54. Special Shortbread Biscuits

My first bake of 2014 and some very straightforward biscuits. I can't remember if I've said this before, but I really enjoy making biscuits because they seem relatively effortless and foolproof, especially now I know that the crumbs in the bowl do eventually come together to form something you can work with! Anyway, I've had to skip ahead a few bakes: I still have a bread and butter pudding and a pavlova to make, but these require occasions really.
The process for making these was the same as the other shortbread biscuits, only light muscovado sugar was used instead of caster sugar. This made them a bit toffee-like in odour as they were baking. The mixture was very short and took some patient kneading to get it to hold. Even when I was rolling it out, it was breaking up, but I persevered and used the weight of the rolling pin to help it to stick back together. It took several rollings to get the dough used up, but it was very easy to cut out the biscuits, with no sticking to the surface. I ended up with over thirty very attractive little biscuits.
The suggested baking time was 20-25 minutes. As usual, I went for the shorter time first, but when I checked them they were still very pale, so I let them have the remaining 5 minutes. They were quite 'golden' by that time, but I wonder if that was down to the sugar as much as the baking time! I could only just fit them onto the cooling rack, and actually sampled one warm. It was delicious. I can see why these are considered 'special' because they have a lovely, rich buttery taste and look like a lot of effort has gone into the making of them. They certainly went down well with my colleagues!
Baker's verdict: simple to make and very tasty. They had a nice 'snap'.
Husband rating: 7/10 - nice shortbread but too sweet for my taste really.

53. Banoffee Pie

This was a bit of an unexpected bake which began life as something else! I'd finally got to the bottom of my second list with just a cheesecake to go, but unfortunately this particular one contains gelatine. Being a strict veggie makes me very reluctant to bake anything containing animal bits, so I bought a vegetarian equivalent and attempted to make it using that. What followed was a disaster: I had to discard the entire filling because when everything was combined, everything just kind of separated. There was no way we were eating that! I'm now faced with a dilemma: do I avoid the cheesecake altogether, or make it with gelatine and not try it? I feel like being militant and going for the first option.
Anyway, I had a lovely biscuit base to do something with, so a flash of inspiration took me to the Banoffee Pie page. I've made these before, and they're really easy, so it was a good last-minute substitute for the dessert promised to our visiting friends. Husband thought I should cheat and buy the ready-made caramel, but I'm not compromising the integrity of the project, so I used normal condensed milk and made my own. It was a bit nerve-wracking (is it done? is it over-done?) but it turned out ok and was nice and thick. I was a bit disappointed by the amount of biscuit: the last cheesecake I made had the same issue (I think I doubled the mixture for that one). In my opinion, the base is the best bit!
Desserts like this are like heart attacks on a plate and this wasn't an exception. I gave our friends enormous portions (which they soon gobbled down); me and husband could barely finish ours. The sickly factor soon kicked in and we actually gave them the leftovers to take home!
Baker's verdict: tasty and simple to make, but soooo sweet and sickly.
Husband rating: 8/10 - rich, lovely caramel, but 6/10 for the queasy after-effects.
 

52. Rich Fruit Cake

So this was the Christmas cake for 2013. I'm saving all the 'rich' fruit cakes for the Festive Season, so this was Christmas cake number two. I made it during the October half-term holiday so it had plenty of time to mature ready for Christmas. Sadly I forgot to feed it as often as I should've; it only got one (albeit generous) dousing with brandy a few weeks before serving. I found the cake very straightforward to make. You can't go wrong with a fruit cake really. It's just a bit time-consuming weighing out all the ingredients and chopping cherries (in fact, lining the tin is the biggest faff). I love soaking the fruit overnight; it creates such lovely boozy aromas to inhale at whim. I recalled how last year, when pregnant, that was the closest I came to enjoying alcohol - having a good old sniff of the brandy-soaked fruit! Anyway, the making of the cake was all very straightforward on day 2; just a bit of elbow grease needed to make sure everything was thoroughly mixed. Then followed several hours in the oven where the lovely scent started to fill the kitchen and indeed the whole house. I had the same issue with the baking parchment as last year: my 'loose cover' ended up sticking to the top of the cake and ruining the appearance of the carefully arranged almonds and cherries slightly. It didn't matter last year, because the cake was iced, but this year it was laid bare for all to see. Not that anyone cared: once you cut into a cake like this, the appearance doesn't really matter: it all just crumbles and becomes a fruity avalanche of cake!
Baker's verdict: a really lovely, moist and very rich cake. You don't need a very big slice!
Husband rating: 9/10 - not normally a Christmas cake lover, however I did really enjoy this. Very moist, very rich, lots of flavour. Liked the nuts in it too.

 

51. Lemon Drizzle Traybake

My goodness. I am soooo behind on my blog! I baked this ages ago and had even forgotten that I had until I checked my folders of baking photos. Sadly this particular folder is empty at the moment: I made this for my A Level students one evening and then forgot to take any photos in my rush to pack it up and then take it into school the next day. I'll have to bake it again (which I would, willingly) in order to properly illustrate my blog.
Not much to say about this bake other than it was very easy to make and very pleasant to eat. The sugary/lemony topping was a bit of a disappointment, but only aesthetically. I felt a bit embarrassed to be offering my students a cake which looked really plain (the topping is translucent)! However, it was beautifully moist and very lemony, so in this case, it didn't really matter what it looked like.
Baker's verdict: something I will definitely bake again. Love a good lemon drizzle and these traybakes are very practical. Easy to portion and plenty to be had!
Husband rating: 9/10 - really lemony, a bit crunchy on top with the sugar. Really moist, a nice strong lemon flavour.

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.

 

49. Coffee Victoria Sandwich

This was baked on a whim. I wanted to bake something which wasn't too complicated and this was on the next list, so off I went. I seem to remember it being a mid-week effort: I felt like I wanted to eat cake and I never feel that I can justify buying cake to eat at home when I'm more than capable of knocking up something myself. Unfortunately I do tend to do things in a bit of a rush these days, and I missed a key ingredient: coffee essence. I just didn't have any in the cupboard and had already started the bake before I realised I needed it. So I mixed up some instant coffee with water and used an equivalent measure of that instead. The cake was very easy to make; the usual all-in-one Victoria Sandwich method; the icing was more 'wet' than I imagined though. I always enjoyed my Mum's coffee and walnut cakes and she uses a much thicker buttercream filling and icing: this one was very wishy-washy. I was a bit disappointed by the end result of this cake - the coffee flavour was quite subtle really, which could be seen as a positive if you don't like the flavour to be too strong, but I wished it had a bit more oomph to it. It was also a very pale cake - I'd expected a darker colour. Still, we enjoyed our slices of it, and my colleagues at school were very pleased to be indulging in the leftovers!
Baker's verdict: a bit bland, so I'll probably use my Mum's recipe if I want to do a coffee cake again. I'll be interested to see how this compares with the Coffee and Walnut Traybake in the book.
Husband rating: 6.5/10 - really sweet icing; not particularly memorable.
 

48. Bara Brith

Ok, so I'm now extremely behind with my blog, having baked several things in the last few months without finding (or using) an opportunity to write about them. I'm doing a big catch-up now though, to try and get the whole project back on track. Such is life when it's filled with everything baby-related and trying to manage working as well! I'm lucky to get time to bake really, but I love doing it so I don't want to abandon the project.
Anyway, Bara Brith. Had it when I went to Wales on holiday years ago, but couldn't really remember what it tasted like. It actually turned out to be one of the easiest bakes I've done, and it's also up there with the tastiest. It all began with soaking currants and sultanas in hot tea overnight. Now, I'm not a tea drinker, so I was a bit concerned that it might have a really strong taste of tea, but happily that wasn't the case - the flavour was quite subtle really.
The following day, all that remained to do was mix the soaked fruit with an egg, sugar and flour and pour the mixture into a loaf tin. As with the other loaves I've baked, I divided the mixture into two 1lb tins rather than just using a 2lb one; it's a good way to ensure we don't over-eat, and these loaves freeze really well. I just reduced the baking time a bit; interestingly they did require a long time in the oven: this is a low temperature, slow bake.
Mary recommends serving slices of this buttered, but the cake tasted really lovely without the butter so we didn't bother; we were both pleasantly surprised by how tasty it was actually. One loaf went into the freezer; the remainder of the first loaf was donated to husband's work colleagues, in honour of his impending work trip to the Land of the Leek...
Baker's verdict: so easy to make and so tasty. I'll definitely be making this again.
Husband rating: 9/10 - enjoyed it; like a very nice moist malt loaf.