Tag Archives: Cakes

Baked with Love – out today

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Baked with Love is out today…

I based it loosely on the Great British Bake Off show. Years ago, the programme’s hosts were Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, who were notorious for their dreadful baking puns and sly innuendo.

To give you a flavour of the book, here are some of the ones I came up with for my book. Don’t groan too much…

Sue, fluffy pink jumper clashing with her bright orange hair, stepped forward, beaming at us. “Welcome, contestants, to this year’s Best Baker UK! Why was the ninja so good at baking pastries?

“Because he had a black belt in martial tarts, of course.”

a picture of a strawberry tart
A strawberry tart
a heap of pistachio nuts

Kimberly and Sue cosied up to Rob as he chopped up a large handful of pistachios, tiny flecks of green flying off the chopping board. “Ooh,” Kimberly said. “I do love a chunky nut or two, don’t you, Sue?”

Sue, straight-faced, shook her head. “Nuts ground to a paste are my preference.”

Playing along

Kimberly and Sue rocked up at my bench. Sue picked up a sausage, letting it dangle from her fingers. “Ooh, I love a sausage early in the morning!”

Sue’s joke might be the most obvious one in the entire world, but I played along. “Absolutely, Sue. The bigger the better too, eh?”

“No, no, no,” Kimberly chimed in. No-one but me could see the tightness in Sue’s jaw as she waited for the reply. “The size of the sausage isn’t important. It’s what you do with it that counts.”

She tipped her head in Rob’s direction. To the left, a camera zoomed in on him.

Bread, bread, bread

As I kneaded the dough, punching into it, Kimberly glided up. “Woo, Lissie!” she exclaimed, helping herself to the sultanas piled up in a bowl. “Are you imagining a certain someone when you hit that bread?”

She added an exaggerated wink, directing her head to Rob’s bench.

Deciding that I might as well give Graham what he wanted, I thumped the dough harder for effect. “Not at all, Kimberly. Though it feels therapeutic. Do you want to try?”

“Oh, yes!” she said, digging her knuckles into the dough I handed over. “It’s the yeast I can do.”

“Amazon keeps sending me Rich Tea biscuits even though I don’t like them,” Kimberly said, picking up the tin of condensed milk on my bench.

Spending so much time with them in person meant you could anticipate the jokes.

“But everything’s okay now,” I replied, retrieving a tin opener from the utensil drawer under my bench. “As you’ve updated your cookies preference, right?”

She high-fived me; the move caught on camera. “Ha! Lissie, you should replace Sue. You’re much better at this than she is.”

Sorry about that! If you’d like to buy the book, you can do so by clicking on the button below.

Buy Baked with Love here
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Cakes, Sausages and Quality Street: You Know it Makes Sense

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If I knew you were coming, I'd a baked a cake, baked a cake

If I knew you were coming, I’d a baked a cake, baked a cake

Granted that most of us in the developed world eat for many reasons – few of which are hunger and the necessity of refuelling with nutrient-dense food – my family decided to use food as the basis of celebration and remembrance today.

My nephew came up with the idea of a ‘grandpa’ foods day, as today is the third anniversary of my dad’s death. I suspect that the motivation behind ‘grandpa’ foods day may have been the idea that it was a licence to eat Dairy Milk chocolate all day. My nephew is eight after all. Nonetheless, a meal which showcased all of my dad’s favourite foods was greeted enthusiastically by everyone, including those of us considerably longer in the tooth than eight years old.

The menu was thus:

My own contribution was the Coffee and Walnut Cake. Here’s the recipe:

  • 225g Stork margarine*
  • 225g golden caster sugar
  • 225g self-raising flour
  • 75g walnuts, chopped finely (the Pampered Chef vegetable chopper makes this really easy)
  • 4 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 1tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 50ml boiling water and allowed to cool

ICING:

  • 50g unsalted butter
  • 100g cream cheese
  • 200g icing sugar
  • 1tsp instant coffee, dissolved in 2tbsp boiling water and allowed to cool.
  • 8 walnut halves

1 x 20cm loose-bottomed square cake tin, greased and lined with baking parchment. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

Cream the margarine and sugar together with an electric hand mixer for five minutes. Add a tbsp of the flour and add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. You can add in one or two extra tbsps of flour to make this easier. Add the vanilla extract, the cooled coffee and the flour and mix well to combine. Add the finely chopped walnuts and mix with a wooden spoon until distributed equally throughout.

Spoon into the prepared tin and cook in the oven for 40-45 minutes (if you insert a skewer into the cake, it should come out clean). Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes, until turning out onto a wire rack and leaving to cool thoroughly.

For the icing, cream together the butter, cream cheese and icing sugar for five minutes and then add the cooled coffee mixture. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. Ice the sides and top of the cake and decorate with the walnut halves. Serves 12-14.

 

*I know, I know – purists would favour unsalted butter (preferably organic, preferably from grass-fed animals) but Stork is the baker’s secret. Light cakes every time! Don’t you reckon?

Words Vs Cake: Cake Wins

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Delia Smith's Sachertorte - yum...

Delia Smith’s Sachertorte – yum…

Post wedding I need other topics to write about (*sighs*) so I decided to make my blog about cooking and writing.

Should the two pair together you ask? Writers, I believe from a quick straw polls of friends, are the kings and queens of procrastination… They have turned it into an art form and cooking is the ideal tool for procrastinators.

Picture the scene. You sit in front of your screen staring at the blank document in front of you. You stare into space for five minutes or so. You write 15 words. You re-read them. You discard them as utter, banal rubbish, highlight them and delete. Repeat ad nauseum.

Picture the scene two. You do all of the above, but after the 15th time of staring into space, you think to yourself: “Aha! My partner/family/friends/cat has always hankered after a home-made pork pie, one that needs many ingredients, complicated pastry techniques, tricky meat jelly developments and HOURS AND HOURS in the kitchen.”

As a writer, you abandon your screen with joy. “Hooray!” you say to yourself. “My partner/family/friends/cat need me to create said, complicated home-made pork pie. The demanding so-and so’s! I must jump to it and get myself into the kitchen ASAP. This could take DAYS.”

Do you see then the natural affinity that writing has with cooking? Baking seems to be a particular favourite. In theory as the writer cum baker allows their home-made pastry to rest in the fridge, a good 500 words or so could be bashed out while waiting.

I think not. The baker cum writer hovers by the fridge, tidies the kitchen surfaces so that said pastry can be rolled out and does a quick check of friends’ social media updates.

Which leads me neatly to complex recipes. I have scoured the internet for the complicated, the multi-ingrediented, the tough of task and the time consuming. Here they are (writers you can thank me later):

Macaroons
Sachertorte
Millionaire’s shortbread (well, of course I’m going to reference my own recipe)
Gravadalax
Christmas cake 
Swiss roll

 

The Top 10 Ingredients for an Awesome Hen Night

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I promise you, oh reader, tonnes of people attended this party and drank a mere one glass each.

I promise you, oh reader, tonnes of people attended this party and drank a mere one glass each.

Stick the word ‘hen’ (bachelorette in US/Aussie speak) in front of ‘party’ and certain ideas spring to mind – mainly the lewd, rude and crude.

I am a sophisticated lady of a certain age (what I actually mean is that my idea of a rollickin’ good time is buying delicious magazine and I struggle to stay awake beyond 10pm of an evening) and thus night clubs, cocktails and chocolate shaped to resemble male body parts were never going to appeal for a party which supposedly marks the end of spinsterhood.*

I appealed to middle sister and she leapt at the challenge of a hen party. It was amazing – fizz featured heavily, baking abounded and laughter lingered long into the following day as my mum, sisters and I recounted all that had happened.

So in the spirit of generosity, I’d like to share with you my ideas for the top 10 hen night ideals:

1. Good friends. Obvs! Luckily, I possess witty and interesting chums so that was the easy part. One of the friends whom I met years ago when I moved to a brand new city was generous enough to introduce me to all of her friends so I didn’t need to find any of my own. This excellent tactic of identifying a popular and generous soul and then ingratiating self into that person’s company is one I would advise any of you moving to a new place to adopt.

2. Good bakers. I know a genius baker and she made me my very own Swiss roll, complete with my name on it too. One sister made cheese scones, another Victoria sponge and a friend brought a cupcake bouquet.

3. Silly games. Consequences and charades, namely, and a friend who is an excellent raconteur**. A few glasses of fizz and the hilarity obviously increases ten fold.

4. Prizes. Naff ones. My sisters have small children and therefore any kid’s party needs a prize for each child so no-one feels missed out. Tiger moms may disagree – does competition motivate and create future leaders? – but mum and sisters decided to apply the same principle to my hens and toured charity and pound shops to provide prizes so that every one of us won something. As a result, people won the world’s biggest bra, a Charles and Diana commemorative plate,  a bottle of femfresh (ahem!) and a Katie Price face mask (and others).

5. Oh, fizz obviously from the picture above. We sipped decorously.

6. A fine spread of gorgeous grub in general… Some of us**, ahem, maybe did not sip so decorously, but there was a lot of food to soak up the alcohol units (clean eaters, look away now) – quiche, crisps, dips***, chocolate cake, millionaire’s shortbread and pizzas.

7. Enter the wine tasting element. We used the excellent thirty-fifty company. They came to my house! They were very knowledgeable! They shared excellent wines! They identified super tasters!****

8. Wine tasting also involved cheese tasting. A match made in heaven surely…? Aged cheddar, really squidgy brie and a beautiful blue.

9. Family members who are super organised and can email folks, co-ordinate arrangements and arrange games on top of all that. Me, not so – therefore step forward Brenda, Lucy and Sally and take a bow.

10. Good friends, again! Thank you Pam, Julie, Maryanne, Lucy, Jackie, Josie, Morag, Val, Louise, Lorna, Connie, Jacqui, Helen, Astrid – and Karen, sorry you missed it for the snow!

 

*Oh, here I am being snotty about certain elements of a hen party and a willie water pistol did feature in mine. And a small, blow-up male doll with a large appendage.

**Pam, and er actually all of my friends tell an excellent story…

**Erm, the bride to be might have been one of the over-indulgers in all things fizzy and alcoholic. Yum and regrets.

***Anyone else remember that film? Weird Science… so whenever I hear the phrase ‘chips and dips’, I want to say Kelly LeBrock’s immortal lines ‘chips, dips, chains and whips’.

****I was one (ha ha ha) and then the genetic connection was proved – mum and two sisters proved to be also. Now, what can be done with said skill…?

 

Lordie… January Blues…

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Image

Doing double time on the detox – cakes and wine are playing a much less significant role in my life these days, money spending is at a minimum (I’ve got a wedding to pay for, for heaven’s sake!) and, as I’ve been fairly organised so far, I can’t even write any more lists for said wedding.

Dull, dull double dull!

So, post-work I’m forced to find other ways to entertain myself, such as tidying up the kitchen cupboards. Most of it was tedious, but the ordering of the baking cupboard was joyful and it is now a thing of beauty, which leads me neatly on to another top ten list (thank you Lesley Carter) – the baking essentials:

  1. Digital scales for precise measuring

  2. Cup measures so you can easily use American recipes as well as British ones

  3. Vanilla extract/paste for delicious flavouring

  4. 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate (so many lovely things to create with it)

  5. A good, solid mixing bowl

  6. Condensed milk (see dark chocolate above)

  7. Soft brown sugar

  8. Icing sugar

  9. Stork margarine – use half and half with unsalted butter for lusciously light cakes

  10. ANYTHING from Lakeland.