Tag Archives: Mary Berry

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 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 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!

Week Twenty Two – Mary Berry’s Classic Apple Pie

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As I still have a good amount of last week’s bake left in the fridge, I wanted to bake something that we could eat for pudding this week so I chose Mary Berry’s classic apple pie recipe.

Mary Berry's Classic Apple Pie

I picked out several lovely apples in Morrisons while doing my weekly shop, and had the rest of the ingredients already. The only variation to the recipe was that Mary adds cloves to hers and we are not keen so I sprinkled some cinnamon on the apples.

Kim's apple pie filling

I cut the apples, sprinkled the sugar and cinnamon, added the water and rolled my pastry. Then I needed to decorate it in some way. For Christmas I got a roller that creates lattice work so I decided to try that- what a bad move!!! When it works it looks great but it sure isn’t as easy as it looks!!! I rolled and cut the lattice work and laid it on the top at least 6 times and took it off and re-rolled it until I was happier with it! I guess it will be easier with practice!!! I then used a leaf cutter to cut out some leaves to make the border and finish the pie.

Kim's unbaked apple pieKim's baked apple pie

I am happy with the way it looked and baked and hopefully when we eat some later with a little cream, it will taste as good as it looks!!!!

I have also looked through Mary’s book and realised how many more recipes I have yet to do so will try when possible to double up on a few more!

Week Twenty One – Mary Berry’s Millionaire’s Shortbread

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Although this blog is a little late in being published, I made Mary Berry’s Millionaire’s Shortbread on Sunday. This brings back lots of childhood memories, my mother used to make this a lot but it was known as Wellington Squares in our house. As my dad loved these so much I have dedicated this recipe to his memory and renamed it to Billionaire’s Shortbread as his name was Bill………..

Anyhow,  the recipe was very familiar to me and I made it in one of the infamous Lakeland tray bake disposable tins which come in very handy. I have been aware of not taking so many pictures of various stages recently to have taken a few more this week as there are three distinct stages to this scrummy cake.

Mary Berry's Millionaire's Shortbread

The shortbread base is first and fairly easy to do, it’s just getting the balance of golden rather than burnt!

 Kim's Billionaire's Shortbread base

Then there is the caramel middle, Mary Berry is not wrong when she says stir ALL the time, if you don’t, it will catch and burn and you end up with burnt bits in it. This didn’t catch but it has done for me in the past so be careful.

Kim's Billionaire's Shortbread caramel middle

The topping is then the melted chocolate. Mary recommends just a plain top or a mix of plain, milk and white chocolate in a marble pattern. Traditionally in our house, it’s a milk chocolate topping with white lines and then swirled so that’s what I did and love the look of it. So here you have, Kim‘s Billionaire’s Shortbread in memory of my lovely Dad who was taken too soon by illness.

Kim's Dad Bill Kim's Billionaire's Shortbread

Oh and don’t forget to support the Comic Relief Bake Off and make a donation here:

http://http://www.rednoseday.com/whats-going-on/whats-on-tv/bake-off

 

Week Twenty – Mary Berry’s Eccles Cakes

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Mary Berry's Eccles CakesWell, I am feeling better still this week and wanted to try something a bit more challenging so, I looked through Mary Berry’s baking bible and decided on the Eccles Cake recipe.

I have never made these before so it was a bit of a venture into the unknown as to what the outcome would be.
Mary’s recipe instructions are very detailed so I set off reasonably confidently on Sunday morning.

Eventually I was at the construction stage and that was the fun part! I cut out my circles in the pastry and put a table spoon of filling in each one, wet the edges and folded the pastry in to meet and seal, turned them over, shaped them into rounds , flattened them slightly and cut the 3 slots in them.

Kim's Eccles Cakes

Here are the results and I must admit, they tasted rather good! ? I seem to be back in the baking saddle and I am now looking through Mary’s book to see what I fancy making next week!

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

Tis the Season to be Jolly !!!!

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So where do we start about the last 12 months?

It’s certainly been an interesting time.  Lewis had every intention of posting far more blogs about photography, but since completing his photography qualification he hasn’t actually taken that many photographs.  This MUST change for 2013!!!

Kim sat and watched The Great British Bake Off, oh god what a mistake that was!!!  After watching a few episodes, Kim thought it would be an excellent idea to buy Mary Berry’s baking bible and then choose one recipie a week.  Well what’s the point in setting yourself a challenge if nobody knows about it? This is where Lewis came up with the idea that Kim should blog about her baking experiences and share it with those who were interested and wished to read or follow the blog.  Hence Kim’s account on WordPress was created…….

Has it been a success?  Well we certainly think so and we would both like to thank our new followers, not forgetting our existing ones, this year and hope that this blog has bought some interesting reading as well as enjoyment.

So what about Lewis?  Well in January he required surgery on his right shoulder and even now it’s still not fully resolved.  It was such a re-assurance when the Consultant said to him “oh it can take up to 18 months for a shoulder to fully heal….”   Oh cheers, thanks for telling me after the surgery!!!! :0)

Due to having a lack of function in his arm, Lewis hasn’t really done much, but hopes to be far more active in 2013.  Lewis hopes without a doubt that not only will he be able to take plenty of beauitful images, but that people may even wish to purchase the images created by Lullingstone Photography, better known as Lewis & Kim….

So what else has happened?  Oh yes, we nearly forgot.  Lewis’ parents decided to downsize from what had been his childhood home and so where do they move to?  Well of course it has to be next door to us!!!!

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “You can’t choose your parents….”,  well guess what, you can’t choose where they live either !!!!   LOL  :0)

Joking apart after a 16 week re-development project, we both hope they have many happy years in their new home, although we’re still waiting for them to actually move in……

Then of course we have the Olympics and Paralympics!!!  WOW is basically all one can say about that.  Whether you like sport or not, no one can deny that we have had the most incredible year of sport.  The achievements of our various sports men and women in their respective disciplines has been absolutely incredible.  The Olympics seemed to be over in a heartbeat which is something we can’t say about the build up to it.  How many years did we have the media bombarding us with Olympic gems?  Far too long would have been the answer.

BUT….. then the Paralympics Opening ceremony began and slowly people were amazed at how a legless man could run, or how someone with one leg could actually ride a bicycle and STILL whip the butts of your average able bodied person!!!  Sure there were plenty of jokes going around; Some were tasteless and some were just down right hilarious…    On that note, we really have to praise the Australian Adam Hills who presented the programme “The Last Leg” which was incredibly funny.  One can only applaud Channel 4 for allowing such a programme that really did break down barriers between disabled and abled body.  We would urge anyone who missed it to try and download it.  It must be on the Internet somewhere :0)

So the whole of the UK were in awe of the competitors and for very good reason.  They were ALL truly inspirational, whether they were winners or losers…  In our eyes, they were ALL WINNERS !!!!

Generally speaking it has actually been a rather quiet year, until we got to December.  Kim had been having some pain and so goes to see the GP. After some investigations, she finds herself with a rapid referral to the hospital and told that surgery is needed…..

So we’re waiting for a date for surgery on the NHS….  Well that’s likely to be a few months then right?  WRONG !!!!

A letter came through from the hospital a few days ago and the date is…….  Yep, it’s New Year’s Eve!!!!  We certainly won’t forget this year in a hurry.

This obviously means that Kim’s baking blog is going to suffer a hiatus for a few weeks whilst she fully recovers.  We both hope that 2013 brings a better year for the both of us in many different ways……

Bailey & Michka - Christmas 2012There are two things that keep us relaxed and relieve any stress and those of course are our two hairy hooligans Bailey and Michka.  It’s wonderful to say that they have both managed to stay in good health.  Without a doubt they will provide Kim with plenty of comfort and love when she comes out of hospital in the New Year…. :0)

We wish you all a very joyous and Happy Christmas and hope that you have a prosperous New Year.  We hope that 2013 is good to you all and is even better than 2012.

Lewis, Kim, Bailey & Michka  :0)