Lemon drizzle: iced

I watched Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets and he did this lovely thing with Lemon Drizzle loaf: brushed it with apricot glaze and water icing once cooked and cooled.

So we have a delicious light light 3 egg sponge with zest of three lemons, baked in the oven at 180C for about 50 minutes. Then make sugar and lemon juice glaze, and pour it over the cake whilst hot. Allow to cool. Make apricot glaze (heat apricot jam, let down with a little water. Strain, ready to use). Brush cake with apricot. Make water icing - add a little lemon juice to icing sugar. Brush cake with icing - all over.
The apricot glaze keeps the cake very moist and allows the icing to set softly. Its beautiful!!

Financiers

These were beautiful cakes, but I misread the kind of tin they should be cooked in, and as a result, had problems getting them out in one piece! Hence the cracked tops.
Financiers are made with beurre noisette, almonds and egg whites. A good way to use up egg whites. They are delicious. Very very moreish.
One surprise was that you leave the mixture for 24 hours in the fridge before cooking!
I used the Gordon Ramsay recipe - but only half these quantities:

Makes 18 - 24:
125g lightly salted butter
175g caster sugar
125g ground almonds
25g plain flour
3 medium egg whites, lightly beaten

Make beurre noisette.
Mix the sugar, ground almonds, and flour together in a bowl.
Beat in melted and cooled butter and the egg whites.
Rest in the fridge for 24 hours.
Preheat oven at 200C.
Grease and flour mini-muffin trays.
Spoon into mini-muffin trays.
Bake for 8 - 10 mins.
Serve warm.

YUM.

Chocolate muffins

Thanks to Ottolenghi for this recipe for Chocolate cupcakes. Its perfect.
I knew I wanted a recipe which had depth and gooey-ness, probably with oil and treacle. This one was exactly it.
I then experimented a bit with the frosting, before just going with what is in the recipe, which suits the muffins perfectly: a rich ganache - chocolate, cream, butter, and a little vin santo (which threatened to make the chocolate seize, but was rescued with more cream. The recipe stated Amaretto, which with its higher alcohol content wouldn't have seized the chocolate).

In the end - the muffins have chunks of chocolate, are soft and gooey, and the slight flavour 'hole' made by the oil and treacle is filled entirely by the ganache on top. It all works out brilliantly - and cake and topping together make each aspect entirely better.

College cakes

First day back in the kitchen at college - because of disastrous floods that have wrecked the kitchens!
It was a fun morning - we made a light fruit cake and some cupcakes - topped with jam and coconut, or buttercream and citrus peel. They were so cute I bought them and took them home.

Jewel cake, stollen

My aunt made me the most wonderful present - a Jewel Cake.
It has whole brazil nuts, dates, cherries, stem ginger, crystallised fruits - including pineapple, surrounded by very little cake :) It looks spectacular, and called jewel because when you slice it, the light comes through the fruits like jewels. Divine.
Oh - and some stollen ;) that we had stashed in the freezer. It survives freezing exceptionally well!

Lemon drizzle cake

3 eggs, same weight butter, sugar, SR flour. Added lemon zest. Also added baking powder. I can't really work out SR flour, and will probably stick to plain with bicarbonate of soda and baking powder added. You know what's going on then. However, this one worked very nicely - really very light sponge and I added zest of 2 lemons, so it is really zingy.
Once baked, poured over juice of the two lemons, mixed with 85g of caster sugar.
The tartness is fantastic against the soft pillowy, buttery sponge. Very fine.

Stollen

Its Christmas. I was inspired by Richard Bertinet's beautiful delicate, light stollen in his bakery, and went to the cookbook (Crust).
Mine turned out to be bruisers!! They were a joy to make tho'. The dough smelled amazing from the first mix - eggs, sugar, milk, yeast. Deeply comforting.
Then it became a beautiful dough once kneaded, strong but rich. Making up the filling was exciting too: creme d'amande was light and deliciously flavoured with ground almonds (amazing when cooked); fruit mix with rum also just gorgeous.

I wasn't brilliant at the folding it all together - I wasn't sure what I was doing really :) would be better next time. I was making three as we had presents to get ready for the next day, and they were so huge I ended up with plenty for us. WOO!!

They came out quite varied because of the way I'd folded them. I selected the best parts for my friends, wrapped them in silicon paper tied with string.
All in all a very economical exercise, and really lovely to make - super rewarding. There's going to be more of these. I have to say the creme d'amande makes a huge difference - you have a light sweet bread, with rum fruit, creme d'amande with some marzipan in, so it all stays light and delicious - nothing heavy in sight :)

Raspberry cake

Same as I made a few months ago. Unfortunately, this one wasn't as good. C'est la vie.
I think I forgot to add baking powder. It was all there, but just wasn't light like the other one.

Chocolate macaroons

I had a lot of seized chocolate and a lot of egg whites (blame the choux paste) to use up. So found this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recipe for chocolate macaroons which went some way to using it up.
The macaroons didn't develop the smooth coating of the petit macarons - maybe I ground my almonds too coursely. I hadn't any pre-ground, so resorted to peeling and grinding plain whole almonds I had in a bag.
Had fun with the piping bag for the second time this weekend (first was for the choux buns). And was pleased with the uniform roundness of the macaroons.
Made ganache with the seized chocolate and cream, whipped it up, then spread onto the macaroons to sandwich them.
This combination seemed to transform the cakes - in the centre they were deeply chocolately but supremely light, and the nuttiness of my (course) almonds was very very good with all that chocolate. Interesting how the sum of the parts was greater than the whole on this one.

Bath buns

Right - these are top notch.
I followed the Richard Bertinet recipe - and it took me overnight, and 6+ hours in the making. But this one is worth it.
The cakes are very very light, plain - in the best way - because the bread is just gorgeous. Just a sweet bun.

 

First you make a 'ferment' which i had to leave overnight, as i didn't have time to finish the process for the buns yesterday evening. I wasn't sure it would still work, so only made a small batch of buns - but it worked well. I made a judgement on the structure of the ferment which looked very well bubbled - but it wasn't frothy as it was at its height of fermenting. 

So this morning I started making the dough with the ferment, milk, sugar, yeast, flour. Worked the dough from very very sticky to very elastic. This took about 20 minutes as I had quite a lot of ferment (only half of what i'd made as I wasn't sure it was going to work and didn't want to waste even more flour). 

Working the dough was very enjoyable, watching the dough change very gradually and getting into a good rhythm. 

Then it was the proving cycle. One hour, then refold and another hour. Then section and make buns and prove for 2.5 hours. 

Glaze the buns with milk and sugar glaze. 

Then bake for just 20 mins!

Glaze again for a good sticky bun. 

Then eat in 5 minutes because they're so good. 

This is one of the best things i've ever made. Very happy with these - although you do have to mimic being a proper baker for a day - its a full on job.

Orange made up cake.

I made this up. I wanted an orange cake - warm, fragrant, rich. Made some sponge, with Sauternes, canditi, orange zest, vanilla.
Then thought I'd use up the oranges - filleted them, kept the juice, made some caramel, poured it over, then placed half the cake over. Only had apricot jam in the house, so put that in the middle. Then tipped the whole thing up the right way.
it looks beautiful! So in the end we've got - perfumed sauternes orangey vanilla-ey cake, sharp fresh oranges surrounded in crunchy caramel on top. Some of the orange juice has seeped into the cake which works well - but the apricot jam is too sweet! we needed marmalade - or even better some cheesecakey type filling, something smooth to carry some orange flavour.
I think this has a halloween feel - crunchy sweeties of the caramel and the orange colour is pretty autumnal.

Raspberries and cream victoria sponge

Winner!! The sponge was light light light and with a smidge of lemon and vanilla - had some life to it. Then, my sister's fantastic redcurrant and raspberry jam, fresh raspberries and whipped double cream. Deserves the 3 picture treatment. We stuffed ourselves :)

Roasted plum cake (remnants)

What's left of the roasted plum cake.

wild mushrooms, cupcakes, papardelle, pannacotta

Sunday 03 Oct
At home:
Wild mushrooms, ham ends, hand-made linguine
Very exciting mushrooms - from farmers' market. Shiitake, King Oyster, Pied Blue. Absolutely delicious. Also picked up the hand-made linguine which is lovely. Would like an attachment to my pasta maker to make linguine.
The ham ends are a bargain. 45p from waitrose of thick lumps of ham. Great value.

Panacotta.
Double cream, lemon, vanilla, gelatine. Then, more double cream with icing sugar.
Still cooling down. Will see if it sets. Not sure - looks pretty liquid. And tastes very sweet. Was supposed to include grappa, maybe that would have cut the sweetness. Raspberries will have to do.

 update: 8th Oct - pannacotta set very well, and the texture was brilliant. Deeply cushiony creamy, with enough bounce, but not like jelly. Great!

Papardelle pasta.
No semolina flour, so only tipo 00. Went cautious with the flour as the eggs were small. Resulted in soft dough, needed plenty of flour when putting through the pasta maker to stop it sticking together. Also more difficult to cut when soft. All done, 4 portions, ready for tomorrow.


Saturday 02 Oct.
At work:
Prep tomatoes, onions for salads. Prep carrots, fine green beans for mains.
- Tuna fish cake, scallop, pea & chilli puree
- Leek and potato soup
- Crostini - goats cheese, caramelised onions and cannelini bean & red pepper pate
- Waldorf salad - salad, apple, celery, walnuts. Yoghurt dressing
- Chicken salad - waldorf plus roast chicken breast. Yoghurt dressing
- Spring roll with salad
- Duck pate with warm crusty bread
- Grilled peach salad, with feta and mint

Marzipan, apricot and almond cake.
Roll out marzipan onto 20cm cake tin. Chop up apricots, spread over marzipan. Make cake mix - sugar, butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, almonds, almond essence. Spread over top of apricots - bake in low oven for 1hr.


At home:
Delicious simple bolognese. Onion, garlic, 10% fat mince, tomato puree, tomatoes. cooked long and low. Beautiful and simple.

Roast pork shoulder with sage, onion, apple.
Cut onion, place on roasting tray with sage. Place shoulder joint on top. Roast for 2 hours. Keep the onions and sage under the meat to stop them over-cooking/burning.
Cut up apple and place in roasting tray with 40 ish minutes to go.

Bertinet sourdough bread.
Ridiculously good. Chewy, tasty, sweet. Beautiful bread. Benchmark.


Friday 01 Oct

In College:
White chocolate and orange cupcakes (x48)
With buttercream & white chocolate icing.
With white chocolate squares.

Cupcakes = 3x sponge mix (weigh 3 eggs, add same weight sugar, flour, butter). Add 150g white chocolate chips. Zest 2 oranges, add to mix. Pipe into cupcake paper cases in muffin trays.

Buttercream = 1kg icing sugar, 600g butter. whip up butter in electric mixer, gradually add icing sugar, covering machine with tea towel to keep the powder down.
melt chocolate (under the hotplate) add half to buttercream. mix.

pipe icing onto cupcakes.

Spread remaining white chocolate onto silicon paper. Shape into a rectangle. Put on tray in the freezer.

Score across in 1.5" lines, to make squares. Take squares off with small palette - avoid touching with fingers. Place on cupcakes.
Get leftover ganache - pipe into small paper bag, pipe small dark chocolate spot at base of white chocolate square.

lemon drizzle and cassoulet

in college:
Lemon drizzle cake -
lemon sponge with lemon glace icing. Looked great! Made 3 sandwich cakes which were shipped off to the magical 'Stores'. Must find a way of retrieving cakes from the Stores.

at home:
Cheese scones - were slightly too shallow - but taste great. Make sure dough is 1inch thick next time
White spelt bread - needed slightly longer in the oven. but good crumb. tasted very yeasty tho', need to work on that flavour.
Lemon cake - repeat of what was made in college.

Cassoulet with celeriac and potato mash:
Pork and fennel huge sausage from Bath Farmer's market - really excellent.
Butter beans and cannelini beans - soaked from dry.
Also used up bacon and chipolatas in the fridge.
Celeriac went very nicely with the fennel in the sausage.