Simnel Cake by Mary Berry

This was another of Mary's recipes which I felt was perfect for baking at this timely time of year!

The recipe calls for a deep 20" cake tin.  I don't own one of these, but I do have two 20" shallow sandwich tins, which after much deliberation I decided would have to do (well, one of them would have to do anyway).

To compensate, I made sure that I lined the sides of the tin with an extra tall layer of baking parchment, so if the cake mixture rose too much, hopefully the parchment would contain it and hold it in place!

This is an all in one recipe, which means that you put all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix them together until a batter is formed.  The recipe doesn't say to do this but I assumed that you were meant to mix together the cake ingredients first (flour, light muscovado sugar, butter and eggs) before adding the fruit and spices.  This is what I did anyway and it worked a treat.

I was getting increasingly nervous as I added the various types of fruit to my batter, as my mixing bowl was getting fuller and fuller and my lined tin seemed to be shrinking before my eyes!

I needn't have worried.  As instructed I placed approximately half of the cake and fruit mixture into the tin, before levelling and adding a layer of marzipan.  I then added the rest of the cake mixture and levelled the top again before baking for 2 and a half hours!

I was very pleased with the finished baked fruit cake, and thought it looked good enough to eat as it was, but I pressed on with the decoration using the rest of the marzipan!

I put the apricot jam on to warm in a pan while I rolled out the second disc of marzipan and weighed out the marzipan balls.  I got a bit carried away with making sure each ball weighed exactly 14g (yes, I know, I need to get a life!) and completely forgot about the jam which was warming merrily away in the pan.  I managed to remove it from the heat just befor it started to burn!

The jam was spread on top of the cake before the disc of marzipan was gently placed on top.  This layer of jam apparently helps the marzipan to stick to the cake.

The top of the marzipan was then scored using a sharp knife, brushed lightly with beaten egg and the 11 balls (representing the 11 apostles less Judas) were placed on top.  I was impressed with how well they stuck to the cake, I had visions of them simply rolling off!

Finally, the whole cake was placed under a hot grill to brown.  I wished I had thought about putting the cake onto a baking tray before I had decorated it, as it was still on the wire rack, but luckily I managed to transfer it onto a tray without any disasters.  Phew!!
 

I was pleased overall with how the cake turned out.  I was a bit cross that I hadn't allowed some overlap for the top layer of marzipan on top of the cake, as my attempts to crimp the edges were pretty dismal, given that there wasn't enough marzipan to work with!  I guess this sort of thing comes from practice and experience.

Taste wise, the cake was delicious.  I have to admit that I did feel a little sick from the marzipan after eating a small slice of this cake, but I think this has more to do with me eating all the offcuts that were left over from cutting around the marzipan discs and the marzipan balls!

Husband was pleased with the cake too.  The boys haven't had the chance to try it yet but I'm sure they soon will, that is, if they can manage to fit it in around the chocolate easter eggs, fish and chips and hot cross buns!

Happy Easter everybody!

Hot Cross Buns by Mary Berry

I have to admit, I'm not a fan of hot cross buns.  There's something about the smell of them that has put me off in the past.  Husband really likes them though and we normally buy a packet from Sainsbury's at Easter each year.  He normally ends up scoffing the lot, as I really don't like them!

However, having seen the recipe for these buns in Mary's Baking Bible, in the run up to Easter I decided to have a go and see if these home baked buns would change my mind.

The recipe generally went to plan, although I felt the dough was not quite soft enough and the fruit kept falling out as I tried to knead the dough!

As this is an enriched dough it took longer to rise than a normal dough.  It didn't help that it was a very cold day (a thick layer of snow outside towards the end of March!) and my kitchen wasn't particularly warm!

Also, I admit that for the crosses, I favoured Paul Hollywood's recipe for the pastry/white paste (75g plain flour and water) rather than Mary's as I felt that the mixture really didn't need 25g butter!  The pastry/paste turned out fine and there was just enough paste to cover the 12 buns.

The buns looked a little rough before they went into the oven (I really need to perfect my kneading technique!) but I think they looked a bit better once baked.

I enjoyed brushing the sticky syrup made from warmed caster sugar and water (the recipe calls for granulated sugar but I didn't have any!) and this left a lovely glossy shine all over the buns.

Husband was impressed with the look and taste of the buns, although he did say the dough was a little dense - again, I think this is down to my poor kneading technique!

We enjoyed these buns after tea, straight from the oven, they were piping hot, we split them in half and smothered them in butter before devouring.

And am I converted?  A huge YES!  I thought these buns were absolutely delicious!  The smell of the buns was very nice, not the chemical, slightly burnt currant smell which I am so used to and which has put me off hot cross buns all these years!

A definite bake again for Easter 2014.  Looking forward to baking them again next year - hopefully my kneading technique will have improved by then!

Easter Biscuits by Mary Berry

With Easter approaching I was keen to bake these delicious sounding Easter biscuits.  They seemed quite easy to make and Boy No. 1 was keen to get baking!  In fact, you can just see his fingers on the edge of the first photo!

I was impressed with the dough and thought it was very pretty.  I used sheets of clingfilm underneath and on top of the dough before rolling it out and as usual this worked a treat and meant that the dough didn't stick to either the rolling pin or work surface, or both!  Such a great tip that I've picked up online recently, I do it all the time now.

I didn't have the right size cutter for the job unfortunately, but found that a glass was perfect for cutting out the biscuits.

So what did we think of the taste?  They were quite nice, but seemed to be lacking the real crunch and buttery flavour that Mary's Oat Rounds gave.  Perhaps if we hadn't baked these straight after baking the Oat Rounds we might have been more impressed?!  Who knows!

All in all a nice biscuit to bake for Easter though and I probably will bake these again next year.

Oat Rounds - recipe by Mary Berry

Having completed the recipe for Mary Berry's swiss roll, I was keen to bake something else.  Our biscuit tin was nearly empty and I was keen to refill it for my boys ready for the week ahead!

A quick audit of the cupboard revealed an opened bag of porridge oats which needed to be used up.  I remembered Mary Berry's recipe for Oat Rounds and having read some favourable reviews online, I decided to make these biscuits while the oven was still hot.

The recipe was fairly simple. The biscuits were delicious!

Quick Boiled Fruit Cake - Mary Berry's Baking Bible

I had been craving a fruit cake for a while and this was the one I had my eye on in Mary's baking bible to bake.

This was the first fruit cake I have ever made, so I was looking forward to baking it although I was slightly nervous about how it would turn out!

Today my baking partner in crime was Boy No. 2 as Boy No. 1 was in nursery.

Instead of using sugar, Mary uses a 397g can of condensed milk which she instructs you to pour into a heavy based pan and add butter, raisins, sultanas, currants and glace cherries.  I liked the idea of doing this as I thought it would plump up the fruit and add even more sweetness.  I definitely have a sweet tooth!

However, I'm not a huge fan of glace cherries, and the recipe seems to call for quite a large quantity (175g).  As I seem to have a "thing" for pecan nuts at the moment, and happen to love nutty fruit cakes, I used 45g broken up pecan nuts and made up to the required 175g using the glace cherries.

I then let the butter melt into the condensed milk and fruit/nut mixture over a low heat, this seemed to take some time but all the butter had eventually disappeared.

Having left the fruit mixture to cool in the pan, I then added this to 225g self raising flour, 2 level teaspoons mixed spice and a teaspoon of ground cinnamon together with 2 eggs using my largest mixing bowl.  I mixed all of this together by hand then poured the gorgeous sweet smelling mixture (which also tasted very nice, I have to admit!) into a greased and lined 7in deep cake tin.  The cake was then baked for exactly one and three quarter hours (I did cover the cake with foil towards the end of cooking as it had browned very well!).

The smells coming from the oven were delicious and I was really looking forward to eating this cake after tea, so I was impatient for Boy No. 1 to finish school and for husband to come home from work!

I really enjoyed this cake and thought it was very tasty and yummy, although I did think that I couldn't really taste the spices in the cake.  The pecan nuts were really very good in this cake and gave an extra occasional crunch to the texture.  I would definitely bake this again!  The cake went down very well with the rest of the family and was particularly enjoyed by Boy No. 1!

Chocolate Fridge Cake - recipe by Eric Lanlard

So me and Boy No. 1 were sitting watching Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard, and he created a chocolate honeycomb fridge cake which looked super easy to make and delicious, so we decided to make our own version!

I'm not too keen on Maltesers, which Eric uses lots of for his recipe, but I LOVE M&Ms and decided to mainly substitute the "chocolate honeycomb balls" for M&Ms - the milk chocolate variety.  I say "mainly" substitute as we found an opened tube of Maltesters in the cupboard which were leftover from Christmas and decided to use them up!

The base of the cake consisted of chocolate melted in a saucepan with butter and golden syrup.  To this we added broken up digestive biscuits, a few broken up pecan nuts and finally the M&Ms, before pressing this into a lined 20cm square tin.

The tin then went into the fridge so the base could set.

Once the cake was cold, we spread 50g melted milk chocolate over the top (to act a a glue) and then added our own twist further by using a few other additional things from the cupboard to decorate the top - white chocolate buttons, pecan nuts and jelly drops - whereas Eric just uses broken up digestive biscuits and more maltesers. 

To finish, Boy No. 1 enjoyed helping me drizzle melted milk and white chocolate all over the top.  The "cake" then went back into the fridge to finish setting.

This was yummy and we enjoyed the variety of the topping as each piece was different!  We would certainly make this again as we had so much fun putting it together and it would be just perfect for a childrens' birthday party.

Swiss Roll - recipe by Mary Berry

Today I decided to bake a swiss roll to have as our dessert after Sunday tea.  I wasn't sure how this would turn out, as this was my first attempt at a swiss roll, but fingers crossed it would all go ok!

My eldest little boy (Boy No.1) decided he wanted to help me bake.  My youngest little boy (Boy No. 2) was fast asleep in bed and husband had popped out to pick up a parcel, so we decided to get on with it whilst the going was good!

This is one of the first recipes in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, and I was keen to have a go at creating our very first swiss roll.

The first job was to retrieve the electric whisk from the new set of drawers in the garage which had been purchased to relieve the fit to bursting kitchen cupboards! 

The sugar and eggs were tipped into a large mixing bowl and we whisked continuously for at least 3 minutes until the mixture was nice and light, foamy and frothy.  I was impressed by how much the mixture increased in volume, it must have at least quadrupled in size!  I was glad I used my large mixing bowl!

We then added a modest quantity of sifted self raising flour and - very carefully - folded this in to the light foamy mixture using a large metal spoon.  This was easier said than done, as we kept finding little pockets of flour in the mixture!

Once we were happy that we had folded in the flour as best as we could, we carefully tipped this in to the pre-lined greased swiss roll tin and gently tipped the tin so that it spread out to all four corners.  This then went into the oven for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes I wasn't happy that the sponge was cooked through and it hadn't started to shrink away from the edges of the tin as Mary says it should, so I left it in for an extra couple of minutes.

The sponge was then removed from the oven and I gently tipped this onto some baking parchment which I had sprinkled with caster sugar.  I carefully removed the baking parchment which was actually quite difficult as the sponge was defiantly clinging on to the paper!  I eventually managed to coax it away from the paper and heaved a sigh of relief as it came away in one piece.

After the roll had cooled, and after I had trimmed one of the edges having decided that the other 3 edges didn't need a trim, Boy No. 1 had fun spreading strawberry jam all over the sponge and licking his sticky fingers at the end! I was then left with the unenviable task of rolling up the sponge but this was a lot easier and quicker than I anticipated.

We all enjoyed this swiss roll for our pudding.  Both boys quickly polished it off and husband said it was very good, even better than Marks and Spencers!  Praise indeed!

I was happy with the way it turned out - and tasted - and I'm looking forward to baking my next swiss roll - I think maybe one filled with coffee buttercream next!  I will definitely trim all four edges next time though to get a sharp finish - which of course means extra trimmings to polish off during the baking process!

 

The start of my baking blog!

Well I've decided to start my own baking blog, having caught the baking bug!

A bit about me, I'm in my early 30s, work as a lawyer 3 days of the week, and I'm also mum to two young boys who love anything home baked and made by mummy!

I've always been food obsessed, but more into cooking "savoury" dishes rather than bakes, cakes, puddings and bread etc.  Then I watched the second series of Great British Bake Off, received a copy of Mary Berry's Baking Bible for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I've been baking more and more ever since!

Will try to post as often as I can.  Being busy with work mid week, I tend to bake for my family at the weekends, with the little ones helping as often as they can.

I'm also been following the Slimming World plan (I refuse to call it a diet!) since I stopped breastfeeding my youngest little boy in June 2012, so expect to see some Slimming World related posts in here too. 

So far, I've lost 2st 12 pounds and just have a couple of pounds to go to reach my target of a loss of 3st!  Any support to shift these final couple of pounds would be most appreciated!