I’ve Been Bad Part 2.

 

Part 2 of ‘I’ve been bad’ involves baking. I’ve been doing a lot of baking. The above tart is the one that I am most proud of. Remember I am new to pastry. However, I decided to be brave and give it a go. I decided to use Peter’s recipe from GBBO as it was there on the website. Plus it looked delicious. There were a lot of things new to me. Not only making the base but also the delicious (for it was delicious) fruity layers. This is a blackberry and lemon tart. I couldn’t have been more pleased as to how it turned out. If you can’t take my word for it then trust my sister who loved it. I am thinking of making it again for her birthday dessert. I did forgo the caramelised nuts for decorations because I just didn’t want to but I did do the rest. I think that I did need to add more of the gelatine (I used a vegetarian substitute). If anyone can tell me how to accurately work that out I’m all ears. 

I’ve also been baking banana bread (requested by work friends) and soda bread and right now I have just finished baking my peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. You’ve seen all that before though. For bread week on Bake off I chose the steamed rolls. They just looked so good. Again I chose Peter’s recipe of Chicken Katsura rolls. However, I swapped out the chicken and used paneer instead. They don’t look pretty and I’m sure that Paul Holllywood would say they are a mess. But the tasted so good. I even have enough filling in the freezer to make more.

A wee sneak peak of the inside. I haven’t make anything for 80’s week, dessert week or patisserie week. Mainly because I’ve been too busy and I haven’t really been inspired. I have considered the quiche but not enough to do anything about it. Cheesecake is the only thing from dessert week that I would make and I’ve made plenty of those in the past. Pattiserie week it would really be the cubed cakes but I’m not buying moles just to destroy them once I’ve finished with them. Maybe I should try some patisserie I have always wanted to bake. Anyway, looking forward to the final tomorrow and I have some cookies to munch on while I watch. Sadly, I am working and don’t get home on time but thanks to All 4 I will only be 20 minutes behind.

GBBO 2020 - Week - I Don’t Know

 

Apologies for not posting in a while. My mood hasn’t been that great. Nothing to worry about. Just stresses from work which is to be expected given the way things are. If you have followed me on twitter or Instagram then you might be aware that I have a new job and I finally have a start date. That job will get me back to doing what I love doing. Concentrating on my patients. I am already counting down my shifts. 

In the meantime, while I have been away from the blog, I have kept busy. I have been knitting and baking on my time off. I have also been reading more. I was sad to be behind in my Bake Off posts though. I have been watching every week and I have been enjoying it. We have had biscuit week, bread week, chocolate week and pastry week. There has been dramas where people haven’t agreed with who is being sent home. And someone is being accused of being an unfair favourite. This seems to happen every year. For me, I have been just enjoying the bakers and the baking. They seem to be a lovely group and they certainly keep you on your toes. They all failed miserably at the easiest of bakes - brownies. Then most of them excel at pastries. We have said goodbye to Mak, Rowan, Sura and Linda. As to who is leading, well there are a few stars but it’s not clear as to who might win.

I have continued to bake along with watching. I made the coconut macaroons from biscuit week. I chose only to do the chocolate ones and I used milk chocolate rather than dark which is just a personal favourite of mine. Sadly, I didn’t enjoy them. They just weren’t for me. Easy to make though.

For bread week I made Mark’s stout and chocolate soda bread. Again easy to make and I was chuffed on how it turned out. Not for me again though. This time I took it in to work and it was quickly devoured with everyone raving about it. Glad it was just me who didn’t like it but I wonder if sweet soda bread just isn’t for me.

Next I went to the Good Food website to bake a plain soda bread. It’s so easy to make. Definitely a good way of getting into baking bread. This time I enjoyed it. I have plans to make it again along with some home made soup at the weekend.

For chocolate week I really only had one choice. That was the week of the ill fated brownie. I’m not a huge fan of brownies anyway. Plus, I wasn’t going to make a three tiered white chocolate cake. So I decided to make the technical option which was the babka. I ended up using a recipe by Martha Collison which sounded very similar to the one on the show. It was actually fun to make. Not only did it turn out but I actually liked it. Would definitely make it again and I recommend the recipe I used. 

I am one recipe behind and that’s pastry. I had to order a few pieces of equipment for that but it’s items I have been meaning to pick up for other recipes (I can justify just about anything). After my three shifts on I plan to attempt a tart. I think that will be a challenging one for me but I’m excited about trying it.

The first image isn’t mine and belongs to GBBO. Most of the recipes you can find from there. If you go to the BBC Good Food app you will find the Irish Soda Bread. Definitely worth a try.

GBBO 2020 - Week 1

 

It’s that time of year again where I every week I watch bake off and actually want to bake. Actually, I didn’t watch it last year. I eventually came off my high horse of never watching it again since it moved channel. I got over that but last year I was just too busy and I never did get the chance to catch up with it as planned. This year though I will watch it and I am in the mood to bake along.

I was a little sad to see Sandy leave as a cohost but Matt Lucas has proven to be fun and I’m looking forward to watching him and Noel. I see he has already caused with his opening but I thought it was funny. The contestants themselves seem like a nice bunch and I am looking forward to getting to know them as the show progresses. Warning, if you haven’t seen this episode I suggest you don’t read any further.

The first week was cake week and the signature dish is battenberg. Didn’t realise how controversial a battenberg is. Most people love it or hate it. I’m afraid I myself am not a fan as I hate marzipan. My gran used to buy a battenberg to bring over for a cup of tea. I could tolerate it as the marzipan was so thin I could peel it off and the cake would just taste like cake. With the bakers versions though the marzipan looked so thick for most that peeling wouldn’t work. It was interesting though to see all the different flavours. The one above is by baker Dave and is probably the one that appealed to me most as it is a chocolate espresso martini. Seeing this I wish I liked it. I am pretty sure that this isn’t the first time this cake made an appearance on bake off. Wasn’t it a technical dish at some point?

The technical was a classic. Pineapple upside down cake. This was one of my mum’s specialities after her scones and her Christmas cake and dumpling. However, she didn’t make it like this. There was no caramel or whipped cream. Plus it was one cake and not lots of individual cakes. She also substituted the cherry for jam as she hated cherries. Still, it was an interesting take on the classic and I think most of the bakers seemed to struggle with it. Poor Dave though. His went flying through the air after poor Sura tried to swat away a fly and didn’t see Dave coming up behind her. I felt so sorry for her. If you fancy trying this recipe you will find it on the GBBO website. It’s a Paul recipe in case you were wondering.

Lastly was the show stopper and the bakers had to make a sculpture of someone they admired made mostly from cake. In other words they couldn’t cheat by using mainly rice crispy treats as a base (guess who has watched cake wars). This was hilarious. Some of the most disturbing sculptures were seen that day. The winner of the week was Peter who kind of cheated since he sculpted Chris hoy in his cycling helmet and glasses. You have to admire him for that though. Plus, all of his bakes turned out well so I think it was well deserved. It did make me wonder who I would choose to sculpt. I would struggle I think as some of the people I admire I think it would be seen as poor taste. However, I did think that Stephen King would be a good one since I think he would have a sense of humour about it.

Sadly the first contestant to go was Loriea. She wasn’t the only one to have a bad week to be honest so I think it must have been a difficult decision. I did honestly think that she has scraped a pass (despite using bubblegum flavouring but that’s just my personal taste). She doesn’t appear to be on twitter but you can follow her and see her bakes on Instagram under Loriea_cc.

As always with GBBO, none of these images belong to me but do belong to Channel 4 and the GBBO franchise.

So I had a go at my mum’s recipe. My dad had sent it to me along with her scone recipe many moons ago. I should have used a small tin and I should have added the cherries after it came out the oven (perhaps with jam as per my mum). However, it actually turned out well. It tasted just like my mum’s and the sponge was light. I will definitely make this again. I decided not to make the GBBO version because I didn’t have the little tins and I wanted to use my mum’s recipe. I’m pleased with the result.