Sharing my amateur findings and interests on cooking, fresh from the oven. See what I did there....?
King's Kitchen
Banoffee Pie
Here’s the story. It’s the end of May and all of a sudden we’ve got one really hot week. There are barbecues galore but one problem - no dessert at the end of them. Deciding to take matters into my own hands I whipped out the Good Housekeeping book and turned to the Banoffee Pie page and decided to tackle it. You cannot beat a good Banoffee Pie. Here goes.
Ingredients
100g (3½ oz) butter, melted, plus extra to grease.
200g (7oz) Digestive biscuits, roughly broken
2 small bananas, peeled and sliced
8 tbsp dulce de leche toffee sauce (I used Carnation Caramel - It’s fine)
284ml carton double cream
1tbsp cocoa powder to dust
Method
1. Grease the base and sides of a 23cm (9in) loose bottomed tart tin or dish. Whiz your digestive biscuits in a food processor until they resemble breadcrumbs. Pour in the melted butter and whiz enough so that they combine. Press the mixture into the prepared tart tin, Using the back of a metal spoon to level the surface and leave to chill for 2 hours.
2. Arrange the banana slices evenly over the biscuit base and spoon the toffee/caramel sauce on top. Whip the cream until thick (not stiff - I made that mistake) and spread it over the top. Dust with a little bit of cocoa powder. Et voila!
Enjoy,
S
Chewy Cookie Dough Mix
So I fancied cookies a week or two back and the recipe we usually go by (and have done for years) was getting a bit tedious and not very cookie like. As you do, opened up Google, looked at a few recipes and thought these looked nice so I gave them a try and they were!
Ingredients
- 100g (4oz) butter, softened
- 100g (4oz) light muscovado sugar
- 15ml (1tbsp) golden syrup
- 150g (5oz) self-raising flour
- And then whatever you want to go into your cookies be it nuts, chocolate, smarties, M&M’s - you name it.
Method
1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/180°C/350°F. Cream the butter and the sugar together.
2. Add the syrup and stir.
3. Add the flour until you get your ball of dough.
4. Split into whatever size you prefer and roll into a ball and flatten slightly on a greased baking tray. Add your toppings and cook for 12-14 minutes if you want a crunchy cookie or 8-10 if you want a chewy cookie!
Enjoy,
S
Going to have to put my bread making plans on hold for a teeny weeny while. I’ve been ill with tonsillitis so haven’t fancied getting my germs everywhere. Then, on top of that, my parents have suddenly decided to re-decorate, but it will be done!
-S
Easter Cupcakes
So this recipe is an all in one recipe which makes it quick and easy. (Makes 12)
Ingredients
For the cake…
6oz Self Raising Flour
6oz Caster Sugar
6oz Unsalted butter
3 Eggs
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1 tablespoon Milk
For the buttercream topping…
8oz Icing Sugar (6oz if doing a chocolate version. See below)
5oz Butter
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Yellow food colouring (Optional)
2oz Cocoa Powder (Optional)
Mini Eggs
Method
1. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5/190°C/375°F. Put the flour, sugar, butter, eggs and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl. Whisk until it turns into a thick batter.
2. Spread equally among your cupcake cases. My rule tends to be to fill them 2 thirds of the way up to leave room to rise.
3. Cook for 25 minutes or until golden on top. Take out and leave to cool on a wire rack.
I used 2 different buttercreams for these cakes so I split my buttercream mixture. I will tell you how to make both then you can decide whether to split or not..
For the Vanilla Buttercream…
1. Whisk together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla extract in a bowl until thick and creamy. (I’d recommend mixing the mixture slightly with a fork first as the icing sugar is very fine and will cover everything if you try to whisk it straight off).
2. Add yellow food colouring to give it a better colour. Et voila.
For the Chocolate Buttercream…
1. Whisk together icing sugar, cocoa powder and butter until you get a thick and pale brown mixture. Again, as I said above; I’d recommend mixing the mixture slightly with a fork first as the icing sugar is very fine and will cover everything if you try to whisk it straight off.
Pipe onto your cakes and top with a few mini eggs. Et voila!
Happy Baking,
- S
So I’ve seen a lot of cooking programmes lately where they’ve been baking various kinds of breads. I’ve never really baked a loaf of bread before which wasn’t in a bread machine, and I mean you can’t cheat more than that. I’ve always fancied baking some bread because we have various kinds of flours stockpiled in our cupboards.
I had a bit of an epiphany the other day while watching ‘The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking With Rachel Khoo’. She was visiting lots of different pâtisseries which is always mouth watering viewing. After she visited these she ventured on to one of the top Bakeries (or Boulangerie, I believe) in Paris. It was when I was watching the baker talk about all the different kinds of breads that I realised that the most exotic bread I’ve had in the last, well, forever (and as far as I can remember), is a stone baked baguette I had about 2 weeks ago.
Thus, I have come up with a decision/challenge/bit of fun. I’m going to try and bake a different bread every week. I’m always struggling to find something to bake so why not start with a big whole category of baking and do it once a week? Not quite sure which to start off with. As I’ve said, I’ve never baked a loaf of bread before so maybe I’ll start with a simple white or wholegrain loaf.
Obviously I’m going to post pictures and recipes when I do each one (If they turn out alright otherwise I won’t bother).
I look forward to showing you my first piece of bread making!
- Scott
Honeycomb using Golden Syrup
While watching The Great British Bake off last year I saw one of the contestants make Honeycomb. It literally took her about 5 minutes to make and I was pretty amazed - I thought there would be tons of effort involved but it turns out there’s not. Easy.
I won’t give a serving amount for this as it comes out in a big block and isn’t really something you’d serve as a dish…
Ingredients
4 tablespoons of golden syrup
1 tablespoon water
200g caster sugar
3 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
Method
1. Find yourself a (roughly) 20cm square cake tin and give it a light greasing with some butter. (This is to make sure you’re not carving honeycomb out of a tin for an hour before you can actually eat it!)
2. In a medium sized saucepan (you want about just an inch of mixture in the pan, any less and I think you run the risk of burning your sugar mixture which will leave you with a bitter tasting honeycomb) heat the syrup, caster sugar and tablespoon of water. Bring to the boil and leave on a low heat to simmer for 5 - 10 minutes. If you see black patches starting to appear on the side then you have it on a bit too high.
3. When you’re done simmering, remove the mixture from the heat and quickly stir in the bicarb. You’ll need to give it a quick and thorough stir (you don’t want little clumps of bicarb in your honeycomb). Pour quickly into the cake tin and leave to cool and set. While it’s setting try not to touch the tin because the mixture is foaming and creating all these little bubbles and if you shake the tin too much you burst these bubbles making bigger bubbles than you want. I’d give it a good half hour just to be sure.
4. When it’s set get a palette knife or spatula and just slide it down the edges between the cake tin and honeycomb to help release it from the tin. I usually place a plate or chopping board on top of the tin and turn it upside down and give the bottom of the tin a few taps to release it from the tin. It may not all come out as one but it doesn’t matter because you’re only going to break it up into chunks anyway!
5. Finally, tuck in!
