Yorkshire Pasties

Because they're made in Yorkshire!

As my usual style dictates, I just made it up as I went along. So here goes at a guesstimate:

Makes 11 pasties

500g minced beef

2 large carrots

3 potatoes 

1 onion

1tbsp Hendersons relish

Salt and lots of white pepper 

I cooked my filling by parboiling the potatoes and carrots, softening the onion and browning the meat with the relish then mixing together and leaving to cool 

Pastry:

500g strong white bread flour

20g trex

40g margarine

1 egg yolk

175ml cold water

1 tsp salt

Mix all the ingredients together in a food processor then add the water until a dough is formed. Chill for 30 minutes

Preheat oven to 180c fan.

Roll out the pastry and cut round a small plate. Fill with filling and crimp. Pierce air holes with a knife. Brush with beaten egg and bake for 40 minutes until golden 

Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

I need to write down my Rhubarb & Custard cupcake recipe while I remember it, so here goes.

My mum grows her own Rhubarb and its actually naturally quite sweet. So there I was in the rain, rooting around for 400g worth of rhubarb. I thought I had it but once I'd chopped the huuuuuuge leaves off I only had 200g. Typically, Sod's law, it really started to wang it down as I trudged back outside to get more rhubarb. So these cakes were made with super super fresh rhubarb. I swear it made them better :D

These cupcakes are one of the sweetest cupcakes I've ever made so if you've got a sweet tooth and you like the taste of those rhubarb and custard sweets, then you're in for a treat!!

For the rhubarb filling, chop up 400g of rhubarb and add 200g caster sugar to a pan over a gentle heat, give it a stir then leave to simmer for 15 minutes or until the nice pink colour and the rhubarb has softened and broken up.

Sieve and leave to cool - I used the sieved rhubarb juice to make rhubarb granita

The cupcakes include corn flour in the batter. I'd never used corn flour before but hey ho, give it a go!!

150g margarine
150g caster sugar
140g self-raising flour
10g cornflour
3 medium eggs
2 tbsp milk
Pinch of ground cinnamon

I cooked them in the aga but for ovens, preheat to 160°c

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and
fluffy. Add the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar one at a time along with 1/3 of the flours and the cinnamon. Mix until just combined. Repeat until all the eggs and flour are combined.

Bake for 20 minutes

To make the frosting, add all the ingredients into a bowl and beat for 4 minutes until smooth and shiny. Colour half yellow and half red to make those infamous sweetie colours.

Once the cupcakes are cool, remove the middles (I've got a fancy schmancy cupcake corer) and fill with rhubarb. Fill your piping bag with the icings so you've got two tone icing in one bag and pipe on the cupcakes.

Et voila!

A Yorkshire Tea

Tonight we had deconstructed Toad in the Hole. I don't like to cook TitH as it's intended to be, I prefer to cook the sausage and Yorkshires separately - it means you get properly cooked Yorkshires and not raw bits.

My fool proof Yorkshire recipe:
Makes 8 muffin sized Yorkshires.
Preheat oven to highest setting. Add sunflower oil to the muffin tin. Beat together
285 ml full fat milk
115 g plain flour
Pinch of salt
3 eggs

Let it rest for ten minutes in a jug. When the oil is ready / oven to temperature, pour into the muffin tin - see this is why I let the mixture rest in a jug! Get back in the oven quick and shut the door, keeping it shut for around 20 minutes. Don't open the door too early.

I also made Onion Sauce to go with it (and gravy of course). My mum always served Onion Sauce with it, from a packet, so I decided to try and make my own:

1 large onion chopped
About 350ml milk
Bring the onion and milk to the boil then simmer over a low heat for 15 minutes. Strain the onion out and put the milk back on the heat, adding flour and butter to make an all in one white sauce. When thickened, add 3/4 of the chopped onion back in with seasoning and serve

Yum yum!!!!!

It's World Baking Day

So how could I resist baking today?!

But what to bake? I don't have much in but having spied the chocolate Teacakes at Costa, I've felt inspired to try them. I was originally inspired to make them after watching them on GBBO, but as I didn't have a spherical mould, I put that thought to the back of my mind.

The Costa ones however are made without a mould, so I knew it was possible and for some reason, I decided to have a go at these today.

I looked at a few different recipes and methods (including the GBBO one of course), but me being me, decided to combine all of them into my own recipe.

A couple of notes: if you have a hand whisk, then use it or if not follow my method for using the Kitchen Aid. If you have neither, prepare for burning yet toned biceps and triceps.

I didn't measure how much chocolate I used. I gauged by sight as we still have loads of Easter chocolate left. At a rough guess maybe 300g is needed.

So here goes:
Biscuits:
50g wholemeal flour
50g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
25g caster sugar
25g butter
2 tbsp milk

Mix the flours, salt, baking powder and sugar together, rub in the butter and add the milk to form a dough.

Roll out to a 5mm thickness and cut rounds (I think mine are about 5cm diameter)

Refrigerate for 10 mins while preheating oven to 150 fan.

Bake for 10 minutes and cool on a wire rack

Melt chocolate and cover the cooled biscuits in them, both sides then leave to set on the rack - they stick but push the underneath and they pop off.

Make the marshmallow:
2 egg whites
100g caster sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl over simmering water. The idea is you whisk with electric mixer for 10 minutes until it doubles and turns white. I don't have a hand mixer and the thought of 10 minutes continual whisking filled me with fear so I had my own plan. Heat over the simmering water and whisk for two minutes. Transfer the bowl (therefore you need to use the Kitchen Aid bowl) to the mixer and whisk on a high speed for a couple of minutes. Return the bowl to the pan and hand whisk over the water for another minute or two then finish off by letting the stand mixer do the work and you "should" end up with perfect mallow. I did. But could have been a fluke of course!

Spoon into a piping bag, no nozzle required and pipe onto the set biscuit bases. Aim to pipe so it almost reaches the edges then pipe up as if you're attempting to make a dome shape.

Melt the chocolate and spoon over the mallow. It will drip a little down the sides so tease it down adding more chocolate to the top and covering it down until the whole teacake is covered. Leave to set

This should get you 12 teacakes. Recipes I read said best eaten the same day but I bet they're fine for a few if there are any left!

Oh my!

How long since my last blog?! I'm rubbish.

Since last year, well the beginning of this year, I've really got into baking bread thanks to my Paul Hollywood book. I've made truffle ficelles, wholemeal, cob, granary, crumpets, teacakes, bacon and cheese loaf and pork pies from the book so far. I'll do a blog each day this week on each of those items along with photos

Today has been about experimenting with my new mini Easter egg mould. I say mini, they're about creme egg size, so not a huge Easter egg but not teeny either. It's a 6x mould so makes 3 eggs of two different patterns

I'm no chocolatier and can't be bothered with tempering so just used melted Dairy Milk as they're for the kids, ordinarily I'd use a higher cocoa solid dark chocolate. I decided to try just doing one thick layer then once cooled and set, melted the edges on a heated baking tray, filled one half with smarties and affixed the two halves together. They're in the fridge now for after the kids tea.

If all goes well with them, I'll use the same method but just do a few thinner layers instead. The finished eggs will then be used for either an Easter egg hunt or for the party bags. They're delicate though of course so not sure how to wrap them. Eek!

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The eggs are a success! They worked and the kids, of course, love them. Yippeeeeee

Curly pie and koggetjes

I decided to bake twice yesterday.

First I made koggetjes. The caramel turned out perfect. I felt rather chuffed with it. The cookie dough was fine but I must have flattened them too much before baking as they spread far too much and weren't as thick as in the recipe photo.

Second bake was Curly Pie. I made tomato, chorizo, mushroom and cheese. I didn't use all the water/oil mix in my dough and still had to add more flour.

They turned out really well though and I'll def be making them again! So easy

Lists for Macmillan c/o the hairy bikers

I'm holding a Macmillan Coffee Morning on September 28th

A chance to do lots and lots of baking!! As well as raise money of course

My initial list was as follows:

Vanilla and chocolate zebra cake
Millionaire shortbread
Vanilla cheesecake
Apple and blackberry crumble cake
Danish pastries
Carrot cake
Lemon drizzle loaf
Macmillan Iced cookies
Custard creams
Coffee cake

And I probably will still do most of them but having got The Hairy Bikers Big Book of Baking I'm also tempted to try the following:
Scandinavian tea ring
Norwegian almond bars
Cardamom and lemon cookies
Amsterdam caramel cookies
Biscuit salami
Pain aux raisins

Mmmmmmmmmmm. It's going to be a fab event