still had some icing left over. Mary asks you to leave it to set then decorate with coarsely grated plain and white chocolate. I must admit I ” cheated” here by buying a pot of ready mixed chocolate curls!

The cake went down well and I would like to take this opportunity again to wish my other mum and one of the chief tasters a happy birthday!

The second recipe was Mary’s swiss roll recipe. I have tackled some of the swiss roll recipes before with varied success. The baking part isn’t the issue it’s the rolling!

The sponge is a fatless sponge and easy to make. I whisked it all together and poured it into the prepared swiss roll tin. I put it in the oven for ten minutes and while it was baking put a sheet of greaseproof paper on the side with caster sugar sprinkled on it. Soon enough the sponge was done and I tipped it onto the prepared paper. Mary asks you to allow to cool “slightly” and then spread with jam. Slight hiccup here, my jam had grown a lovely mold on it so I quickly made some buttercream and used this instead. I rolled the cake into the roll and again , it split to my dismay but not all the way through. I sprinkled it liberally with caster sugar and took the photograph!

Well the countdown has now reached 38….. so near yet so far!

Week One Hundred & Seventeen – Mary Berry’s Angel Sponge Cheesecake & Marmalade Cake

Posted on Apr 12, 2015 by kimsideas

Week 117 and I now delve into Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible and flip back and forth through the pages looking for bakes I haven’t yet done which is getting smaller by the week!

I chose Mary’s Angel Sponge Cheesecake , I must say I haven’t really liked the baked cheesecakes that I have made and at least this one was not baked but is sounded different. Mary asks you to make a sponge first. She asks you to beat the eggs and sugar together until it leaves a trail, then sift in the flour and fold in lightly. Put this mix in the prepared tin and bake.

Once baked to a golden brown, allow to cool and then cut in half.

Please one half in the bottom of a deep cake tin, cut side up. Mary then asks you to make the cheesecake filling by beating the sugar and butter together, add the egg yolks , orange rind, orange juice and cheese and mix well. Whip the cream and fold into the cheese mixture, whisk the egg whites and fold them in- quite complicated! Spoon the mix into the tin onto the sponge and level, lay the other half of the sponge on top, cut side down. Cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge. Now Mary asks you to leave in the fridge for about 4 hours then remove from the tin and serve. Now after four hours, mine was nowhere near set and if I had tried to remove it, I would have had a puddle. At this point, I did what I usually do and looked at Rising to The Berry to see what Anneliese did and having read her blog, decided to leave mine in overnight. Even though I did this, when I turned mine out, it still sagged and when we tasted it, it was more like a mousse between two sponges.

The second recipe was Mary’s Marmalade Cake. I nicknamed it “Paddington Cake” as Paddington loved marmalade. I very carefully chopped washed and dried all the cherries this time and added them to all the other ingredients and mixed well, thankfully it was one of Mary’s all in one recipes.

I lined a loaf tin with one of my 99p Shop liners, poured the mix in and put it in the oven to bake. I did observe Mary’s warning that it you were heavy handed with the marmalade, the fruit would all sink to the bottom as it would slacken the mixture. Once baked, allow to cool and then remove from the tin and warm some marmalade and brush it over the top. I must say that despite the amount of marmalade in it and on top, it still tasted like a fruit cake, the orange didn’t come through too much.

I had mentioned my blog might be a little late as indeed it is . This was because I was helping my chief tasters finish their garden by leveling the last bit ready for turfing. They brought a digger in and I had a go, it was great fun but harder than it looked. I was “chief skip leveller” – as in, when they dumped the earth into the skip, I made sure it was evenly distributed and the maximum space was used- with my trusty old Woolworths rake!