Week 13 - Tarts: Blueberry Bakewell Tarts

This weeks recipe of the Blueberry Bakewell Tarts should be simpler to make compared to previous week's Stilton and Potato Pie which was quite laborious. These Bakewell Tarts are very tasty as my mother has made this recipe before so I am looking forward to trying my hand at making a batch.

The pastry

For the pastry I sifted 200g of plain flour into a bowl and then rubbed in using my fingertips 100g of chilled unsalted butter. Once the mixture looked like breadcrumbs I then stirred in 40g of icing sugar. The recipe said to add the beaten egg using a palette knife but I don't own a palette knife so I used a dinner knife instead which worked just as well. I mixed the egg with the dry ingredients until a ball of dough was formed.

The dough ball

I wrapped the dough in cling film and placed it into the fridge to chill. The recipe said to chill the dough for at least 30 minutes, but I had to teach a piano lesson so had to leave my dough in the fridge for about 3 hours.

Once I was able to continue with making the tarts, I removed the dough from the fridge and left it to soften slightly as it was quite hard from being chilled for several hours. The recipe said to roll out the dough between a sheet of grease proof paper and the cling film that it had been wrapped in. I found it quite hard to properly roll out the dough like this and had to apply quite a lot of pressure to the rolling pin so that the dough reached a thickness of 3mm.

The rolled out dough

As I was running short of time, I decided to cheat slightly in the method that I used to make the tart pastry cases. First I cut out 12 circles of pastry using my large round cutter. Then I slotted the circles into each hole in the greased muffin tray and gently pressed the dough down so that the base and sides of the tart case were created.

The 12 tart cases

The recipes method of cutting out individual pieces of pastry to make the sides and base of each tart case would have taken me much longer to do. Once I had finished putting in the circles, I put the tray into the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

The frangipane

To make the frangipane I put 55g of unsalted butter, 55g of caster sugar, 1 egg, 40g of ground almonds and 15g of plain flour into a bowl.  I mixed all of the ingredients together using my electric mixer until they were thoroughly combined.

The frangipane

Putting it all together

I first pricked the bottom of each pastry case with a fork and placed 1 teaspoon of  ready made blueberry jam into each tart case.

Tart cases with the added blueberry jam

Next I spooned the frangipane mixture over the blueberry jam until each tart case was filled to the top.

The tart cases filled with frangipane 

I placed the muffin tray into the preheated oven set to Gas Mark 3 and baked the tarts for 30 minutes until the frangipane had turned a golden color. Once baked, I left the tarts to cool for 10 minutes before removing them from the tray and placing them onto a wire rack.

The baked tarts

I mixed together the icing sugar with a little water so as to create a stiff paste and covered the top of each tart with the icing. For the final touch I topped each tart with one or two blueberries.

The finished Blueberry Bakewell Tarts

The verdict

The Blueberry Bakewell Tarts were truly delicious and so straight forward to make. The recipe said to only add 1/2 teaspoon of jam to each tart, but I'm glad I added 1 teaspoon as this made a good layer of jam underneath the frangipane. My family loved the tarts and they got gobbled up very quickly. I can definitely say I will be making the Blueberry Bakewell Tarts again.

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Palm Leaves and Almond Straws

Week 12 - Pies: Stilton, Potato and Caramelised Onion Pie

This week's blog has been somewhat delayed due to my 10 month old son and myself being unwell. The recipe for the Stilton, Potato and Caramelised Onion Pie looks quite complicated to make so fingers crossed that my pie will not turn out a complete disaster!!!

The pastry and filling

I sifted 200g of plain flour and 1/2 teaspoon of salt into a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl I mixed together 75g of butter with 75g of lard, using a fork until both fats were soft and blended together. I then spread out the fat along the bottom of the bowl and marked it into quarters using a knife.

The fat mixture marked into quarters

I cut one-quarter of the fat into small pieces and rubbed it into the flour using my fingertips. I added 1 1/2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar and 150ml of icy water to the flour and mixed all of the ingredients together using a table knife until a soft dough was formed.

The soft dough ball

I wrapped the dough ball in clingflim and put it into the fridge to chill for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes of chilling time, I put the dough on my floured kitchen work surface and pressed the pastry into a rectangle shape using my hands. The recipe then said to roll out the dough into a rectangle measuring 30 x 11cm, with a thickness of about 1cm.

The pastry rectangle

Using a table knife I dotted another quarter of the butter/lard mixture over the dough rectangle. I had to make sure that I left one short edge of the rectangle 3cms free of fat mixture.

The fat mixture dotted onto the pastry

I then folded the pastry into thirds like a business letter, wrapped it in clingfilm and chilled it for another 15 minutes.

The pastry folded like a business letter

While the pastry was chilling, I fried a chopped onion with 15g butter, salt and 1 tablespoon of caster sugar. The recipe said to fry the onions for about 15 minutes at a low heat so that they would caramelise.

The caramelised onions

After 15 minutes I took the dough out of the fridge and rolled it out to a rectangle shape with a 1cm thickness. I dotted another quarter of the butter/lard mixture on the dough and folded it up into thirds as before. I re-wrapped the dough in clingfilm and chilled for another 15 minutes.

Next I peeled and thinly sliced about 450g of potatoes and cooked them in boiling water for about 10 minutes until soft. I drained the water out of the pot and set the potatoes aside to cool.

I took the dough out of the fridge and repeated the steps of rolling out the dough into a rectangle shape, dotting it with a quarter of the fat and then finally folding the rectangle into three. This time I had to chill the dough for 30 minutes.

I crumbled 75g of Stilton into a bowl and mixed it with 75g of grated Gruyère cheese. In another bowl I grated 75g of mature Cheddar and mixed in 70ml of crème fraiche and 30ml of double cream. I love cheese but looking at the amount of cheese in each bowl does make me wonder if this pie is going to give me serious indigestion!!!!!

The next stage in the recipe was to layer all of the filling ingredients on top of each other in the pie dish. I started with a layer of potato on the bottom of the dish, then a layer of Stilton/Gruyere, a layer of double cream/Cheddar and finally some caramelised onions. Then I did another layer of potato followed by the rest of the cheese mixtures and the last bits of the onion. I finished off the pie filling with a final layer of potato on the top. I suddenly realised after all of my layering that I was meant to have seasoned each layer with nutmeg and pepper. However it was too late now so I just had to season the top of the filling with nutmeg and pepper and hope that it would still taste ok!!

The pie filling layers

For the pastry lid I first had to cut off 4 thin strips from the pastry rectangle. I rolled out the rest of the pastry until it was slightly larger than the shape of the pie dish. I brushed the rim of the pie with some beaten egg and stuck the 4 strips of pastry onto the rim.

The strips of pastry stuck onto the rim

I lifted up the rolled out pastry and laid it over the pie dish. To seal the pastry I pressed down the edges of the lid to the strips on the rim. I cut of the excess pastry around the sides making sure that there was a bit of an overhang over the rim of the dish. I brushed the pastry lid with more beaten egg and cut a cross into the middle so that the steam will be able escape while the pie is being cooked.

Ready for the oven

I placed my pie dish onto a baking tray and put it into the oven preheated to Gas Mark 7. I cooked the pie for about 35 minutes and then turned the oven down to Gas Mark 4 and continued cooking for a further 25 minutes until the pastry became a lovely golden crisp colour.

The baked pie

The verdict

I was pleased with how my finished Stilton, potato and caramelised pie turned out. The puff pastry lid was cooked to perfection as it was really crisp and flaky. The pie filling was tasty and thankfully the slight lack of nutmeg and pepper was not noticeably. However, even though the pie was very tasty I won't be making it again. My husband and I have decided to rename it "The Heart Attack Pie" due to the volume of cheese, fat and cream in the recipe as we both had severe tummy ache for the rest of the evening after eating the pie.

Next Week's Recipe:

Blueberry Bakewell Tarts

Delay to the Stilton, Potato and Caramelised blog

This weeks blog has been delayed due to me being ill this week. The write up on the Stilton, Potato and Caramelised Onion Pie should be out by the end of this week.

Week 11 - Bread: Cheese and Onion Tear and Share Loaf

Home made bread is one of my favorite foods as it tastes so much better then shop bought bread. I am hoping that my attempt at the Cheese and Onion Tear and Share Loaf will go as successfully as my previous bread recipe. As its just my husband and I who will be eating the bread, I will be making rolls instead of an entire loaf as then I can put what we don't eat into the freezer.

The mixture

I sifted 450g of strong bread flour into a bowl and mixed in the salt, sugar and yeast. I made a well in the centre of the flour and poured in 300ml of lukewarm water and 1 tablespoon of oil. I mixed all of the ingredients together, adding a little more water as the mixture was a little dry, until a soft dough had been formed. I covered the bowl with clingfilm and left it to rest for 10 minutes.

The soft dough

I placed the dough onto my floured kitchen work surface and kneaded the dough for 5 minutes. I used stretching and gathering-back movements to knead the dough which I learnt to do from the previous bread recipe in the "How to Bake" book. I placed the kneaded dough into a large oiled bowl and covered it with oiled clingfilm. I then placed the dough in my airing cupboard and left it to rise for an hour.

The dough ball covered with oiled clingfilm

Once the dough had risen to double its size, I punched it down and kneaded the dough for a few minutes until it became smooth.

The risen dough

As I was making rolls and not a 'tear and share' loaf, I split my dough into 7 pieces instead of 19 like the recipe instructed. I flattened out each of the 7 dough pieces so that they looked like mini pizza bases.

The flattened dough pieces

I then fried the thinly sliced onion until soft and grated 120g of cheddar into a bowl. I put the onion and some of the grated cheese into the middle of each flattened piece and folded up the dough around the filling.

The onion and cheese filling

I pinched the top of each dough ball so as to create a seal over the filling. I lined a baking tray with baking paper and arranged the dough balls seam-side down on the tray making sure that there was enough space between each roll.

The filled dough balls

The recipe said to cover the dough with a large upturned roasting tin. However I had to cover my dough with clingfilm as I don't own a large roasting tin. I put the baking tray into the airing cupboard and left the rolls to rise for 40 minutes. 10 minutes before I took the dough out of the airing cupboard, I preheated the oven to Gas Mark 5.

The risen rolls

I sprinkled some more of the grated cheese over the rolls and baked them in the oven for 25 minutes until golden brown.

Ready for the oven

The baked rolls

I rotated the baking tray after 15 minutes of baking so as to make sure that the rolls were evenly browned.

The verdict

My rolls had a good light, spongy texture and the cheese and onion filling made the bread extremely tasty!! After eating one of the cheese and onion rolls my husband declared that "it was amazing in the most stunning way".

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Stilton, Potato and Caramelised Onion Pie

Week 10: Biscuits - Walnut Crumbles

This week I am going to make Walnut Crumble biscuits which is going to be a completely new recipe for me. I had never heard of Walnut Crumbles before and I did a search in Google to see if there were any other Walnut Crumble biscuit recipes and nothing came up.  The recipe looks very simple so it will be interesting to see how these biscuits turn out.

The mixture

First I beat the softened butter with the caster and demerara sugar using a wooden spoon until the mixture became soft and smooth.

The sugar-butter mixture

In a separate small bowl I beat the 1 egg with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract and then added it to the butter-sugar mixture. I sifted 250g of self-rising flour into the bowl and gently mixed all of the ingredients together.

The combined ingredients

The final step was to fold 85g of chopped walnuts into the mixture.

The final walnut mixture

I lined two baking trays with baking paper and rolled small amounts of the mixture into balls. I put 12 balls of mixture onto each tray, placing them far enough apart so that the biscuits would have space to spread out while being baked. I gently flattened down each ball with a fork and sprinkled chopped walnuts over the top of each biscuit.

The biscuits ready for the oven

I put the trays into a preheated oven set to Gas Mark 4 and baked them for 10 minutes until the biscuits became a light golden colour.
Once I removed the biscuits from the oven I left them to firm up on the baking tray for a few minutes before transferring them onto a wire rack.  My first set of biscuits were rather bite size, so for my next batch of Walnut Crumbles I made sure the mixture balls were a bit bigger.

The baked Walnut Crumbles

The verdict

These very simple biscuits were truly delightful and tasted like shortbread just with added walnuts. This week it was a nice change to make a recipe that did not require many of hours  of work in the kitchen as the Walnut Crumbles only took me about 30 minutes to whip up. These biscuits were a big hit with my family and got polished off very quickly as they were rather addictive!!!

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Cheese and Onion Tear and Share Loaf

Week 9 - Cakes: Coffee and Walnut Battenburg

The start of my blog for 2013 has been some what hindered by my 9 month old son tipping an entire cup of coffee over the laptop which killed it instantly. However I am now up and running again a few weeks later then planned and ready to take on my next set of baking challenges.

The first recipe that I have to make for 2013 from the "How to Bake" book is a Coffee and Walnut Battenburg cake. After baking so many things at Christmas that required mixed dried fruit its going to be a nice change this week to make a sponge cake.
I am not a fan of the white and pink version of the Battenburg cake that you find in the supermarket so I'm hoping that the "How to Bake" recipe will alter my low opinion of this cake.

The mixture

The first thing that the recipe instructed me to do was to prepare the cake tin as I had to split the tin into two separate halves using baking paper. I cut out a rectangle of paper that was 20cm by 28cm and put this into the tin as the lining. I then pinched up the paper in the middle of the tin which created a pleat about 4cm in height which will act as the divider between the vanilla and coffee-walnut sponge mixtures.

Compared to a Victoria Sponge cake, the Battenburg cake mixture is very simply to make because all I had to was put the butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder and ground almonds into the mixing bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until all the ingredients were combined. To make the separate sponges, I split the cake mixture into two, putting one half of the mixture into another bowl. For the vanilla sponge I added a few drops of vanilla essence and 1 1/2 half teaspoons of milk to one of the bowls of mixture. To the other bowl, I added the ground coffee, mixed with 1 1/2 half teaspoons of milk and chopped walnuts.

The vanilla sponge and the coffee-walnut sponge

I then spooned the coffee and walnut mixture into one half of the cake tin and the vanilla mixture into the other half.  I had to make sure that my pleat of paper that divided the two mixtures was straight and in the middle of the tin so as to ensure that the sponges would end up roughly the same size.

The two sponges ready for the oven

I baked my cake at Gas Mark 3 in the oven for 40 minutes until the sponges were springy to the touch and had shrunk away from the sides of the tin. Thomas awoke from his nap not long after I took the cake out of the oven so I was not able to continue with the next step of the recipe until a few hours later.

The baked cake

Once the two sponges were removed from the tin, I trimmed off any rough edges with a sharp knife and cut each sponge lengthways into two equal strips.

The strips of sponges

I then had to make the butter icing that would join each strip of sponge together to create the chequerboard effect. In a cup I mixed together 1/2 a teaspoon of coffee granules with 1 1/2 teaspoons of milk until all of the coffee had dissolved. I added this coffee mixture to the icing sugar and butter in the mixing bowl and beat the ingredients together until a smooth mixture was created.

To create the cake I put a vanilla sponge strip next to a coffee-walnut strip and stuck them together using some of the butter icing. I spread some more of the icing on top of the two strips and stuck the remaining two strips on top. Now that the cake was assembled, I covered the top of the sponge with more of the icing in readiness to be covered in marzipan.  My vanilla sponge had not risen as high as the coffee-walnut sponge which caused my assembled cake to become lopsided on one side!!!

The assembled cake

I rolled out the marzipan to a rectangle shape that was the length of my cake and wide enough to wrap around the whole cake. First I laid the iced side of the cake on one of the ends of the marzipan and then covered the other three sides of the cake with the remaining icing. I rolled the cake over in the marzipan, gently pressing down as it turned so that the marzipan stuck to the cake.

The lopsided cake in marzipan

I trimmed the marzipan where the two ends met to create a neat join and turned the cake over so that the join was underneath. Next the recipe instructed me to trim a small slice of each end of the cake to neaten it and show off the chequerboard effect. As I had rather a lot f marzipan left, I decided to decorate the top of the cake with small marzipan balls instead of walnut pieces as the recipe says. For the finishing touches, I crimped the edges of the marzipan along the top with my fingers and dusted the cake with icing sugar.

My finished Battenburg cake

The verdict
The "How to Bake" version of this cake completely won me over and I shall be adding this Battenburg cake to my list of recipes that I want to make again. This delightfully light and tasty cake is the perfect partner with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

Next Week's Baking Challenge:

Biscuits: Walnut Crumbles

Week 8 - Celebration Cakes: Fruit Cake

For this week's baking challenge I am making my favourite cake, the Fruit Cake. The cake will have about a week and a half to mature before I cover it in marzipan and icing in readiness to be eaten for Christmas. For the last few years I have religiously used the same fruit cake recipe, so lets see if the "How to Bake" recipe can trump my old recipe.

Preparation of the cake tin

The first task I had to do before making the cake mixture was to prepare the cake tin . The "How to Bake" book says that its important to do this step properly otherwise the cake may turn out wrinkled or dry with burnt edges and an undercooked centre. Previously I have had problems with the tops of my fruit cake being overcooked and slightly burnt and I think this is because there was no real method as to how I lined my cake tin.

I had to cut out two rounds of greaseproof paper slightly smaller then the cake tin's base. Then I cut a long strip of greaseproof paper that had to be 5cms higher then the rim of the tin and long enough to go around its circumference. I folded the strip in half so as to double its thickness and made snips diagonally up along the bottom of the paper at intervals of about 1cm.

To line the tin I put one of the paper rounds into the base of the tin and placed the strip of paper along the inside of the tin. I greased the base and the snipped edges of paper with some melted butter. On top of  the base I put the second round of paper and also greased this with butter. Finally my tin was ready for the cake mixture.

My prepared tin

The cake mixture

I had to toast the almonds in the oven at Gas Mark 4 for 5 minutes until lightly browned in colour. The recipe said to use whole blanched almonds and then chop them up after roasting, but I just used ready chopped almonds as this it what I had in my kitchen cupboard. I did not have quite enough chopped almonds to make 100g so I had to make up the difference with some flaked almonds.

Toasted almonds

In a large bowl  I stirred together the 750g of mixed dried fruit and glacé cherries with a tablespoon of flour to separate out any clumps in the fruit. Once the almonds were toasted I added them to the dried fruit.

The mixed dried fruit and almonds

 In a separate bowl I had to beat 250g of butter with a wooden spoon until it became creamy.  The recipe said to use butter that had been softened but I had forgotten to get my butter out of the fridge before I started the fruit cake. As I did not have time to wait for the hard lump of butter to soften, I enlisted the help of the microwave to heat up my butter to the required temperature.

To the creamed butter I added 250g of dark muscovado sugar which had to be sieved as it was so lumpy. In fact some of the sugar lumps were so hard that they were impossible to break up. I tried heating the sugar with some of the creamed butter in the microwave to try and soften the lumps. This did help a little bit but I still could not get rid of all of the sugar lumps so I just had to add them to the creamed butter and hope that they would dissolve once the cake was cooked!!!

Next the recipe said to add the 4 beaten eggs a tablespoon at a time to the butter mixture. I have to admit that I did not follow this painstaking instruction of putting a tablespoon of egg into the bowl at a time. Instead  I added my beaten egg  in three stages to the mixture, beating the mixture well after each addition. I sifted the flour and mixed spice onto the egg mixture and gently folded it in with a large metal spoon along with 50g of ground almonds. Lastly I added the dried fruit and 5 tablespoons of brandy to the bowl. Once all of the  ingredients had been combined, I spooned the mixture into the prepared cake tin.

The finished mixture

The mixture in the cake tin

Before I could put the cake tin into the oven there was one final step that had to be done. I had to line a baking tray with several folded sheets of newspaper before setting the cake tin upon it. Then I had to wrap the outside of the cake tin in newspaper and secure it in place with some string. Now I could finally put my cake into the oven.

The tin wrapped in newspaper

It took 4 hours at Gas Mark 2 for my cake to reach a lovely golden brown colour and it really did pay off to prepare the tin properly with the greaseproof paper and newspaper as the top of the cake did not overcook.

I left the cake to cool completely before removing the tin and the greaseproof paper. Using a fork I pricked the base and the top of the cake and then trickled over 3 tablespoons of brandy, first over the base and then over the top. So that the cake could mature for a week, I wrapped it in fresh greaseproof paper and foil and stored it in a airtight cake tin.

The baked fruit cake

The verdict

The fruit cake smells amazing but I have to control myself from eating it now as the cake has to be fully iced and decorated for Christmas. So I will only be able to tell in a week and a half's time if the "How to Bake" recipe is better then my old trusty fruit cake recipe. I am very impressed though that I have managed to produce a fruit cake that has not come out of the oven with a thick, overcooked crust. From now on I will always prepare my cake tin like the "How to Bake" book instructs as this is certainly the key to success when baking a  fruit cake.

NOTE:

Due to the amount of baking required for Christmas, I am taking a break from the Bake Off Recipes until after Christmas