Bake off!

I'm home for the break, and we're having a whole roast suckling pig! The only trouble is, we don't have any nice fresh bread. So my brother, my mum and I had a bread bakeoff - I made up double quantities of the standard bread mixture and which we split three ways and each kneaded our own dough. We'll see who makes the best loaf!

Here are (from left to right) Andrew's loaf, mum's loaf and my loaf, ready for the oven.And now, straight from the oven (Left to right: Mine, Andrew's, mum's).They all look rather good, but that doesn't answer the big question: Who bakes the best loaf? Well, mum's was a bit denser and heavier than the other two, so that was eliminated from the running fairly quickly, but mine and Andrew's were pretty much neck and neck. I think my loaf won by a whisker - it had a slightly better, chewy texture in the middle, and the crusts were virtually indistinguishable - but it won only by the narrowest of margins. But most importantly, all three loaves were much, much better than any mass-produced loaf of bread!

Just another batch of cookies

I met up with Helen for dinner earlier and we decided that we weren't overwhelmed by the dessert options. So instead, I baked a batch of cookies. Same recipe as ever.

Verdict: Lebkuchen

It's really tricky baking with the crappy college ovens. There's no real indication of the actual oven temperature and the fact that everything's half-baked and half-grilled really makes things difficult. That's my excuse anyway - the Lebkuchen were really overcooked. They should be soft, but mine mostly came out crunchy. Not bad, but not quite what I was hoping for. The taste is actually pretty good - I initially thought that the spice balance wasn't quite right, but actually the more I eat, the more I think that it's actually pretty close to the real thing. And the few which did end up soft and chewy really do taste a lot like Lebkuchen are supposed to taste. I'm undecided as to whether I prefer the iced ones or the plain ones; it does work well either way. I'm pretty pleased with this really - they're really good especially when you consider how easy they are - I'll have to try baking it again sometime when I have a better oven available!

Lebkuchen

It's getting near Christmas, and what would Christmas be without Lebkuchen? Time to get baking! This recipe is largely based on this one, but with a few minor tweaks here and there (chiefly, I've replaced the cardamom with nutmeg and also made a few other changes to make the ingredients easier to obtain in the UK).

Lebkuchen
Ingredients

• 4 Eggs
• 200g Sugar
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 1tsp Lemon juice
  
• 1 1/2tsp Cinnamon
• 1tsp Cloves
• 1tsp Allspice
• 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
• 200g Ground almonds
• 125g Mixed peel
• 250g Plain flour
• 2tsp Baking powder

Method

1. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together.
2. Add all the remaining ingredients, combining to form a dough.
3. Shape into portions roughly 10mm thick and bake at ~180C for 15-20 mins.
4. Allow to cool. Cover with melted chocolate, icing or icing sugar if desired.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, as it turns out, it is mostly - the hardest part is shaping the dough into biscuits for baking, as it's so sticky. Here's the dough.
After a bit of struggling with the stickiness, eventually it looks like this when ready for the oven. I was expecting them to merge into one giant Lebkuchen.And straight from the oven. They didn't spread out very much in the end!I iced some of them with a plain icing. I think they look pretty good overall!

Marbles...

I'm off kayaking this weekend, and I thought I'd try to ingratiate myself in advance to the people who will probably end up spending large chunks of their weekend pulling me out of the river. And what better way than by baking cake? It's got to be quick and easy though, so I've gone for a marble cake, taking the recipe out of The Baker.

Marble Cake

Ingredients

• 185g Butter
• 230g Caster sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 280g Plain flour
• 3tsp Baking powder
• 185ml Milk
• 2tbsp Cocoa powder

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Beat in the eggs and vanilla extract.
3. Fold in the flour, baking powder and milk, alternating additions of dry ingredients with the milk.
4. Divide the batter in two. Beat the cocoa powder in a bowl with a little milk to form a paste and add to half of the batter, combining thoroughly.
5. Spoon the batter into a greased 1lb loaf tin, alternating spoonfuls of light and dark batter.
6. Draw a skewer through the batter a few times to create the marbling.
7. Bake at 180C for 40-60 minutes until cooked through.

Here's the cake in the tin (end of step 5).

And after marbling (end of step 6).

It came out of the oven slightly compressed, as I'd covered it with foil and baking paper in an effort to stop the stupid college oven grilling the top. It sort of worked - at least it's not burnt to a cinder on top!

It looks rather better when turned out of the tin though. The photo looks a bit more anaemic than the cake does in real life.

The marbling didn't work though. One day, I'll get it right, but today was not that day.I also baked a (half-quantities) flapjack to bring with me too. Slightly overcooked it, and then forgot that you have to let flapjacks cool in the tin before removing, or they disintegrate. Oops.

Verdict: Yes! We have n̶o̶ bananas!

Well, I've tried one of the cupcakes now. The flavours aren't as coherent as they were in my head, so it's a slightly strange mish-mash of tastes. But it's pretty decent overall - I'm not convinced by the chocolate chips though; I don't really know if they go that well with the rest of the cake. But the sweetened mascarpone works wonderfully and the texture is absolutely wonderful. It's mostly a good recipe I think, but needs a bit of tweaking - perhaps just going down the plain banana bread cupcake route is the way forward.

Frank Silver and Irving Cohn lied!

I owe Rob a cake. I bribed him a few weeks ago with the promise of cake, so it's time to make good on my promise!

Yes! We Have No Bananas!
Ingredients
For the cake

• 4 Very ripe bananas (~350g peeled weight)
  
• 310g Honey
• 2 Eggs
• 3tbsp Olive oil
• 3tbsp Milk
• 78g Self-raising flour*
• 130g Plain flour*
• 80g Strong bread flour*
  
• 3tsp Bicarbonate of soda**
• ~1/4 Nutmeg (just over a gram)
• 110g Chocolate chips

For the filling/decoration

• 250g Mascarpone
• 35g Honey
• Dried banana chips

Method

1. Mash the bananas with the honey.
2. Whisk in the eggs, oil and milk.
3. Fold in the flour, baking powder and nutmeg.
4. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Divide the mixture between a greased 1lb loaf tin and 5 cupcake cases and bake at ~180C for ~15mins (cupcakes) or ~30mins (loaf tin) until cooked through.
6. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.
7. Cream the mascarpone and honey together.
8. Cut the loaf cake in half horizontally.
9. Sandwich the loaf cake with the mascarpone/honey mixture and spread the rest on the top of the cupcakes.
10. Embed banana chips in the top of the cakes.
    

*Yes, I ran out of flour. How did you guess?
**Honey is slightly acidic, so no cream of tartar should be necessary. I think...

Here's the mixture at the end of step 1. As you can see, there are still quite a few lumps of banana - I should have mashed the bananas on their own first and then added honey afterwards. Well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.Ready for the oven - check out my new cupcake moulds!The cupcakes out of the oven. They're slightly overcooked, and one has an elephant man thing going on, which will need amputation at some point. But they look like cupcakes at least!Here's the loaf cake out of the oven and finally cooked through. It's a bit... what's the word? Oh yes, BURNT TO HELL! I've now discovered that the stupid crappy college-provided oven has the heating element on the top of the oven - so when you bake things, they also grill simultaneously. A complete pain for baking cakes! Oh well, I'll just have to hack the top off.But at least it released from the tin nicely. :o)The finished article.

Verdict: Red velvet cupcakes

In my opinion, they were slightly disappointing. They were reasonably good, but ultimately pretty boring. They don't taste of much, and although they are quite nice and moist... they don't taste of much. And I still don't really like icing, although this particular icing was much better than the regular sugar-and-water types. All in all, it's a success, but I really don't understand why this cake has such an incredible reputation. Give me an Elizabeth David chocolate cake any day...

Red velvet

There are few cakes whose reputation really precedes them. One is the Elizabeth David cake, whose reputation is entirely justified. Another is a very American recipe - the Red Velvet cake. I think it's time for me to try this one out, and to give it the best chance possible, the recipe I'm using is out of the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. I've decided to bake it as a batch of cupcakes though and the buttercream isn't actually what's suggested as icing, but the creamy vanilla frosting that they actually suggest looks like way too much hassle.

Red Velvet Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the cupcakes

• 170g Butter
• 430g Caster sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 76ml (two bottles) Red food colouring
• 3tbsp Cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tbsp Vanilla extract
• 355ml Buttermilk
• 330g Plain flour
• 1 1/2 tsp Cider vinegar
• 1 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

For the buttercream

• 115g Butter
• 390g-500g Icing sugar
• 60ml Milk
• 1tsp Vanilla extract

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.
2. Beat in the eggs.
3. Whisk in the food colouring, cocoa and vanilla extract.
4. Fold in the buttermilk and flour a little at a time, alternating buttermilk and flour.
5. Mix in the vinegar and bicarbonate of soda.
6. Pour into cupcake moulds and bake for ~20mins at ~180C/Gas mark 3.
7. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
   
8. For the buttercream: Cream the butter, 260g of the icing sugar, the milk and the vanilla extract together.
9. Gradually add the remaining sugar, beating after each addition, until the buttercream is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency.
10. Spread or pipe buttercream on top of cooled cupcakes.

It turns out that this makes quite a lot of batter, so some of it had to be baked in a loose-bottomed tin as a regular cake.

Here's my glamourous assistant, Veronica.
The finished cake batter. Just look at that colour!
How much it made - twelve small cupcakes and about a sandwich tin's worth of batter.The cupcakes were a bit burnt on the top, but actually it's not as bad as it looks by a long shot. Even the most badly burnt bits were very edible.But just look at how pretty the cupcakes were when turned out!Me looking somewhat gormless while checking on the big cake.The cupcakes removed from the trays.The big cake.After icing. I think they look pretty good!

Verdict: Quick and easy Kugelhopf

Mmmm. It's a very slightly sweet, fairly buttery bread. With sultanas in it. Nothing special you might think, and you'd be absolutely correct. But it is rather good. I think it'd go well with a glass of milk, or possibly a cup of coffee (of course, it'd go very well with a cup of tea, but I think you should have been assuming that). All in all, quite a pretty and pleasant thing, but not terribly special.

[Edit]Incidentally, I've just noticed, this is the 100th post - thanks for reading![/Edit]

A quick and easy Kugelhopf

I wasn't going to bake at all today, but Kenny put the idea into my head earlier and it just sort of stuck. But I'm moving this weekend, so it's got to be quite a quick and easy recipe. As you may recall, I bought a Bundt tin a while ago. It's not had nearly as much use as it deserves though, so I thought I'd bake a nice and easy Kugelhopf (Incidentally, does anyone know the difference between a Bundt tin and a Kugelhopf tin? As far as I know, they're basically the same, so if anyone knows, I'd be interested to find out!).

This is based on this recipe, but either I screwed up the conversion to sensible units, Kugelhopf is nothing like I think it is or the recipe is really quite rubbish. The recipe below is approximately what I did, which is very different from the recipe I was cribbing - my recipe is far from ideal I'm sure, but it should be good enough...

Quick and Easy Kugelhopf

Ingredients

• 500g Plain flour
• 1 sachet Fast-action dried yeast
• 40g Caster sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 240ml Milk
• 115g Butter (I only had 85g butter in stock, so I substituted the rest with olive oil)
• 75g Sultanas

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, eggs and milk into a dough.
2. Work in the butter.
3. Knead for a few minutes.
4. Knead in the sultanas.
5. Put into a well-greased Kugelhopf tin, cover and allow to rise for ~1hr.
6. Bake at 180C for ~50mins until the top (i.e. the base of the cake) is brown.
7. Remove from tin and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Here's the Kugelhopf ready for rising (middle of step 5).

And here it is after rising and ready for the oven (end of step 5).Out of the oven.Look, it came out of the tin!

Verdict: Pear and almond cake

Wonderful! This is a fantastic cake; the cake itself is lovely and moist and nicely sweet. The almond taste really comes through as well, which I hadn't been expecting. The pears are soft and sweet and taste lovely from the caramelising. But the juxtaposition of the two is really spectacular. I really love this cake - it looks beautiful, it tastes fantastic and it's moist enough that it really doesn't need to be served with anything (although I did serve it with custard, and that did work nicely). One of the best cakes I've baked so far I think!

Pear and almond cake

This is a cake that I've been intending to bake for aaaages. It's actually one of quite a long list of recipes I want to get around to trying but haven't found time actually to bake. Until now! The recipe is taken from here with a few very minor modifications.

Pear and Almond Cake
Ingredients
For the pears

• 2 Large pears
• 25g Butter
• 1tbsp Caster sugar

For the cake

• 150g Butter
• 125g Caster sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 75g Self-raising flour
• 75g Ground almonds
• 1tsp Ground cinnamon

Method

1. Peel and core the pears, then cut into quarters.
   
2. Heat the butter and sugar together in a large frying pan. When the butter is bubbling and the sugar has dissolved, add the pears and caramelise over a medium heat, turning occasionally.
3. Remove the pears from the pan and allow to cool. (I did this much the previous day and put the pears in tupperware in the fridge overnight).
4. Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.
5. Beat the eggs and vanilla extract into the mixture.
6. Fold in the flour, ground almonds and cinnamon.
7. Pour the mixture into a lined baking tin. Arrange the pears on top.
8. Bake at 170C/Gas Mark 3 for 40-50 minutes.
9. Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing from the tin.

Here are the pear quarters just after being put into the pan (start of step 2).Now partway through and at the end of step 2. Quite a lovely change, isn't it?After staying in the fridge overnight, the pears have survived remarkably well!The batter's a bit thicker than normal cakes (I'm guessing this is because of the ground almonds - they'll release a lot of oil when baked). I'm also unconvinced that the proportions of pear to cake are correct; I'd already reduced the number of pears from 3 to 2. But anyway, here's the cake ready for the oven (end of step 7).And here it is again after baking. I think it looks really rather good!

Why won't anyone believe me?!

Bacon cookies really work. Neither my mum nor my brother believed me, so I had to bake them a batch. It's the same recipe as last time, except without walnuts and I used dark brown sugar instead of caster sugar.

Here are the cookies ready for the oven.
And ready to eat!
Both my mum and my brother were sceptical at first. They tried the cookies and said they didn't like them. But they continued eating the cookie and finished it. And then went for another. And another. And eventually conceded that it really genuinely works. What we learned from this time around though is that the walnuts actually do add something, even if I didn't realise it at first; you really notice the absence.

Verdict: Spiced honey, sultana and nut roll

Honestly? A bit of a disappointment, really. It's tremendously pretty, but the taste just doesn't quite live up to the looks. I thought it somewhat bland - actually, I thought it needed more of everything: more honey, more sultanas, more nuts and definitely more spice! But being a bit more specific, I think it really needed a bit more sweetness, so honey would be the first thing I'd increase. Or rather, I'd add some brown sugar on top of the honey. The sultanas worked really well and I think having a bit more would definitely be an improvement - the same goes for the nuts, but they were closer to the right amount. And the spices were barely present - I needed to add a heck of a lot more. Overall, it was a disappointment, but it shows a lot of promise. A few minor tweaks to the recipe, and this could be excellent. Maybe some mixed peel and possibly a little ground ginger or cloves too would benefit matters, but really it's just the overall balance of flavours that needs tuning.
This rather arty photo is courtesy of Kenny.
And if you'd like to know why Kenny's photos always look so much better than the ones I take, this gives you an idea of the lengths he goes to when he takes photos. This time around, it was a relatively simple shot; usually he also goes to the hassle of getting a couple of table lamps positioned to improve the lighting!