Super Easy, Super Delicious Vegan Pretzel Buns

Wow. A year and a half since I last posted anything on here - I guess what they don't tell you about Masters life is that it consumes you! I lived in halls for the first 3 semesters as well so baking wasn't really a possibility, however I've just moved into a new place all of my own and now I have the space and desire to bake again - just not really the time! 

1 month ago, it was my 27th birthday. And on my 27th birthday I received the best present I think I've ever had, and will ever get... A kitchenaid! Ok, so it's a bit overdramatic calling this the best thing I've ever received but having lusted after these beautiful machines since I was about 15 it really was a complete shock and a dream come true.

Meet Percy, the Pistachio Kitchenaid:-

 Man of my dreams.

In today's adventure, Percy and I decided to make pretzel buns. I've made these a couple of times and am playing with recipes at the moment to get the best one, but this is the best I've found so far... enjoy!

Fresh pretzels will always hold a special place in my heart as I grew up in South Germany and often used to grab a brezlen as a great way to start the day... or for lunch... or as a snack... Chewy, salty, sweet, with that unmistakable pretzel taste. This recipe is one that I've tweaked from a couple of different sources to come up with an infallible result. The nice thing is this is also a vegan recipe; it doesn't have to be though - it just happens that I had almond milk and margarine in rather than cow's milk and butter! These are super easy to make, incredibly versatile and can be used as lunch rolls or a dinner accompaniment.

Ingredients
1 Cup almond milk
2 Tablespoons margarine
2 Tablespoons light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon dried yeast

2 Teaspoons salt
2 Cups strong white bread flour - + 1 cup if needed.

3 Cups boiling water
1/2 Cup bicarbonate of soda

Coarse sea salt

Method
1) Heat the milk, margarine and sugar in a saucepan, do not allow to boil. Remove from the heat when the milk is just hot to the touch (the margarine may not be melted yet). Stand for 5 - 10 minutes until it's warm and add the yeast. Stir and stand for 15 minutes. By the end of this time, the yeast should be gooey and bubbly.

2) Slowly pour the yeast mixture into a stand mixer with the dough hook attached and the salt and bread flour in. I used 2 cups initially then added about 3/4 of the 3rd cup; the final 1/4 I used to knead the dough with. If you don't have a stand mixer then get your hands involved!

Percy loves an action shot

3) Mix until it forms a smooth dough; in the mixer it'll take about 10 minutes but by hand could be longer. Removing the dough from the bowl, knead in the remaining flour for about 5 minutes until the dough is smoother and easy to shape. Grease a bowl that's at least double the size of your dough, place the dough inside and cover with clingfilm. Rest for at least 1.5 hours in a warm, dry place. (I tend to preheat my oven, turn it off when I'm making the dough and shove it in there with the door cracked).

Pre-kneading...

Post Kneading!

4) Once the dough has at least doubled in size, turn it out onto a very lightly floured surface and gently knock it back (knead it again, but be very gentle). You just want to get it to a point where you can shape it again - about 30 seconds is probably too much.

Just starting...

Nearly there...

And we're risen!

 5) Shape the dough in 18 balls. Using a saucepan with the boiling water and bicarbonate of soda in (it'll fizz, don't worry but keep an eye on it), carefully place each ball of dough into the water for 20 seconds then drain and place on a baking tray. Sprinkle the tops of each one with a little sea salt.

6) Bake for 12 - 15 minutes at 180 degrees or until browned and cracked in appearance (they should sound hollow if you tap the bottom). Make sure to put a pan with some water in in the bottom of your oven when you bake them too as the steam adds to a gorgeous crust!

Chewy, crunchy, soft, salty. Perfect

If your rolls are a bit soggy it might be difficult to get them off the tray - make sure you use a knife or scraper to force them off whilst they're still warm or you'll have to tear them away. They can be frozen once baked, and are great defrosted and warmed up again!

Hopefully now I have my own space and energy to bake again I'll be updating the blog a bit more. See ya around!

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 5; 'Alternative Ingredients'

The first thing that sprang to mind when I heard that the initial bake of week 5 was sugar free cake was beetroot chocolate cake so lets ignore the fact that I said in my cheesecake post I'd be making a polenta cake, shall we? 

Mind you, a polenta cake may have been more sensible and my kitchen may not look like a crime scene if I had stuck to that plan, but ohhhh well. 

Beetroot added to cake sounds disgusting but is actually probably one of my favourite methods because when done well it yields a wonderfully sticky, moist and fudgey texture to a chocolate cake. This cake is no different however the lack of sugar means that it tastes rather... uhm, earthy. Whilst there is some definite sweetness to the taste it's not overwhelming and if your taste buds are tuned to sweetness like most peoples are when presented with a slice of cake then you'll probably dislike this quite a lot. I am in two minds whether I like it or not. I mean, I don't dislike it, but I wouldn't go crazy over making it again in this form. I'd happily make another beetroot cake! 

The ganache and strawberries really save this cake even though the ganache definitely defeats the object of not using refined sugar. Whilst we're tentatively on the subject of what you can legitimately use in a sugar free cake, I think we need to have a brief discussion about how a) what you bake on the show should probably be edible and b) how a cake is a sweet item, and not a savoury one, so not including any sugar at all would not yield a cake at the end. Yes, honey, maple syrup and agave syrup are all still sugars but then so are fruits (fructose) and natural sweeteners such as Xylitol and stevia. I saw the challenge as more of a 'Don't make a cake using your traditional grain sugars' rather than 'Don't use any sweet ingredients at all'. 

Anyway. 

Once again, I've slightly adapted a recipe I've found online, this time it's from The Wholesome Cook. 

3 cups self raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb of soda

6 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tsp Chinese five spice powder

1 cup of raw grated beetroot

2/3 cup of olive oil

2/3 cup of honey

1 1/3 cup of cold water

2 tbsp vanilla extract 

250g dark chocolate

275ml double cream

Oven temp: 150 degrees fan. Line a spring release tin with greaseproof paper.

Combine all the dry ingredients with the beetroot and mix well. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the wet ingredients and combine with the dry. Fold in gentley with a wooden spoon. 

Transfer to the pre-pared tin and bake for 30 - 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.

To make the ganache put the double cream in a glass bowl over a bain marie until warm (don't boil it). Add the chocolate and remove from the heat, stir until all melted. Chill in the fridge for two hours or until set enough to spread on the cake. 

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 4; Baked Cheesecake

Oh dear, it had to happen at least once in this challenge, didn't it? I had a total fail. An absolute flop. If I had been in The Tent, it  may have ended up being another Bin-Gate style scandal (Cheesecake-Gate doesn't have the same ring to it, thankfully). It was so bad it went almost straight in the bin. Dessert week got me, and it got me good. Not wanting to make crème brûlées and not really knowing what a Spanischer Windtorte was, I decided to tackle baked cheesecake. I'm not a particular fan of baked cheesecake so I've never attempted one before and well... I probably won't attempt one again any time soon. 

I had grand ideas for this; what about a chocolate and honeycomb baked cheesecake with a dark chocolate biscuit base and honeycomb crushed over the top? It'd surely look and taste amazing. Rich, creamy dark chocolate cheesecake and crackly, golden homemade honeycomb running through it. Yum. A true showstopper! 

The best laid plans eh?

That being said, I don't think it was the recipe that was the problem. It was me. I overworked the mixture, and then cooked it totally inappropriately. I ended up with this rather sad mess:

Oooph. I can hear Sue softly weeping in the background. I can feel Paul's glare. Mary would have a small heart attack trying to summon up something nice to say about this monstrosity.

Poor, poor cheesecake. I couldn't do much other than put it out of it's misery... by putting it in the bin. I did try a bit (for science!) and it made me feel thoroughly sick.

Yes, that base is burnt. The sides are burnt. The top is burnt with shards of honeycomb melted into it (apparently if you sprinkle honeycomb on top of something that's going to bake for 45 minutes it'll melt and then harden, because you know, high sugar content). The middle is strangely under AND overcooked. The honeycomb has dissolved from the mixture to nothing. It's sunk in the middle and become dense and uh, chewy. The honeycomb that I made largely stuck to the pan and ended up being abandoned until two days later when it had become a soft sticky mess.

No recipe this week because who the frick would want to recreate that mess?! Maybe I overworked the mix (I definitely overworked the mix). Maybe I had the temperature on the wrong setting (180 - would 160 have been better for my fan oven?). Maybe I set it too close to the bottom of the oven. Should I have used Tamal's bain marie method? Maybe, Should I have just eaten the chilled base and not bothered adding the mixture? I'm inclined to say yes.

Whilst I lick my wounds, I'll be sticking to chilled cheesecakes for a little while I think. Though things may take another turn for the worse as I attempt to tackle polenta cake for Week 5 - Alternative Ingredients week...

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 3; Quick Bread

Apologies for the late entry for this post; my laptop mouse pad has had a bit of a senior moment so I've had to hunt down a mouse in order to use it. As such, week 4 will be coming up tomorrow...

I'll preface this entry with a simple fact; I hate baking bread. I hate baking bread with a passion. I hate having to knead it because it makes my hands sticky, I hate waiting for it to prove because I'm impatient and most of all I hate that 9 times out of 10 when I attempt to bake bread it doesn't work. I hate it I hate it I HATE IT! So needless to say bread week is not my favourite and was indeed the episode I was looking least forward to creating something from.

That is, until I discovered Alvin's Prosciutto, Manchego and Balsamic Red Onion Soda Bread recipe. This stuff is amazing. I've made three loaves of it since the episode aired two weeks ago and I will be making it again without a shadow of a doubt. It's a hearty, stout bread that is just as fantastic on it's own as it is with a soup. I'm very much looking forward to making loaves of this in the depths of winter to go with stew, goulash, pies and other 'stick to your ribs' meals. You can eat this plain or smother it with butter. Either way, it's a definite treat and one that's sure to go down well with anyone who enjoys a good filling bread.

I can't get over how easy this bread really is to make. It's so simple - there's no prooving, no kneading, no yeast that needs to be alive and smells like a brewery. It's just like a cake really with a some unconventional mixing methods! Well, apart from the fact that you get a wonderful loaf of bread at the end rather than a yummy cake snack. And compared to how long it took me to make the Arlettes of week 2, this was a walk in the park!

You could adapt the ingredients in this fairly easily. Instead of Manchego cheese (impossible to find in my semi-rural local Tesco) I plumped for Comte cheese, on the basis that it looked like a hard cheese and Manchego is hard, right? Well, not really the same thing as Manchego is a sheeps cheese and Comte is an unpasteurised cows cheese; but having never eaten either before I was sure that they'd swap easily enough. Comte is a fairly nutty flavoured cheese compared to Manchego's 'buttery texture' (thanks Google) but it is certainly a good accompaniment to the acid-y sweetness of the onions and the salty ham. I swapped prosciutto and parma ham for similar reasons in my original bake but went back to prosciutto for the second and third loaves and honestly can't tell the difference. I also left out the extra salt as I found that my first loaf was fairly salty from the ham.

The final adaptation I made was to not put the ham on top of my second and third loaves - I found on the first loaf it just burnt and turned into extremely crispy bacon. Putting the foil on top after it's had chance to brown stops this from happening to the onions that are placed on top.

Don't forget to score it into quarters, as this helps the bread to grow and bake properly.

Recipe
You can find the original recipe here; I would urge you to go there straight away and bake this little beauty for yourself. I adapted it slightly as per the below:

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 large red onions, finely sliced
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar

450g plain white flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (double check it's in date as it's the only raising agent in this bread!)
Pinch of dried herbs - I used basil, parsley, a small amount of coriander and rosemary
30g cold salted butter, diced
200g Comte cheese, diced irregularly
80g Prosciutto or other finely sliced ham, roughly torn
300ml buttermilk with 25ml cold water stirred through

Oven temp: 200C/180C Fan oven. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Warm the oil in a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat. Add the sliced red onions and stir, reducing the heat slightly. Cover and cook for 15 minutes stirring occasionally so they don't stick. Turn the heat down low and add the sugar and vinegar; stir and increase the heat and cook for a further 5 to 8 minutes, until sticky and the vinegar has almost all evaporated. Set aside to cool.

Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and herbs in a bowl. Using your fingertips rub the butter in until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. I find it easier to keep going until you think it's done and then shake the bowl vigorously to bring any further butter chunks to the top of the bowl.

Keeping back 1 tablespoon of the cooked onions and a small amount of cheese for the topping, add the remaining cheese, onions and all of the proscuitto/ham. Toss to incorporate - at first the onions and ham will clump together but eventually the flour will dry them enough to allow all three ingredients to disperse evenly in the mixture. Just have faith and keep going!

Make a well in the middle of the flour mix and pour in roughly three quarters of the buttermilk and water mixture. Using a clawed hand mix the flour into the buttermilk well until a sticky dough is formed. Add further buttermilk if you feel like the mixture is too dry (I ended up adding all the buttermilk all three times I've made this). It should be fairly sticky and no flour should be left in the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape roughly. You can work it a little bit here but you don't need to. You do need to try and shape the dough though so if you are finding it's falling all over the place you may want to give it a bit of a light battering. Once shaped, transfer onto the greaseproof paper and score the top quite deeply with a cross.

Throw the rest of the cheese and onions on top. Bake in the middle of the oven for 15 minutes and then cover so that the onions don't burn. Bake for a further 20 - 25 minutes or until it comes away cleanly from the greaseproof paper and sounds hollow when tapped.

Cool on a wire rack; at least until lukewarm as this is truly a bread that needs a little time to sit and chill. The runny cheese inside though is quite a treat if you can't wait that long!

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 2; Arlette Biscuits

It amazes me every year how they manage to come up with different technical challenges to bake - and every year I think I know each one but rarely do! The Arlette biscuit from last week's show is not something I've ever come across but being a lover of cinnamon swirls and always up for a pastry related challenge I decided that I would try the blind technical challenge.

Luckily for me, the official GBBO website has the full website with complete instructions on so I don't have to guess at timings, quantities or method! Which is great because this is a strangely complicated recipe that requires hours to do. I'm not exaggerating - from weighing my first ingredients out to having a finished product cooked it took over 4 hours. You can make these using store bought puff pastry which would speed the process up but where's the fun in that? 

However - they are completely worth the effort.

They're not quite what I'd call a biscuit, more of a pastry to me, but they are absolutely yummy and I would definitely make them again. I'd probably make them from scratch again; it is a lovely feeling to know that you've put all the effort in. I did run into a couple of butter related issues but overall they seem to have turned out ok! I doubled the recipe so I ended up with 16 decent sized biscuits. 

I learnt a few of things along the way - 

1) Don't rush the chill times. Equally, don't overchill. My pastry was fine but my butter layer cracked when I tried to incorporate it. I'm not sure if this is because I overchilled it (I chilled it for nearly an hour rather than half an hour as it still felt squidgy) or because I underchilled it but it meant that I had to attempt to incorporate squidgy butter into hard pastry... In the end I dolloped as much underneath and on top as I could and rewrapped it in clingfilm. This made it easier to get the butter into the pastry. Arguably this has affected the end result, as puff pastry puffs from the butter in between the pastry layers.

2) Turn them in the middle of the cooking time. I often neglect to do this with other biscuits but it really makes a difference with these; if you don't turn them then the bottom sugar/cinnamon combination will probably catch and burn. Turning them ensures a nice colour all around.

3) Don't skimp on the sugar and cinnamon mixture. It looks like a lot to go in but if you skimp then you'll end up with quite bland puff pastry that doesn't really resemble a biscuit in any way.

4) Roll the pastry as tight as you can at the penultimate stage. A loose roll will mean that it's harder to cut your biscuits and they will not make a 'whole' biscuit when they're baked.

5) Using a small rolling pin is easier than a large one when you're rolling out the rounds prior to baking. Aim for as thin as you can get - the thinner they are, the better the taste. 

Yes, it's a four hour effort. But you're actually only working on these every 30 - 45 minutes and only for five to ten minutes at the time. Set aside a morning and get them done! 

Great British Bake Off Challenge - Week 1; Madeira Cake

This year I am challenging myself to make at least one bake from the British TV show, The Great British Bake Off. GBBO is hands down my favourite annual TV event (the Rugby Six Nations comes a close second) and every year I loudly shout about how I'm going to make some of the recipes... but I never do.

Not this year. This year I will hold my word.

I have decided - nay, promised - that I will make at least one of the bakes from the show each week.

The first episode of the 2015 series saw the new bakers tackle Madeira cake, whip out a Walnut cake, and finish up with decadent Black Forest Gateaux. All three are bakes I would love to make and consume as they're among my favourite baked goods (BFG... unffff) but in the interest of ease, creativity and intrigue I've opted for a Madeira sponge.

I've never made a Madeira before, which is largely why I chose it for my first GBBO challenge, but equally as I really wanted to try candied peel. What can I say? I'm an overachiever.

I ended up making two; one to take into work with me and one to devour with my family. This was irrefutably a good plan as there's now just half of the second one left even though they only came out of the oven 2 hours ago...

Hows that crumb looking? Sadly this one came out a little overcooked on the sides and top but the inside is still fairly moist and has a lovely vanilla and lemon flavour. The recipe I used (see below) called for almond extract but in it's absence I used vanilla. It's a fairly close textured cake but I feel it would probably come under a fair bit of scrutiny from Mr Hollywood!

I'm pleasantly pleased with how the candided peel/orange slices came out. I used to the left over syrup on top of both of the cakes and found I had just enough to drizzle. Nice. It was a lot simpler to make than I thought it would be as well - the first recipe I found suggested it would take over 3 hours to make; mine took 35 minutes.

Hopefully this one will be appreciated tomorrow!

Madeira Cake recipe

Adapted from I'd Much Rather Bake Than...

• 175g butter, room temperature
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs, room temperature, cracked and whisked
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 150g self raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 75g ground almonds
• Splash of milk

Cream the butter for around 5 minutes with a hand mixer until it's very soft and creamy. It should go a lot lighter; almost white. 

Slowly add in the sugar, whilst still using the mixer. Keep mixing it for another 5 or so minutes - your aim is to completely combine the sugar and butter into a creamy paste. 

Combine the eggs and vanilla extract in a jug and add slowly to the mix in stages. Keep mixing as you add. For the first few glugs the mixture will start to thicken but by the last it should have started to release again. 

Sift in the flour, baking powder and almonds in two parts. Be sure not to get any almond lumps or 'debris' in the mix. Fold this in using a metal spoon. You've added a lot of air in the previous three stages, now you're folding in the dry ingredients gently to keep that air there! 

Splash the milk in so that the mixture releases a little more. It should be fairly runny. Turn the mix into either a lined loaf tin or a lined and greased round tin.

Bake for 30 - 45 minutes at 150oC, keeping an eye on the top. You should get a crack down the middle but be careful not to let the colour go too dark. If it's starting to catch then cover the cake with tin foil and return to the oven. I put a cake tin with water in at the bottom of my oven to generate some steam; which I think helped. I will have to try without and compare the two!

The cake is done when a skewer comes out cleanly. Leave it in the tin for ten minutes and then turn it out. 

If you're using syrup, poke some holes in the cake with a toothpick and drizzle the syrup when the cake is out of the tin.

Candied Peel Recipe

Taken from Food and Wine.com

• 1 large orange 
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• 1/2 cup of granulated sugar

Either slice the orange thinly or remove the peel in thin chunks and lines using a sharp knife. Set aside. 

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan and stir; bring to the boil. 

Once boiling, add the orange pieces or peel. Simmer for 20 - 25 minutes until the syrup has thickened and the fruit has gone translucent. Remove from the pan and place on greaseproof paper to cool. Drizzle the remaining syrup over the cake and place the orange pieces/peel on decoratively.

If you're making candied peel, be very careful as sugar water gets very hot and it sticks if it touches your skin! 

Next week it's biscuits - another enjoyable thing to bake! 

(Not quite) Thursday Feasts #2 - Swirled Rocky Road

Just imagine it's Thursday not Sunday, k? If you read my last post, I'm sure you'll understand why Thursday Feasts has taken a little while to get off the ground. But it's back and it's back for good!

Rocky road, or as it was known in our family, 'fridge cake' was one of my favourite foods growing up. I have great memories of not only making it but the delight of realising one of my parents had made it - it was the only thing my Dad ever 'baked'! I have wonderful memories of making this in a loaf tin and slicing a 'slice' off for my breakfast whilst my parents weren't looking ;) Not the healthiest start to the day but man does it hit the spot. The recipe is so simple but utterly delicious and it's such a quick make that you don't really have an excuse not to.

I pulled the base recipe for this from the BBC food website, but adapted it a little for myself. It also takes inspiration from a rocky road sold in my uni town by a local cafe. 

Swirled Rocky Road

Ingredients:

• 100g/4½oz soft unsalted butter
  
• 300g/10½oz best-quality dark chocolate, broken into pieces
  
• 3 tbsp golden syrup
  
• 150g/7¼oz chocolate digestive biscuits (roughly crushed)
  
• 100g malteasers (roughly crushed)
  
• 50g glace cherries (roughly chopped)
  
• 75g mini marshmallows
  
• 3 tbsp peanut butter if desired

Method:

1. Melt the chocolate, butter and golden syrup in either a glass bowl over a saucepan of hot water on the stove or in the microwave (if microwaving, stir the syrup in once the butter and chocolate have melted and make sure you heat it in 30 seconds bursts, stirring in between to ensure it doesn't burn).
   
2. Stir in the roughly crushed digestives, malteasers and cherries until all are coated. If you're adding peanut butter, stir 1 of the tablespoons in now. The mixture should be rough but still quite fluid. If you have just coated the biscuits and cherries with little chocolate/butter/syrup left, you'll need to add more.
   
3. **Optional** If you add the marshmallows in when the mixture is still hot from being melted, they too will melt and dissolve into your rocky road. Either chill in the fridge for ten minutes or leave the mixture for half an hour to cool if you want to make sure that your marshmallows remain whole. If you don't have time, then only stir a small amount of them into the mix and put the rest aside.
   
4. Line a square dish with tin foil as smoothly as possible. Pour the mixture into the tin. Using a teaspoon, swirl the remaining peanut butter through the top layer of the mix. It should create a lovely yellow marbling pattern. Push the remaining marshmallows into the top and refrigerate until solid. Serve by cutting it into chunks with a big knife.

The wonderful thing about this is that you can really go wild with your imagination and put whatever you want in it, as long as it's crunchy and you like the taste! If you don't like malteasers, then why not try M+Ms or fudge pieces? If you are allergic to peanut butter, why not try swirling caramel across the top or even a green coloured peppermint sauce? Your imagination and tastes are the limit here. 

One of the best versions of this I tasted had white chocolate malteasers, digestives and mars bar chunks in... Just throwing that out there.

Thursday Feasts #1 - M+M cookies

Welcome to one of my new features! Every Thursday I will be showing you guys something I've cooked or baked in the last week. And to start, we have these wonderful cookies that I made these for my boyfriend to take into work with him and I have to say, they are the best cookies I've ever made! They're really chewy and as you can see, kept their shape fantastically.

Om nom nom. I made a batch of 16 and there are only 5 left... The recipe is very simple. And here it is...

Adapted from All Recipes

Best M+M cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain flour
• A pinch of salt
• A pinch of baking powder
• 3/4 cups of melted butter or margarine
• 3/4 cups of golden caster sugar  (I took out the brown sugar from the original recipe as I don't like the strong taste of it. If you don't mind, then sub it back in.)
• 1/2 cup of white caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (Alternatively, if you have it, you can use vanilla flavoured caster sugar and skip this)
• 1 whole egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4s of a sharing bag of M+Ms = reduce if you want more cookie to M+M ratio!*

Method:

Oven temp: 160 degrees C 

1. Combine the dry ingredients into one bowl and set aside. Melt the butter. Combine sugars in a big bowl.
2. Pour the melted butter over the sugars and mix until it seems to be fully combined/not very grainy.
3. Add in the whole egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract if you're using it and combine again until light and creamy.
4. Sift in the dry ingredients and stir/fold until just combined. Add in your M+Ms and mix again.
5. Grab a baking tray and portion out cookie dough onto the sheet (no need to grease) roughly 3 inches apart. Put the tray in the freezer for five minutes.
6. Take the tray out of the freezer and bake for 6 minutes to 10 minutes. They're done when they start to go golden brown around the outside. When you take them out, leave them on the oven tray for fifteen minutes before removing them to cool.

*I used a whole bag of M+Ms and there really were too many. I also recommend roughly bashing half the M+Ms so that you get a nice difference in texture and more colour 'oomph'.

Now, number 5 is an odd instruction but it makes a lot of sense; cookies rely on the butter and binding ingredients in them being cold to keep their shape. If you've ever made cookies before you'll know that warm cookies spread incredibly quickly and lose their shape rapidly - they go thin and greasy. This stops this totally! You don't want to freeze them completely, just make sure that they're cold to the touch. When they go into the oven cold they cook through fast and don't have the temperature needed to 'dissolve' onto the tray.

You really can't beat one of these with a cup of steaming hot fresh tea. If you leave them on the saucer they warm up and go all gooey again!

Tea and a biscuit, that Great British institution!

Weekend Bake: Oreo Cupcakes

I love these cakes, I make them as often as I can get Oreos in the house unopened for long enough to whip the batter up! The icing is sticky and cloying which goes really well with the sweet moist cake. This time I used a different recipe to normal - which called for the interesting ingredient of boiling water, an addition that I initially thought had scrambled the mixture - but it is much moister and stickier than my cakes normally turn out so I'm sticking with it!

I managed to make 28 of these bad boys, luckily I'd bought a duo pack of Oreos as it happens that there are exactly 14 Oreos in each pack! The plan was that my BF was going to take half the batch to work with him but unfortunately that didn't happen for a few reasons, so we've been left with 20 cupcakes to eat between two people... Challenge accepted ;)

The recipe for the cakes came from this fantastic blog and will be, when I can be bothered to wander upstairs to collect my recipe book, forever enshrined in writing so that I can make these bad boys again! I adapted the Primrose Bakeries vanilla frosting receipe to include Oreo crumbs and chunks - I was anxious not to put too much liquid in as I was running low on icing sugar so my frosting is a little too stodgy for my liking. Still tastes beautiful mind you!

Cross section showing the oreo cookie baked into the cake

Weekend bake; 'healthier' chocolate chip cookies

I love cookies and baking them but they're not exactly the healthiest of bakes!

However I recently discovered the wonderful 'Chocolate Covered Katie' blog which has loads of gluten free, healthier, diet, often vegan/vegetarian recipes you can use to make healthier versions of your favourite treats. It's a wonderful website and she has so many great ideas that you'd be a fool to not read through it.

I made her no bake mocha chocolate chip cookies, which honestly are gorgeous! I baked mine as I don't like raw cookies at 160 degrees for about 8 minutes (as I made very small ones) - I was a little skeptical that they wouldn't really work but they are the perfect oaty cookie. Mine are a little powdery as I put too much cocoa in but other than that, they're a definite repeat make! Next time however I'll cut the cocoa powder in half. I also used real sugar as it's all we keep in.

Definitely check her site out, and if you fancy a healthy sweet fix then make these cookies! Unfortunately my memory card reader has gone walkies so no pictures :( Normal service will be resumed soon, I promise!

Baking bonanza

Had a bit of a baking splurge these last few days, hence the absence and lack of posts! Firstly, my Dad wanted me to make him some soft centre cupcakes to take back to work with him and then my sister requested I make a few desserts for the BBQ she held yesterday. Finally I  made a sausage pie for dinner today and some lovely little fruit pastries with the left over bits.

Boozey ganache centred cupcakes boxed up and ready to go. I got the recipe from the recipe section of the Baileys GB facebook page and adapted it slightly as I wanted a chocolate sponge and I didn't actually have any Baileys in. Instead I used 'Amarula cream' which my sister brought back from Sweden for us (more info here, if you can you should definitely get some as it's lovely!) which made it sweeter and fruitier than the original recipe would've but overall, very tasty. Poured slightly too much in which is why the buttercream was too runny; obviously if you made this measuring out your liqueur would be advisable.

Next I made a selection of muffins. My favourite, lemon and poppy seed (from this post) and some chocolate ones from a general google search. Apologies for the lack of recipe link there! I used some of the remaining ganache to fill the centres of the chocolate muffins, and put a teaspoon of lemon curd into the centres of the lemon and poppy seed ones. It's definitely how I'm going to make them from now on, as the gooey centre gives them a lovely texture and a great surprise for those who don't know how you've made them! It's also really simple, all you do is spoon a small amount of mixture into the muffin case, put a spoonful of curd/ganache on top, and then cover it with more mixture. Yum!

Lastly, my fruit tarts. So easy, so simple, so tasty! Just get some ready rolled puff pastry (cheating I know, but I don't have the time to make my own), lay it on a baking sheet in rectangles and spread some jam on it. Slice up the fruits you have - I used strawberries and nectarines -, add a pastry border to hold it all in, egg wash the exposed pastry and sprinkle with a little icing sugar! They're really summery and can be made to your own individual taste. Probably would be better with sweet pastry but for a quick throw together dessert if you're making something with puff pastry in the first place they're great. As you can see the pastry doesn't really rise very much as the ingredients are quite heavy but it doesn't really matter. Just make sure it's browned underneath.

I also made a 'cheesecake' but that went, uhm, a bit wrong and is probably best not mentioned...

What do you use your left over pastry for? Do you know of a better substitute to Baileys? And why did we get it as a gift from Sweden when it's an African drink? Mysterious.

Lemon and Poppy seed muffins

I'm not lying when I say I've been wanting to make these for about a year; the biggest problem I had was procuring poppy seeds (which seem to be non-existant in my town). However on Saturday I managed to find two packs of the elusive things and so I was free to bake! I made these yesterday. Recipe and verdict after the cut :)