Tag: baking

Antics

Brownies: A Small Bite of Heaven…

theadventuresofcaptainhetty

Today is the first day of my Summer. Ahead lies long stretch of four months until my final year at university – not at all daunting…! In lieu of a month of constant revision (and regaining mobility of my right arm from writing so much!), I would like to catch up on my somewhat neglected blog with a beautiful brownie recipe: an optimistic beginning to hopefully a good summer ahead. This a foolproof recipe that is guaranteed to yield amazing results!

Top tip: cut up your pieces better than I did!

Ingredients:

  • 275g caster sugar
  • 185g unsalted butter
  • 85g plain flour
  • 3 large eggs

(and the exciting bit:)

  • 185g good dark chocolate
  • 50g white chocolate
  • 50g milk chocolate
  • 40g cocoa powder
Painfully unevenly cut: an example of how not to cut up your brownies!

Method:

  1. Cut the butter into small cubes and break up the dark chocolate into small pieces. Tip both into a medium sized bowl. Fill a saucepan with water so it does not touch the bottom of the bowl when they are stack on top of each other. Heat the water on a low simmering heat. Stir the butter and chocolate occasionally as they melt into one another. Remove bowl from the pan and leave the mixture to cool to room temperature.
  2. Meanwhile, prepare your owven by turning it to gas mark 4/180C/160C, and line a shallow 20cm tin with greaseproof paper (I used my round loose-bottomed cake tins but normal people who can take things out of tins competently probably use square tins!).
  3. Next, sieve out the flour and cocoa powder together into a fresh bowl.
  4. Then chop the white and milk chocolate into chunks – ready for a later stage.
  5. With a third bowl, whisk the three eggs and caster sugar together with an electric mixer on the highest setting. Stop when they look like a thick, creamy milkshake. This will take no longer than 8 minutes but may be faster and took no more than 3 minutes depending how pwerful the whisk. The mixture will be double its original size, pale and creamy. Be careful not to overdo it as you will risk knocking the air out.
  6. Pour in the cooled chocolate and butter mixture and gently fold in with a figure-of-8 motion, taking great care not to knock air out. Make sure to reach the sides of the bowl. The resulting mixture will be a dappled brown colour. Do not rush this stage: be slow and gentle.
  7. Resieve the cocoa and flour over this mixture so it covers the whole thing evenly. Do the same gentle folding as before, making sure to eradicate pockets of the dry ingredients. At first, the mixture will look disheartening and dusty (but you’re on the right track!). In the end, it will be fudgy mixture. Again, do not overdo this and stop before you think you should.
  8. Gently stir in the white and milk chunks of chocolate.
  9. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, gently easing it into all areas of the tin and leveling it to a smooth level. Put into the oven for 25 minutes. At the end of this time, check the middle does not wobble. If so, bake anouther 5 minutes. There should be a parpery crust and the sides will have moved away from the tin’s edges.
  10. Leave to cool and cut into squares, triangles or even dodecahedrons should you desire.
  11. Crucially, enjoy!
Antics

Baking Therapy

theadventuresofcaptainhetty

With exams fast-approaching and revision slowly taking over my every hour, I have neglected this eclectic blog posting – Have no fear, I have many exciting posts planned post-exam!

However, on the topic of exam stress, I have found baking to be a useful therapy. It makes for a nice distraction to seven hour chunks of revision. Taking half an hour to whizz up some batter, fifty minutes revision, ten minutes to decant/ice and a tasty study snack as a reward. Granted, I have had to balance all this with early morning gym sessions and evening swims. But interpersing my revision with some carefree baking has been a godsend. So here is a quick and simple recipe I can wholeheartedly recommend should you too be revising, very busy or just want a carefree, enjoyable activity to offset your day!

A Good Ol’ Classic Victoria Sponge!

Stable Baking Classic

For this cake, I followed a simple Victoria sponge recipe. I jazzed things up by turning it into a marble cake. This is really simple: I separated the batter in half and added about a tablespoon of cocoa powder and a glob of golden syrup to one, and a dash of vanilla extract to the other. I spooned each mixture alternately into the two circular loose-bottomed (ay-ay) tins, and did a rough feathering.

Ingredients:

Sponge:

  • 200g caster sugar
  • 200g butter (leave out for about ten minutes before measuring)
  • 200g sifted self-raising flour
  • 4 softly beaten eggs
  • 1 TEAspoon of baking powder
  • 2 TABLEspoons of milk

Optional: (for marble cake)

  • Drop of vanilla extract
  • Glob of golden syrup
  • Tablespoon of cocoa powder

Icing/Filling:

  • 140g sifted icing sugar
  • 100g softened butter
  • Drop of vanilla extract
  • Some jam for the filling (or your preference – lemon curd works equally as well!)

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to gas mark 5 or 170 Celsius. Butter two sandwich tins (I use 20cm loose-bottomed ones). Line with baking paper is desired but personally baking paper and I aren’t friends.
  2. Using your largest bowl, whisk together the caster sugar and eggs. Then add the flour, baking powder, milk until you have a smooth batter. Be careful not too over-whisk, as the eggs will separate slightly.
  3. If you are after a marble sponge, separate half of the batter into another bowl. In one, add the cocoa powder and golden syrup, and in the other add the vanilla extract. Spoon alternately into the sandwich tins. Pulling a skewer through a few times for a fathered look.
  4. Otherwise, add the vanilla extract into the plain batter and spoon into the two sandwich tins. You’re looking for a more-or-less even top, so spoon down with a spatula or knife. Bang the tin into the kitchen surface a couple of times.
  5. Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. The sponge will spring back when pressed and an inserted skewer/fork should come out clean. Take out of the tins carefully and place on a cooling rack as soon as possible. Leave to cool through.
  6. For the filling, whisk together the butter and sifted icing sugar. Add the vanilla extract. Spread your jam/alternative over the top of one sponge. Then spread the filling on top. Sandwich the two together and start to spread the icing on top of the other sponge: decorate as desired (I used walnutes going spare around the edges of mine!).
I jazzed things up by turning it into a marble cake

Very tasty classic that did not last two days in my house! I hope you enjoy too, and happy de-stressing!

Antics

Laptop detox

theadventuresofcaptainhetty

Last Thursday, I went home for long weekend to break up the four days of no contact hours I have this semester. Much to my mortification when I unpacked, I realised I left my laptop charger at home. Anyone who knows me, knows how important my laptop is. I rarely go anywhere without it. And why wouldn’t you when it provides reading, writing, university work, access to any information readily available at the touch of a fingertip? So the prospect of four, suddenly very long days stretching ahead felt very daunting. Luckily I had prepared my work for the following week in advance, so the 80% battery ration was not overly critical. My weekend went very differently laptop-free.

Lemon and white chocolate Victoria sponge with scraped icing around the sides

Within an hour of being home, I started baking. I made a lemon and white chocolate Victoria sponge with scraped icing around the side. This was partially spurred on by the horrendous state of our uni kitchen (despite personally deep cleaning it two or so days before…). It felt liberating to be able to create something with a free range of preparation space.

Listening to the impact of another failed Brexit vote on Radio Four (yes I am an elderly woman), I modified this recipe. with fresh lemon juice and zest, a hint of white chocolate grated into the batter and icing, and replacing jam with lemon curd. It was really nice to surprise my parents with cake when they came home from their day!

This spurt of baking escalated. The good feeling from this initial cake lead to cheesecake and flapjacks (after watching the Stand Up 2 Cancer Bake Off):

The flapjacks were a little crumbly, and I would follow Paul Hollywood’s advice of adding more than 2-3 tablespoons of golden syrup to hold everything together and let the outside caramelise more. Again, I used the white chocolate and lemon flavours for my cheesecake. This was also a little crumbly, the biscuit base falling apart over time. Whilst not overloading the base with melted butter, next time I will be adding more than the recipe uses; but the main body is perfectly creamy! The firmer you would prefer the cheesecake, the longer you leave it in the fridge to set. Making these were a nostalgic and fun experience, much more engaging than filling time up on my laptop.

Over the weekend, I saw both my grandparents. These visits spurred on my final two cakes, coffee and a marble cake:

You really can’t see the full effect of the marble sponge here, but simply separating the batter into two and adding chocolate and vanilla respectively makes a massive visual difference. It was lovely to give my grandparents the cakes too. I realised that between uni and my grandmother’s walking holidays, I hadn’t seen her so far this year. It was really enriching for us to catch up: I got to see her new yellow/orange MINI and Maurice (whom you may recognise from my first post) and Mavis Davies.

In all, I can happy reflect that a laptop free weekend was a refreshing experience of getting out to see family more, and being able to share some baking with them. Not having the fall back of a laptop meant that I had to actively consider how best to fill my time in the down moments: actually reading that book I’ve been meaning to get through, being more present with my family, ploughing through my to-do list and feeling good about it. All in all, if you want to challenge yourself over lent, I can thoroughly recommend having a relaxed ban on technology for a few days (or at least assure you it’s not the end of the world if you leave your charger somewhere!). I wish you a happy week ahead as I tuck into the last slice of coffee cake!

(Of course, it’s all fun and games until realising I had left my straighteners at my parent’s. Looks like another week of sacrifice ahead!)