Week 43 – Rosemary and Sea Salt Focaccia

As promised I continued the bread making this week by making a flavoured focaccia (definition: “a flat oven-baked Italian bread which may be topped with herbs or other ingredients” Thank you Wikipedia!).

During our lovely visit to the Isle of Skye we visited one of the most expensive restaurants I think I have ever been to, The Three Chimneys. It came highly recommended from lots of friends /work colleagues who had visited it and it didn’t disappoint, the food was really delicious! We really enjoyed it as a special treat but two things reminded us that it wasn’t our usual sort of place... Firstly a cup of tea cost £4.50!!!! Now I LOVE tea, anyone who knows me knows that I can’t get enough of the stuff but seriously it’s just hot water and a few leaves!! Secondly, and the real icing on the cake, was when six Russian diners arrived by helicopter for their meal, yes that’s right by helicopter. They landed on a makeshift grass helipad right outside the front door of the restaurant! We were so surprised that we asked the waiter if this happened often, his response “Oh yes sir, we have guests arrive by helicopter about once a month”.

Well we knew we were out of our league and wouldn’t be eating in places like that again anytime soon so we took full advantage of the three course menu and accompanying artisan bread, hand-churned butter and tablet with my tea. One thing we particularly enjoyed was the bread they offered us. We both loved their rosemary and sea salt rolls so I thought I would give something similar a go this week for my bake. I went for this recipe by Lorraine Pascale which comes from her Baking Made Easy series so I thought it would be a safe, easy choice for my second attempt at bread.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/rosemary_and_sea_salt_12392

Ingredients

• 500g/1lb 2oz strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 x 7g/⅛oz sachet fast-action dried yeast
• 80ml/3fl oz olive oil, plus extra for drizzling (I only had extra virgin olive oil in the house so just used it but I’m not sure if this might have affected the bake and change the consistency of the dough)
• 150-250ml/5-9fl oz warm water (I mixed a little bit of boiling water with cold for this, I think it might have been a bit more like hot rather than warm water which I think might have affected the yeast because the dough didn’t rise as much as I would have expected)
• vegetable oil or oil spray, for oiling
• 1 bunch fresh rosemary (freshly picked from our garden! This was super exciting for me because I think it’s the first time I have ever cooked/baked with something we had grown in our own garden)
• large pinch sea salt

Method

1. Dust a large flat baking tray with flour.
2. Put the flour into a large bowl, add the salt and yeast, then add the olive oil, plus enough warm water to make a soft but not sticky dough. The dough should feel quite loose and not tight and difficult to knead (my dough was a bit tough, I’m not sure if that was because of the oil or the hot water). If the whole amount is added it may appear that the dough is beyond repair, but gently kneading by way of scooping up the dough, scraping any sticky bits on the surface and slapping it back down again for a few minutes will see the dough begin to become ‘pillowy’ and more manageable. The more water that can be added (the full 250ml/9fl oz is great) then the lighter the bread will be. But it can take some perseverance. Also resist the temptation to add more flour as it will make the dough too heavy.
3. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes by hand on a lightly floured work surface (serious muscles required) or for five minutes if using an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. The dough will feel stretchy when pulled. To test if it is ready, make a ball with the dough then, using a well-floured finger, prod a shallow indent in the side (no more than ¾cm/¼in). If the indent disappears by way of the dough springing back then it is ready to shape. If the indent stays, knead for a few minutes longer.
4. Shape the dough into an oval and place it on the prepared baking tray. Flatten it out to about 30cm/12in long and 20cm/8in wide. Cover the dough loosely with oiled clingfilm, making sure it is airtight (I’m not sure I got the right balance between being airtight and loose??).
   
5. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.
6. Leave the dough in a warm place for about an hour, or until it has almost doubled in size (my dough did rise but I’m not sure it quite doubled in size). With a floured index finger press holes in the dough at regular intervals, about 4cm/1½in apart in rows across the dough, pressing right down to the bottom. Cut 3cm/1¼in sprigs of the rosemary and push them into the holes. Sprinkle some sea salt over the dough and place in the top third of the oven. Bake for about 25–30 minutes, or until the bread is well risen, pale golden-brown and feels hollow when tapped underneath.
7. Remove from the oven, drizzle with the remaining olive oil and leave to cool on the baking tray.

The foccacia looked right and had a tasty flavour but I think it was a bit heavy for a foccacia (not that I have eaten that many of them but it seems like it should be lighter!). I think next time I should be a bit more careful with the temperature of the water and use exactly the right oil to see if that helps make it a little bit lighter and fluffier. Anyway, we will still be tucking into it tonight before dinner with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in.

I'm glad I tried making another bread, it is fun to work with the dough and to make something savoury for a change. While I was away I bought the Hummingbird Bakery ‘Cake Days’ cookbook so I will probably be back to the sweet cake and buns next week.

Happy baking x Linds x

P.S I also made my third Free Cakes for Kids bake, a handbag cake for Caitlin. After I dropped it off with her mum I had a wee teary moment, it really is emotional delivering these cakes to children’s homes. It just reminded me how much of a difference such a simple thing as a cake is making to these children. 

Week 42 - The humble white loaf

After watching many many episodes of The Great British Bake Off, listening to Paul Hollywood comment on loaves, baps and baguettes I thought it was about time that I tried my hand at making a proper loaf. Now I have made bread before, in week 31 I made Beer Bread which was GREAT but a bit of a cheat because it didn’t use yeast and also didn’t require kneading. 

This past weekend I started a week long holiday in the Scottish Highlands with my better half Dave. This meant that my usual baking time at the weekend went out of the window with having to pack, tidying the house and then heading off on our road trip/mini break up north. Luckily we booked a self catering holiday cottage on the Isle of Skye so I decided to pack my scale and loaf tin and bring the baking challenge on holiday.

This morning I was up before the sun to start the task of making a classic white loaf before we headed out for a day of touristing. I searched online and found several variations to the plain white loaf but decided to stick to the reliable BBC Good Food website for my first proper venture into the world of yeast, proving and knocking back. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2060/easy-white-bread

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 2 tsp salt
• 7g sachet fast-action yeast
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 300ml water

Method

1. Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl (I found a tip online which said you should put the salt and yeast at opposite sides of the bowl when you start mixing because the salt can kill the yeast. I don’t know if it really makes a difference but I gave it a go). Make a well in the centre, then add the oil and water, and mix well. If the dough seems a little stiff, add 1-2 tbsp water, mix well then tip onto a lightly floured work surface and knead. I had a look at some YouTube videos of kneading techniques to help get me started, there are LOADS on there and it was super helpful to actually see how to work the dough.
2. Once the dough is satin-smooth (no idea what this means! After a bit more googling I decided to knead the dough for about 10 minutes.  Paul Hollywood and Jamie Oliver both have recipes suggesting 8-10 minutes of kneading so I just went with that and hoped for the best. I will have to work on my biceps before I make bread again, you really do need some guns to properly knead for 10 minutes straight) place it in a lightly oiled bowl (I had to improvise a little as the holiday cottage doesn’t quite come with a full set of baking equipment so I just used a roasting tin and covered it with a plastic microwave protector dish and cling film instead of using a bowl).
3. Leave to rise for 1 hour until doubled in size or place in the fridge overnight. This is the first of two proving stages where you leave the bread to think about becoming a loaf and let the magic scientific bit work on making the dough rise.
4. Line a baking tray with baking parchment. Knock back the dough, then gently mould the dough into a ball (I decided to use a loaf tin instead of doing the freestyle shape on a baking tray). Place it on the baking parchment to prove for a further hour until doubled in size.
5. Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Dust the loaf with flour and cut a cross about 6cm long into the top of the loaf with a sharp knife. Bake for 25-30 mins (my loaf was in for more like 40 minutes because I don’t think the oven was quite hot enough and I purposefully left it a bit longer to make sure it was cooked all the way through) until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Cool on a wire rack.

Transforming the dough into the loaf

As you can see from the photos the loaf came up lovely. It is super crusty but has a nice texture, especially when you toast it. The only thing I would say is that it’s a tiny bit bland, I think it could do with either some more salt or a little bit of sugar (lots of bread recipes seem to add a bit of sugar).

Overall I would have to say I really enjoyed making bread, the only thing is you have to be really patient, something which isn’t really my strong point. Even though the mixing and kneading only took about 15-20 minutes the 2 hours of proving with a bit of knocking back (not in the dating sense, its just when you knead the dough again to get rid of all the air from the first proving stage) in the middle was a bit of a drag. Thankfully I am on holiday so have all the time in the world which is a novelty but if I was doing this as a normal weekend bake I might try the overnight method to save hanging around watching the dough rise for two hours.

The view from the cottage helped to pass the time while the bread was proving.

Arty bread shot!

Now that I am over the first hurdle of making bread I might just try a different type of loaf for week 43’s bake as well, maybe something flavoured......uuummmm decisions decisions!!

I will keep you all posted, happy baking x Linds x

Week 41 - Cake Pops!

This week I was lucky enough to receive expert tuition for my bake, from a certified teacher no less! My friend Karlie came round to teach me how to make cake pops, now she is a teacher, a Primary School teacher rather than a cookery or baking teacher, but she does have bags of patience and a very official sounding teacher voice so I was convinced by everything she said!

Karlie went to a cake pop tutorial at an Edinburgh bakery a few weeks ago so she came fully equipped with the skills and knowledge to teach me and my friend Rebecca how to Pop!

I volunteered to provide the cake and Karlie provided the toppings/decorations and cake pop sticks. I was advised (by Karlie and a bit of Googling) to bake vanilla/Victoria sponge as the cake base because the toppings would add lots of flavour and sweetness. I also had to make a batch of butter cream to act as the binding agent. For this I used my reliable Vicky songs recipe (see Week 36) which came up a treat as always. We were then led through a step by step process by the cake pop master, which is summarised below.

1) Bake cakes and leave to cool

2) Once cooled crumble cake into a fine breadcrumb texture. We did this with our hands but if you have a good processor you could give it a quick whizz in that instead to save a bit of time.

3) Mix small amounts (we did it about half a tablespoon at a time) of butter cream into the crumb mix to make a sticky consistency.

4) Once the cake is sticky enough to form a small ball that's doesn’t break when rolled between your hands (see photo). This means the cake is then ready to form the pops. Roll the crumb mixture into small golf ball sized balls and place on a lined baking tray. Our standard Vicky sponge made our 21 cake pops (we only had 21 sticks!) with a bit of cake left over to snack on so I think it would probably be perfect to make a batch of 24.

5) Dip the cake pop sticks in a small amount of melted chocolate and push into the cake balls. We were carefully instructed by Karlie to push the stick almost all the way down through the cake to ensure its stable.

6) Place the cake pops in the freezer for 20 mins to harden.

7) Once the cake has hardened they are ready to decorate... this is when the fun really started!

8) Melt the chocolate and leave it to cool slightly before starting to drip the pops. Dip one pop at a time in milk/white chocolate and then immediately decorate with sprinkles/popping candy/chocolate stars or anything you like.

9) Leave to dry in a cake pop rack, or create a makeshift one from a large shoe box like we did!

10) Sit back, make a brew and wait for them to dry.

11) Tuck in!!

We had a great time! We even let the husbands get in on the decorating action after their round of golf. We all had a great time, I think it would be super fun to do with kids (as you can see some of our efforts look like they were in fact done by small children), if a bit messy. 

The white chocolate was better to dip with because it dried quickly but it did make for a very sweet cake pop once you added surgery, e-number filled sprinkles on top too. It might be better to try with dark chocolate and see how well it dries and it might give a better sweet/bitter ratio.

I have heard of an alternative method of making cake pops where you pour the cake batter straight into a special round ball-shaped baking mould. Our method of crumbling the cakes makes for quite dense, heavy cake pops so it would be good to see what the pops would be like if you made them in a mould. It might just make them a bit lighter so you could eat more of them in one sitting!!

Anyway, I felt like it was an all round success but I will have to leave it down to the teacher to grade our work... Mrs Gray please let us know how we did... fingers crossed its A+’s for the whole class!

Happy baking x Linds x

Week 40 Malteser and Mint Aero Traybakes

After a wonderfully relaxing long weekend away for our anniversary I had to come home and get straight back to the baking, no rest for the wicked as they say! One of my work colleagues Ruari was leaving and I had said I would make him a leaving bake. His favourite is the traditional Victoria sponge which was easy but wasn’t going to fulfil my need for a new bake for the week or feed the masses of work chums who had come to wave him off.  I needed something else that I could make quickly, easily and in bulk... step forward the traybake! You have got to love a traybake, they are super easy because you don’t actually have to do any baking at all, just some melting, mixing and chilling, perfect for a bunch of hungry workers. After some searching on Pinterest I decided to do two batches;

Malteser tray bake

http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/malteser-traybake-393

Ingredients

• 100 grams butter
• 200 grams milk chocolate
• 3 tablespoons golden syrup
• 225 grams digestive biscuits (finely crushed)
• 225 grams Maltesers
• 200g white chocolate – I added this for a final topping layer

Method

1. Melt together the butter, chocolate and syrup then add the crushed biscuits and the Maltesers.
2. Mix together quickly then pour into a lined Swiss roll tin and chill until set (DEFINITELY make sure you line the tin or it can be a pain to get out of a cold tin. If you have line it you can just lift the whole try bake out at once and cut it on a chopping board). This only takes a couple of hours which is great and it’s actually easier to cut after a short chill, before it gets really really cold.
3. For a special occasion drizzle with some melted white chocolate. I felt the tray bake looked a bit unfinished so I covered the whole of the top with a layer of white chocolate, it took about 150-200g’s.

Mint aero tray bake

http://cookiescakesandbakes.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/aero-bubble-traybake/

Ingredients

• 100g Butter
• 200g Milk chocolate (I used 100g milk chocolate and 100g of the mint Aero chocolate bars for extra mintiness)
• 3tbsp golden syrup
• 225g Finely crushed digestive biscuits
• 225g Aero Bubbles
• 100g Melted milk or white chocolate (optional) (controversially, and very unlike me for my baking I chose to use dark chocolate for the top! The only time I really like dark chocolate is when it’s paired with mint... don’t leave me alone with a box of After Eight mints, it’s dangerous!)

  Method

1. In a large pan, slowly melt together the butter, chocolate and syrup then add the crushed biscuits and the Aero bubbles.
2. Stir together quickly then pour into a lined Swiss roll tin (DEFINITELY make sure you line the tin or it can be a pain to get out of a cold tin. If you have line it you can just lift the whole try bake out at once and cut it on a chopping board).  Using a wooden spoon, flatten it out as level as you can.  
3. If using, melt the milk or white chocolate (dark for me) and drizzle over the traybake. Chill until set. Cut into squares and watch it disappear! They really did disappear so if in doubt make double!!

After they went down so well for Ruari’s leaving do I thought I would make another Malteser batch for my friend Karlie’s birthday and I must admit while this is a super easy recipe and I have now been baking for 40 weeks, it doesn’t always go to plan!! I was rushing and trying to do far too many things at once and managed to burn all the chocolate and butter to the bottom of the pan!! It took about 4 hours of soaking and 3 attempts to scrub it off! Needless to say I had to throw it out and start again, slightly winging it because I didn’t quite have all the right ingredients left but it came together. Karlie said she enjoyed it so things worked out alright.

Moral of the story, I will make mistakes and get it wrong, but it is just baking!!! Worse things happen at sea as they say so just start again or sack it (I think that’s maybe a Scottish term, it just means give it up) and have a brew instead!

Happy eating x Linds x

Week 39 - Teisen Cariad (Love Cake)

This past weekend was a momentous one life wise and baking wise, it was my first wedding anniversary and I reached a baking milestone, I made pastry! Woopwoop!! On the 29^th of September 2012 I was lucky enough to marry my best buddy, in front of our wonderful friends and family, who had travelled from all around the world to celebrate with us in one of our favourite towns in the world; St Andrews in Scotland. This week I wanted to bake something to celebrate our anniversary and remind us of our special day. I was inspired by the Courting Cake as featured on the first week of this year’s series of the Great British Bake Off. http://www.lancashirelife.co.uk/food-drink/the_history_of_the_courting_cake_a_lancashire_tradition_1_1645135

You can read more about it in the article but basically ladies in Lancashire traditionally made a Courting Cake (a combination of Victoria sponge and shortbread with fresh strawberries and cream) as a token of love and affection for the man they were betrothed to. Well I thought that seeing as that ship had kind of already sailed I would look around to see if I could find any anniversary cake ideas, when I stumbled upon the Welsh Teisen Cariad or Love Cake which seemed to fit the bill.

http://recipewise.co.uk/teisen-cariad-love-cake

“Teisen Cariad is a traditional Welsh recipe for a ‘Love Cake’ a light apple and sponge cake – apples being the traditional symbol of love and desire in Celtic lands. Connla in Celtic mythology receives an apple which feeds him for a year, but each bite also gives him an irresistible desire to go off to the immortal lands with the beautiful and magical woman of the Faerie, who gave him the apple. In this, as well as many other cultures, and in many forms of art, the apple is often used as a symbol of love and sexuality.

In Wales ‘Teisen Cariad’ was baked for a special person, at valentines, or for weddings. It is a simple apple cake held in a thin shell of sweet, buttery, pastry. Served with a little whipped cream this cake is quite delightful”

Ingredients

Apple Puree

• 500g apples
• 50g sugar (as a guess I went for golden caster sugar)
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Sponge

• 85g caster sugar
• 85g butter (softened)
• 2 eggs
• 115g flour (as a guess I went for self raising flour)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 lemon (finely grated rind)

Shortcrust pastry

• 225g flour ( as a guess I went for plain flour)
• 115g butter
• 115g caster sugar
• a little milk
• lemon zest (finely grated rind from 1/4 lemon)

Icing

• a little lemon juice (1/4 tsp)
• a little water (1/4 tsp)
• 70g icing sugar

To serve

• 1 tbsp strawberry jam
• a heart shaped cutter
• 75 ml double (thick) cream (whipped lightly to serve)

Method

• Peel, core and slice the apples, put them into a saucepan with the 50g sugar and a little water. Stew the apples until they become soft (I had no idea how long this would take... I think it took about 20 minutes on a medium low heat in the end), then add the ground cinnamon and mix it in. Use the back of a spoon and push the stewed apples through a fine mesh sieve to make a puree (I tried to do this and while it did make a nice smooth purée it took AGES!! So I in the end I gave up and just mixed the rest of the apples into the purée because really life is too short and who is going to notice a slightly chunky apple! Also, I guess you could probably do this with a hand blender instead).
• Make the pastry by rubbing the softened butter into the flour, add the sugar, grated lemon zest, and mix with a little milk until a stiff paste is made which can be rolled out. Cover the pastry and chill in the fridge for twenty minutes, then roll out the pastry quite thinly.
• Line a buttered, shallow 20cm cake tin with the rolled out pastry (bottom and sides of the tin). Spread the cooled apple puree all over the bottom of the tin on the pastry base. (I really debated about baking the pastry on its own first - or ‘blind’ as it’s called in the baking world - before adding the apples, I really didn’t want to have a soggy bottom! But having never made pastry before I thought I’d better just stick to the recipe and hope for the best).
• In a mixing bowl cream the butter and caster sugar and grated lemon rind from the rest of the lemon, until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and lastly fold in the flour and baking powder. Spread this batter mixture carefully over the apples.
• Bake at 190C for 35 minutes (I baked the cake for quite a bit longer, more like 50-55 minutes, I just wanted to make sure to bake the crust properly), until the cake is springy but not dry – test it by inserting a skewer and see if it comes out clean. Take the cake out of the oven, (the sponge will continue to cook for a few minutes) and allow to cool. In a bowl blend the icing sugar with a little lemon juice and water to make an icing. Take the cake out of the tin and spread the thin icing over the top of the cake while it is still gently warm. Let this icing cool and set.
• Take a heart shaped object, like a cookie cutter, place this on the cake and dab in a little strawberry jam to make the heart shape.
• Serve slices of the cake with a spoonful of whipped cream.

Now as you will see that the recipe isn’t super detailed so it ended up being like my own mini Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge where they leave out some of the details to test you. This was a bit of challenge but I got through it and I conquered my fear of pastry which I think is a major win. I decided to approach it like riding a horse, I think someone told me once that they can sense fear so you just need to relax when you are riding so I did that with the pastry and just went with it. And you will be very pleased to hear that there wasn’t a soggy bottom in sight and the love cake was super tasty.

The Teisen Cariad was the perfect accompaniment to our anniversary celebrations and I would highly recommend it if you are looking to make someone a special treat to remind them of how much you love and care for them.

Happy anniversary to my lovely husband Dave. I also want to say a big thank you to all our friends and family for their cards, gifts, messages, love, support and hugs we are incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so much love, and now so much love cake!!

Happy baking xx Linds xx