Tag Archives: kims cake challenge

Week Twenty Eight – Mary Berry’s Bunny Rabbit Cake & Easter Biscuits

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Mary Berry's Bunny Rabbit Cake

Week twenty eight and the Easter theme continues. Mary makes a bunny rabbit birthday cake in her book but I thought it would make a nice easter cake and funnily enough, in my search for a bargain, I found a silicone easter bunny cake in my local Lidl and it inspired me. Mary’s recipe for making this cake is pretty much throw it all in a bowl and mix it together until smooth, so that’s exactly what I did!

the throw it all in together mix

The fun came when pouring the mix into the silicone bunny and ensuring it went into all the nooks and crannies! Then into the oven it went and the timer went on. While it was baking, I looked at how Mary suggested decorating it. She suggests dessicated coconut, but I thought grated chocolate might be more in keeping with Easter (that’s my excuse…..!) so I grated some milk chocolate, white chocolate, pink chocolate buttons and orange chocolate buttons and made the butter icing.

Lidl's silicone bunny case

I had also decided to make some Easter biscuits so I made this dough which was easy enough, and rolled out the dough. I didn’t have any easter cutters so I used a heart cutter.

The cake came out of the oven and was left to cool a while before I took it out of the silicone shape. It came out really well and I left it to cool completely. The biscuits went into the oven at this point. My hubby likes this point as he gets to have “first dibs” on the leftovers in the bowl and if there isn’t anything in it that is harmful to the dogs, they often get the last lickings before it goes in the dishwasher!

the hoolies love the bowl

The decorating of the rabbit cake was trickier than it looked. Having to put on the butter cream and then the chocolate shavings and trying to keep any bits that fell on the floor away from the dogs- in case anyone doesn’t know, chocolate , raisins, currants etc- VERY bad for dogs, can even kill them so please don’t let them anywhere near them.

Kims Bunny Rabbit Cake

Finally the cake was finished, the tidying up of all the shavings, bowls and surfaces took forever.

Mary Berry's Easter Biscuits

The biscuits, I decided to put an icing cap on so I rolled out some fondant icing, and used the heart cutter to cut the toppings. I have some pretty cutters so I pressed these into the topping and then allowed the icing to set before using food colourings to paint them to make them look pretty.

Kim's Easter Biscuits

 

Week Twenty Seven – Mary Berry’s Chocolate Eclairs & Profiteroles

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Choux pastry was the order of the day this weekend and as both Mary Berry‘s eclairs and profiteroles are made form the same pastry method, I decided to make both…or I will never get to the end of this challenge!

Mary Berry's Chocolate EclairsMary Berry's Profiteroles

 

 

 

 

 

I read Mary’s baking bible carefully and got out a medium size saucepan, and weighed out the butter and measured the water and put the pan on a low heat. Once the butter had melted and the mix was beginning to boil, I added the flour and mixed it together until it formed a dough ball that came away from the sides of the pan.

Kim's choux pastry mix 1

Mary tells you to allow it to cool a little before adding the 2 large eggs and then mix it together to form “a smooth shiny paste” and I used my electric mixer for this.

Kim's choux pastry mix 2

Then the fun part, trying to put this lovely mix into a piping bag without making a mess- I failed dismally at this part…but what’s a little mess when you are cooking? Mary recommends using a 1cm piping nozzle, I didn’t have one of these, so used the largest plain nozzle I had, the eclairs kind of resembled caterpillars!! Anyhow, I piped some eclairs and some balls for the profiteroles and then into the oven they went, on a higher temperature for part of the bake and then a lower temperature for the rest of it.I took the goodies out of the oven and cut them to allow the steam out.

Kim's eclairs & profiteroles

Then while they were cooling I whipped the cream and made the chocolate icing topping. Although Mary uses dark chocolate for this, I don’t like dark chocolate very much so this is where I decided to put my own twist on it- with GALAXY chocolate! It looks much lighter than the traditional topping but it was very yummy!

Kim's profiteroles with galaxy toppingKim's eclair with galaxy topping

Week 26 – Mary Berry’s Hot Cross Buns

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As promised, the Easter recipes begin here, and with hot cross buns. Yes I know it’s technically not the right time to make and eat them but any excuse for a bake! This bake has taken the longest of all my bakes so far, because it involved yeast and rising time so it took most of the day to do.

Mary Berry's Hot Cross Buns Recipe

The dough itself seemed easy enough to mix together and the 10 minutes of kneading it seemed to fly by and it’s very therapeutic taking out your frustrations on a piece of dough! I then needed to leave the dough to rise in a warm room – in our house, that’s not so easy but after looking on the internet, it recommended putting your oven on low, with the door open and rest the bowl on the open door which is what I did, and the kitchen felt cosy too. After an hour and a half, the dough had doubled in size and was ready for the next step. Mary then asks that you knead it again for several minutes then divide into 12 and place on a tray, and cover with clingfilm and leave to rise again for half an hour.Usually at this point, I find that Mary’s estimate of how many can be made out of a batch are often optimistic but on this occasion, I found that I had 16 hot cross buns!

Kim's buns final rising!

While the buns were rising again, I made the small amount of pastry needed to add the cross to the top of the buns, as I felt that just marking the top of the bun with a cross was not traditional enough. I then rolled the pastry out and cut it into strips ready to go on the buns.

the cross strips for the buns

Finally, the buns were ready to have their cross, and then into the oven they went for 15 minutes. I set the timer and five minutes before they were rady, I made the glaze by dissolving sugar into water and when the buns came out, they had a liberal coating of the glaze.

Kim's uncooked hot cross buns

For my first foray into making buns with yeast, I was quite pleased with the way they turned out!

Kim's finished hot cross buns

As you can see, my usual two baking fans were in their usual spot waiting to see if there were any left overs or anything dropped , but sorry guys, no dried fruit for you too, it’s like chocolate, very dangerous for dogs , so you can have a doggy treat instead today!

The Hairy Hoolies

Week Twenty Five – Mary Berry’s Butterfly Cakes

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This weekend I had loads to do so I needed a quick and easy recipe that would fit in with what I needed to do so I got out Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and found the Butterfly Cakes. As it was also Mother’s Day, it reminded me of when I was small and my mum made these quite regularly and when I spoke to her, it reminded her of when her mother, my nan used to make them.

Mary Berry's Butterfly Cakes

The basic cake recipe was fairly easy to mix together and divide between the 12 cake cases, they baked evenly and I left them to cool. Then the fun came with cutting the top off the cakes to pipe the butter icing on, then cut the offcut in two and artistically place like a butterfly on the butter icing!

Kim's creative efforts

Then when I had piped and swirled and cut and artistically made butterfly shapes, I then finished them with a dusting of icing sugar. I was pleased with the way they looked.

Kim's Butterfly Cakes

Happy Mother’s day mum, hope these bring back the lovely memories of Nan that you gave to me.

Kim, her Nan & Mum

Happy Mother’s day too to my other mum, hope you enjoyed your fresh off the press cake!

Kim & her other mum

Next week I may begin to tackle some of Mary’s Easter recipes…watch this space….

Week Twenty Three – Mary Berry’s Traditional Parkin

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Parkin?? Until today, I had only vaguely heard of it and didn’t really know what it was or it’s origins. According to Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, it is ” a favourite from the North of England“……this got me curious so I tried to dig a little further into the history of this gingerbread type of cake.

I found a few variations of it’s “history” but little seems to be known about where it started other than- “Parkin is a traditional gingerbread eaten in Autumn, in Yorkshire. It is a sweet and sticky cake that is perfect for long winter evenings. Often associated with NorthYorkshire, particularly the Leeds and York regions, the origins of parkin are not known. It is also baked in other Northern regions such as Lancashire. Parkin is a moist and sticky cake which is traditionally eaten on Bonfire Night, but can be eaten all year round. Guy Fawkes was born in Yorkshire, and this tasty gingerbread, which originated in that area, is traditionally baked in November to celebrate the foiling of his plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament!The principal ingredients of parkin are white flour, oats, black treacle or molasses, butter and ginger. All these ingredients were important constituents of Northern, working-class diet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, so it is likely that parkin evolved in that period. It is a cheap and filling cake that is distinguishable for its dark colour and lovely rich consistency.”

So , with Mary’s recipe in mind, I melted the butter with the black treacle and dark sugar. I had put the dry ingredients of flour, spices and porridge oats in a bowl and in a jug had the milk, egg and bicarbonate of soda. Once the butter and treacle had dissolved the sugar, I let it cool and then mixed all the ingredients together. Into the prepared tin it went and into the oven for an hour.

Mary Berry's Traditional Parkin

My dogs were hanging around drooling, like they always do when I am baking but they were out of luck , no drips, no bowl to lick as they have both put weight on and need to watch their waist lines!!

PING went the timer after an hour and I took the parkin out, it was dark and firm (!) and I left it in it’s tin for Mary’s recommended 10 minutes, then put it on the cooling rack. When it was cool, I cut it into squares and have put it away for a week as apparently it will be much nicer…..according to Mary!

Kim's parkin

Although it’s not November, as is traditional, it’s bloomin’ cold outside, we have coal in our fuel burner and the dogs are laying on their bed in front of it- I think that qualifies!

Happy New Year …and a slight pause to my challenge

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As you may have read with Lewis’ blog, I have had a few issues with my health and face my operation early tomorrow morning.

To say I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to bake today was an understatement. Plus the fact that we have a glut of Christmas cake,  mince pies,nuts and chocolates !

So I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading my blog and to look for updates in a few weeks when I should be up and running again. I wish you all a peaceful New Year.