Baking as therapy

I woke up in an absolutely foul mood this morning. No real need for it, just particularly crabby. You know when you haven't even got out of bed yet but you can feel the little dark cloud on your shoulder? Admittedly I am pretty tired at the moment but even that didn't seem to explain it on a Saturday morning when a lovely weekend with visiting friends stretched in front of me. Half an hour later as I stood in the middle of a meadow throwing a toy for the dog while getting drenched in a full-on downpour, the crabbiness seemed at least partly justified. Nice of the world to get in step.

Now its Saturday evening and I am tired but very chilled. What has brought about this transformation in mood? Baking. Getting into the kitchen, grabbing some flour then rubbing some butter in for a short pastry. Grating cheese into a savoury biscuit dough. Best of all, watching the transformation of a golden combination of butter, sugar and eggs as I stirred melted chocolate through it.

So, what did I make? Well after whipping up a quick Victoria sponge last night, today required a little more concentration. First up, Delia's onion tart. We weren't sure whether our friends would have eaten, so preparing a few salads, investing in some good cheese, making hummous and baking this tart seemed to cover us either way, with the prospect of fantastic leftovers tomorrow. The tart has yet to be sliced but looks golden brown and smells divine. Its an old favourite and I'm quietly confident.

Next up, little savoury biscuits. Wine will be drunk tonight and rather than resorting to peanuts and Pringles I thought I'd make a bit of an effort. I haven't tried these before. It's a Good Housekeeping recipe for flour and butter, mustard, grated cheese and egg mixed to a smooth dough then rolled out and cut to about the size of an old penny. They have turned out deeply moreish and opinion is divided on whether the then crispy ones or the thicker, slightly puffed, ones are better, so another batch will certainly be needed.

Finally, good old Nigel's brownies, yet again. We are all involved with a sponsored walk tomorrow (marshalling rather than walking) and, since the others are helping as a favour to me, some kind of cake-based thanks seemed appropriate. The original plan was to repeat the Paradise slices, substituting raspberries for sultanas. Luckily I remembered in time that one of our party doesn't like coconut, so switched to baking the brownies. This will also mean pudding tonight is covered, as with the raspberries plus the cream left over from the tart the brownies will make a really decadent end to the evening.

So sweet and savoury baking, two old favourites plus a new star, have returned me to my natural balance and harmony reigns once again.

Is there anything baking can't achieve? I rather doubt it. There is an old cliche that if women ran the world there would be no war, but perhaps the truth is that if we all spent a bit more time making pastry by hand, mellowness would rule. It certainly seems to work round here. And those who don't like to bake could stroke cats to achieve the same effect. This is my vision. My, if you will, manifesto. The time has come. The time is now. Well, once I've opened the wine and had another of those savoury biscuits, anyway.

If Paradise is... oh you know the rest

Time has once again flown since I last got around the blogging. Blame Easter, blame the weather, blame the government, just don't blame me.

There has been a fair bit of baking, most importantly major developments on the macaroon front, plus Hummingbird cake and Paradise slices. With exciting recipe news on top of all this*, it has been a crazy rollercoaster ride. Or something.

To start with, a macaroon update. Nigella's recipe being a big disappointment I returned to my usual vanilla recipe and simply swapped the ground almonds for ground pistachios. This, to cut a long story short, worked like a dream. I stuck with Nigella's pistachio filling, which is really rather good, and all was well in macaroon world.

I cannot overstate how good these were. If every batch of macaroons turned out like these I would be a deeply happy person - very light yet rich, beautiful to look at, very elegant indeed. And they tasted absolutely fantastic. These actually worked well enough for some to be presented to my father-in-law as a belated birthday gift, though sadly some of the enjoyment was lost for all concerned when my dog stole them from the shelf he had put them on. Turns out she can reach places his dog can't. I can report that six pistachio macaroons with a rich filling call for a serious number of pooh bags 24 hours later. Less beautiful to look at and certainly less elegant.

I have now moved on to trying chocolate macaroons. I found a few recipes online but decided to start by trying to adapt my existing recipe again. It calls for 1 3/4 cups of icing sugar so I tried 1 1/2 cups of icing sugar plus 1/4 cup of cocoa. The results have divided opinion. I don't think the resulting macaroons are chocolately enough but the in-house judge disagrees (husband, not dog. Probably worth clarifying since their current rates of consumption are about equal). I'll be sandwiching them with a rich chocolate filling tonight so it may be that this balances things out.

Having made huge progress with the macaroons generally it is probably as good a time as any to pause and summarise the top tips to date:

- a slightly sloppy mixture works best
- tap the tray on the side after piping
- leave for at least 15 minutes to form a skin
- only one tray in the oven at a time, on the top shelf
- if the top comes away from the bottom they need 2-3 mins more
- leave to cool on the tray for five mins
- put a damp tea towel on a cooling rack then transfer the macaroons to this on their paper
- leave until completely cool before removing from paper
- put the macaroons in an airtight container in the fridge for two days before icing

All this faffing is so worthwhile as it helps to give a smooth, flat finish to the macaroon and a finished texture which is crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle. Damn they're good.

So, back to the cakes.

I'd been wanting to try Hummingbird cake for a long time but never had the right ingredients (a common story due to my lack of organisation when it comes to shopping plus tendency to get distracted by shiny new recipes when I settle down to bake). It is banana, coconut and pineapple incorporated into a sponge, topped off with a cream cheese icing. The banana has to be hugely ripe to stop the cake being too heavy and dense. The pineapple has to be in syrup and crushed rather than pulped or chopped. The former was no problem but I only had a tin of sliced pineapple, which was in juice rather than syrup. Throwing caution to the winds (oh the life I lead) I pulped the pineapple anyway, using a little of the juice and substituting ginger syrup for the pineapple syrup. This actually worked surprisingly well, with a dollop of cinnamon to bring out the best in the banana. I wasn't over keen on the finished product myself, but then I'm not much of a cake person. It certainly got scarfed quickly, and not by the dog.

The real discovery has been the Paradise slice. A shortbread base (oddly, I have no problem making shortbread as a base for something else) spread with raspberry jam then topped with a sponge containing coconut and sultanas. Very Mr Kipling. Only good. Absolutely stunning and, with the exception of the macaroons, the hit of the year so far.

By special request I will be experimenting with these slices. First up will be a version with fresh raspberries rather than sultanas, to be swiftly followed by cherry jam and cherries batch. We have a foodie friend coming to stay this weekend and he and the cake eater in chief will be assisting at a charity walk I am organising, so macaroons for Saturday night and Paradise slices for the walk on Sunday sounds like a plan to me.

One final update - the filling definitely chocolates the macaroons up to a sufficient level. Whipping cream, a lot of dark chocolate, cocoa powder and some butter makes a rich, densely chocolatey filling. What were the chances?

*I have another recipe for shortbread to try. Will I never learn?

Nuts

A day of celebrity recipes, with mixed success. First up, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Jamaican Ginger Cake, as featured in the Guardian magazine last week. Then pistachio macroons a la Nigella Lawson. I haven't tried a recipe by either of them before so was interested to see how they work work out. Most of my cook books are not by celebrity cooks but I have yet to try a Nigel Slater recipe that did not work, not to mention that wasn't a pleasure to read.

So, the ginger cake. I was using electronic scales which turned themselves off just as I started measuring the golden syrup straight into a pan already including other ingredients so judged the quantity by eye only. I was missing All Spice and was slightly random with the amount of ginger I added so was prepared to allow some leeway if the finished cake was problematic. It wasn't. It is dark and gooey and a huge success, making me keen to seek out some of his other recipes. I do like recipes where you can dollop rather than being too exact so this was a very promising introduction. A baking ginger cake does fill the house with the most wonderful, welcoming smell and is far less of a cliche than bread or coffee. Very Sunday-ish.

And so to Nigella. I was planning on making pistachio macaroons by just switching the almond meal in the vanilla recipe for pistachio meal. I didn't think it would do any harm to google first to see what was out there and there was Nigella's recipe. The method was the same as usual but the proportions of ingredients and probably more significantly the cooking temperature and time were very different. Although these did taste good, the texture and appearance was more biscuity than anything. Really disappointing. Returning to google I discovered that I was not the only person to have had this outcome. That'll teach me not to read below the first two results.

Having said that, the pistachio buttercream recipe she gave was pretty good.

So, unwilling to end a day of macaroon baking on a down note (things have been going so well I didn't want to jinx my mojo or something) I did what I should have done in the first place and stuck to my usual recipe, simply switching the quantity of ground almonds for ground pistachios. The result is absolutely fantastic, meaning I now have two flavours well and truly sorted. Next up is either coffee or chocolate flavour.

Four batches in, other news: leaving the piped macaroons to sit for ten minutes before baing does help, lightly smoothing the top with a damp finger doesn't. Tapping the baking tray on the counter before baking does sort out air bubbles. A damp tea towel under the macaroons as they cool on their parchment does make them easier to lift off. And they really do benefit from being left alone for 24 hours (ideally 48) before icing. This time I'll be resting half in the fridge and half in a tin to see if it makes a difference but I'm pretty happy with my method now.

Looks like this particular Christmas plan is actually coming together. Though I'll need to find a recipe that calls for about 20 egg yolks when the time comes.

More macaroons

Well this is just addictive. I got home from work last night and immediately got stuck into making another batch of macaroons. I risked halving the recipe, always a brave move when it calls for three large egg whites.

Having gone with one large egg white and one small egg white, (the joys of getting a box of free range eggs from a friend's assorted chickens are many, including beautifully bright yolks and a wide range of sizes), I ended up with a sloppier mixture than last time, perhaps unsurprisingly. This did not concern me as the whole point of obsessively repeating the same recipe over the next week or to is to perfect it. Though it is certainly challenging trying to control the contents of a piping bag with a large nozzle when your mixture has the texture of a thick smoothie.

Anyway. The macaroons were rather thin and flat on the tray as the raw mixture spread a little. Happily this turned out to be a huge advantage as they rose slightly into absolutely gorgeous looking macaroons with smooth, flat tops.

So, conclusion number two (number one being to only use the top shelf of the oven) is that a sloppier mixture works better than a firm one, although I suspect that think there is some middle ground to be found between the two. Perhaps a medium and a small
egg, though this is not an exact science. I may have to talk to those birds.

This time around I left the macaroons uncovered on the side for a few hours to help them to dry out, then overnighted them in tupperware to protect them from the dog. I sandwiched them tonight and they are deeply, deliciously chewy. They look the part but the texture isn't quite right - in theory they should be flakier on the outside and a little less chewy. But given how wonderful the chewiness is, is it time to compromise authenticity for a fantastic food experience?

I think a third batch is called for, with a slightly thicker texture and a full overnight exposure, before a final decision is made.

This time around I made the Swiss meringue buttercream with a different brand of butter, and apparently it is 'too buttery'. In other news, I'm going to have to remove that pea from under the mattress.

Last night I also made a mango and coconut cake as the same person who claims to be worried about developing diabetes due to the level of baking going on around here started pouting when told that the macaroons were not to be eaten for 24 hours. This is a golden sponge with (ahem) mango puree and coconut in it. It is a fine and firm sponge, albeit slightly dry. Imagine the sponge from a farmhouse fruit cake if it had no fruit in it. The coconut flavour comes through well but not so much the mango, though there is certainly a tropical feel to it. Dear god, I sound like George Lucas. I can write this crap but you wouldn't say it. The coconut frosting is apparently 'weird but works in context'. On the whole, a perfectly fine cake but its hard to imagine it ever coming up as the answer to the 'What cake do you fancy?' question.

More macaroons up next, and either carrot cake or Jamaican ginger cake, depending on which of the missing ingredients I remember to buy first.

Adventures with macaroons, part one of a series

The other week a little flurry of random cooking led to Viennese biscuits. If I have ever piped anything before it was back in my school days, and its not the sort of thing I would expect to be any good at, but I was suprised by how easy it was to control the bag. In fact the hard part was getting the mixture into the bag in the first place. I had intended to half coat these biscuits in chocolate but they all got eaten while I wasn't looking, which pretty much put paid to that.

The same night I also made some chocolate macaroons. These were not the elegant and stylish version currently so popular, but the old fashioned chewy almond cakes. Or at least that was the theory. For me, this has long been one of those foolproof recipes which always works and which I can bash out on no notice, but this time it went wrong. Rather than neat little domes, I produced a pile of thin cookies. They did appear to taste the same - and lasted about as long as the Viennese biscuits - but it was frustrating. What is it that means a simple recipe, followed many times, suddenly takes a random turn?

Some time ago we were given a gift of Laduree Macaroons. The beautiful colours, delicate flavours and stunning presentation made them a gift to treasure rather than to dive in and scarf, and the box lasted the best part of a fortnight as we shared each treat. I don't for a moment expect to be able to achieve what those chefs do, but suddenly there seemed little point in not trying a challenging recipe if the simple ones were going to play up anyway. So bugger chewy almond cakes, I decided to try my hand with the modern version.

I spent a happy evening researching various recipes and found that, as suspected, the authentic Parisian ones tend to look like something Heston Blumenthal came up with after concentrating really hard. Reassuringly though, there are many people out there who have been similarly inspired and have detailed what works for them. There are some variations - oven door open or closed, egg whites left out overnight before use or just at room temperature - and some useful tips such as smoothing the surface of the raw macaroon with a damp finger to get a smooth finish. Cherry picking bits from different websites according to how much sense they seemed to make and choosing a recipe with sensible looking quantities, the baking commenced.

For a first batch, I am absolutely thrilled with the results. The process was far less complicated than I anticipated, although most comments I read suggest that macaroons have a mind of their own and getting the ingredients and method right carry about equal weight with the weather and blind luck. In my case, the sheet nearest the top of the oven produced about half which looked exactly right (I decided not to smooth the tops this time around, focusing on taste, texture and size to begin with, so many of them had a little nubby bit from the piping). The macaroons on the sheet immediately under this rose into a more obvious dome shape, suggesting that I'll need to bake one sheet at a time to get the right appearance.

There is a definite difference in texture between the two types, with the domed macaroons being much more meringuey - albeit about the best meringues I've ever tasted. They are gloriously gooey in the middle and melt-in-the-mouth crispy on top. I may even be tempted to use this recipe whenever I make meringues in the future and just be sure to bake them on that shelf.

The flatter, smoother macaroons look much closer to what I was actually aiming for and are definitely closer in texture. A number of the websites suggest leaving them 24 hours before icing them so that the texture dries out, and that is definitely something I will try next time. This time curiosity got the best of me so I ploughed ahead with a Swiss meringue buttercream. An absolutely stunning combination and luckily too rich to eat much of, as the sandwiched macaroons were just wonderful.

These macaroons are supposed to improve after a day or two, which could make them the ideal Christmas gift, given that we tend to catch up with different friends over a number of days at that time of year. So now I have a plan. Over the next eight months I will be trying out the various tips, perfecting the recipe and to introducing variants.

First up, perfect the vanilla ones. This means trying the recipe with small changes each time to see exactly what works best in my kitchen - leaving the egg whites overnight, leaving the cooked macaroons for 24 hours before icing, refrigerating them, smoothing the tops and who knows what else.

Once I have mastered those it will be time to move on to colours and flavours. Substituting ground pistachios for some of the almond meal in one batch, swapping some icing sugar for cocoa in another. With trial and error I am hoping to be able to produce a range of flavours by December. Although of course its equally possible that I will lose the will to live when it comes to macaroons and end up offering to do everyones Christmas cake for them. Or lebkuchen, I really do fancy giving those a try. Or Florentines. Or maybe gingerbread. So many options, so little time.

Also baked in the last fortnight: vanilla cupcakes (again), Nigel brownies (again), plus a batch of lemon cup cakes with lemon frosting happily described as the perfect combination of cake and icing by the man currently working his way through the last couple left in the tin.

Having finally gathered the right combination of ingredients together, I also got around to baking apricot and coconut cake. I have absolutely no idea who named this recipe, which actually contains more fig than apricot, plus a fair amount of sultanas, but it produced a lovely golden cake full of moist fruit and texture. It was one of those cakes that would also work warm as a pudding, so will be revisited when we have guests who actually like that combination of ingredients. This is apparently going to be less often than you might expect, what with all the coconut haters and fig bashers out there. Hmmmm, fig bashers reads rather like a euphemism, now I come to look at it.Time to call it a day.

Next up - carrot cake(probably) and further adventures with macaroons. Ah, the life I lead.

My citrus phase

Other than a batch of (rather fabulous) wholemeal bread, it's all been about citrus for the last few days. It started with a lemon cake, adapted from a cup cake recipe to become a grown up layer cake. This didn't actually work out all that well - the cake tasted fine but the layers were thin, despite using a small tin size. Next time I'll try it as a single layer top-iced cake. The flavour was great though, and a really moist texture. Sandwiched with lemon and cream cheese icing it was a gooey delight and a good change from my usual lemon drizzle, which was rather the point.

I have a few Australian cookbooks and the lemon cake sent me back to them. Many of the recipes substitute some or all of the flour with almond meal which tends to lead to a very moist sponge, and the use of fruit is fantastic. I keep meaning to make a hummingbird cake but whenever I think I have gathered the right fruits together I inevitably turn out to be missing some crucial element.

I'd been having an urge to bake something with coconut for a few weeks. I am sure other people must have far more interesting urges than me since mine all seem to relate to baking, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Or something.

Anyway, coconut was on my mind. I had some limes in so googled for combo ideas but was surprised by how little was out there. Various lime cake recipes came up but most had pretty critical reviews, or something about the recipe just didn't look right to me. A fair few cheesecakes, but nothing inspiring.

Returning to one of my Aussie books I found a lime and coconut friand recipe. Friands are a big favourite of the Cake Eater in Chief but since they use a lot of egg whites I have tended not to make them as often as asked. Now that we have a dog who has spent a big part of her life living rough and as a result burns off more calories through nervous energy than she can consume in conventional dog food, I have a ready receptacle for any spare protein lying around the house. Though since she is quite happy to steal what she feels she needs (half a pound of butter and two packs of biscuits last week alone, must get child locks) this still doesn't feel like a good enough reason to go friand crazy.

Either way, lime and cocnut friands it was, and they were absolutely fantastic. Beautifully light, delicately scented and with toasted coconut on the top. The whole batch went within 24 hours (the other reason I don't make them too often is that I am told they do not keep and must be scarfed instantly, although how their staying power can be judged when they are never around for more than a few hours is beyond me). I made another batch the next night which were served warm from the oven with cream. A definite hit.

The coconut urge is still with me, as is a supply of citrus fruit, so tonight I have ventured into boiled orange cake territory. Again the recipe is quite meal-heavy and follows the classic boil-a-whole-orange-or-two-then-pulp method. This was a stunningly easy cake to make - bash all the other ingredients together with a wooden spoon then add the now-room temperature orange pulp and bake. The result is a cake even I could happily eat. The sharpness of the orange means the cake is barely sweet and it is not only gorgeous to look at, with it's brown top and yellow / orange speckled middle, but is also beautiful to eat.

So where does the coconut come into it? Well the original recipe calls for a macaroon topping to be added with ten minutes cooking time remaining. Although it was this mixture of ingredients which first drew me in, as the time to separate the eggs drew nearer I started to have doubts.

There is a phenomenon I have noticed in Marks and Spencer a few times. Glancing around the store something will catch my eye, for instance, on a recent occasion, a pale blue shirt. Walking closer I realise it's pin striped. Nice. Closer again and there appears to be a huge ruffle either side of the buttons. Plus a pocket. And something weird with the cuffs. I barely dare to look at the back, by now quite certain there there will be a ribbon tie. What is going on here? Why does nobody in the design or manufacture team ever scream 'enough'? Why should a single item of clothing be subjected to every single flounce and fancy that the designer can think of?

This was going through my mind as I considered adding macaroon to the top of my orange cake. I felt so sorry for that blouse - the temptation to rescue it from it's hanger and remove the ruffles was enormous - and could not bring myself to flounce the cake. So it is gloriously topping-free and having tasted it I feel vindicated. The sharpness of the orange and simplicity of the appearance make it a grown-up cake, a serious cake for serious times. It will be the perfect cake to go with the Sunday papers and, for those who do, a pot of fresh coffee.

And of course it leaves my coconuty urge un fulfilled, the perfect excuse to bake again. Tomorrow I suspect I'll be trying coconut, apricot and fig cake. But tonight belongs to the orange.

Fudge

Nine chocolate cupcakes in a presentation box. What could be a better birthday cake for a grown man? Nine chocolate cupcakes with chocolate fudge icing in a presentation box, that's what.

When making vanilla cupcakes I generally stick to an extremely light vanilla buttercream but I have never really been convinced by the chocolate version. Somehow the deeper flavour of the chocolate cupcakes calls for something more substantial than the buttercream and more dense than glace icing.

I've written before about childhood memories of bread being baked. Cakes were also a regular treat. My father has a sweet tooth and every weekend my mother would bake a cake. Her bible for such things was a Kate Stewart cookbook and once this had been discovered the norm was for a chocolate or coffee sponge, with fudge icing. I can clearly remember the taste of both, despite not generally being drawn to sweet food myself.

It was the icing that did it. I recently tried the chocolate sponge recipe and found it heavy compared to my usual recipe (although spectacular for a chocolate sponge pudding). But it was the icing that had really stuck in my mind. Butter, caster sugar and a little water brought gently to the boil then poured over icing sugar and cocoa, beaten smooth and then stirred regularly as it cooled and thickened. It would thicken quickly, the top of the mix forming a crust which could then be beaten back in, until the texture of the whole mix became densely spreadable. Spread across the base sponge, put the top on, then leave to set to a thick fudge filling.

So it was this icing I used on the birthday cupcakes, and it worked a dream. The set icing has a beautiful glossy finish which I simply did not know about as it was always hidden in the middle of the cake in my childhood. It was thick and (unsurprisingly) fudgy, densely chocolatey and complemented the cakes beautifully. A palpable hit.

So many cakes these days make a point of using nothing but the finest chocolate but this icing is a reminder that sometimes a good quality cocoa is every bit as luxurious.

Update

I know there is an ongoing debate about how often it is appropriate to blog, but I have just realised one good reason for being disciplined and writing often - I totally forgot an entire baking session, producing two cakes for friends.

First up, Nigel Slater's awesome chocolate brownies, the ones he ran a few years ago to coincide with Glastonbury. Such an amazing recipe but one I don't make too often simply because these brownies are impossible to resist, even for me with my savoury tooth.

Karmically this is not a good recipe for me. Those who love me would surely argue, but I can be just the teensiest bit competitive so, for instance, if I were going to a gathering where each of us was tasked with preparing some food, I'd bake these. Guaranteed praise and applause, which I am shallow enough to love. Though on a more positive note, there is also something so deeply satisfying about baking something that people truly love to eat. It makes me feel all warm inside. Which is, of course, still making it all about me. But then it's my blog so nyah nyah nyah. And is karmically even a word? Not according to dictionary.com which has helpfully suggested 'karmic ally' as an alternative. Now I'd love a karmic ally. Hell, who wouldn't?

But I digress.

Butterscotch cake. That was the other one. I hadn't tried the recipe before so wheeled out the brownies as my sure-fire back up in case it wasn't spectacular (on this occasion not just for the applause but also because I really love these people and wanted them to have good cake). The cake was a bit of a disappointment but my expectations may have been unrealistic. Butterscotch is such a lovely taste but I would even have been pleased with a brown sugar feel. This however was just a sweet sponge. It was a pretty brown colour, admittedly, and tasted perfectly fine, but it just wasn't special.

Mind you, I really blew it with the icing. These friends arrived on a Friday night and had only been able to confirm that they were coming that day, so this baking was taking place in the context of dashing home from work to hoover the house, clean the bathroom and check the spare room was clean and tidy. This meant that the butterscotch cake was still warm when they arrived, so I wandered out to ice it about an hour after that.

The icing in question was basically a dlight variation on a fudge recipe, but removed from the heat at an earlier stage than usual with the mix still a thick paste. Sadly I was pretty toasted by this stage in the game (did I mention that these people are drinkers?) and was also chatting throughout the cooking process. To cut a short story shorter, I overcooked the icing and made - yes - fudge. This was particularly ironic given that in the run-up to Christmas I tried making fudge several times to see if I could do it well enough to make a gift of it, but did not feel that I could. Oh how I laughed.

So, not for the first time, thank the lord for Nigel Slater. Oh, and for good friends and white wine. In fact, looking back, the surprise isn't that I forgot to blog about these cakes last time around, but rather that I remembered that I'd baked them at all.

Dough!

I have been horribly slack in keeping this up to date though not, I am delighted to say, in the baking. Following my triumphant production of the World's Best Sponge Cake Ever (WoBSCEr) I started fiddling around with different size cake tins to see what impact that would have (and also,to be honest, because I couldn't actually remember which tins I had used in the first place). It turns out that the recipe works stunningly well in a 6" tin and becomes average in anything else. So it's 6" cakes all the way in this house. A sharp raspberry or bramble jam is definitely needed with the sweet buttercream (apple and raspberry is just too sweet) although the in-house critic has also helpfully reminded me that jam 'without bits' works best.

The ginger nut biscuits have run their course as an obsession but are now a staple. Fifteen minutes from start to finish, though they do catch suddenly on the bottom. Last time around I considered covering them in dark chocolate just for the hell of it (let nobody say I don't know how to live life on the edge) but they were all scarfed before I got the chance.

A fruit loaf went well, though to my mind it was not really much different to a bog standard fruit cake. The recipe said it worked well sliced and buttered but I can't see it myself. Mind you, it is from a 1970s cook book and I suppose they did things differently then. I do like a loaf cake so will be trying a few variations on the theme in the next few weeks, but right now I have the urge to play with coconut and limes and marscapone. Though probably not all in the same cake.

After the fun of making white bread like my mother used to, I progressed to wholemeal baked in tins. This proved popular on the home front though I thought it seemed too dense. Today was a real breakthrough though, the fun bit that comes when you relax into a recipe and start following what you think you should do rather than sticking to the letter of the law. I made a seeded loaf - not in advanced way, I bought a flour with seeds in - and other than the ingredients and the oven temperature went my own way with it. The recipe called for one ten minute knead followed by a rise in the tin then straight into baking but this really didn't feel right for me. I let it rise in it's bowl until it reached American gameshow host texture - smooth and stretched on the surface but, as with too-tight post-surgery skin, with the sense of a seething mass trying to break through. A second kneading then into a two pound loaf tin (rather than divided between two as suggested) and left to rise again. Baking took longer than stated, as was to be expected, but silver foil across the top worked it's usual magic and the end result was easily the best bread I have ever made. Beautifully light with a fantastic crust and amazing with butter and good cheese.

A totally new departure today was an apple and almond tart, as I was asked to produce something on the pudding side of cakey. This has a blind baked shortbread base with a moist almond sponge and sliced apple on top. Here my complete inability to work out what size cake tins I am using caught me out slightly. The recipe called for a 23 by 3 tart tin with removable base. Evidently the one I used was slightly bigger as there wasn't enough shortbread to go up the side and the finished tart has a slightly thicker base than would be ideal as a result. Mind you, I was mainly distracted by once again told to roll out an incredibly short mixture. Who are these people who can achieve such feats? I did my usual trick of slapping the ball of dough in the middle of the tray and using my knuckles to squish it into shape and place. Anyway, the tart is absolutely lovely and disappearing at an alarming rate. One of those things that looks and tastes far more impressive than it is so a good one to try on guests.

Returning to a moment for the question of sizing cake tins, I wonder if I am alone in struggling with this? I once mentioned in passing to the lady behind the counter at Lakeland that they would clean up (with me at least) by selling tins that had the size indelibly printed on them. Both she and the woman next to me in the queue looked at me as if I was quite insane. Evidently they are the sort of women who can tell at a glance whether a tin is 21, 22, 23 or 24cm in diameter. Or maybe they are just the sort of people who keep everything in its packaging. Either way, these simple things defeat me.

And now I feel vindicated - having had someone who is better at these things than me measure the tin I used, it is 22cm in diameter while the recipe called for 23cm. So are cake tins like women's clothes? Can you wander from cookshop to cookshop seeking the perfect size 22 only to find that one shop makes them baggy while the others are skin tight?

While rambling generally, this seems a good moment to acknowledge the dog's contribution to my recent baking. Since the glorious day when some raw cake batter fell on her head she likes to accompany me in my efforts, forcing herself between my legs and the work counter in the hope that history will repeat itself (or that the extra half egg will find its way into her bowl again). When it doesn't she has taken to helping herself. Hearing the telltale sound of a dog with her nose where it shouldn't be I wandered into the kitchen yesterday afternoon to find one side of the cooling rack had collapsed and half the cake it held had mysteriously disappeared. I might be more flattered by her enthusiasm for my cooking if she wasn't a dog who will truly eat anything and has been found tucking into raw root vegetables in the past. My parents used to have a childlock on their fridge to keep the cat out and now that the dog has worked out how to get into a pedal bin it is surely only a matter of time before she masters opening a cake tin.

Speaking of the dog reminds me that it is high time she went for a walk so I will abruptly abandon this post. Having strayed so far from the topic there seems little point in trying to find my way back and the sun is, after all, shining.

Step back in time

After the fairly disastrous baking last Monday I was in the mood for something different.  Stocking up on golden caster sugar I found my eye drawn by the extra strong flour and the yeast.  

As a child, I was fortunate enough to have three separate positive influences which set the seeds of my love of baking*.

The first was working through a wonderful book, Floury Fingers, which I still have and which I may even try a recipe from since I am in retro mode.  Rock cakes, jam buns, butterfly cakes, jam tarts, in simple recipes aimed at young children, complete with drawings of the equipment needed and instructions to ask mummy to turn the oven on.

The second was Home Economics classes at school, from the first to third year of secondary school.  We started gently with tea and toast in the first class then moved on to such gems as kedgeree.  Shortbread (successfully!), Swiss roll and lemon meringue pie spring to mind as two of the recipes we attempted.  We worked in a huge room divided into sets of two work stations, each fully equipped with a wide range of bowls, spoons, sieves, hand whisks and of course an oven.  We worked in pairs, although I can't remember any crossover between my partner and I. 

Some of what I 'cooked' makes me cringe now.  I distinctly remember a salad which included ham rolled up with mayonnaise and grated carrot shoved in the middle.  Looked pretty, must have tasted foul.  The cheese, potato and tomato pie remains a classic and simply being taught how to be confident with everything from boiling an egg to whisking the perfect merringue was invaluable.  We all trooped in with our ingredients in a basket (oh yes, we all had baskets) and whatever we had cooked went home for our families to enjoy.  This removed the element of school competitiveness so for a blissful period each week you could just do your own thing and not be judged (unless of course you actually set something on fire, which would be hard to hide).  The class stood me in good stead in the kitchen.  It was segregated - girls did HE and needlework while boys did metalwork and woodwork - and at the time I wanted to do the boys' options instead.  But while the most sewing I can manage these days is putting on a button, I still cook confidently whereas who knows the last time my brother made a wooden coat rack?  Mind you, he is a superb cook.

Anyway, I digress.  Although I suspect HE has been playing on my subconscious mind these days - hence my urge to make a Swiss roll following yet another bad batch of shortbread - the most relevant influence to my baking this week was the third.

My mother.

Like many of us in the 70s, I grew up in a house where my mother cooked every night.  We sat at the table to eat together, my dad got the biggest proportion and every part of the Sunday roast was used, even running to fritters on a Tuesday or Wednesday if necessary.  My mother was a really good cook and home made puddings and cakes were part of our lives.  In particular, a sponge would appear for tea on a Saturday and Sunday and I still remember when she discovered Katie Stewart and her wonderful fudge icing recipe.

I was a girl guide and my pack met on a Friday night.  My parents would often go to the library while I was there, dropping me off on the way and picking me up afterwards.  Looking back from an adult perspective, although they were and are avid readers I can't helping thinking that two hours in the library would have been pushing it and suspect a trip to the pub may have been part of their routine as well.

On weekends we had tea and cakes at teatime and then a supper of bread and cheese.  For this - and we are finally getting to the point now - my mother would bake bread.  Two loaves of white bread to be precise.  Made with little sachets of yeast, left to rise on top of the cooker with a clean cloth over, beaten back then eventually shaped into two mounds on a baking tray.  The two would always stick together at some point along the side and pulling them apart then picking little bits of the resulting exposed bread to eat was a highlight of the wole thing.

I was also encouraged to get involved and can remember every detail of the kneading of the dough.  The look as it stretched, the smell, the initial gooey texture becoming smoother and more pliable.  I also remember taking the cloth of the risen dough, how smooth the top looked, stretched by the living mass below.

So this week, standing in the Co-op and looking at the yeast I found myself yearning to bake bread.  Never one to resist temptation, I duly loaded up my basket and headed home to get started.  Rather than wading through my books I started simple, with the recipe on the side of the yeast packet.  It only called for one kneading and I was sure that we used to knead a second time, after dough had risen in the bowl and before shaping it on the tray, but I stuck with it.  the resulting bread was OK but not right.  It was too dense and I had shaped it in a way which left me with two high, round loaves.

Having established that the recipe only appeared on one of the two yeast sachets, my second attempt was made with the recipe on the side of the bag of flour.  This ommitted the sugar and had a higher flour to water ratio, though my confidence had been retored by my first attempt so 

I simply added the amount of water which felt right.  This recipe also called for one kneading but this time I ignored that instruction, kneaded a second time then left the shaped loaves to rise on their baking tray.

The result was vastly improved.  A lovely crust, a lighter bread.  I suspect that I am now very close indeed to the bread of my chilldhood, and it is fine for certain purposes.  It makes the most wonderful cheese on toast and would be great sitting on top of a bowl of homemade onion soup.

But this is not the bread of my dreams.  Kneading the dough, smelling it once risen, cutting the first slice and enjoying that wonderful warm bread smell has been like a reawakening and I am keen to try a variety of recipes to find a bread for every occasion.  Sandwich loaves, breakfast rolls, crusty bread for serving with a tomato pasta and salad - bring it on.

To fill the time while the dough rose with the first batch I revisited the ginger nut biscuits I unceremoniously burnt on Monday.  Whipped them out after ten minutes and they were perfect. Fifteen minutes start to finish, simple ingredients - a wonderful example of how the home made version can not only look and taste better than the shop bought, but can also be more economical.  I also bashed out a simple fruit cake for my husband to take in to work - lemon and sultana, a pale cake that does not need as long to cook as the denser Christmas-style and as a result can be easily fitted into a baking session on a work night.

Filling the time during batch two, I once again made a quick cake.  The wonderful cup cake recipe I used for gifts at Christmas 2007 also makes the lightest Victoria sponge, and the vanilla icing recipe from the same website is glorious.  A half-measure in the middle of the cake with a thin layer of blackberry and apple jam from a local market stall led to one of the best cakes so far this year, a light and airy treat.  I cannot recommend this site highly enough and the receipes from it are now my official standby when a failsafe cake is needed.

http://www.cupcake-creations.com/cupcake-recipes.html 

*I also fondly remember making peppermint creams when in infant school, but then who doesn't?

Dammit

Oh I just give up.  I can't make shortbread.  I had yet another try yesterday, this time using a recipe which follows something close to the classic 3-2-1 proportions but then adds a little almond essences and a little vanilla essence.  

I love the rubbing in method, finding it genuinely relaxing and purposeful.  I make mean pastry, which I put down to the fact that I have Raynaud's so my hands are always cold.  It occurs to me that this may lie at the heart of my shortbread problem.  Every time I stare at the contents of the bowl wondering how I will get the breadcrumb-like mix to become a kneadable dough without waving a magic wand.  perhaps if I had warmer hands it would loosen up the butter a bit and help it to gel.  I have tried recipes where you add liquid at this stage but the finished result just isn't short enough and loses the melt in the mouth flavour.

By my usual standards, yesterday was not actually a bad attempt.  I didn't come close to kneading it till smooth but did manage to shove it into a mass which I was then able to flatten and shape slightly on the baking tray.  Not a rolling out so much as a nudging with the knuckles.  

The end result wasn't bad.  The almond essence worked really well and it was pretty short, although unfortunately it did not cook quite through in the middle - another minute and a half would have done it.  But certainly worth a revisit.

I also had a bash at ginger nut biscuits.  This was a hugely satisfying recipe of the atmost simplicity - melt some butter and syrup together in a pan while sifting flour, cinnamon, ginger and bicarb together.  Mix it together, roll into small balls and flatten slightly on the baking tray.  15 minutes and they're done.  Sadly by this point I was up to my elbows in the rubbing in for the shortbread and, as usual, drifting away in my thoughts.

Still, on the plus side, although this particular batch had the slightly bitter taste of just-burnt baking, the kitchen still has a heavenly gingery smell and I'll be returning to the scene of the crime to make them properly tomorrow.  This time without losing track.

Demoralised by two failures in a row - one undercooked and one overcooked, perfectly edible but just not right, I bashed out a batch of failsafe chocolate chip muffins.  These are from one of those cookbooks that pre-dates the wide availability of free range, organic eggs and the rich flavour these produce was a little overpowering for the recipe, but the muffins were still light as a feather and have been disappearing at an alarming speed from the tin.  Which is good as I'll be needing that space for ginger nuts this time tomorrow.

And I really must try the shortbread just one more time with the extra 90 seconds of baking time...

Say cheese

Friends are coming for lunch tomorrow.  As ever, the house needs cleaning from top to bottom, the dog needs walking and there just isn't enough time to do everything.  A risotto will be an easy lunch tomorrow; with warm bread rolls and a tomato salad it can be done in half an hour while chatting over a glass of wine.  Pudding is a different matter, so tonight I've made a lemon cheesecake from Annie Bell's Gorgeous Cakes. 

I absolutely love this book.  It is beautifully laid out with photos that really inspire without being intimidating.  There are sections of the book I will probably never use (much though I am looking forward to being an aunt, I really can't see a stage coming when I will ever want to decorate a celebration cake with anything other than simple icing.  Piping just isn't me) but even these are fun to flick through.

The other reason I love the book is that the recipes work.  They have that wonderful sunshine feel so alien to Shropshire in January - fresh mango and passionfruit rather than sultanas and dried apricots, a promise of the summer to come.  Almond meal and coconut feature regularly and you can almost taste the moist, fruity sponges just from reading the recipe.

The cheesecake is a lovely twist on a classic.  A retro Digestive base, plenty of lemon juice and zest in with the cheese, baked till it rises and starts to firm up.  Then my favourite bit - sour cream spread across the top before it returns to the oven.  There is nothing sickly about this cheesecake, and no slick fruit topping.  It gives a fresh, zingy, sharp mouthful and will be wonderful with raspberries piled up next to it.

Now all I have to worry about is keeping our dog away from their baby.

Rolling on out

And this is what always happens. Made a Swiss roll last night then had to more or less sit on my hands to stop myself baking another. Walked the dog this morning, hit the kitchen and have now made a further Swiss roll, plus a sultana and orange cake (well, once you get in the zone...)

After looking at various recipes I started with the old standby the Dairy Book of Home Cookery. This is one of the things my husband brought to our marriage, and he swears by it. Their basic recipe was absolutely fine and pretty much standard. It led to a fairly eggy-tasting sponge but that's bound to happen with free range eggs in a recipe of this sort.

I broke away from their instructions to roll the still-warm sponge in parchment and a tea towel, leaving it to cool. I also didn't bother to measure the jam. This led to a lovely roll with no cracks but also to the jam making a bid for freedom once it was re-rolled. My husband the critic also tells me that fruit 'with lumps in' is no good for this sort of thing. The oven was a little too warm (I turned it one before starting, a mistake given how long the eggs and sugar have to be beaten for) and the shelf was too near the top (something I am terribly lazy about because our shelves don't fit very well and it can be tricky to move them). The resulting sponge was a fantastic shade of golden brown but it could probably have done with another minute for the bit that ends up on the inside of the roll.

So on the whole, I'm pretty pleased given how long it has been since I made one of these. Of course the fact that last time I was in my early teens and managed it without a moment's concern may suggest that I should just get a life.

This morning I made a chocolate roll - same recipe, oven not turned on until I was ready to add the flour and cocoa to the mixture - and it came out perfectly. Following a request for chocolate buttercream to fill it the end result is not as striking as a roll with a cream filling, but it does taste great. The buttercream is fantastically light, and with the cocoa masking the eggyness (egginess?) of the sponge this is apparently the way Swiss rolls are to be made in this house from now on.

This is always a problem. Once the tasting begins regulations start being laid down. My husband has one of those cake addictions which mean that one slice is never enough, so I know that if I wanted to keep experimenting with the plain sponge and non-lumpy jam the results would get eaten, but where's the fun in that? He'll happily contribute detailed feedback, comparing one cake to the last time the same recipe was used or even five times earlier (begging the question of why he can't tell me which of two outfits looks better when I'm going out) but knowing at the outset that it will always be a second rate cake in his eyes is off putting, given that he'll be the one who has to eat it.

While the Swiss roll was cooling in it's sausage of paper and towel, the orange and sultana cake came together. This was by the rubbing in method, which I love using. It's such a relaxing way to spend five minutes and I love the way you hit a tipping point where the stubborn lumps of butter suddenly disappear without trace, leaving a lovely warm colour to the mix.

The cake is a variation on a family fruit cake from the same book. As always with these things I put in more peel that was called for (I hate it when you can barely taste the citrus) and the result is a cake bursting with plump sultanas and zing. The chances of the Swiss rolls being eaten have just plummeted.

This is my other major frustration. It would be almost physically impossible for my husband to eat the amount of baking I could happily produce, and apparently having kids specifically so you can forcefeed them cake is frowned upon (political correctness gone mad). So no more baking for today, and nothing for it but to get the hoover out.

Well, here goes

I love baking.  I love everything about baking.  I am fond of baking trays, I get excited by cute measuring spoons, I crave cake tins in every shape and size.  I don't know much about science but I know what I like, and what I like is to take simple ingredients, mess them about a bit, wang them in the oven and have some miraculous baked item appear.  My idea of heaven is good stuff on the radio, nobody in the house and a whole afternoon to work through different recipes.  Baking relaxes me and the only downside is that the moment I have finished one recipe I want to start the next.  

I don't have a particularly sweet tooth and once I have had a quick taste of what I have baked to see if it worked I have little interest in eating more.  I have no doubt that some killjoy psychologist would have a field day with that but I can live with it.

At Christmas 2007 I wanted to make cup cakes for friends as gifts.  I looked in all my recipe books, I haunted bookshops, but found little to inspire me.  Through the joy of Google I found a little site with a simple vanilla cup cake recipe on it.  Something about the way it was written, the context it was in, made it clear that this was the recipe of a home baker with heart.  And so it proved - the best cup cake recipe I have ever tried, which also makes a wonderful Victoria sponge.  This was particularly pleasing as Victoria sponge has been one of my recurring failures.  I know all the theory for why a sponge cake would be too thin, would crack, would shrink away from the sides, would sink in the middle, would cook unevenly.  Knowing the theory and adjusting accordingly did not stop any of these things happening, occasionally and memorably all at the same time.

Having cracked the sponge, my other two problem areas are also kitchen classics.  Scones and shortbread.  I suck at both.  I keep coming back to them and trying different recipes, different techniques, different everythings but to no avail.  I am determined to master them both, but along the way to just carry on trying new recipes for all sorts of other things and to keep baking for the love of it.

I'm not a decorator and I'm too clumsy to be great at detail.  Straightforward classic baking of cookies and tarts, fruit cakes and tea breads, cheesecakes and brownies, tray bakes and shortcakes.

Last weekend, on a whim, I made a pineapple upside down cake as a last minute pudding for my father-in-law.  The last time I made one of those I must have been 13 and in home economics class.  This has got me on a nostalgia trip and after a similar time lag of 20+ years I'm going to make a Swiss roll.  This is a bigger deal than it may sound given my traditional problems with sponge cakes and of course the terrors of rolling the thing up.  So I'm off for a happy hour of looking at the various recipes I have before plunging once more into the mix.

At this moment in time I have no idea whether this blog is going to be something I stick to or not.  My intention is to keep a record for myself of which recipes I have tried, which I have loved, what has gone hideously wrong and what has been fixed.  I am unlikely to record everything I bake and may not get any further than this first post.  Either way, I'll be baking, so I for one will be happy.