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 Eight Three – Mary Berry’s Double Orange Cake, Chocolate Victoria Sandwich Cake & Almond & Chocolate Chip Cake!

Posted on Jun 15, 2014 by kimsideas

Week eighty three and a mega bake this week. On Friday, I got home from work, all hot and bothered because of the heat and a hectic week and dove into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible for inspiration. On Saturday, hubby and I were going to see some friends who had recently moved house and thought a couple of cakes would make a nice house warming present.

So with that in mind, I chose the double orange cake which was the usual put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.When all blended well, pour into a deep round tin and bake for about half an hour until risen and golden.

Once the cake was cooked, Mary asks you to heat some apricot jam and spread over the top then mix some icing sugar with some orange juice and pour over the cake. Then finely grate some orange zest to decorate.

The second recipe for the house warming was Mary’s chocolate sandwich cake. Again Mary asks you to put all the ingredients together and mix well, then divide equally between 2 sandwich tins and bake.

Once the cakes were risen and brown, allow to cool and then make Mary’s white butter cream and use this to make the filling and topping and then sprinkle with chocolate bits.

Once my two house warming cakes were done, I then thought ahead to Sunday, it would be father’s day and as my chief taster is my other dad, i thought he might be upset at missing out on a cake this week so I made him the almond and chocolate chip cake.

Mary asks you to mix the ingredients together and then pour into a deep round tin. This is where i got a little creative. i had recently bought a giant cupcake tin -one of my bargain buys. I decided to use this to make this cake in and divided it equally between the two sections and baked it. Once it was baked, I put the two halves in a tin to decorate on Sunday to give it to my chief taster with his other Father’s day bits.

Off we went to see our friends who had recently moved and we had a tour of the house and garden. We met these friends when we got our first hairy hoolie after losing my old girl and have been good friends since- and we got our second hairy hoolie from them a few years later. We helped our friends to take down a tree in their garden but unfortunately at the end, a rather large branch hit my wrist when it came down and a rather large egg shaped lump came up almost immediately on it and it was painful. Luckily after a trip to the Urgent Care Centre to get it looked at, it isn’t broken, just soft tissue trauma but sore!

Sunday came and I wasn’t sure how I was going to decorate my chief taster’s cake with such a sore wrist and it’s on my left wrist and I am left handed. I managed with the help of my lovely hubby to mix together a vanilla butter cream and put this as the filling and topping, sprinkling flaked almonds and chocolate bits on the top. I then put some coloured cellophane around the base to make it look like a cup cake case. Not quite how I wanted it to be but hopefully it looked ok.

The chief taster was pleased with his cake and we all sat on their patio with the chimnea lit and his other gift of an axe to chop his logs!

Happy father’s day to my other dad and as always, my thoughts are with my Dad who passed away on Father’s day eight years ago, gone but always in my thoughts.

I know I always go on about The Great British Bake off but I was so excited to see the adverts telling me that the series is back this summer- yippee! Oh, and I really laughed at the World Cup advert that Mary did with the rest of TGBBO team- so so funny! If you haven’t seen it, you can see it here.

Oh and the countdown? 101 left to go……

Week Seventy Three- Mary Berry’s Swiss Wild Strawberry & Walnut Cake & Almond Tuiles

Posted on Mar 16, 2014 by kimsideas

Week seventy three and I should heed my words in a recent blog- read the recipe fully and carefully before attempting the bake! I dipped into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and found the Swiss wild strawberry & walnut cake which sounded lovely.

Stupidly I weighed everything into a bowl and mixed it and turned it into the tin as I kind of assumed that Mary’s recipe would be her usual throw everything in a bowl and mix affair- how wrong I was- but I ended up with a rather thick pancake!

So take two- Mary Berry’s Swiss wild strawberry & walnut cake – even though hubby was trying to persuade me to leave the walnuts out. After CAREFULLY reading the recipe and begging three eggs from my other mum, I put the three eggs in a bowl with the sugar and whisked until mousse like and thick, leaving a trail. Then fold in the sifted flour and walnuts. Put into the tin and bake for 45 minutes.

This time the cake rose but despite being on the right temperature for the full amount of time and the oven door not being opened, it still rose less in the middle. But it was 100% better than the last effort.

When cool, Mary asks you to slice the cake into three- with trepidation I grasped the knife and made my first cut. The top layer came away quite easily as there was a slight crust on the top but the next cut was harder as the sponge is very light but I managed it. In my local Morrisons I found a box of Spanish strawberries which looked heavenly and when I opened them , they smelled amazing and tasted just like strawberries from my childhood. I whipped double cream until it was nice and thick and spread cream onto each layer with some strawberries and finally the cream spread over the top and sides and finished with more strawberries.

The second bake I had left for a while as I had watched with amusement the contestants on the last Great British Bake Off making tuile biscuits with varied results .

The almond tuiles recipe was rather bizarre in that you creamed the egg and sugar together. In another bowl, add the egg white and mix the flour in. What Mary doesn’t tell you is that it goes like glue! Then mix all the ingredients together including the chopped almonds. Mary then asks you to put a teaspoon of the mixture onto the baking tray- she suggests four spoonfuls on each tray to allow for spreading. Only bake four at a time and this is really important.

Bake them until they are brown around the edges but not the middle. Remove from the oven, time is of the essence here. Allow to cool for a few seconds and use a spatula to lift and drape over a rolling pin to create the curve. Allow to cool on this before putting on a rack for final cooling.

I was pleased with my tuiles and the curves I managed to get!

I usually listen to music while I am in my own little world baking in the kitchen. I can become a bit of a sports widow while there is rugby or formula one on and baking is a good way of filling this time. I have been listening to Robbie Williams album “Swings Both Ways “ and its brilliant. Such an eclectic mix of music, quite different to his normal style and I can highly recommend it. He is no Michael Buble (sigh…) but he has certainly given him a run for his money with this album!

Oh, and the countdown now stands at T – 122 recipes left to go….

Week Sixty Seven – Mary Berry’s Almond Spice Cake

Posted on Feb 2, 2014 by kimsideas

Week sixty seven and I needed a birthday cake idea from Mary Berry’s Baking Bible for my chief taster ( AKA my lovely other Dad) and I wanted something that would cheer him up as he had been very poorly recently. I knew that he loved anything with almonds (yuk!) so this cake was perfect!

The recipe was the usual easy Mary Berry throw every thing into a bowl and mix. The only slight variation of this recipe is that you roll out some marzipan into a circle the same size as your cake tin. Then pour half the mixture in, add the circle of marzipan and pour on top the other half of the mix. This had a long oven bake time so I had to be patient while I waited for it to cook. once it was done and cooled, the topping was made in a saucepan by adding brown sugar, butter and cream and bringing it to the boil to thicken it. Pour this over the cake and sprinkle with almonds.