The fantastic Great British Bake Off has returned to our screens this past week, with a brand new batch of bakers trying to impress the lovely Mary Berry and feisty Paul Hollywood. For the last two series, I’ve been a passive viewer - sometimes drooling, sometime awe-inspired by what the amateur bakers are managing to achieve. The showstopper challenge still impresses me every time, particular as they draw near the end of the series.
When I wrote my Life List, one of the first items on there was to bake the perfect loaf of bread. Then I watched two series’ of the Great British Bake Off and realised that I am never going to be a very good baker.
So, instead of making the same loaf over and over again in search of perfection, I thought I’d change the task. Instead, I’d like to try making a variety of different types of bread, settling for the adequate and tasty product instead of the marketable ideal. Who decides what perfect is anyway?
To celebrate 1000 episodes of F1Minute, I baked a cake and iced it. It was my first attempt at icing, and the whole concept is quite new to me. I was inspired by a colleague at work who makes some pretty outstanding baked goods, and is the go-to person when it comes to celebration cakes. I think at the moment she has orders from at least three people for at least five different birthdays.
Last week, I talked about recipes I am tempted to make, and today I’ve got more kitchen related stuff. I managed to have a quick browse through a Lakeland catalogue this week, and it was full of kitchen related gadgets. A few of them were pretty impressive, so I’ve picked five that I would buy if I was in the mood to sort my kitchen out.
Lakeland Scrudle - £2.99 The name leaves a lot to be desired, but the description that it helps emptying casserole dishes and getting the last servings out of a pan resonated with me. They say: “A cross between a scraper, a scoop and a ladle, we’re sure this is soon to become a kitchen essential that you’ll wonder how you managed without!” I imagine it is one of those tools that you don’t know you need but once you have it, life is a million times easier.
Occasionally, my dad will send me a recipe that he has found and it’s usually for something sweet and delicious. So far, I haven’t made any of them because it’s hard enough to avoid the sweet things that exist already in our house, without adding any more to the mix.
Having said that, there is nothing like window shopping in the cake recipe section of websites, and here are five that I have been drooling over recently.
I felt like doing a bit of baking and found this recipe for a classic Victoria Sponge. I know I said I had sworn off the BBC’s GoodFood site, but there are such good finds on there, I can’t help myself.
Anyway, the thing I particularly love about making a sponge is that you just throw all the ingredients in together and mix it up.
Mix, mix, mix.
I had some leftover oats from the apple trifles I attempt, and suddenly realised that the ideal way to use them up was to make some flapjack. Mr C is keen on flapjack and making sweet treats always makes me popular in the household.
After perusing some recipes, I became aware how amazingly easy flapjack is. Equal quantities of sugar and butter, some golden syrup, throw in the oats and raisins, bake and cool.
I’m not quite sure how it happens, but we keep being given big bits of meat. It was a huge piece of gammon over Christmas, and now an actual chicken. A terrifying, giant, whole chicken.
Looks pretty sneaky, doesn’t it?
I was definitely more concerned about the chicken than I was about the gammon. It just seems a million times more complicated, and there’s always a big stigma attached with cooking chicken properly.
My cooking adventures continue and I’ve had mixed results recently. Firstly, I’m going to have to find a better website than BBC Good Food. It worked fine for one day, but every other time I have tried to get into the kitchen and read a recipe off my iPad, it has failed loading. The site has been terribly slow, and just generally bad news. I even had to print out a recipe at one point. I was halfway through, it all died, and I had to scrabble around to try and get a cached version. Not great.
I’ve cooked lasagne for years but as I have got busier and spent less time in the kitchen, my version of lasagne has become lazy. Gradually, I swapped out all the separate ingredients for an easy version: a few veg, jar of red sauce, jar of white sauce, mince, pasta, go. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, I am a big fan of easy cooking, but now I have found a bit more time I thought it would be fun to go back to the ingredients version.
Today I braved the supermarkets to pick up ingredients for the mammoth piece of gammon we received. I told you about it yesterday, and the fact that I am even blogging about the results means I didn’t burn it. That is a bonus!
I was following this BBC recipe, but I sort of modified it for my own results, due to constraints with both time and the size of the dishes that I had to work with. I’m not good at photographing food, it turns out, but I’ve got a few illustrations along the way.
Someone gave us a gammon joint!
Mr C is partial to a bit of gammon, and I normally buy the ready made slices that just need grilling or frying up, with a bit of pineapple thrown in for good measure.
Now I am faced with this:
I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, but after a quick search, I found a nice, simple recipe. It starts with having to soak the joint overnight, so Mr C is going to have to wait another day for his gammon. The good thing about that recipe from the BBC is the Shopping List option, which gives you a list of everything you’ll need, in the categories you will find them in the supermarket. That makes me very happy, as I may have to brave the supermarket tomorrow.
I really just have to point out this amazing food blog called Zoom Yummy. I think perhaps I discovered it via Wordpress’s Freshly Pressed feed - a daily selection of the best posts from anyone using Wordpress, and it turns out that’s quite a lot of people.
I usually only scan through the list and see if anything catches my eye, and this blog certainly did.
I can’t really do it any justice in words, so I’m just going to point you in the right direction. The photos are amazing, the food looks so good at the end, and it makes me want to bake. I haven’t yet, I haven’t even picked out any of the recipes to try. At the moment, I just like ogling the food that Petra makes.
At first, I was in two minds. The Julia Child storyline was annoying, it takes a while to get used to her. I wanted to watch more of the Amy Adams stuff, more cooking please. But then I really got into it and the way the two stories worked together was fabulous. I love, love, loved it. Want to read the books and start cooking more. Yay for blogging!
After the success of the chocolate covered pretzels, my mother and I decided that baking mince pies would be the next challenge. It is Christmas, after all.
After a bit of a delay as we tried to locate some mincemeat (silly supermarket two for one offers resulting in empty shelves), and we were ready to go.
Now, I cook and I bake and I enjoy it, but I’m not so good at the bit where you have to dive right in and get your hands dirty.
A while ago, I tweeted about my desire to have some Nestle Pretzel Flips, but it appears they are no longer sold in the UK. Along with Lucky Charms, the best things are always stolen from me. My good friend pointed out a site called American Soda that delivers US groceries to our shores, but shipping isn’t exactly cheap.
Instead, I had an idea. Why not make them myself?
I visited my mother today and we had a go at making them. Here’s how it went.
Rant No. 1 I do not understand birthdays at work.
If it’s your birthday, at many offices you have to go out and buy some cakes or donuts or cookies, or a selection of all three. Everyone very graciously wishes you happy birthday and thanks you for the sweet treats. It’s all nice and pleasant.
But my birthday means nothing to me, I’d rather the day just went by like any other. I don’t particularly enjoy eating the cakes that other people bring in, nor my own, so it really starts to feel like… why should I bother?
I came home yesterday, and it was raining and really nasty weather, just at the time when it’s getting dark. I hate that time because you have your lights on but they’re not really doing anything, although it’s still hard to see.
Over the weekend, I tried my hand at making my own fudge. It wasn’t a complete success, but Mr C did attempt to eat it. He ate quite a lot of it actually, despite my warnings that it was basically pure sugar. Needless to say, he felt a bit sick afterwards.
