70. Special Fruit Scones

I seem to remember quite spontaneously deciding to make these. I had all the ingredients and just fancied knocking something up. I'm having a crisis with scones at the moment, and was eager to find out what would happen if I followed the recipe to the letter. Joe thought he'd heard something about not overworking them and then (after I'd made them) about how not to use the cutter, and Mary says that they shouldn't be 'overhandled'. So I was very careful, added some additional fruity ingredients (candied peel) to make up the required 50g and hoped for the best. As you can see, some of them look suitable scone like, while the others turned out like my usual efforts: decidedly flat! They were very tasty (especially warm with butter), and even after a few days, they weren't horribly dry or anything, just so flat. I've got to crack this. There has to be a way...
Baker's verdict: easy to make, but the results were disappointing.
Husband rating: can't remember but do recall enjoying them.

69. Iced Apricot Fruit Loaf

This is another bake from the list I'm supposed to be working my way through, although my system is going to go to pot now that I've decided to abandon bread-making for the time being. I think I'll just bake whatever I fancy (and try really hard not to leave all the difficult ones until last)! Anyway, as Mary's introduction to this recipe states, this one was very easy to make. Apart from the customary faff of rinsing and drying the glace cherries and some chopping of apricots, it was really quick and straightforward to prepare. I still have worries about our oven, so am generally setting the temperature a bit lower, or the timer a bit shorter, and just keeping a very close eye on things. This seemed to bake ok and smelt delicious. I went a bit off piste with the icing, as I didn't fancy covering the whole top in a big blob of it, so had a go at some artistic 'dribbling' and thought it looked rather good! W.I. here I come!
Baker's verdict: easy to make and very tasty. Thought it might be dry when I cut it, but it was actually moist and very tasty.
Husband rating: can't really remember, but did like the smaller amount of icing.

68. White Cottage Loaf

Here follows a lesson on how not to approach making bread...the first point being that you need to make sure you have all the right equipment and a decent space somewhere warm for it to prove. This loaf never really stood a chance, and the process of making it involved much frustration and pent-up anger! Entirely my fault, and I've now decided not to make any more bread until I have the right stuff and a good kitchen in which to do it.
Issue #1: wrestling with cling film when I should've had a large plastic bag, suitable for covering food. This was the best I could do, but it was next to useless.
Issue #2: a proving place. I decided on the airing cupboard, only the airing cupboard wasn't tidy enough for a baking tray to perch in. An almighty clatter heard from downstairs, a sickening feeling in my gut and yes, there it was: a heap of bread dough unceremoniously plopped on the floor. Totally unsalvageable owing to the grotty condition of the airing cupboard, so into the bin it went. A shame really, as all the processes up to that point had been easy and gone well. I was looking forward to some freshly baked bread.
Of course I will attempt this again, so watch this space...
UPDATE! SECOND ATTEMPT!
So I made this way back in September (it's now March) and have only just got round to blogging about it! Unfortunately I only just manage to find time to bake, nevermind get to this stage as well, and now there's another little person in the family to thwart my efforts!
Anyway, this attempt was much more successful, and although it did its proving in the airing cupboard, it didn't meet the messy end of its predecessor. I made sure I had the right equipment (including a big plastic bag for proving) and it turned out really well. The only thing I wouldn't do another time is bake the load on the baking parchment, as it stuck and was virtually impossible to peel off. It also needed bit less time baking in our oven, which I'm gradually becoming more confident at 'reading'.
It was such a tasty loaf that I made it again the next weekend, but it didn't turn out as well. I think I rushed it, because I was preparing Sunday dinner at the same time, so I'll be more careful next time.
Baker's verdict: easy to make and I was really impressed with how it turned out - I made proper bread!
Husband rating: he denies all knowledge of this loaf but I know he thoroughly enjoyed it!

67. Oat Rounds

I didn't intend to bake these this weekend. I was going to bake bread, but I got as far as the second proving and had a disaster (which I'll relate in my post about the bread) which resulted in said bread ending up in the bin. Desperate to bake something, and not go out to the shops for ingredients, I thumbed through the book and found these. I thought I had all the ingredients, but forgot I used up the last of my caster sugar for some charity buns last week. Fortunately I had some golden caster sugar kicking about, so I used that instead. These were super easy to make, but annoying. The biscuits call for softened butter, beaten together with sugar. Oats and flour are then added and once you've formed a dough, you're supposed to roll it out and cut rounds from it. However, softened butter and warm hands does not make for a pliable dough which can be rolled out. It simply stuck to the rolling pin! I resorted to beating it out with my hand and cutting some very uneven 'rounds' which I had to wriggle off the surface. Needless to say, I didn't find my baking pleasurable today. It felt like everything went wrong. I even put the wrong amount of sugar into my first mix so had to start again. Anyway, I eventually got them in the oven, at a lower temperature to compensate for the weirdness of our oven, and just kept an eye on them. They turned out alright in the end.
Baker's verdict: easy but irritating to make; a lovely texture and very buttery taste.
Husband rating: 7.5/10 - very nice and very well-baked, but Mary Berry's rich recipes are a bit too rich for me.

66. Petits Fours aux Amandes

I've been trying to bake these for about four weeks and just not got my act together. One of the reasons was because the recipe required egg whites and not yolks and I wasn't sure what to do with the yolks to avoid throwing them away. In the end, I decided to have a quick flick through the book, thinking to make some rich pastry for the freezer or something, but discovered that the Melting Moments I've already made actually required two egg yolks. So I ended up making a batch of those as well! Good to know. So these petit fours were always going to be a bit daft; I'm not a massive fan of tiny cakes as it seems a whole lot of effort for a tiny mouthful. However, they were very easy to make, with very few ingredients and a simple bit of piping to do. They only took 10 minutes in our crazy oven and did look very sweet.
 The only grumble I have is that they stuck to the baking parchment I'd had to line the trays with, so some of them came off with a bit of paper attached to the bottom. I might try baking them directly on the tray next time. Anyway, they're tasty little things, which my little girl certainly enjoyed sampling!
Baker's verdict: easy to make, very tasty with the lovely almond flavour. The addition of the glace cherry on top made them a bit chewy.
Husband rating: 6.5/10 - okay, just feel like you're eating sweets rather than a baked product. Got stuck in my teeth a bit, but nice almond flavour and baked well.

65. French Apple Tart

So, my Mum turned up with a bag of cooking apples donated by a friend and it just seemed appropriate to make an apple pie with them. I let them fester for a few weeks until doing something with them became an urgency, and happily found another recipe in Mary's book. This recipe also turned out to be a bit of a labour of love. We'd made plans to go out once I'd made it, but it took much longer than I though it would.
The pastry was easy to make; a rich shortcrust which needed refrigerating. It was hard to roll out and get into the tin, so there was a bit of patching going on. When I'd blind-baked it and taken the beans out, I was quite concerned to see several large cracks in the base, especially as I was making the filling and it was very sloppy. In the end I braced myself for a soggy bottom, but something that would at least taste nice.
The apples took some preparing. Once they'd been cored (not peeled) and chopped, they had to bubble away on the hob for some time with some sugar and apricot jam, until they became mushy. A dessert apple was sliced for the topping. I thought it looked very pretty as I put it into the oven, and apart from some of the apples browning a bit, the end result (glazed with more jam) looked very appetising. Joe and I had some (forgot the ice cream) and I really liked it. The pastry was thin, and the apples were lovely. They'd got lemon juice in, so the flavour was quite tart, but I thought it worked well. I ended up freezing some of it, and it did freeze very well.
Baker's verdict: a bit fiddly but not complicated. Lovely, sharp apple flavour and a nice texture. Would be even better with some cream or ice cream!
Husband rating: 6.5/10 - the apple filling was nice with a nice balance of sweetness and tartness; not enough pastry and too much apple though.

 

64. Victorian Christmas Cake

This was baked a little out of season, but I knew I probably wouldn't make this for our actual Christmas cake. I prefer the dark, brandy-soaked ones you have to make months in advance! This cake was nothing like that: a bake it and eat it straight away cake. I'd forgotten when I started preparing all the ingredients just how labour-intensive making fruit cakes is. It took me ages to chop all the fruit and nuts (a vast quantity, as you can see), but hardly any time at all to make the actual cake mixture. It was a real labour of love! I do like to see all the fruit mixed together though, and the smell always reminds me of Christmas, so it started to make me feel a little festive.
Anyway, the cake took several hours to bake on quite a low temperature. I covered it in foil to prevent it going too dark on top, but was a too late to stop it catching on one side. I blame my lack of familiarity with a new oven, which is always burning things! After leaving it to cool in the tin for a while, the cake was easy to turn out, and had its first tasting during a family outing the following day. It was lovely and moist, absolutely crammed with fruit. I think the addition of pineapple is a really nice touch, and although I never fully dry it out (or the washed glace cherries), it doesn't seem to make to cake soggy. There was so much fruit in it, I didn't even notice if the cherries had sunk to the bottom (as they do if not dried enough). The cake was then divided into sections for my Dad, me and Joe, and Joe's colleagues. He took a big tin full to work (it was a hefty cake) and all of it was eaten. He said I'd managed to convert several people to the joys of fruit cake! It's a funny thing: lots of people have an aversion to fruit cake, but these lighter ones seem to be much more appealing.
Baker's verdict: time-consuming but easy to make and very tasty. I'd definitely make it again.
Husband rating: 8/10 - it was nice and moist; a good fruit cake for someone who doesn't really like fruit cake.