Cool Cake

Seeing as I am somewhat cake obsessed here’s a cake related youtube clip. Such a cool cake!

Baking Mania

I seem to have issues. I keep on and on and on baking! Last night’s Chelsea Buns kept me up until gone midnight, but it was worth it as they turned out tasty. I would have liked them to be a bit more risen, but I would have had to stay up even later! I shared them with friends at work and nobody appeared to get Chelsea Bun poisoning – in fact they seemed to like them Tonight I have been a little more sensible and not baked anything with lots of rising involved, but it did need an hour in the oven … my Friday bake was a Madeira Cake. It turned out very nicely and allowed me to try out my tin which has a bottom that comes out (if you know what I mean). Tomorrow I plan to bake bread rolls, in between the usual Saturday stuff of tidying, washing, kids stuff etc.

My name is Suzy, and I’m a bakeaholic

Chelsea Buns before they all got eaten

Chelsea Bun (now deceased!)

Sticky lovely bun (also deceased)

Madeira Cake ready for the oven

Madeira Cake after cooking

Madeira Cake cooling

Yum! A couple of slices of fresh cake for me and Ben :-)

Bakeaholic

Ooh it’s nearly midnight and I haven’t posted! I’m currently waiting for some chelsea buns to cook. I had a sudden urge to bake them about 8:30pm … bit of a stupid time to start baking really when you have to let things rise. Not sure if they’ll be any good, but as my friends and I back in Uni used to say “you should never surpress an urge!”. Of course I may regret this in the morning, but there we are. I find baking therapeutic. Pictures tomorrow I guess!

Abi & Grandad

This weekend as we were at Mum & Dad’s, Abi spent time with Grandad again. They decided to bake more bread like they had done at Christmas and this time I got pictures! I don’t think it is the bread-making that is the attraction for Abi, although she does enjoy it – it’s more that its a special thing for her and Grandad to do together She is rather fond of him! And shhhh don’t tell him, but I’m rather fond of him too

Abi & Grandad

Me & my Dad

Abi & Grandad

Lemony Deliciousness

Since I have already made too much bread, and filled my freezer with it, I have moved on to cake! I popped to the shops at lunch time with a vague idea of making a lemon cake in mind. I stocked up on eggs, flour, sugar and lemons and then this evening started looking for a nice lemon cake recipe. Surprisingly I couldn’t find one in any of my recipe books, but the interwebs came to the rescue and I found one on the BBC Good Food site – Lemon Drizzle Cake. Ben, liking the idea of cake, was being my assistant (very helpful) and together with my trusty Kenwood we made a most delicious cake I’d never actually zested a lemon before – quite fun and smells lovely. Squeezing the lemons for the drizzle was a little painful as I’d not really thought about my dry cracked hands and a small cut which stung rather a lot! Anyway, it was fun, and turned out very nice indeed. By the way if you are tempted to try the recipe, I read the comments on it, and decided to go with the majority who suggested using the zest of 2 lemons instead of 1, and the juice of the 2 lemons instead of 1 1/2 for the drizzle. It worked out well like that.

More Bread

I got myself a Kenwood Chef – a good investment based on stories of them lasting a good 40 years or more. Today I made my first loaf of bread mixed & kneaded in it. A lot less effort than doing it by hand, but with much more flexibility than using the breadmaker. This first loaf was a quick packet mix as I didn’t have much time – a cheese & onion bread. It came out very nice Next time I shall make something from scratch I think. It was an odd shaped loaf – I had a kind of rustic loaf idea in my head but it ended up looking more like a potato! But still, it’s tasty so who cares! It cheered me up anyway.

Bread

I have become a little obsessed with making bread. It’s all my Dad’s fault After he and Abi baked bread rolls down in Bristol it made me want to have a go. First ones I did with the breadmaker on the dough setting, then took it out and made it into rolls. These came out nice but tasted a little on the sweet side, kind of like brioche – very nice but not quite right I think. Not sure why the breadmaker recipe includes so much sugar. I looked at the recipe on the back of the flour and that has way less sugar.

Today I decided to make some more rolls but this time do it by hand – I followed the flour bag recipe and doubled it to make a big batch – my breadmaker wouldn’t have been able to handle this much as it’s quite small. I haven’t made bread for years, but it all came back to me I tweeted throughout the process – hope I didn’t bore anyone! I was just enjoying myself and wanted to share.

Step 1: Mixing

Step 2: Kneading

Abi helped with the kneading, but she wasn’t strong enough to really work it, and the table was too high for her, so I did most of it. Very therapeutic, a nice bit of kneading

Step 3: Rising

I had to start shaping the rolls at this point before it got any bigger and overflowed the bowl!

Step 4a: Shaping plain rolls

Step 4b: Shaping seedy rolls

I split the dough and made half into plain rolls. The other half I added some seeds to- pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and pinenuts.

Finished plain rolls

Finished seedy rolls

They turned out really well, I think I am proud of my rolls!

The only problem with doing it all by hand is that it takes ages … well, really, making bread by any means takes quite a while, even in the breadmaker. It’s not something I’m going to be able to do when I’m at work, but it was really fun to do today, and maybe I’ll be able to make bread at weekends when I have more time.