Technical Bake Part ii: Florentines/ Ain't Nobody Got Time To Temper Chocolate

Welcome back to the new series of 'Oh Crap, What Has Kirsty Got Herself Into?'!

I won't lie, when I watched this week's episode I thought about sacking this project in. Florentines? Really? Has anyone in the history of anything found any time to make Florentines ever?

I would guess at no. However, today was a particularly sleepy Sunday and I don't wanna quit this until at least episode 6. So here you are: my attempt at Florentines. Brace yourself. 

The Ingredients:

- 50g butter

- 50g demerara sugar 

- 50g golden syrup

- 50g plain flour

- 25g of glacé cherries or dried cranberries, finely chopped

- 50g candied peel, finely chopped

- 25g almonds, finely chopped

- 25g walnut pieces, finely chopped

- 150g plain chocolate

The Recipe:

- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line a baking tray with with baking parchment.

- Carefully weigh out the butter, sugar and syrup into a small pan and heat gently until the melts. 

- Take the pan off the heat and add the flour, cherries (or cranberries), candied peel and walnuts to the pan and stir everything together. It'll form a pretty sticky (and reeeeeeeally tasty) mixture. 

- So, this recipe is meant to make 18... Mine made 15 of varying sizes. The easiest way to do it is to do one baking tray at a time, I reckon. Spoon out 6 or so dollops onto your lined baking tray, pop in oven, bake for 8-10 mins, take out, leave to cool for a fews minutes, transfer to a cooling rack, rinse, repeat until you run out of mixture. Make sure you leave lots of space between the mixture on the tray. 

Beautiful! If I do say so myself.

Let's take some time out for a second.

We need to talk about tempering the chocolate. If you're not aware, tempering chocolate is when you use a thermometer and other bits of kit to precisely measure the temperature of your chocolate as you melt it and then cool it down again.

It's meant to keep your chocolate shiny and give it a nice 'Snap'. 

Six words:

Ain't. Nobody. Got. Time. For. That. 

Maybe I'll have a go at it one day. But today was not that day, even though Lady Mary Berry's recipe specified it. Guess what I did, reader?! I melted the chocolate, I spread it on the cooled biscuits, did the funny cute zigzag thing with a fork, and that was it. AND THEY STILL LOOK GOOD. 

So yes, if you find a recipe for these things that demands you get tempering, sack it off and do the lazy thing. They will be just as good and people will be just as impressed and everything will be fine. FINE. 

I'd never eaten a Florentine before. They're pretty good! A bit weird - they're like biscuits for grown ups. If you eat one with a brew, you feel a bit fancy, ya know? I'd recommend making them, too. You'll impress your pals and probably yourself and they're not even that difficult.

I have no idea when I'll get time to make next week's Technical Bake but it's bread week and I l-o-v-e making bread, so I'll find the time, for sure. Until then, happy Florentine-making!

Technical Bake Part i:- The Cherry Cake/An Array of Excuses

Oh god, it's been a year. To the two of you who used to read this: I am sorry. 

In the past year I:

- Applied (and got!) the job of my dreams 

- Moved from Manchester to the middle of ruddy nowhere in Cumbria

- (for the new jobs, obvs)

- Learned to drive and got a little car

- Fell 4 inches off a step (TWICE) and broke my foot (TWICE!)

Those are my excuses and I am sticking to them. 

Now I am working in a job where I don't come home and want to crawl under a rock and am also pretty housebound (see broken foot, above). 

AND THE BAKE OFF IS BACK!!!! So I, too, am back with a vengeance.

Some of you may know that I had a go at applying for this year's Bake Off. I got nowhere. 

It's fine. It's fine. I have my new, crazy Cumbrian life to throw myself into. I'm not bitter. 

HOWEVER. To prove those miserable so-and-so's at the BBC wrong, I have given myself the challenge of having a go at the technical bake each week. And blogging it. It'll be like I'm living the Bake Off. The only difference is that I'll have a proper recipe. And no time limit. Or pressure. 

IT'S BASICALLY THE SAME THING OKAY. 

Okay. 

Right to it. 

The ingredients:

- 200g glacé cherries (actually - a few extras for decoration)

- 225g self-raising flour

- 175g softened butter

- 175g caster sugar

- 1 lemon, 

- 50g ground almonds

- 3 large eggs

- 175g icing sugar

- 15g flaked almonds, toasted

The recipe:

- Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease a 23cm bundt tin or savarin mould with butter. (I don't own one if these things. I used a loaf tin. But then, I'm a bit of a wild card.)

- Chop your cherries into quarters, rinse them, drain them, then coat them in two tablespoons of the flour. Just...trust me. 

- Put your dry, flour-y cherries to one side

- In a big bowl, mix the flour, sugar, butter, lemon zest, eggs and ground almonds together until they're well combined. 

- Fold in the cherries carefully

- Tip it all into your greased tin. The recipe recommends 30-40 mins in the oven. Mine took more like 60. You know the drill. Bake it till it looks nice and golden and a knife comes out clean.

- Leave it to cool in its tin and then on a wire rack.

- When it's cool, mix together the icing sugar and juice from the lemon to a thick paste. Drizzle over the cake and top with the toasted flaked almonds and your extra cherries. 

Voila!

Eat your heart out, Berry. One cherry cake made by: reading the full instructions, obeying no time limit, and using the wrong kind of pan. You can stick your savarin. Roll on biscuit week. 

Salted Caramel Brownies (from scratch!)

So if you have left your house at all within the past year, you will know that salted caramel is a THING now. I mean, I'm sure it has been a thing for a long time, but it's become much more of a TRENDY THING. Pop into any cake shop, chocolatier or milkshake establishment and you'll find salted caramel flavoured stuff everywhere.
And? And it's divine.
Like, I can't believe that caramel with a load of salt in tastes as good as it does.

Now, I don't consider myself all that trendy, but salted caramel is tasty sooooo I thought I'd give it a shot! And not just that but...I baked it into brownies.

You're welcome.

Ingredients for the salted caramel:
- 175g caster sugar
- 150ml double cream
- 10g butter
- a pinch of flaked sea salt

Ingredients for the chocolatey tasty brownies:
- 115g unsalted butter
- 170g chocolate (we used milk but dark also works very very well)
- 25g cocoa powder
- 3 eggs
- 200g caster sugar
- 140g plain flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- a large handful of walnuts (optional)

To make the salted caramel:

- Measure the sugar into a saucepan and put it over a medium heat. Don't stir it, just leave it to melt.

- When it gets to this kind of stage, you can stir it a little bit to make sure it's not burning to the bottom of the pan. 

- When the sugar has dissolved and is an even colour (the colour of caramel, surprisingly!), pour in half the cream and salt and stir it like a maniac. Be careful though, the sugar is VERY hot and it will spit at you.

- Once it's calmed down, add the remaining cream and salt and the 10g of butter. Again, stir it like a crazy person. 

- We found that a huge lump of caramel formed and it took a lot of work to get it to dissolve but more heat, lots of stirring and a tiny bit of cream should do the trick. 

- Once all the lumps are gone, take it off the heat and leave it to cool whilst you make....

The Brownies!

- Preheat your oven to 175C.

- Melt the butter and chocolate together in a glass bowl or jug over a pan of simmering water.

- Once the mixture has melted and cooled a little, stir in the cocoa powder. 

- Add the eggs one at a time, stirring after each one. 

- Mix in the sugar, salt, vanilla essence and then fold in the flour.

- Chop your walnuts (or pecans or hazelnuts or whatever you like) into sizeable chunks and mix them in too. 

- Pour half the mixture into a lined baking tin.

- Spoon half of your caramel in blobs all over the first half of the brownie mix.

- Spread the rest of the brownie mix carefully over the caramel and then, again, blob the salted caramel over the top.

- Bake in your oven for about 30-35 minutes and you will be rewarded with delicious fudgey brownies combined with a gooey salted caramel.

- Might I suggest you enjoy these with a little (or not-so-little) blob of vanilla ice cream? You'll give any of those cake shops and chocolatiers a run for their money with these babies. Enjoy!

Easy Welsh Cakes

Okay so I haven't posted since the 26th of March but let us BREEZE past that.

Um.
Hasn't the weather been good? Yes...yes, lovely weather....lots of...sunshine. And heat! Loads of that.
Yep.

And...have you been watching Eastenders lately...me neither...

Okay okay okay okay okay I'M SORRY for not posting for ages but I am BACK and I am easing you back into this whole baking thing with some simple and addictive Welsh Cakes. GO.

Ingredients:

- 225g plain flour

- 85g caster sugar

- 1tsp of cinnamon (or mixed spice)

- half a tsp of baking powder

- 100g butter (salted or unsalted is absolutely fine)

- 50g raisins (or currants or sultanas...)

- 1 egg, beaten

- a splash of milk

- Measure out the flour, sugar, cinnamon and baking powder into a bowl. 

- Rub in the butter until the mixture takes on a crumbly texture.

- Mix in the raisins.

- Add the egg and mix everything together into a soft dough. Add a tiny bit of milk if it feels too dry and crumbly.

- Roll out the dough so it's the width of your little finger. Cut out rounds using a 6-ish cm cutter (or if you don't have one, the edge of a drinking glass will just about do the trick). Re-roll any trimmings and cut out more. 

- Grease a griddle pan (or a heavy based frying pan) with butter and put on a medium heat.

- Cook the Welsh Cakes for about 3 mins each side until golden brown. If they seem to be cooking too quickly, turn down the heat and you should hopefully avoid them being too gooey in the middle. 

- Sprinkle with caster sugar if you fancy!

- And enjoy! I dare you eat just one...

Jaffa Cake Cupcakes

Good morning everyone! 

(I understand that you may not be reading this in the morning - hell, I'm not even writing this in the morning - but "Good evening everyone..." sounds a bit ominous to me).

I have been BUSY. And by busy, I mean working all day and then crashing as soon as I arrive home. Literally, in these past few days I have fallen asleep whilst reading, whilst watching a movie and whilst watching Breaking Bad (if you watch Breaking Bad you'll know it's pretty excitement-inducing and very difficult to sleep through).

So yes! This is why I have not been so faithful to you, dear bloggy, although I have been doing the odd bit of baking!

The following recipe comes from the new Hummingbird Bakery Book, Home Sweet Home. If you're a regular here, you'll know that I quite bloody adore Hummingbird Bakery recipes for one simple reason: THEY WORK. And taste delicious. And look pretty. Okay that's a lot of reasons. 

ANYWAY. Jaffa Cake cupcakes do pretty much what they say on the tin. It's a normal sponge, with an orange filling and a chocolate topping. Just like a normal Jaffa Cake...but topped with...a Jaffa Cake! I've typed the word Jaffa too much. What does Jaffa even come from?!

Jaffa. 

Jaffa Jaffa Jaffa.

Jaaaffffaaaa....

Ingredients:

For the cupcakes

- 70g softened butter

- 210g plain flour

- 250g caster sugar

- 1 tbsp baking powder

- half a teaspoon of salt

- 210ml milk (semi-skimmed or whole is fine)

- 2 large eggs

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 100g marmalade

For the frosting

- 450g icing sugar, sifted

- 60g cocoa powder, sifted

- 150g softened butter

- 60ml milk

- mini Jaffa Cakes, to decorate (n.b. you don't actually need two packets for this recipe; we just bought two... for science)

The bottle of wine as pictured is optional but highly recommended. 

- Preheat the oven to 170C (325F) and line a muffin tin with paper muffin cakes - this recipe made 17 cakes for us)
- If you've got access to a freestanding electric mixer (like I did thanks to my friend Becca and her lovely kitchen), throw in the butter, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix till they form a sandy consistency. This can also be achieved by hand, it might just take a couple more minutes.

- Mix together the milk, eggs and vanilla extract in a separate jug.

- Mixing slowly, add in the milk mixture bit by bit until fully combined. Once you've added half the liquid, mix at a higher speed until everything is combined. Then gradually add the rest and, again, mix until fully combined.

- Spoon the batter into the paper cases (two-thirds full) and cake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

- If you've got a vanilla cupcake recipe that you adore, then definitely feel free to use that instead of this: it makes no difference whatsoever.

- For the icing, mix the icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter together until combined. The texture might at first be quite sandy and dry but fear not.

- Whilst mixing, gradually add the milk and beat until the butter icing has a light and fluffy texture. 

Eat all of the frosting from the bowl...mmm...wait...no...try NOT to do that.

-Once the cupcakes are cooled a bit, use a knife to make a hollow in the centre of each one, keeping a hold of the cut-out piece of sponge.

- Fill each hollow with the marmalade and replace the cut-out piece of sponge, trimming it if you need to.

- Ice the cupcakes using your chocolate butter icing in whatever manner you wish. Top each cupcake with a mini Jaffa Cake

- Enjoy with aforementioned wine - I've now decided that actually, it's not optional at all.

Cake International & Make-Your-Own Pizza

Nope, it's not Christmas.
And it's not your birthday.
(Unless...it is...).
And you haven't lost a tooth.
But I am giving you the gift of a double blog post today.
Part One: I went to Cake International in Manchester.
In case you're not familiar, Cake International is a cake show in which many different companies/bakers/chefs gather to show their wares and celebrate baking with enthusiasts like me. The show was made up of lots and lots of different stalls. Some were selling all kinds of different bits and bobs to make and decorate cakes, and some were run by people with some amazing skills.
Take, for example, this stall in which the display-cake showed that you can make freaking LACE out of sugar!

\

Or these flowers made solely out of butter icing. It's amazing what a piping nozzle and some cool angles can achieve! The good thing about some of these stalls was that they were putting on free demonstrations, showing us how the effects could be achieved at home.

Another big part of the show was the competition - there were many different categories in which people competed. From wedding cakes of three tiers or more....

....to novelty sculpted cakes...

....to themed cupcake displays.

The things that people had achieved with their cake decorating blew me away. Look at this one! This cake won Best in Show:

LOOK AT THE BABY ONES! LOOK AT THEM.

...anyway. The show was also attended by some biiiig names in the baking world. Mary Berry, the Queen of Cakes, attended on the Friday and the Saturday. I've been wanting to meet her for a long time and Cake International was my big chanc- oh I could only make it on the Sunday. Okay. That's the charm of working in retail!

As disappointed as I was to miss meeting the Berry, I did get the opportunity to watch a demonstration by John Whaite, who won the Great British Bake Off in 2012. He made an amazing sounding blueberry and limoncello tart from his upcoming book, John Whaite Bakes. 

Lastly, I managed to queue early enough to make it into a practical demonstration, in which I made a traditional bakewell tart under the watchful eye of food writer and chef Sean Bird. And they let me take it home!

I turned up to Cake International on my own and although it was strange to not have anyone to ooh and ahh at the gorgeous cakes with, it meant I could run around and do exactly what I wanted to do. I went to demonstrations, I met John Whaite, I baked a tart and I bought some more materials for this wonderful hobby of mine. The Cake & Bake show is coming up soon and Cake International is going to a couple more venues. Even if you've only got the slightest interest in cakes and baking, you should go. You'll see things that you'll probably never see again and it's a really cool and different day out. 

Now for Part Two! 

(You can't say I'm not good to you, lovelies).

I made homemade pizzas recently and I highly encourage you to try your hand at it. Obviously this is a little different to the things I have blogged about before but, trust me, you won't regret this one.

Ingredients:

- 650g strong white flour

- 7g sachet of dried yeast

- 2 tsp salt

- 25ml olive oil

- 50ml warm milk

- 325ml warm water

- noms to top it with

- Measure the flour into the bowl and add the salt onto one side and the yeast onto the other. This stops the salt from immediately denaturing the yeast.

- Stir in the olive oil and warm milk.

- Add the warm water in bit by bit until the mixture starts to come together as a dough. You ideally want it to be a little wet still when you begin to knead it, so don't add the water all at once. 

- Tip the dough out onto a well floured surface and begin to knead it. You can find a lot of information about kneading on Youtube if you need a visual to help, but I just think of it as pulling the dough in one direction and pressing it back into another. Keep doing this for 5-10 mins (yes! It needs that long) until it becomes smooth and elastic.

- Pop the dough back into the bowl and cover in cling film or a damp towel. Leave it in a warm-ish place for at least an hour - preferably 90 minutes if you can. It should double in size.

- After this time, take the dough out and knock it back. This essentially means knead it a little bit until all the precious built-up air is gone. Place it back into the bowl, cover and leave in the warm place for another 30-minutes to an hour.

- Prepare all your toppings. Obviously you should use whatever takes your fancy - as a basic guide you'll need some kind of tomato sauce (whether it's a tomato puree or a sauce from a jar or a homemade creation) and some cheese, but the rest is up to you! I used ham, mushrooms, peppers, mozzarella and chicken (not pictured)

- Preheat your oven to as high as it goes.

- Take a chunk of your dough (I halved mine because I'm greedy and like thick pizza doughs) and use a rolling pin to roll it into a vaguely circular shape. Mine was maybe a quarter of an inch thick.

- Top your base/s with the tomato sauce, cheese and then whatever wonderful array of ingredients you have lovingly put together and then shove it in the oven for 10-ish minutes until everything looks cooked/melted/crispy.

- Serve with a salad to pretend you just created a healthy meal and voila! an incredibly tasty meal that's way more fun than getting it straight from the supermarket!

A tip! To add to the fun times - if you're cooking for kids (or any big-kids), it's a really nice idea to get people to top their own pizzas. Lay out the rolled out dough, all the toppings and a big mountain of cheese and let everyone do the hard work!