Madeira cake by Mary Berry - 20/4/13

 

This is the first bake in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, and one that I had put off for a while as Mary describes the sponge as "rich and densely textured" and for this reason it didn't really appeal.  However, I was going to visit my family and wanted to bake them a cake, one that travelled well as I was travelling on the train, so I thought this cake was ideal. 

The cake batter followed the "all in one" method and was very easy to mix together.  I particularly enjoyed grating the zest of one lemon into the mixing bowl, it had such a fresh citrussy scent! 

The cake had a good buttery lemony flavour but the texture was dense, as the recipe says, and it was a little on the dry side.  Unfortunately, the cake didn't seem to go down too well with my family (now there's a first!) and I ended up bringing a lot of it home with me!

However, we found this cake definitely improved with age, and we ended up polishing it off with great enjoyment.  Husband particularly enjoyed this cake and said it was good, which was surprising as he usually likes a good topping on his cake to counteract any dryness.

I would bake this cake again, but next time I will remember to bake it at least a couple of days in advance, to allow the cake to mature and become moist.

 

 

Muesli Cookies by Mary Berry - 19/4/13



I liked the sound of these muesli cookies.  Mary says that the flavour and consistency will depend on the muesli used.  I used our usual muesli, no added sugar Alpen.  They were very easy to make and totally delicious!  Boy No. 1 helped me bake these, as usual.  We weighed most of the ingredients - 175g soft butter, 100g caster sugar, 1 large egg, and 175g self raising flour - into our second-to largest mixing bowl and beat all of these together with the electric whisk until smooth.  The mixture was fairly stiff and most of the dough stuck to the beaters!

 



Having removed the cookie dough from the beaters and after putting the excess dough back into the mixing bowl, we then added 175g no added sugar Alpen and mixed this in, using a wooden spoon this time!

 

 

We then spooned 28 (large) teaspoonfuls of the mixture on to three pre-prepared baking trays, and this is where Boy No. 1 got busy, sprinkling extra muesli and a little demerara sugar onto the top of each cookie.

Mary's recipe does say to leave room for the cookies to spread.  As can be seen above, we did do this, and as we fully expected the cookies to spread, we didn't bother pressing down on the top of each cookie.However, when they came out of the oven, they had barely spread at all, and looked a little rustic!

Despite their appearance, these little cookies were tasty and delicious, and the extra muesli and sprinkling of demerara sugar on the top provided a welcome sweetness.  Both boys enjoyed these, and they were quickly devoured by all of the family!  I found that one (or two) were particularly good with a nice cup of tea.

 

Mini strawberries and cream cakes by Lorraine Pascale - 14/4/13

I had treated myself to Lorraine Pascale's latest book a couple of weeks before baking these delicious cakes and this was the first recipe that caught my eye!  The thought of delicious vanilla sponge cakes, filled with a dollop of double cream and strawberry jam, topped with a strawberry and drizzled with melted white chocolate was just too tempting to resist. 

 

For the sponge cakes, I have to admit I didn't follow Lorraine's recipe as I thought the quantities were quite large and I wanted to keep these cakes "fairy cake" size rather than the larger cup cake size.  So I turned to my trusty Mary Berry's Baking Bible and instead followed Mary's standard fairy cake recipe, adding some good quality vanilla extract to the cake batter.

Lorraine suggests you can make an optional sugar syrup for pouring over the split sponge cakes once they have been baked and split, I decided against this as I thought the cakes would be sweet enough.

 

For the cream filling and topping, Lorraine instructs you to add vanilla extract and sifted icing sugar to the double cream before whipping.  I was very pleased with the taste of the cream and the texture of the sweet cream was perfect - no over-whipping the cream this time!


I loved the results of this recipe, and so did my family!  This is definitely a recipe that I will be coming back to again and again.

 

 

 

Chocolate Swiss Roll by Mary Berry - 12/4/13

I was looking forward to baking this chocolate swiss roll, especially after the success of the plain swiss roll!  Myself and Boy No. 1 baked this for our pudding whilst Boy No. 2 was napping in bed.  We used strawberry jam - instead of the blackberry jam referred to in the recipe - and it was fine.

 

I did manage to overwhip the cream though, at the time of baking I had a lot of things on my mind, as will be seen at the end of this post.  Looking back, I don't know how I managed to bake this swiss roll at all to be honest, but I think I needed some distraction and focus, and baking this gorgeous fluffy chocolatey swiss roll provided me with this.

 

Despite the double cream being slightly overwhipped and more difficult to spread due to this, it still tasted really good.  The sponge had a lovely chocolatey flavour and the cream, jam and sponge worked so well together.



 

 

I baked this chocolate swiss roll in memory of my dear brother Andrew, who very sadly passed away on 10/4/13 aged just 30 years.  RIP Andrew, thinking of you always. xxx