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, 22 May 2017

97. Dorchester Biscuits

Husband is still having a cake amnesty, so I chose another savoury bake for this week's endeavour. These looked very easy, and the only extra ingredient I needed to buy was the chopped nuts; I was troubled to discover that husband had used the baking butter though(he doesn't realise it's my designated baking butter), so I had to use the spreadable kind. The recipe, strangely (for biscuits) stipulated that softened butter was required, so this was actually fine. However, the 'dough' was so melty that it couldn't really be handled for very long. I'd use cold (hard) butter next time and see how the biscuits turned out after that. I've had this issue before; usually where biscuits are concerned, you need to rub the butter in. You can't do this very well with softened butter! Anyway, there seemed to be a high ratio of cheese to flour, so that I thought I'd measured things wrongly. It was a bit of a suck-it-and-see bake, but the end result was good. The recipe suggests serving them with drinks - they certainly had that canape sort of feel to them. They were bitesized and very tasty, even after a couple of days. Husband said they were rich, but I found them really moreish. They were very cheesy!
Baker's verdict: easy and tasty; I'd make these for 'nibbles' in the future and I'm sure they'd go down well.
Husband rating: 7/10 - very nice; quite rich so you'd
want no more than a couple at a time. Not really had anything like this before so not got anything to compare it against.
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