Microwave brownie

Well, it turns out that starting a new job means that I've been kinda busy and haven't had a chance to get back into baking yet. This update's not really a proper one either - but I saw this recipe for microwave brownies and thought it was worth a shot.

Microwave Brownie
Ingredients

• 4tbsp Plain flour
• 4tbsp Caster sugar
• 2tbsp Cocoa powder
• 2tbsp Olive oil
• 3tbsp Water

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients up in a mug until homogenous.
2. Microwave on full power for ~1min40.

So, what's it like? Well, the texture's about right, but it's not nearly chocolatey enough, and the olive oil gives it a slightly weird flavour. It's definitely got potential, but I think it probably needs more cocoa powder, less flour and a switch to sunflower oil. And maybe some chocolate chips too! But it was definitely worth the punt and probably will be worth refining into a better brownie too.

Verdict: Chocolate cupcakes

Not the prettiest cupcakes in the world, I'll grant you - but absolutely gorgeous! I baked an extra cupcake to try, and I admit I scarfed it down before it had a chance to cool down. While still hot from the oven, it was soft, moist, chocolatey, sweet - everything that you'd want from a cupcake. I'm certain that they'll still be great once they've cooled, but I didn't manage to test that! This one worked really well!

Cupcakes!

After a decade at Balliol, I'm about to leave for the real world, so I've been busy saying goodbye and thank you to the people who have helped me over the years. The porters are the final group that I'd like to thank, and a batch of cupcakes seem like a good way to express that! The recipe that I'm using is this one, with only the tiniest bit of faffing around the edges.

Chocolate Cupcakes
Ingredients

• 150g Butter
• 150g Soft dark brown sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 115g Plain flour
• 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 1tsp Cream of tartar
• 35g Cocoa powder
• 100g Chocolate chips

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together.
2. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.
3. Fold in the remaining ingredients.
4. Pour into cupcake cases and bake at 170C for 20-25 mins.
5. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

I found I had to let the mixture down a little with a splash of milk. Here's how they turned out straight from the oven - I'm certainly not good at cupcakes!

Coloured cupcake cases are pretty though!

Yeah... turning them out of their cases could have gone a bit better.

The finished article!

Verdict: Mystery coffee cake

The mystery cake was actually quite good! Really rich, as expected, and very dense, but in quite a good way. It reminded me quite a bit of the chocolate ganache cake I baked a few years ago - and having made that connection, I notice that the recipes are actually rather similar! In any case though, it was rich, dark, chocolately and wonderfully dense. A good cake, but not a light one!

Mystery cake!

That was a bit of a long, unplanned hiatus - life got a bit busy again! Anyway, we're back for the moment at least. My friend Tracy invited Trisha and me over tonight, mainly so I can bug her husband, Ben, to explain MRI to me - and if that's not worth bringing a cake for, I don't know what is.

I've had a post-it note stuck to the front page of my Filofax for the last age. It's got a quick summary of a recipe for a coffee cake written on it, in my handwriting, written with one of my fountain pens and in the ink I used to run in that pen. The weird thing is though, I've got absolutely no recollection of writing it! I assume that at some point I saw this recipe and thought it looked good or interesting (and in fairness, I do still think it looks both good and interesting) and copied down crib notes intending to bake it at some point. Unfortunately, because of this, I have no idea where the recipe came from, so I can't credit the original author properly - sorry! Nevertheless, it's time to bake that mystery cake!

Mystery Coffee Cake
Ingredients

• 100g Plain flour
• 200g Caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp Cream of tartar
• 100g Cocoa powder

• 2 Eggs
• 1tbsp Vanilla extract (yup, that's a lot of vanilla!)
• 60g Olive oil (That was my guess as to how much 75ml weighed - it's a bit low though; more like 65ml)
• 150ml Milk
• 150ml Black coffee

Method

1. Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl together.
2. Whisk the wet ingredients together with a balloon whisk.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk together.
4. Pour into a lined cake tin and bake at ~180C for 45-60 mins.

Here are the mixtures halfway through step 2. I whisked the eggs and oil together separately first to ensure that they'd distribute well through the other wet ingredients - but with hindsight, I don't think it was necessary!

 The mixture ready for baking. It's wonderfully glossy!

The finished article, fresh from the oven. It smells wonderful and looks ever so dark and fantastically rich - I think I might let it cool and cover it with a ganache just for that extra level of decadence!

What the heck, why not? I did cover it with ganache in the end - 200g of 53% cocoa dark chocolate and 150ml of double cream. That's a lot of ganache...

Practice makes perfect...

...but conversely, a lack of practice breeds imperfection. Just baked another standard (but half-quantities) wholemeal sourdough loaf and discovered that I'm not nearly as good at baking bread as I used to be. Hopefully I'll get back into it!

Verdict: Apple pie

In short, it was good. Not world beating, but good. I had been a little careless in making the pastry and used a little too much water; I realised it at the time, but it really hurt this pie. The filling was really nice, well balanced for sweetness, and the apples went soft, but not too soft. But it could have done with a bit of apple that just dissolved into a paste as well. If the pastry had been a bit shorter and I'd thrown in some bramley apples as well as the braeburns, and maybe even served it with some vanilla ice cream or custard, this would be really great; as it is, it's just good. Room for improvement then, but in a really tasty way!

As English as apple pie...

The American's might use the phrase "as American as apple pie" a lot, but the apple pie predates the USA by quite a few centuries. Apparently, there's a printed apple pie recipe that dates back to 1381 (a quick Google turns it up easily, but the recipe itself isn't exactly very informative...). In any case, I'm a little ill, which means that I've not left the flat all day and so I've decided to bake! I got a gorgeous new pie dish for my birthday that I've yet to use, so this seemed like a perfect opportunity!

Apple Pie
Ingredients

• 180g Plain flour
• 85g Butter
• ~2tbsp Cold water
• 600g Braeburn apples
• 80g Caster sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp Ground nutmeg

Method

1. Rub the flour and butter together until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add just enough cold water to form a dough.
3. Place the dough in a freezer bag and refrigerate for ~30 mins.
4. Roll out 2/3rds of the dough and line a pie dish.
5. Peel, core and chop the apples and mix with the sugar and spices.
6. Pour the apple mixture into the pastry-lined dish.
7. Moisten the crust of the pastry.
8. Roll out the remaining dough and place over the pie, pressing around the crust to seal.
9. Poke a hole in the top to let the steam escape and bake at 180C for ~45 mins.

Here's the pie at the end of step 6. It's rather a small pie dish, so it turns out that I had quite a bit of apple mixture left over. Well, at least no one can complain about my pie being underfilled though!

Ready for the oven. I would have crimped the edge, but I didn't leave myself enough overhang.

Straight out of the oven. Looking good...

And ready for eating!

Verdict 2: Wasabi and apple ganache

Okay, maybe it wasn't entirely my fault - I tried again (with half quantities), taking extra care not to overheat the chocolate. It was fine when I poured it out and definitely hadn't seized, but when I took it out of the fridge, it had separated out again. It's a shame really - I think the flavours are really nicely balanced, but I have no idea why it went grainy. Maybe I'll try adding some cream to act as an emulsifier sometime, but I think I'll leave this one alone for now.

Back to basics

I've been neglecting Aage. Like all pets, you really ought to play with them once in a while, so it's time for another loaf of bread! It's been a while since I've just done a plain wholemeal sourdough, so I'm just doing a normal, run of the mill (albeit half-size) wholemeal sourdough loaf. I am running a mini experiment though - I've made this a much drier dough than usual, and I'm interested to see how much less moist the end result is. It's not the most exciting experiment in the world, but it should be a useful one!

Verdict: Wasabi and apple ganache

It was absolutely horrible! But I should also rather hastily add that I don't think this is a flaw of the recipe, but letting the chocolate seize absolutely ruined any chance of it being nice. The texture was a really nasty grainy, vile mess. So this was entirely my fault for being careless - I've not done any chocolate work in quite a while and completely forgot how fickle it can be. The flavour was actually really interesting though - it seemed to be nicely balanced and really quite complex - so I think this recipe has some great potential, if you're not a muppet. I'll try it again soon (hopefully) and try to be a bit less stupid... so we'll reserve judgement until then!

Wasabi and apple ganache

A while ago, I was given a copy of Adventures With Chocolate by Paul Young. I hadn't got around to trying any of its recipes until now, but they all look absolutely amazing! One in particular caught my eye though, and today seemed like a good opportunity to try it!

Wasabi and Green Apple Ganache
Ingredients

• 15g Wasabi paste
• 200g Caster sugar
• 250ml Apple juice
• 200g Dark chocolate

Method

1. Put the wasabi, sugar and apple juice in a pan and bring to a simmer.
2. Simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Pour over the chocolate and stir until smooth.
4. Pour into ramekins and refrigerate to set.

Annoyingly, I was a bit careless with it and let the chocolate seize. Ah well, I'm sure it'll be okay - just maybe not as smooth as it could be! We shall see...

Verdict: Spelt sourdough

Well, it's good, but not altogether very different from a normal white loaf baked with regular wheat flour. In fact, there's very little difference that I could discern - it's maybe very slightly chewier, but that's it really. Nice, but nothing special.

Verdict: Lemon meringue cupcakes

Oooh, these are really nice. The batter was indeed a little too thick, so the cupcakes themselves could have been a little softer. But the taste was just wonderfully delicate and perfectly balanced. The lemon curd was tart, but not too sour; the cake was sweet but not overpoweringly so and the meringue was just a wonderful counterpoint to everything else. This is a really nice recipe - though I'm not certain it's entirely worth the faff, it's definitely a good cupcake!

It's a baking day!

I had been intending to go into the lab today and get a load of work done, but seeing as it's horribly snowy and icy outside, I decided that it'd be better spent as a baking day instead. So while the spelt bread's rising, I thought I'd make cupcakes. Usually, when I see a recipe I tweak it slightly to my liking - this time around though, the only thing I've changed is that I substituted 1tsp of vanilla extract for the vanilla pod, because I'm too cheap to use real vanilla pods! The recipe I used is this one, from a Channel 4 programme.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes
Ingredients
For the lemon curd

• 90g Caster sugar
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 55g Butter
• 1 Egg
  

For the cake

• 100g Butter
• 100g Caster sugar
• 1tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 Eggs
• 100g Plain flour
• 1/2tsp Baking powder
• Zest of 1 lemon
  

For the Italian meringue

• 50ml Water
• 100ml Caster sugar
• 2 Egg whites

Method

1. Whisk all of the ingredients for the lemon curd together over a double boiler and cook over steadily simmering water for ~10mins, whisking continuously, until the mixture thickens to a custard-like consistency.
2. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
3. Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla for the cake together until light and fluffy.
4. Beat in eggs one at a time.
5. Fold in the flour and lemon zest.
6. Spoon a few teaspoons of the cake batter into cupcake cases. Add one teaspoon of lemon curd, then cover with more cake batter.
7. Bake at 180C for 15-20 mins until golden brown and the cupcake centre springs back after being lightly pressed.
8. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
9. Dissolve the caster sugar in the water over a gentle heat to form a syrup.
10. Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks.
11. Gradually pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites while whisking continuously, and whisk until thick and glossy.
12. Pipe the meringue over the top of the cupcakes and gently toast with a blow torch.

Here's the lemon curd at the end of step 1.Ready for the oven. The batter feels a little thick.Straight out of the oven - they're looking pretty good!Check out my meringue! How amazing does that look?!I can't pipe very well :o(.But they still look pretty gorgeous when toasted, no?

An ancient loaf

I've been curious about using different types of flour for quite a while now. Recently, I finally went and got myself some spelt flour, so I thought I'd see what baking with spelt was like. Spelt is a particular sort of wheat that was around back in Roman times and still survives to this day. It's the same recipe as my usual sourdough (500g flour, 200ml water, 13g salt, half of Aage), but made with (white) spelt flour. I didn't use the sponge method, so it's all just thrown together in one go.

The spelt flour is really fine - about halfway between regular wheat flour and cornflour. It has a slight tendancy to clump, but it forms such a silky dough! It's been the most satisfying dough to knead that I've found so far (although that might partly be because I used warm water and it's a ridiculously cold day!), and the gluten seems to develop incredibly easily compared with normal bread flour. Here's the dough at the end of the knead, about to start the first rise. It's rather a wet, soft dough as you can see, but remarkably, it's not actually all that sticky either.

Verdict: Olive sourdough

It's good. Not world beating, but a good loaf. Lovely and moist with a really excellent crust - the olives give it some flavour, but really it's just a loaf of (good) white bread with bits of olives throughout. It is good, but I think I'd rather have a plain wholemeal sourdough to be honest!

Improving white sourdough

I just realised that I never put a verdict on the white sourdough loaf up. Well... it was dull. It just didn't have anywhere near the same depth of flavour that the wholemeal loaves do; actually, it barely had any flavour at all. But it did have a lovely texture - rather a lot like ciabatta. And so, I thought I'd try baking another small white loaf and throwing chopped olives through it. I just kneaded in about 50g of drained olives after the (short) first rise, immediately before the prove - I just hope that the oil from the olives doesn't make the bread too soft when it's baked! Alas, as ever, I ran out of white flour (a problem compounded by my adding too much water), so it's not a completely white sourdough loaf, but it's probably about 80% white flour and 20% wholemeal..

How beautiful does this one look?!