Tag Archives: Recipe

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 Eleven – Gingerbread Traybake

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My hubby actually asked last week if Mary Berry’s Bible had any gingerbread recipes in it as he fancied some gingerbread……well when I looked, there are several gingerbread recipes so I read each one carefully as my thumb is still out of action and I needed a recipe that I could manage with one hand.

So, most of this recipe involved weighing most of the ingredients into a large saucepan, heating gently, to melt them all together, adding the flour and spices and finally beating in four eggs and some milk. The last part was bit tricky but I managed it without needing hubby’s help and only dropped one egg on the floor and the dogs thought their luck had changed!

This recipe calls for quite a lot of each ingredient and I found at the end of the mix that the tray I used, (the size that Mary Berry recommends in her recipe) there was too much to fit in this so I dug out a smaller round tin and lined that and ended up with a tray bake AND a round bake too………

The gingerbread seemed easy enough to make, loads of treacle in it though so it’s going to be very sweet. It baked well and was ready at the recommended time. I took both tins out and let them stand for a while before turning them out onto the cooling rack.

 

Once they were both totally cool, I made the topping, Mary recommends using icing sugar, a small amount of water and some finely chopped crystallised ginger. This is when my hubby made me laugh, he asked what the topping was made of and when I told him about the crystallised ginger, he said “BLEUGHHHHHH!!” I was highly amused that he asked me to make a GINGERBREAD cake but didn’t want TINY amounts of GINGER on the topping……..MEN!!!!!

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 Four – Shortbread!

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Week four and I decided to go with Mary Berry’s “The very best shortbread” recipe. I already had a shortbread mould from Lakeland and thought that this would come in useful with this recipe.

The other retail therapy item I treated myself to was the perspex cookbook stand from Lakeland which is fast becoming my second home. Each week I was struggling to find space on a work surface to cook, weigh, roll out etc while keeping the recipe book at hand and relatively clean. This solved this issue, I can clearly see my book now and it keeps it nice and clean.

Lakeland perspex cookbook holder

I followed Mary’s recipe for her very best shortbread and got out my Lakeland mould and followed the instructions on that to prepare the mould. I carefully pressed the dough into every nook and cranny of the mould and put it in my pre-warmed oven. I checked it after the time Mary recommended and decided to give it about another 10-15 minutes. Then I took the mould out of the oven and left it to cool completely. It then said to “turn it out onto a rack and dust with castor sugar“- it didn’t say “how do you get the stupid shortbread out of the mould in the first place?” ! I used a knife around the edges, I turned it onto the rack and tapped the back of it. It just wasn’t shifting!

Eventually I resorted to chiseling it out and it still stuck!

Well, being ever resourceful, I decided to google this issue and came across a blog with the same issues as I was having with this mould. http://cakesbakesandcookies.com/tag/shortbread/

Lakeland also have some comments/feedback under their website for this item with the same issues. http://www.lakeland.co.uk/11537/Shortbread-Mould

I decided to call it a day, go and get some more ingredients to make this again. I decided to make 2 batches, one in a tin as per Mary’s recipe and one giving the dratted mould another go.

The mix went well for each batch. I pressed the shortbread into my tin and after oiling and then flouring the mould, I pressed the mix into the mould. I had taken on board the tips on the websites to turn the temperature down a little and cook it for longer and in the oven it went.

Lakeland recommended a lengthy bake, allowing to cook to the colour of toast. I set the time for 45 minutes, then after this had gone by, added another 15 minutes…..then another 15 minutes….and eventually decided that they were done.

I turned the tin shortbread out fairly quickly, dusted it with castor sugar and cut it into fingers. The mould I left to cool.

The shortbread fingers were golden in colour and the semolina in the recipe gave it a nice crunch.

Now to the mould quickly becoming my nemesis. I went around the edge with a knife and tipped it onto a tray no movement yet. I tapped it gently all over. Still no movement. I used a small meat hammer to tap it smartly and hey presto, it released onto the rack.

I was not impressed with the result, the thistle mould could barely be seen, despite carefully pressing it into the design. The colour was too golden and it was very crunchy!

Oh well , I have achieved my goal and the tin of shortbread I was happy with the results so task done, but I am going to have to read more into the solutions to my mould it will not beat me!!

Week 2……and a bit…..the lemon swiss roll

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Yes, I know…the plan was to bake a recipe a week and blog about it…..and no excuses but boy what a week it was though…my hubby had a medical emergency that I needed to help him with and when it was sorted, we got home at about three in the morning!

That evening, after very little sleep and a full day at work, I attempted the recipe..and it was a disaster. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have baked while shattered and stressed but hindsight is a wonderful thing. The tin I used was also wrong so the sponge came out a lot thicker than it should. So my swiss roll was more of a swiss fold!

Then further disaster struck…..yeah I know, not my week at all! I was making porridge in the microwave and when it was done, took it out and placed it by the sink in order to get the dates, nuts and berries I wanted to add to it. ( I was trying to be healthy!) The bowl tipped off the work surface and without thinking, I went to grab it and got a hand full of boiling porridge! OUCH! The rest then went on the floor and I must have looked a right sight because I had to get my hand under the water as soon as I could while trying to keep the dogs away from the hot gooey mess on the floor. Then i had to try to clean it up.

When the air hit my hand, it really began to hurt and I realised that I had done some damage to it. So a trip to the local Urgent Care Centre was needed where the lovely staff patched me up.

I spent a day or two feeling sorry for myself and took a retail therapy trip to Lakeland to buy a swiss roll tin. (Such a hardship…)

I rolled up my sleeves today, and tried the recipe for the second time. This time, although it isn’t as perfect as Mary Berry’s roll, I am pleased with it. It might not make the “Great British Bake Off” grade but hey, we all have to start somewhere…..

This is mine……

So , I have a day or two before week three comes around..and I have already decided what this weekend’s challenge is going to be….so watch this space.