A few months ago, gripped by baking fever, I purchased Mary Berry's Baking Bible. I quickly decided to embark upon a mission to bake everything in the book, and turn myself from an occasional baker into a bit of an expert. My Grandad Ern was a Master Baker by trade; the man responsible for introducing Danish Pastries to England in fact, and I wish it had occurred to me to spend more time learning from him, rather than simply enjoying the fruits of his effortless labours. This project is almost a way of making amends for that; I'd like to follow in his footsteps (if not in my career, at least as a hobby) and continue the proud heritage of baking in my family.
I credit my friend Rachel with the idea to write a blog about my baking exploits, hoping that there will be more successes than failures as I attempt all 213 of the Queen of Baking's recipes.
So as not to bore the husband with a monotonous diet of sponges, followed by weeks of biscuits, I've decided to tackle the recipes by selecting the first bake from each chapter, followed by the second recipe and so on. I'm not going to pick and choose; I'm determined to face my baking demons and learn how to do everything baking-related, even if the consequences are disastrous!
Everything will be photographed, with comment about how I found baking it, and a husband rating (to be taken with a pinch of salt as he has a very selective cake-tooth).


Sunday 17 November 2013

50. Eccles Cakes


Oh...my...goodness. Never again! What a bloomin' faff these were! There's a reason why someone invented ready-made puff pastry, and that was probably to preserve the sanity of many a hapless baker who tries to make their own. What a technical nightmare! Still, I did it - at least I can say that. Husband and I quite fancied eating these, hence my decision to bake them. He'd had one a few days previously, and once the idea was in my head, I really wanted to make them.
It all seemed quite straightforward from the recipe; there are even pictures of how to make the pastry, and it did present quite a fun challenge. It involved lots of butter, lots of folding, rolling and refrigerating and so on until you can eventually insert the filling. I thought I was following the instructions quite well until I found some parts of the pastry impossible to work with. The butter got too warm and melty; the pastry got too sticky, and then there was no doing anything with it! I decided to make the Eccles Cakes in two batches and put the melty pastry in the freezer to get the butter to harden up quick. It felt like very high-pressure stuff because of how the pastry was behaving, and I rushed the assembly. I didn't think about the thick bit of pastry where I joined the circles once the filling was dolloped in, but we ended up with a lot of stodgy, not very well-cooked pastry once they came out of the oven, so much of what I made was inedible. The whole process just seemed to take so long, and I didn't enjoy the faff of it all. But then I seem to be able to tolerate faff if I feel confident that I'm doing the right thing: in this case I really didn't! It was all very disappointing really. I feel that yes, I made flaky pastry (you could see the layers), and yes, I made Eccles Cakes. They tasted nice, but I didn't execute the bake carefully enough, although they did at least look the part. Lots of lessons learnt here!
Baker's verdict: tasty, but fiddly. Not really worth all the effort making the pastry.
Husband rating: 3/10 - doughy and inedible, but they did have a nice flavour.

 
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