Recipe #11 of NEWrecipes52 ...

Just in time for Easter and I thought I'd try baking hot cross buns. The recipe I followed came from Rachel Allen's Bake book ...


I already had all the ingredients in my cupboards (love it when that happens!). Yeast and warm milk doing it's stuff ...


Make a well in the dry ingredients ...


Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ...


Then knead!

Now, I was feeling particularly lazy and so I thought I'd let my mixer take the strain. Using a dough hook attachment, I set the mixer of a really slow speed and set it to work for around 5 minutes ...


Once the dough had "come together", it was set aside in a warm location for around 2hrs, until it had doubled in size, just like regular bread ...


After the wait, I knocked the air out of the dough, then kneaded again for a couple of minutes to get a really smooth, shiny dough. I took pieces (approx 40g in weight) and rolled them into bun shapes, using a sharp knife I cut the cross shape on top, then added a little egg wash and made a "cross" of shortcrust pastry and let the buns prove ...


A quick glaze of egg wash and then into a hot oven ...


Actually, a little too hot! My buns cooked a little too quickly and got a little darker than I'd intended ...


But that really didn't matter because whilst they were still warm, I split and buttered them and had one (or two!) with a mid-morning cup of tea ...

Recipe #10 of NEWrecipes52 ...

Back to what I bake best ... cakes! I was given a series of recipe cards from my boss at work, [thank you Paula ♥] and one of them included a rather tasty looking recipe for cappuccino cake. Now I say "tasty looking" but I'm not actually a fan of coffee. In fact, I really don't like the bitter taste of it at all. However, my hubby loves the stuff and so this bake was for him ...

The usual suspects ...


The recipe called for the cocoa powder to be mixed with warm water to make a thick, chocolaty paste ...


Then it was just a case of mixing all the other ingredients into a dark, rich batter and pouring into greased / lined tins ...


25 minutes at 160oC later, and here's how they looked ...


Once the cakes were cool, I whipped up half a pint(!) of double cream and added a shot of instant coffee ...


Half the whipped coffee cream was used to fill the cake ...


The other half was then spread evenly on top ...


A generous dusting of cocoa powder for decoration (+ flavour!) ...


And a big slice served up for dessert ...


Now even though I dislike coffee immensely, this cake was really rather nice! The coffee flavour was subtle and actually really enhanced the yummy chocolate taste, rather than over-powered it. So although I started out baking this for hubby ... I do confess to indulging in a slice [or two] myself!

Recipe #9 of NEWrecipes52 ...

A savoury turn this week. Well actually, I made this last weekend but I'm running about a week behind on all my recipe posts at the moment, though I'm hoping to rectify that this week.

Anyhoo, back to the recipe ... spicy chicken pasties, chosen from my [now] trusted and favoured "Great British Bake Off - How To Bake" recipe book and a chance to raid my woefully under-used spiced rack. The recipe called for cayenne pepper, turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander and freshly grated ginger ...


The secrets to this recipe is PREPARATION and TIME. I measured out all the ingredients and had them all ready to go, otherwise I would've been scrambling around trying to get the lids off my spice jars, when I should have been processing the pastry. The pastry and yogurt marinade were made well in advance, to give the best possible flavour. The colours were gorgeous ...



A little word of caution here ... turmeric STAINS!!! It produces the most amazingly intense yellow colour for the pastry, but once I cleaned down I worktops I was left with a slight discolouration which I needed to use a bleach cleaner to get rid of.

The content of the pasties was the 2 or 3 pieces of cooked marinated spiced chicken, with a teaspoon of mango chutney ...


How cute do they look with their edges all neatly crimped and glossy with a freshly applied coat of egg-wash?


They were truly scrumptious! The pastry was crumbly, the chicken fragrantly spiced and the mango chutney was sweet and oh so wonderfully sticky ...


I took soooooo many photos whilst making these pasties ... so many in fact, that I created a LO showcasing some of them ...

Credits:
Template - Designed by Timounette, 12 Photos of Christmas
File tabs - Fei-Fei's Stuff, Sweet As Candy

What a lovely surprise ...

Yesterday, whilst I was at work, DH arranged for this beautiful vase of spring tulips to be delivered to my office ...


The reason why? Well ... just because!

And they look even more beautiful this morning ...

Recipe #8 of NEWrecipes52 ...

I decided to test out another recipe from the pages of The Primrose Bakery Book and this time I tried the banana and chocolate chip loaf.

Lots of yummy ingredients ...


My "tin" is actually made from silicon ... it's bendy, it's squishy and it's PINK!!! I've never tried using silicon bake-ware before, but I was given a rather funky multi-coloured set for Christmas, by my friend Hayley, and I figured this recipe would be the ideal test for it!


Tasty banana batter with LOTS of dark chocolate chips ...


Carefully combined before being poured into the silicon tin for baking ...


The loaf took almost 1 hr to bake ...


But because my loaf tin was slightly smaller than the recipe mix intended, I had batter left over and so I was able to knock out a batch of tasty muffins in less that 20 minutes too ...


Perfect for eleven's and I'd say another recipe success!!!

Recipe #7 of NEWrecipes52 ...

Until yesterday, I'd never baked Brownies before. What? Seriously? I know! Even with all my years of baking experience, never before have these gooey, chewy squares of chocolaty heaven been created in my kitchen.

My recipe came from The Primrose Bakery Book (cute cover, eh?) ...


The Primrose Bakery is a real place, in London and whilst I've never been there, I adore their recipes. Here's a snapshot of some of the key ingredients ...

285g dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids)
115g butter
450g light soft brown sugar
6 eggs
160g plain flour
1.5 tbsp instant espresso powder
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp salt
230g dark chocolate chips

You can't really go wrong with LOTS of chocolate and LOTS of butter ...


The chocolate and butter is melted over a bowl of simmering water. Whilst this is happening, whisk up the eggs with vanilla extract. In a separate bowl combine the sugar and espresso powder. Add the egg mixture to the sugar, stir and then add the [by now] cooled chocolate, sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and combine together with a wooden spoon. Lastly, add the chocolate chips (if using) ...



Pour the batter into a rectangular baking tin or similar. Now I don't have any rectangular tins, but I do own an oven proof glass dish that I usually bake lasagna in. It did the trick perfectly. This is the gooey mix prior to baking ...


And 40 minutes [at 150oC] later, here's how it looked ...


A further 30 minutes later and here's how it looked, along with a big dollop of whipped cream on top for good measure ...


It was still slightly warm, the top and sides had just the right amount of crunch and the centre was soft, moist and oh so gooey ... yum! My Brownies were seriously tasty and I'm definitely going to be making them again. I'm just kicking myself for not having baked them sooner!

NB. Please excuse the graininess of my photos; I used the camera on my phone again rather than my "proper" camera!

Recipe #6 of NEWrecipes52 ...

It was bound to happen sooner or later. The chances of all 52 new recipes being a success were pretty slim and today, my luck ran out :-(

I thought I'd try my hand at baking macaroons ... those dainty little almond flavoured biscuits, that look oh so pretty with their spring inspired pastel colours. Sadly, mine didn't look quite so pretty and they didn't taste as good as I'd hoped either.

I have two different books with macaroon recipes. I've got The Great British Bake Off - How To Bake and Lorraine Pascale's Baking Made Easy ... I opted to follow Lorraine's version.

It started out well enough as I combined icing sugar, ground almonds and egg whites into a thick paste ...


Caster sugar and a splash of water were put onto the heat to dissolve and then brought up to the boil to make a sugar syrup. Whilst that was happening, I whisked up some more egg whites to the soft-medium peak stage ...


The recipe called for the sugar syrup to be poured onto the whisked egg whites and it was here that I think things went slightly astray! As soon as the hot syrup hit the egg whites, it rapidly cooled and made the mixture go "grainy" (I can't think of any other way to describe it!). You can just about see what I mean in the photo below ...


I persevered and added the mixture to the paste I'd prepared earlier, by folding together until combined.

It's at this stage in the recipe that the food colouring is added (if using) and it's at this point that I'll refer you to my recent mini meringue kisses post ... remember I said I didn't think I'd added enough colouring? Well, I made up for it BIG time with this recipe ...


Oh my goodness! What had I done???


Despite the rather lurid colour scheme, I spooned the mixture into my piping bag and went about piping evenly sized(!) circles on to x2 parchment paper lined baking trays. Then I waited 30 minutes to allow a skin to form before popping them into a cool oven to bake for around 12 minutes ...


Once they'd cooled completely, I sandwiched two of the individual biscuits together with some whipped cream and the results didn't look too bad ...


Unfortunately, I think I slightly under baked them as the insides were a bit stodgy and chewy, but it was too late to do anything about it ...


So there you have it my friends, the first negative result from my NEWrecipes52 adventures. But I won't let this experience dampen my spirits. In fact, I think I'm going to try the recipe from my other book as that has a different method of preparation ... but that's for a future post.