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).


Monday, 17 April 2017

Easter Brownies

Not one from Mary's Bible, but worthy of a mention! I found this recipe while trawling through old editions of home decorating magazines for the scrapbook and thought it would be a good one to try with my little helper.
I don't need to say too much about the method as I've included a photo of it all, but there were some necessary tweaks. Firstly, I didn't have a '15cm sq brownie tin'; I had an 18cm one, which was clearly suitable for baking brownies in. In fact, I couldn't really see how all the mixture would fit into a 15cm one!
The next issue was the baking time. I thought 20 minutes seemed remarkably fast, but went with it, even reducing the original 15 to 13 minutes to accommodate my oven. As you can see from the first 'finished' picture, they looked kind of done, so we (my mum helped, as there was a child and a baby to do things with at the same time) took them out and left them to cool. When I asked my mum to lift them out of the tin, she noticed that they seemed rather floppy. A quick skewer test revealed a really runny inside - not by any means 'fudgy', more like molten!
So, we popped them back in, in increments of ten, or five minutes, and kept testing with the skewer until they seemed less raw in the centre. I consulted Mary's brownie recipe, and although the quantity was greater, they were baked for 40-45 minutes! So we used our baker's intuition a bit and watched as they puffed up and got the typical brownie 'crack' and the eggs finally started to ooze a bit. Once the skewer was almost clean, we took them out. I can't say what the exact baking time was, but I'd aim for 35 minutes and then just check them next time.
Baker's verdict: easy and fun to make, apart from the farcical method, and very tasty. Could probably be a bit gooey-er, but were a really nice texture. I'd try the same recipe with different chocolate treats and can see this becoming a bit of a speciality of mine.
Husband rating: 9/10 - lovely, not too sweet, very moreish, nice cocoa flavour. Very good brownies.

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