Say hello to my cinnamon friends

Another month, another Daring Baker challenge, this time from my overly decorated buddy Marce.

I've always wanted to know how to make dough like this, kind of soft but able to keep it's airy shape. I assmue that's the egg doing it's work. I was initially quite scared it was going all wrong, I had to keep adding more and more flour to get it out of sticky and into tacky.

I used a different method in my kneading this time (I love to experiment, and by this time I thought it was going all wrong :-)), instead of using my palm to push and stretch the dough, I just flattened it out and folded it in on itself (bit like when you make puff pastry). It worked, look at the size of these puppies:


Yes, that was my biggest baking tray :-) The eagle eyes amoung you might spot small bits of hazelnut in the cinnamon swirl. I forgot I had them and the mixing dough stage.

Now I was quite busy this month, I made these on the 29th, at the last stage. I didn't have enough milk to make the glaze so I had to go out to get some while the buns proved... 2 1/2 hours later, a one nil victory, 1 Guinness and a John Smiths later they had risen. Probably more than double their original size.

I only made the cinnamon version of the recipe; the quantity of icing sugar used for the fondant was nerve jingling! After winning a hamper of biscuits and general yumminess on Friday my kitchen is 100% proof on the sugar content! Luckily I have the self-control to only have one and leave the rest. Ok, two, but's that's the end of it. Well, I suppose the box is open now I might as well finish them off, no point letting get soft.

*spits crumbs* fee, 'elf-'ontrol!!!

Now, if self-control is what you want, you need to go here, you'll find some of the best buns this side of Jessica Alba...! I hear Cream Puff's are a wonder to behold.


Where was I...? Oh yeah, a big thanks to Marce for her choice, and I mirror other DBer's comments about making this recipe again some time. I'm just off to take the retarded ones out of the fridge... happy salivating!

Milk Chocolate and (runny) Caramel Tart

Now obviously you can spend hours making a cake look good and make it turn out properly.

But that's just boring, I've used this excuse said this before: I need something more! If you want cake perfection you're frankly in the wrong place (try here).

How I measure cakes:
Was it all eaten: Check.
Number of proposals: One.
Number of people who laugh at my efforts: 1,824 and counting (I was number 2, after God butted in with a few wise cracks!)

Obviously, this being mid "summer" in England the temperature was an unbelievable tepid 14C. So you can understand why the caramel was running.

And another thing, I think people who decorate their cakes are insecure. Seriously! I mean covering it in half moons of icing sugar... what are you looking for? Marriage proposals or something??!!

Yep, that is yet more milk chocolate bits in the mousse. I know how to please an audience.

So there it is. No need to pretend to be polite and inquire about the recipe.

Yes, I have spoons... oi! Put the spatula down, there enough for everyone!
Form a QUEUE!

tut... animals...

Mushroom and Beef Pie

You gotta love a good pie. There's a nice bar near us that serves pie with beers from across the globe. the beer was nice, my pies are better :-)

This one is chestnut mushrooms and porcini mushrooms, fried together and then added to the minced, organic beef. I think there's some dried chilli and garlic in there too. No onions since I didn't have any :-) The topping is puff pastry. As you can see the base/gravy came over the top at one point; it all adds to the whole thing in my biased opinion!

It's Cheescake O'Clock

I was given my first dessert cookbook for my birthday recently, all the recipe have chocolate in them!

It's the first weekend and I made two things from it. Shortbread, which takes minutes and is well easy. Anyone could do it...


And this double chocolate cheesecake. Again, easy if you have a spare two hours... and you melt the chocolate for the filling before you let the gelatin in the cream base start to set!!!

Thus the top got a little messy as I tried to even it all out...




There are crushed hazelnuts in the bottom which really added a whole new dimension to the cake. It was supposed to be an toasted oat bottom but I substituted digestive biscuits... and should have used more butter (which was measured in tablespoons in the book??) and of course a little chocolate to help it all bind nicely :-)

The filling was comprised of yoghurt, whipped double cream, a bit of gelatin and some cream cheese. It was split and 175g of white chocolate was added to one half and 175g of dark chocolate to the other half...

Which give a wall of creamy chocolatey goodness at the end!

Daring Bakers - July: Strawberry Mirror Cake

I had mixed feelings about this cake. After my last contact with gelatine, Bavarian cream and the Daring Bakers I knew I had to make this work. And try to follow the recipe exactly (or risk incurring the [justified] Cream Puff Rough Justice(TM)) . So this is why, this time, I did my best to omit the booze from the cake.

The various shops/liquor stores/distilleries I visited trying to find the kirsch were all out. I knew I'd regret that strawberry liqueur bender I went on around the last days of June... who knew it would be so easy to dry up all the sources within 50 miles... and what chronic bad timing!

Anyway, as you can see the recipe was followed precisely. Apart from the big flat rectangular sponge bit. And the measuring the dimensions of cake tins bit. And American cup sizes bit... oh and the powdered gelatine bit... hmm precisely... what's baking without a little edge of your seat re-jigging of things hey? Hey?!?!?!

A few DBs had there birthdays this month, I decided to take my cake into work. bet none used plates like this!:

Yes, I bet my bosses were very impressed... :-)

I don't even like Pooh et al but it's a birthday cake, novelty plates were called for!

The smart (or picky) people reading this would notice that there was a slight darkening of the sponge along the bottom. Any chef worth her/his weight in salt would have removed these. But I thought, no, it's up to me to show people what happens when you make basic errors. Consider yourselves taught, I won't be showing you again... The recipe called for a large flat sponge. I didn't have a baking sheet like that so I improvised. I put it in a cake time and made it twice (plus) as tall and sliced it in half...

Also, measure how high your sponges are before putting them into your cake mould. Otherwise you'll look like a right Muppet when you can see a halo of cake under your mirror... ha ha... *cue much nervous laughter*

The cake was a right pain getting to work (it's tradition to buy everyone cakes at our office). I took pics of the mirror top before I wrapped it to take to work. It was perfect when straight from the fridge, in it's little cocoon... The top got a little smudged on the way to work, I think it hadn't set properly... it was super concentrated strawberry syrup it was made from, maybe that didn't help...
The concentrated topping was needed since I'm not a big sponge fan... bit bland for me. I'm not a big cream fan either to be honest... still, how many people had one of these for their birthdays!

Would I make it again? No. Was it fun to make? I certainly wasn't bored! It was different. I'm usually a stickler for perfection, but I don't feel the need to perfect this cake like I do the Gateau St Honore...

Anyway, thanks to Peabody for choosing this challenge. It was certainly something I've never seen before, and I guess I enjoyed making it too. :-)

Check out the other Darers here!

Recipes are for the... well, prepared...

Looks like a veggie feast doest it?!

Well apart from the chunks of black pudding sausages it is! :-D Those are the purple looking things. There's also goats cheese, onions, garlic, shredded cucumber in there too. The "filler" is just eggs and a dash of double cream (with salt and pepper). I used store-bought shortcrust pasty because I have a life; blind baked it using greaseproof paper and dried beans to keep the base from rising.

The onions were cooked under the sausages under a hot grill; Then put into a frying pan with crushed garlic and, right at the end, the shredded cucumber (that's the healthy bit kids ;-)).

I cooked it for about 20 mins at 190C, or until the goats cheese had bronzed and the centre had solidified somewhat. I didn't want it rock hard though.

A drizzle of EV olive oil would have been lovely, but I used Worcestershire sauce instead :-)




I made this bread a week before the quiche, but it would have been nice together I guess. It's your basic loaf of bread, but I added some poppy seeds and some saffron to the mix. Interesting... gives it a nice colour, and the poppy seeds work really well with cheese...

Poppy Explosion

Yes, the long thin one was the perfect size for a hot dog. If I ate such rubbish... *ahem* I experimented more with this batch of bread. I wanted some nice airy rolls to soak up the sauce for my dinner... (lamb in an anchovy, rosemary and red wine sauce since you ask, but no, no pics, maybe tomorrow).

As well as trying different sizes and forms, I added more yeast then the recipe called for. And a little bicarbonate of soda. They were definitely more fluffy than usual, maybe a push it a little more next time though.



PS some people say that cockroaches will outlast a nuclear bombardment... I will still be finding poppy seeds in my kitchen until the last star in the universe puffs out it's last light particle!

PPS that's a long time from now.

PPPS there are no cockroaches in MY kitchen!