Tag Archives: Cook

Week Thirty Three – Mary Berry’s Cheese Scone Round

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After the over indulence of chocolate and big cakes of the last few weeks, I searched Mary Berry‘s baking bible in search of something savoury and found this recipe that I had yet to cover.

Mary Berry's Cheese Scone Round recipe

The recipe seemed easy enough and Mary’s instructions as always are clear and concise. I assembled all the ingredients as instructed and ended up with a scone dough that Mary suggests shaping into a round and dividing into 6 sections. This is where I added my own twist and decided to cut them out as usual scone shapes which I think looks nicer and is easier to store. I managed to cut out 9 scone shapes , sprinkled the top of them with the leftover grated cheese and popped them in the oven.

The smell as they were cooking was mouthwatering! After the pinger went off, I had a look at them and they were a beautiful golden colour and pretty even so I was pleased with them.

Kim's cheese scones

I am afraid to say that one didn’t get to cool off totally, before it was sampled but I maintain that this is the cook’s perk!

Week Thirty One – Mary Berry’s Special Shortbread Biscuits

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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.

Mary Berry's Special Shorbread Biscuits

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!

Kim's special shortbread biscuits

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

Week Twenty Four- Mary Berry’s Deep Treacle Tart

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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.

Mary Berry's Deep Tracle Tart

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

Kim's pastry

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.

Kim's deep treacle tart

Oh and by the way, we weren’t overly keen on the parkin from last week- I will stick to traditional gingerbread in future!!!!

Week Nineteen – Mary Berry’s Iced Fairy Cakes

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Have you missed me? I am “back in the saddle” as they say and while still recovering from my surgery on New Year’s Eve, I wanted to get back to some kind of normality so decided I would spend a little time in the kitchen and Mary Berry‘s bible has 2 recipes– her fairy cakes and then on the next page, iced fairy cakes so rather than do this twice, I combined it, made the fairy cakes and iced them!

Mary Berry's Iced Fairy Cake

I made 2 batches of fairy cakes, one plain as per Mary Berry’s recipe and one to which I added cocoa so they were chocolate fairy cakes and the icing had cocoa in it to make it chocolatey too. A simple recipe and probably really easy to do but making them was the longest I had stood in the kitchen for a while.

Kim's fairy cakes

 

The results were good, I was pleased with the cakes and as they are very moorish , I gave my hubby’s mum and dad some to save our waistlines.

Kim's finished fairy cakes

I didn’t put many details on about my recent ill health and surgery, but I had an amount of time where I thought I might have a serious illness and was “off my game” for a while. Luckily, I had a lovely GP who sent me to the hospital and I found myself on a Fast Track to surgery rollercoaster. I had never had surgery before and was a little anxious to say the least. I have come out of it the other side, recovering well and the results show that my fears can be laid to rest. To give you a flavour of what I went through, you can read further here:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Hysteroscopy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Laparoscopy/Pages/Introduction.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oophorectomy

On a lighter note, I hope you have managed to watch The Great Comic Relief Bake Off http://www.rednoseday.com/whats-going-on/whats-on-tv/bake-off, it certainly helped my recovery and gave me the motivation to get back to my baking challenge. I will also be making a donation to this very worthwhile cause and ask that if you can , you do so too.

Finally, and yes this is one of my longer blogs, I would like to thank my hubby, my mum and my other mum and dad for all the love, help and support over the last month or two, without you guys, it would have been so much tougher. Much love to you all. x

Week fourteen – Mary Berry’s Very Special Scones & Special Fruit Scones

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It’s been a very busy week and an even busier weekend and I wasn’t sure I was going to get time to bake this week but I managed to find time – at the expense of the ironing…..oh well……(smile).

 

 

 

I thought scones would be fairly quick and easy this week and the recipes for Mary Berry’s special scones and special fruit scones were so similar, I kind of cheated and made the dough, halved it and added the fruit, so covering two recipes in one week. Otherwise, I will still be at this challenge a year from now!

Any way, the mix was straight forward, the dough was sticky, as Mary explains and it turned out very sticky. I found my fluted cutter and cut out my first batch. I placed those on my baking tray and then rolled out the second fruited batch and then into the oven they went.

Mary recommends 10-15 minutes for the bake and having made a few of her recipes, and often had to add a few minutes, I set the timer for 15 minutes…….oh silly me! Well Mary says they should be risen and golden, I think “golden” could loosely describe the colour of them! I think they might be a bit crunchy!

 

 

Week Thirteen…migraine alert….Oat Biscuits AND Dorchester Biscuits

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Wow, week thirteen came upon me so quickly and as my thumb was feeling better, I was going to tackle something more savoury, something like one of the bread recipes which can take some time-and kneading!

But come Saturday morning, i was struck with the worst migraine I have ever had, nausea, sickness, banging head, and no tablets would touch it- I was put back to bed and Saturday was a complete washout. I felt a little better on Sunday and went shopping, taking it easy as I could feel the headache still there….sigh.

Anyway, I didn’t want to miss a week, so decided on the oats biscuits recipe and then decided I liked the Dorchester biscuit recipe too so decided to do another ” 2 for 1″ recipe weeks.

                                     

The oats biscuits , Mary claims are a relative of the digestive biscuit, kind of but I think they are more along the lines of hob-nobs and Mary,  I rolled, and re-rolled, but I couldn’t get 16 biscuits out of my mix! I managed 12 and I think I got a pretty even bake so I was happy with them.

The Dorchester biscuit, I had never heard of but it was a savoury kind of biscuit so I went with it, made the mix and Mary then recommends that you roll “walnut” sized balls, and slightly press them down, sprinkle some crushed nuts on the top and you should get about 30 out of your batch? Really? I think my idea of walnut size and Mary’s are quite different!

Any way, the Dorchester biscuit is a strange entity, it kind of thinks it’s a cheese straw but with added nuts, but I thought although unusual, they were rather scrummy!

Week Nine – Blueberry Muffins AND American Chocolate Chip Muffins

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Week nine already, and because of work commitments, I only had Sunday to clean shop and cook so decided to go for the muffins recipes as I thought “Oh, they’re easy”…….. but I was wrong………..

 

 

 

 

I decided to do both the blueberry and the chocolate chip muffins as the mix was pretty much the same at the beginning and thought as I was tired and time was short, to halve the recipe and do half the batch as blueberry and half the batch as chocolate chip. I also found at 5pm that I only had enough muffin cases for half of them and decided (oh silly me) to just use normal cake cases for the others but a few more……

Well, we all have baking disasters and Sunday was mine. The muffins didn’t really rise, they were heavy and all stuck like glue to the cases. I decided that I would make them again, but on Monday after a good night’s sleep and a quick dash around Morrison’s to get more cases…blueberries…chocolate chips…etc, think you might be getting the picture….

            

SO Monday came and I got home from work, took the hairy hoolies for a quick dash in the rain , dried them and got out Mary Berry’s Bible. I read the recipe instructions more carefully and off I set. I had googled the muffins sticking and came upon this blogger who also had the same issues with Mary Berry’s recipe, so I was pleased I wasn’t the only one.http://risingtotheberry.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/chocolate-chip-american-muffins.html

Ok, batch one – the blueberry muffins seemed to go well and so did the second……set the timer and into the oven they went. The result?…………………….

Well they look much better than the first batch, but the test will be- do they stick to the case? Well, they need to cool totally so watch this space….

Week Eight- Fast Flapjacks- with chocolate chips!

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Week eight and I have adjusted to mum living at a distance again.

I didn’t want to cook anything too taxing this week so chose flapjacks. Mary Berry’s Fast Flapjacks with the option of adding chocolate chips sounded like it fitted the bill.

Since I have started this challenge, I have 2 avid fans in the kitchen watching my every move and if I drop anything, well, they make sure it’s cleaned up quickly!

Ok, the recipe seemed simple enough, golden syrup, butter, Demerara sugar and porridge oats– vaguely healthy too- well the porridge oats say they are a “super food” any way!

The syrup, butter and sugar all went in the pan and melted together.

Then in went the porridge oats, a thorough stir in and left to cool for 10 minutes before adding the chocolate chips, then pressed into a tray bake tin and into the oven for 35 minutes.

 

All in all, another success, quick and easy and no hidden extras- such as preservatives that you get in shop bought things. I am also beginning to think more about buying things in the supermarket, before I stop and I think- ” I can make that!”.

Inspired by “The Great British Bake-Off” !

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2191208/Mary-Berry-helped-bake-away-blues.html

One day last week, I was browsing the news online and came across the above article, a young mum who set herself a challenge to bake EVERY recipe in Mary Berry‘s “Baking Bible” cook book. I read it with interest as I have always liked baking but have pretty much stuck to fairly easy stuff such as cupcakes which look great with little skill or effort.

This young mum worked her way through Mary Berry’s book, not front to back, but ensured she covered every recipe – boy was she eager! She baked 2-3 recipes a week even when she was on holiday.

I admired this lady and decided that after watching “The Great British Bake-Off” that I should set myself some culinary challenges and this article inspired me.

So, I went online (ahhh retail therapy…), ordered my copy and waited for it to come through. I then sat and flicked through all the recipes, some I had no worries of completing, others I had fancied making and some looked a real challenge!

I decided that one recipe a week, most likely a weekend challenge is what I would go for and announced on Facebook what I was going to do.

My hubby , work colleagues and in-laws will become the taste panel and hopefully give their verdict and (hopefully not too much) constructive criticism!

Watch this space – week one – decided to start with a fairly simple (hopefully!) coffee victoria sponge cake………

Kim