Tag Archives: kims cake challenge

Week Eighty – Mary Berry’s Strawberry Meringue Nests & Rock Cakes

Posted on by
3

Week eighty already and I didn’t know what I fancied attempting this week – sweet or savoury? I dipped into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and surfaced with strawberry meringue nests and rock cakes!

Mary Berry's Strawberry Meringue Nests

The meringue nests would make a nice pudding after the planned weekend b-b-q and so I began. Mary asks you to whisk the egg whites until frothy. Then you add the icing sugar but interestingly Mary then asks you to whisk the mix over a pan of hot water until the mixture is stiff and ready for piping. No easy feat but I had a pan of hot water on anyway boiling some eggs for a salad so I used that pan and juggled the bowl over it while whisking until I thought it was set…… then Mary asks you to put the mix into a piping bag and pipe into basket shapes. Mary estimates that the mix will make 6 baskets but mine made four- they were huge though!

Kim's Meringue Nests

My piping skills obviously need a lot of practice ! I was ok with the base but when it came to the basket sides, I wobbled all over the place! When all were piped, they had to go into the oven for about 45 minutes. Once cooked and cooled, Mary asks you to put strawberry pieces in and glaze with some melted strawberry jam. This is where Mary and I agree to disagree as I am a purist with strawberries and thought they didn’t need to be spoiled with a glaze. I also added some raspberries and served in the basket with some cream.

Kim's Strawberry Meringue Nests

The second recipe was rock cakes. The last time I made rock cakes was when I was in home economic classes at school. Mary asks you to weigh out the flour and add the butter , rubbing it in until it resembles breadcrumbs. Then add all the other ingredients and mix together.

Mary Berry's Rock Cakes

Use 2 teaspoons to put amounts of the mix into small heaps on the tray and sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for 15 minutes. The finished cakes kind of resemble rocks I guess. All I can say is that they tasted good!!

Kim's Rock Cakes

Well the countdown continues with 108 recipes left to bake….

Week Seventy Nine – Mary Berry’s English Muffins & Rich Cheesy Biscuits

Posted on by
4

Week seventy nine and all birthday celebrations had been put to bed so what to choose this week? I delved into Mary Berry’s Baking Bible with less enthusiasm than usual as I felt we were all a bit “caked out” and needed something more savoury this week.

I found the English muffin recipe which I decided to give a go and no, no bread machine in sight this week, these little delights would be made by my own fair hands! I got up fairly early on Saturday and weighed all the dry ingredients into the bowl as per Mary’s instructions. Mary then suggests that you add the tepid milk gradually using a food mixer with dough hooks to help. I was pleased about this as I didn’t think I would have the strength to mix this by hand at the moment. (My recovery is going well but I am not back to full strength just yet). The dough came together nicely and I lightly floured my work top and rolled the dough out and used a 3″ cutter to cut the muffins out. I placed the muffins onto a floured tray, dusted the top with semolina and covered the tray with a large plastic bag. I left the tray on top of my cooker. Mary suggests leaving them for an hour to rise. I used fresh yeast but I ended up leaving mine for about an hour and a half as my kitchen doesn’t seem to be the optimum place for dough rising! Finally Mary suggests you use a griddle or heavy based saucepan- I only had a large saucepan and heat it and place the muffins in it in batches for about 7 minutes each side until they have a nice brown colour and have risen well again.

Mary Berry's English Muffins

I was gobsmacked at how well they turned out- I , for the first time felt like a “proper” baker this week and I was really chuffed with them. I phoned my official taster who came and collected some still fresh from the oven and between that batch and what we had left over, they didn’t last beyond the end of the day- yum yum!

Kim's English Muffins

The second recipe was Mary’s rich cheesy biscuits. Mary asks you to put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then add the butter and rub it in so that the mix resembles breadcrumbs. My other mum recently treated me to the new Lurpack  cook range and I used the butter which can be used straight from the fridge and is still soft enough to cook with. It rubbed in beautifully. Mary then asks you to beat the eggs together and add most of the egg to the mix to create a dough and have some left to glaze the biscuits. When the dough has come together, Mary tells you to wrap the dough in cling film and pop it in the fridge for about 15 minutes. Mine was in the fridge a little bit longer as I then popped out to go and pay the ransom demand for my hubby’s birthday card from my mum from the Post Office – (apparently it was 11p extra than the 1st class stamp she put on it but I had to pay £1.11 ransom to get it !), then I cam home via the supermarket as I had no poppy seeds or sesame seeds which Mary advises to put on there. Like most of my trips to the supermarket, I couldn’t decide on the topping so bought both…and a few other bits while I was in there! Finally I got home, rolled out the dough and used a round cutter to cut my biscuits. I put them on baking trays and glazed them with the left over egg. I then sprinkled half of them with poppy seeds and half with sesame seeds. In the oven they went for about 15 minutes.

Mary Berry's Rich Cheesy Biscuits

They smelt mouth wateringly good and were beautifully crisp from the oven. they had that biscuit snap noise which both Mary and Paul go on and on about in The Great British Bake Off! Funnily enough, these biscuits were divided between us and the official taster and they didn’t last beyond Sunday- but sadly went a little soft in the tin overnight!

Kim's rich cheesy biscuits

This week I was really pleased with my muffins, I couldn’t believe how well they turned out and I will definitely make these again. I have been a bit nervous of anything yeasty but it has given me confidence to tackle the rest of Mary’s bread recipes without resorting to the bread machine!

Kim’s Cake Challenge- my favourite parts so far, with so many left to go….

Posted on by
Reply

As I mentioned last week, I have had an operation which means that I am currently recovering and there will be no bake this week.

I must admit that I will miss not baking this week but I am not up to standing for any length of time. I went to the supermarket with my mum today and that has pretty wiped me out and I am now tucked up on the sofa.

I have been thinking back to my favourite bakes to date and I must say that in no particular order, I have particularly enjoyed the millionaire’s shortbread, the hot cross buns and the giant all in one Victoria sandwich cake so far. The millionaire’s shortbread reminded me of my nan and mum’s baking and I was amazed that I could produce hot cross buns that looked anything like they should!

Kim's large all in one victoria sanwich cakeKim's finished hot cross buns

Kim's Billionaire's Shortbread

 

My least favourite to date still has to be the parkin, perhaps it was my bake but whatever it was, I really didn’t like it and will not be making it again.

I don’t know how long baking the rest of the challenge will take but I am thoroughly looking forward to it and extending my baking skills further.

Week Seventy – Mary Berry’s Irish Soda Bread & Bath Buns

Posted on by
Reply

Week Seventy and I am ahead of myself this week. As it was half term, I managed to get a few days holiday at the end of the week and decided to devote Friday to baking and was super excited about it too! I sat with my usual cup of coffee and browsed Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and settled on her Irish soda bread recipe and the bath buns.

Mary Berry's Bath Buns

I began with the bath buns recipe as it involves yeast and therefore rising time. I made the dough as per Mary’s instructions and left the dough in an oiled bowl covered in cling film.  My kitchen wasn’t overly warm but I hoped for the best.

After an hour, the dough had barely risen at all. I wasn’t sure if it was because my kitchen was too cool or the yeast pack past it’s best. I pondered for a while and turned the oven on low. I left the bowl on the oven door with the remnants of the oven heat coming out for another half hour. It didn’t really change. I kneaded it again and divided it into buns and put cling film over them and left them on the oven door which was still slightly warm. At this point I was rummaging through my cupboard. I found a newer pack of yeast and decided to make a second batch. I made the dough again and left it to rise. This time, it did rise but still didn’t double in size. I then divided the dough into buns and covered them with cling film and they did rise slightly again. I decided to bake both batches to see how they came out.

Kim's Bath Buns

The bun on the left is the second batch and the lighter smaller bun on the right is the first batch. Actually they both tasted okay but the second batch was better. I think I will ensure that I have really fresh yeast next time and ensure that the kitchen is warmer but I enjoyed making them and will probably make them again.

The irish soda bread in comparison was an easier bake. The dough was easy to make and no yeast or rising time to contend with. Mary tells you to shape the dough into a round and bake for about half an hour in the oven and then turn it upside down for about 10 minutes to ensure the bottom is baked- no soggy bottoms here!

Mary Berry's Irish Soda Bread

The result was a round rough looking loaf of bread. The weight of it compared to a normal loaf is astounding- really heavy. You could use this recipe to make bricks I think!

Kim's Irish Soda Bread

Anyhow, as my other dad isn’t supposed to eat anything with yeast in it, he got the whole loaf to eat. I did leave him some bath buns too!

Week Sixty Seven – Mary Berry’s Almond Spice Cake

Posted on by
1

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!

Mary Berry's Almond Spice Cake

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.

Kim's Almond Spice Cake

Happy birthday to my chief taster, I hope it was a suitably worthy birthday cake for you- made with love xx

Week Fifty Eight – Mary Berry’s Banoffee Pie & Banana Loaf

Posted on by
Reply

Week fifty eight and this week was quite unusual. I went to see my mum and family this weekend and took advantage of the fact that hubby wasn’t with me to bake 2 banana based recipes- you see I can’t bake these at home as hubby is allergic to bananas and I don’t want to risk him having a serious reaction for the sake of this challenge. Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible has a few banana recipes in it and I hoped to be able to adapt the recipes or swap the ingredients where possible but these 2 recipes would not be the same without bananas.

Mary Berry's Banoffee Pie

The first recipe was banoffee pie and I was always under the impression that the banana and toffee was mixed together but in Mary’s recipe, there is no banana in the toffee layer, just sliced into the cream on the topping. The base was ginger biscuits crushed and added to melted butter to make the base. Then Mary asks you to heat the butter sugar and TWO cans of condensed milk until it thickens. I think I didn’t spend long enough on this and although I thought it had thickened enough, when I chilled it, it still remained quite gloopy and didn’t cut cleanly. I topped it with slices of banana and covered it with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. My “volunteer” tasters didn’t look overly keen with their scoop of sloppy pie but they did assure me that it tasted better than it looked!

Kim's Banoffee Pie

The second recipe was a banana loaf. I took a loaf tin liner with me. Mary’s recipe asks you to add all the ingredients into a bowl and mix well, pour into the loaf tin and bake in the over for around an hour.

Mary Berry's Banana Loaf

When it was done, there was a lovely smell in the kitchen- one that my home will never have- of a scrummy banana loaf- and the smell of bananas was strong so I was pleased I chose to bake it at my mum’s. A few slices were eaten before I left and It seemed to go down well.

Kim's Banana Loaf

The evening was capped off with an invitation to a Halloween party- and my first I have to admit. I did have fun with choosing something to wear, I went as a vampire and found the most amazing fangs to wear! I found I got into character quite quickly!

Kim the Vamp!

I have also just finished watching the last Great British Bake Off master classes and some of Mary’s recipes that she did were one’s from her book and I was pleased to see that so far, I have managed fairly well, but am sad that there is no more GBBO until next year now……sigh…..

 

Week Fifty Four – Mary Berry’s Mini Cakes, Mini Jammy Cakes & Danish Pastries!

Posted on by
2

Week fifty four and this weekend I was on top form-well as good as it gets! Looking through Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible , I still haven’t got half way yet but this week gets me a bit closer to that goal!

Mini Cakes & Mini Jammy Cakes

I started with Mary’s mini cakes and mini jammy cakes in the children’s section. I have a mini muffin cooker gadget so used that to bake the mini cakes in batches. While the first batch was on, I made the mini jammy cake mix which is more of a dough and in between swapping batches in the muffin maker, I rolled out the cake dough into balls, used a wooden spoon end and made holes in them and added some jam into each one. I placed them onto the baking trays and popped those into the oven.

Mini Cakes

The mini cakes were done in about three batches so I mixed the icing and found some flavoured chocolate buttons for the toppings, they look very cute.

The mini jammy cakes came out looking like half doughnuts and I thought they were quite stodgy and I wasn’t overly keen on these.

Mini Jammy Cakes

The final recipe of the weekend was Danish pastries, as this involved fiddly pastry making, I begin that process before the other cakes and by the time I had finished the mini cakes, the pastry was pretty much ready and I decided not to do the almond filling as I am not overly keen on that so used Mary’s alternative fillings of a vanilla cream and also used apple.

Mary Berry's danish pastries

I folded them carefully into the envelope parcels as Mary describes and they finally went in the oven. When they came out, the pastry had certainly risen and I left them to cool. Then I mixed some icing sugar into a loose paste and drizzled it over the pastries and sprinkled some almonds over. They certainly looked lovely and tasted good but if I made them again, I would probably cheat a little and buy ready-made pastry!

Danish Pastries - Apple and Vanilla

The Great British Bake Off is nearly done now, I can’t wait for tomorrow’s instalment tomorrow. I loved Beca’s traditional welsh spring lamb and vegetable suet pudding last week and Frances’ musical pastries. She managed to combine the taste and the creativity! What will tomorrow bring?

Week Fifty Three – Mary Berry’s Macaroons & Coconut Pyramids

Posted on by
Reply

Week fifty three and I am back on form after last weekend and thought I would try two recipes again this week. The first, Mary Berry‘s coconut pyramids was a very simple recipe from her children’s part of her Baking Bible. The recipe was the usual throw everything together mix which Mary is famous for and add some pink food colouring. Mary asks you to spoon the mixture into a dariole mould, press down gently, and then turn out onto a lined baking tray, repeat until the mixture is used up. The colour was quite eye catching!

Mary Berry's Coconut Pyramids

I put the coconut pyramids into the oven and set the timer. When it pinged, I had these umm interesting bright pink coconut towers! I must say though that they taste better than they look!

Kim's Coconut Pyramids

The second recipe was Mary Berry’s macaroons. I had managed to source some sheets of rice paper as I remember eating coconut macaroons on rice paper as a child . Even more amazingly, I couldn’t find these sheets anywhere, not in any of the supermarkets or even my favourite shop Lakeland. I had to resort to good old Ebay for this item.

Mary Berry's Macaroons

I mixed the ingredients together as Mary suggests but I did add some coconut to this recipe instead of so much almond as I am not a great almond fan. I cut out rice paper circles and put a spoon of the mixture in the middle of each circle and flattened them slightly. Into the oven they went.

After the allotted time, I checked the macaroons but I didn’t think they were ready and I ended up giving them an extra ten minutes. I allowed them to cool mainly on the baking tray and transferred them to the rack. Mary suggests you put an almond on each macaroon as a decoration (bleugh!) so I decided to “enhance” the coconut in the macaroons, that some chocolate decoration would look and taste nicer!

Kim's Macaroons

I am sitting writing this after watching this week’s episode of The Great British Bake Off and thoroughly enjoyed it as usual. I am pleased to see that Frances is still in there and her baking has found it’s flavour without losing too much of her artistic flair and I am also pleased to see Beca coming into her own too, I would be happy to see either of these two girls win!

Week Fifty Two – Mary Berry’s St Clements Muffins

Posted on by
Reply

Week fifty two….eventually. You may have stopped by to check on what last week’s bake was and noticed that nothing had appeared! Well that’s because it was an absolute s*** of a weekend, I won’t bore you with the details but between a hole in a water pipe and me damaging hubby’s car, let’s just say I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to bake!

Mary Berry's St Clements Muffins

I chose Mary Berry‘s St Clements muffins, they sounded lovely but given the weekend events, maybe I was aiming too high? The recipe was straight forward enough, and I was careful not to overmix the muffin mixture. I divided the mix between the cases and popped them into the oven to cook. After the pinger went, I checked them and took them out of the oven. They looked a nice colour, and were springy in the middle. I left them in the tin for a while and then put them on the rack….and watched them deflate alarmingly!!! what a disaster- it about capped my weekend off.

Kim's disastrous St Clements Muffins

I set about making a second batch, I was not going to be defeated , I followed the recipe really carefully, divided the mix again into the cases and baked them. I allowed a little extra time for cooking and when the pinger sounded, I left the muffins in the tin to cool slower and then put them on the rack. I still wasn’t overly impressed with them. They were not my idea of a muffin, light and airy with the distinctive muffin top and they really stuck to the cases.

Mary Berry's St Clements Muffins

I don’t think muffins are my thing, I have since googled “foolproof muffins” and found that like me, there are loads of people out there whose muffins do not rise as they should. I will aim to defeat my muffin nemesis …..but not this weekend!

Week Fifty One – Mary Berry’s English Madeleines & French Madeleines

Posted on by
Reply

I was on a roll this week and full of enthusiasm and ready to bake. I had found a few bargains for these bakes and surprise surprise, they weren’t from Lakeland this week but from T K Maxx of all places! The tins were a fraction of the price they should be and the silicone dariole mould was from Ebay.

Kim's madeleine tin and dariole mould

Mary Berry‘s Baking Bible lists both types of madeleines and I made the French madeleines first. The batter was easy enough to mix and I used a spoon to put some in each shell space and put the tray in the oven- oh I did oil and flour the mould first to try and ensure no sticking. The first batch came out soon enough and they came out of the tray fairly easily. The second batch went in soon after. The mould provides a shell shape with some ridges. I wasn’t overly keen on these, I thought they were quite plain and needed something to liven then up, perhaps dipped partly in icing of some flavour? I didn’t fancy dipping them in my tea as Mary suggests!

Mary Berry's French Madeleins recipeKim's French Madeleines

The second recipe, English madeleines looked lovely but I was a bit more daunted by these. I oiled and floured the silicone mould, made the batter and filled each dariole mould half way. I put the mould on a baking tray and into the oven it went. When this batch was done, I left the cakes to cool slightly and then had the fun of trying to get the cakes out of a floppy mould….it is a technique! I refilled the mould and put that in. Mary’s recipe asks you to cut the bottom of the cake so that it sits upright. Then push some jam through a sieve, heat it, put the cake on the end of a fork, roll it in the jam and then into a bowl of dessicated coconut. Finally top them with a cherry half and I found instead of normal cherries for cooking, I have found morello cherries- they are very tasty but are quite a lot darker as you can see in the picture.

Mary Berry's English Madeleines recipeKim's English Madeleines

The Great British Bake Off is getting more exciting by the week, I loved the traybakes this week and I though Christine deserved the Star Baker award this week, she was on top form. The tuiles were a challenge and a half…and there is a recipe for almond tuiles in Mary’s book that I have yet to do….gulp!