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.
 

47. Very Best Scones

I made these so long ago but haven't had a minute to update my blog. I'm lucky enough to find the time to bake these days, with a little person to take care of! Anyway, one of the main reasons why I decided to make these my next bake was the fact that after a trip to Devon and Cornwall, I didn't manage to get my cream tea. These were on my list of imminent bakes, so I stocked up on strawberry jam and clotted cream and got baking.
I found the recipe and method quite unusual in that I've made loads of scones in the past, but never this way. I don't think I've ever added sugar to them, and I've certainly never included eggs in the mixture. I was really taken aback by the wetness of the dough, and did find it really hard to work with. Mary advises that having a wet mixture makes for a better rise, so I persevered and got myself into a right old sticky mess! The dough was hard to roll out as a result, and once I'd cut the rounds, they were hard to peel off the work surface as well. So much for them keeping their shape! By the time I'd wrestled with the sticky mess, I'd lost interest in aesthetics; I just wanted to them to bake properly and taste good!
They certainly did rise, and I think they baked evenly and looked tasty. Once they'd cooled, we got out the jam and cream and had ourselves a lovely cream tea (jam first, cream on top). We repeated this the next day, but then I took the remainder to work for a special Monday treat. They went down very well, with someone asking me for the recipe!
Baker's verdict: messy to make; need to be in a patient mood! Very light and tasty though. I'll take more care over the presentation next time.
Husband rating: 7.5/10 - they were nice with the jam and cream.

46. Chocolate Chip American Muffins

Oh dear. Another baking disaster. And I don't know what went wrong, but it most definitely did! I'd volunteered to provide cake for a local baby group meeting, thinking it'd be a great opportunity to crack on with the project. I thought muffins would be perfect as people could just grab one and pick away at it in its case, rather than me having to fiddle about slicing things. I've made lots of batches of muffins in the past so I saw no reason why I'd have any bother with these. How wrong could I be?! Admittedly I made these while looking after the baby, but I'm sure I didn't mess up the quantities or anything. The only thing that might've caused some issues was the additional task of having a phone conversation with the husband just as I was putting the mixture into the cases. I did find that many of the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom of the mixture, because I couldn't keep stirring it up one-handed. So some of the muffins had lots in, while others not so many. Anyway, the resulting muffins didn't really rise very much at all, and they were very stodgy, dense cakes which were certainly not fit to be shared with people I didn't know very well, to whom I'd previously sold myself as someone who was good at baking! So I palmed a load off on the husband to take to work with my apologies for their flatness, and bunged the remainder in the freezer. And then I swiftly got on with a Victoria Sandwich which went down so well someone even asked me for the recipe and said it was the best they'd ever had!
Baker's verdict: I'd like to say they were easy to make, but the resulting failure suggests something went awry somewhere. I'll attempt them again after researching some other muffin recipes to try to solve the mystery!
Husband rating: 5/10 - tasty but a bit dense. Just a bit plain really although there was a lot of chocolate in them. Maybe too many chocolate chips.

45. English Cherry Cake

I baked this especially for my Dad who happened to mention that he liked fruit cakes with lots of cherries in them. It wasn't really what he or I had in mind, but I only had a week to bake it and all the 'proper' fruit cakes involve leaving them for months on end to absorb all the booze. Anyway, this seemed like a reasonable alternative, and with the addition of some almond extract would have that 'Bakewell' flavour which he loves. It was a very straightforward cake; the only faff being the washing and thorough drying of the glace cherries - supposedly to prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake. It didn't.
The rest of the mixture was a basic sponge really and so very easy to make. It was baked in a deep tin and turned out to be quite a chunky cake. My first taste of it suggested it was a bit dry, but actually it was pretty moist. I think it was the amount of dense sponge that foxed me and made it seem less light than the Victoria Sandwiches (of which I have made zillions now). It cut well, but it was a shame about the sinking cherries, as it didn't look quite as aesthetically pleasing as I'd hoped. It went down well with the old man though, but he is fairly easy to please on the cake front!

Baker's verdict: easy to make, albeit a bit fiddly where the cherry prep was concerned. Tasty but not especially 'wowy'!
Husband rating: remember eating it but can't remember what it was like. Think I liked it!
 

44. Glazed Lemon Tart

I asked the husband which bake from my current list I should make for the barbecue we were having with friends and this was what he chose. I have to admit to sighing a bit; it looked fiddly, with lots of processes and opportunities for it to go horribly wrong. But I knew I'd have to bake it one day, and this occasion seemed a good excuse to tackle it. I started the whole thing by reading through the recipe very carefully. Having noticed that the lemon slices for the decoration needed to be soaked in syrup for two hours, I decided to tackle that bit first. Some of these things seem straightforward enough on paper, but I always get nervous when doing things with sugar on the hob, and I didn't quite get this right. I'd thought the sugar had dissolved, so started boiling it, but then noticed some of it hadn't, so took it off the boil and let it simmer for a bit longer before boiling it again. This had me worried that I'd burn it somehow, but it seemed alright, and I knew that if the worst happened, the lemon slices could be picked off!

 It was actually quite tricky slicing the lemons thinly, but I was fairly pleased with my efforts. Taking the pips out made them a bit ragged-looking, but everything can be labelled 'rustic' and got away with! Anyway, they were deposited into the syrup and set aside for two hours. The next hurdle was the pate sucre (sweet pastry), more intimidating because it was given its French label! This included sugar and eggs, and softened butter, so was quite a soft, greasy mixture. It needed 30 minutes in the fridge, but when I took it out, it still didn't feel particularly 'solid' like pastry normally does. I'd not paid attention to the instruction to line the tin, chill it and then make the filling, so I'd already made the filling by the time I rolled the pastry out. Well, what are you supposed to do when you're used to multi-tasking like mad? Anyway, I popped the pastry-filled tin back in the fridge for a little while. The filling was hard work - I had to grate 4 lemons and juice 2 - but was a pleasing texture and smelt lovely. It went into the oven with fingers crossed that it would set properly.

The recipe said to remove it when it was golden, and I wasn't wholly convinced by the colour, although it had started to turn darker at the edges. I was worried about the pastry over-baking, so I made the decision to take it out (not before the suggested time, though). I'd expected it to come out with quite a wobbly texture, but it was definitely firm to the touch, as the recipe dictated. There was no advice to leave it to cool before adding the lemon slices, so I got the apricot jam glaze prepared and then put them on. I was pleased with how the finished tart looked, although the pastry could've been neater. It was hard to work with though, so I did my best.
Baker's verdict: a lot of processes, but well worth the effort. An impressive-looking and very tasty tart which baked really well. I need to employ a bit more finesse next time, but there was certainly nothing amiss taste wise! The skin of the lemons on top was a bit tough though.
Husband rating: 9/10 - the tastiest thing made so far. Lovely, strong sweet and sharp lemon flavour. The lemons on top were pleasant to taste but a bit chewy. Wouldn't want it without them though, just needed to be softer to eat.
"It feels like an honest interpretation of a lemon" - husband after drinking beer for some hours...