Week 12, item 2 - The Main Event

Chocolate Shortcakes with a Peanut Butter Filling

Hmm, bit of a mouthful that title.  However the actual recipe was a lot less complex.  I looked through the cookbook a couple of times before deciding on this recipe – I wanted something that wasn’t a cupcake, a cookie, and not too intricate.  You may remember that I made the basic shortcake in the very first week of this adventure, and the result was ok, but I learnt to make the dough a lot thicker.  I already had most of the ingredients, which resulted in a quick and cheap trip to the supermarket, and it combined many delicious elements, mainly chocolate and peanut butter!

The bake

Incredibly, once again, I had all the main ingredients, except for using vegetable spread instead of butter, dark chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate chips (that’s what I had in the house), and I used light double cream (if such a thing really exists.  It seems like an oxymoron).  As I said above, the recipe was very simple.  All the dry ingredients are mixed together in a bowl, followed by the wet ingredients put together, then added to the dry ingredients, to make a rough dough.  The recipe says that there would still be some dry bits, but my mixture didn’t seem to be combining at all, so I did add a little bit of water to the mixture, just to make sure nothing flew across the room as I put the dough ball onto the kitchen surface, in order to mould into a flatter dough, to make six shortcakes.

I patted down the mixture until I felt it was flat enough.  And I actually had enough to cut out 9 shortcakes!  After keeping in the fridge for a bit for the dough to firm (the recipe states freezer but I didn’t have enough flat space), you brush the top with beaten egg, sprinkle it with demerera (or golden granulated as I did), then pop in the oven for 20 minutes.  As I needed a larger surface area I was using my mother’s kitchen, and she has a fan oven, so rather than having to add 10 minutes to the cooking time as I normally do, the cakes had cooked in the lower range of the recipe guidelines.  They looked good, although once again a bit thinner than I’d hoped, especially as they’ll be cut in half.

While they cooled, I made the filling.  With Hummingbird recipes I tend to halve the quantity needed for frosting, however as cream cheese was on offer anyway, I decided to go by the required quantities of cream cheese, peanut butter and icing sugar.

You may remember me saying that my sister has a nut allergy.  So this would be another thing that she would not be able to eat.  So in order for her to share in the shortcake consumption, before adding the peanut butter to the cream cheese and icing sugar, I halved two shortcakes and put in some filling sans peanut butter.  I did add more icing sugar than required to make it sweeter.  Once I’d split and filled those two, I added the peanut butter to the remaining cream cheese mixture.  You might have seen chocolate flavoured cream cheese, and this mixture is how peanut butter cream cheese would taste.

Once the shortcakes had cooled, I cut them all in half, and added probably two heaped teaspoons of mixture to half of the halves, as it were, before sandwiching them together. 

They’re basically chocolate scones, aesthetically and by taste.  That is, the cakes themselves are a little dry on their own, but with the filling there’s a nice texture contrast, and added moisture and sweetness.  The chocolate chips are a nice addition too, as they’re slightly melted from cooking.  So more of a success this time I feel.  Hopefully that will continue onto next week’s bake, but until then, Happy Baking!

Week 12, item 1 - Cake Pop disaster!

Leftover Cake Pops

Hmm, unfortunately the title of this blog post reveals how my cake pops turned out!  But I’ll still explain how I got there.  Now then, I had leftover chocolate sponge and buttercream from the Salted Caramel cupcakes I made last week, which, by the way, tasted amazing!  Maybe my most successful bake thus far from Home Sweet Home.  The icing had just a hint of the salt, so complemented rather than overpowered, and the caramel in the middle of the cupcake made the cake so moist.  I will however add the disclaimer that eating one did make my teeth hurt.  So be warned, it contains a lot of sugar.  But back to the leftovers. 

In the past I may have just eaten the offcuts and buttercream leftover separately (but eaten them nonetheless).  However, in the past year or so, the new baking trend, along with whoopee pies, seems to be cake pops.  You can even buy a cake pop maker.  However I don’t feel that they’re the proper cake pops – they’re just balls of sponge.  Whereas I first heard of cake pops being made by crumbling sponge that you’d made.  Which seems wasteful, but quite handy really if you have leftovers.  Due to my piqued interest in cake pops, for Christmas last year, Santa brought me a cake pop stand, sticks, and glitter/decoration for cake pops.  So I’ve really needed an opportunity to make them to be honest!  Firstly I crumbled the sponge, then just added it to the buttercream, and mixed.  I then made the mixture into little chocolatey balls (insert joke here), and put a stick in the middle (again, insert joke…).  I managed to make 6 from the mixture.  I put them in the freezer for a bit so that they would firm up, and be easier to coat.  While they were firming up, I turned to make the topping, which is where disaster struck…

Rather than use royal or fondant icing for decoration, as this was just an experimental first foray into cake popping, I wasn’t that worried about the coating.  I used another present from Santa, a bag of Renshaw’s toffee melts.  I didn’t intend on using the whole bag as I only had 6 pops, so I just put some melts into a small ceramic bowl, and blasted them in the microwave in 30 second bursts.  Being melts I assumed that they would, well, melt, but they took ages!  And once they had melted, they seemed to have burnt.  As a result the melt goo didn’t stretch very far, and made the cake pops look really sloppy.  Sad times.  However the taste wasn’t half bad, with or without the coating.  Although, again, sugar packed and therefore super sweet, so brush your teeth afterwards!  I will definitely make cake pops again, but maybe with a little more thought behind them next time.

Week 11 – Happy World Baking Day!

Salted Caramel Cupcakes

As I said in my previous post, I had this week off, so intended on trying something a little more complex.  I also found out earlier in the week that today, Sunday 19^th May, is World Baking Day!  So I thought that despite having the whole week to bake, I would wait until today, to make my endeavour more global, in keeping with the fact this blog is on the World Wide Web.  The official World Baking Day activity was to pick something from the website according to your baking ability, however nothing from any of the abilities really screamed out ‘bake me!’ so I thought I’d stick to the book, literally.  But then I had the dilemma of what to cook.  As I was going to be baking today, and I already had plans for earlier, the recipe could no longer be too complex, so I decided to go for Salted Caramel cupcakes.  This week has been quite a caramel filled week to be honest – while in London on Wednesday my sister and I called into Paul A. Young chocolate shop in Soho, and he makes amazing salted caramel chocolates.  We then had Salted Caramel Carte d’Or ice cream on Friday, and today in Starbucks I tried the new Triple Caramel Frappuccino (in stores tomorrow I think).  That drink has put me on a sugar high all day!  So really it was a natural decision.

The bake

The cupcake sponge itself is basically a chocolate cupcake, and the salted caramel part comes from the filling and the frosting.  For the cupcake bake, I am following the ingredients to the letter!  Except for using skimmed milk instead of whole milk.  Often with cake/sponge recipes in the Hummingbird cookbooks, you cream the butter and sugar together first, then add the dry ingredients, but in this instance you added all the cupcake ingredients, minus the milk and eggs, into a bowl and mixed until they resembled crumbs:

 

You then mixed milk and eggs in a jug, and gradually added it to the bowl, until you had the cupcake mixture.  And that’s it!  Definitely not complex, sorry guys!  I decided to use muffin cases rather than my usual small cupcake cases, and as a result the batter filled the 12 cases exactly.  However, turns out I overfilled – can you see how the cakes have spilled over the sides!  So although it did mean I didn’t have to do another batch, next time I would fill the cases halfway rather than two-thirds/three-quarters of the way.  So that they would look more uniform once I’d put the frosting on them, I cut off any edges that went beyond the standard cupcake shape, and put them to one side (I hate waste!).

Once the cakes have cooled completely, you add the first caramel element to the cupcake.  I’ll say now that the recipe asks for dulce de leche, or caramel sauce.  My local large supermarket didn’t have what I was looking for (turns out every little doesn’t always help), but thankfully my mother had an opened jar of caramel sauce that she’d picked up from Aldi once.  Aldi no longer had the sauce in question.  I have definitely seen dulce de leche in a supermarket before, so it’s probably worth just keeping an eye out!  Anyway, to add the sauce to the cake, you employ the same method as I used when adding the orange marmalade to my Jaffa Cake cupcakes.  That is, to cut a circle in the cupcake with a sharp knife, take that bit out, fill the gap halfway with caramel sauce, then replace the bit of cake in the hole.  The cake does need to be level, so I tend to cut half of the sponge bit off.  I added that to my pile of cupcake edges from earlier.  The trick with putting the cake bit back in is to make sure you’re putting it back in the same way it came out, so the cake looks like it hasn’t been touched.  As you then add frosting it doesn’t matter aesthetic-wise, but it does make a level cupcake!

 

Then it’s time for frosting.  As noted in previous blogs, Hummingbird recipes tend to require a lot of icing sugar (670 grams for this one!) so as usual I halved the quantities.  It’s a standard buttercream, so you add icing sugar, softened butter and milk, then add some dulce de leche, and some sea salt!  This is where the salt comes in.  The recipe says ‘a pinch’, but maybe add a little bit at a time, and taste.  I put my definition of a pinch in, but found I couldn’t taste any salt at all, and although I know it should be a subtle complement to the caramel, it’s no good not being able to taste it at all!  So I added a little bit more.  Once they’ve all been frosted, swirl a bit more caramel sauce on top, and a small sprinkling of the sea salt.

Voilà!  Don’t they look great?  I’m not the best when it comes to decorating the cakes, and need to hone my palette knife technique, however by adding the swirl of caramel on top it gives them quite a sophisticated look!  Unfortunately I haven’t had a chance to taste one yet – I’m still on a sugar high, and it’s almost 11pm so if I have one now I’ll never get to sleep… However, I have a bit of a treat in store for you – as I said I hate waste, and have enough sponge offcuts and excess frosting to attempt cake pops!  So once I’ve made those I’ll share my method/results with you, and by then I will have definitely tasted a cupcake.  Ooh so much suspense!  So until then, happy baking!

Week 10, C is for cookie. And cornflake. And chocolate…

Cornflake Cookies

My choice for this week comes from a leftover ingredient from a previous week – malt powder!  It wasn’t an intentional choice, but I bought a big jar of it for the Chocolate MaltCake, and still have a lot left.  And although you wouldn’t think so, these cornflake cookies contain malt powder(as well as chocolate)!  I can’t think of many other recipes that will help me use it up… I also wanted quite a simple recipe.  The last time I made cookies, I overcooked them a little, so my aim this time was for a soft cookie, but with a little bit of a crunch from the cornflakes.

The Bake

First of all, my amendment to the recipe is halving the quantities.  It wanted 400 grams of flour for the cookie dough, but I only had 300 grams.  The recipe consists of two main parts – preparing the cornflake mixture, making the cookie dough, then merging them for the final cookie mix.  You might think that you could just add cornflakes straight to the mixture.  But you’d be wrong.  You actually mix cornflakes with malt powder, caster sugar and salt, then coat in melted butter, and bake the mixture for 15 minutes, or until the mixture is ‘crispy’.   My end product, however, looked a bit like a giant Anzac biscuit.  Once it cooled I prised it from the glass tray but it still wasn’t crispy, more gooey. 

While the cornflakes were baking, I made the cookie dough, which is a standard cookie dough mix, with chocolate chips added.  It was all very simple.  I then added the cornflake mixture to it.  The recipe said to use two tablespoons of dough for each cookie, but for the first batch I used an ice cream scoop.  As a result I only had 5 cookies on a tray when I put them in the oven for 15 minutes.

 

As you can see, the cookies are quite big!  So they weren’t adequately cooked after 15 minutes.  I wanted them soft, but not raw!  So back in they went for 5 more minutes.  For the second batch I used a dessert spoon, to get smaller cookies which would cook faster! (I was running late for badminton…)  These turned out more like what I had in my head.

The cookies are really soft, even when cooled, and still so a few days later.  The chocolate cookie element tasted really good, and the chocolate chips had melted a little, giving a smooth, rich flavour, but the cornflake detracted from the taste more than anything.  As the cornflakes weren’t crispy, there wasn’t a texture contrast, and there wasn’t a distinctive taste, so it had no real purpose!  So although the cookies disappeared quite quickly, I think next time I’ll just make chocolate chip cookies.  I’ll have to find some other recipes using malt powder!

I have a week off next week, so hopefully that will lend itself to an interesting, complex and time consuming bake.  Until then, happy baking!

Week 9 – S’more, s’more!

S’more Brownies

This week my only pre-requisite for choosing the recipe was to ‘make something my sister likes’.  This task isn’t as simple as it sounds as she is very fussy about food.  And has a nut allergy.  It’s surprising how many of the recipes in Home Sweet Home contain nuts.  She also doesn’t really eat fruit, or cookies due to a bad experience as a child with cookies with nuts in (that’s how we discovered she has a nut allergy)!  So the choice made itself really, as I fell upon the S’more Brownies page.  Brownie, fine, chocolate, fine, marshmallows, fine.  Being British I’ve never tasted a S’more, but as someone who has grown up on American books, tv shows and films, I’m aware of them as a campfire treat, consisting of marshmallow and graham crackers.  I have never been near a campsite, let alone a campfire, but I do love a good brownie.  The S’more brownie consists of a chocolate brownie base, a layer of digestive biscuits (we don’t have graham crackers in the UK), and a marshmallow topping.  I’m already salivating.

The bake

Take note, regular readers of this blog, that this time I followed the recipe ingredients exactly!  Except for one thing – I used 100g of dark chocolate instead of 120g.  But dark chocolate is pretty expensive, and most bars come in 100g blocks!  Sorry, two things – I used Stork margarine instead of unsalted butter.  But I use that as a butter substitute for most of my baking, except for when making buttercream frosting, as you can taste the butter in that!

As noted above, the S’more brownie has three main elements; brownie, biscuit, marshmallow.  And, to be honest, each of those steps is pretty simple.  The first step is to make the biscuit layer, by crushing digestive biscuits, and combining them with melted butter, in the same way you would the base for a cheesecake.

 

You put this to one side, then move on to the brownie mixture.  You start by melting butter and dark chocolate.  Most cookery books only give the bain marie method of melting it over a pan of hot water, but this book actually says about melting it in the microwave!  This is my preferred method, mainly as I don’t have a glass bowl to put over a saucepan.  You have to be careful not to burn the chocolate in the microwave – my tip is to only put it on medium heat, and in 30-45 second bursts.  Also, if after a few bursts it’s mostly melted but there are still a few lumps of chocolate, instead of putting it in for another 30 seconds and risk burning it, just stir it, and the heat tends to melt the rest.

Once the chocolate and butter is melted, the rest of the ingredients are added to the chocolate.  I had a couple of problems with this process – first one of the eggs cracked as I was trying to get it out of the egg box (egg white all over the kitchen), and after I’d mixed everything together a tube of coffee sweeteners fell into the mixture!  But eventually I had the brownie mixture, ready to go into the brownie tin.  The recipe tells you to line the tin with foil first, and make sure there’s enough foil sticking up at the edges.  Put the brownie mixture into the tin, then top with the biscuit.  You are meant to use an 8inchx12inch tin, but all I have is 8inchx8inch.  I hoped for the best.  Then bake for 30-35 minutes.  I cooked mine for 45 minutes as after 35 the middle was still raw, and even after 45 minutes it still didn’t pass the skewer test, but I had to persevere.

After the brownie is cooked, you top it with the marshmallows.  The brownie had risen quite a bit during cooking time, and the marshmallows were coming up right to the foil.  You then put the brownie tin back into the oven for the marshmallows to soften.  This is when all marshmallow-y hell broke loose, as I opened the oven door to see marshmallow oozing over all the edges, and a pool of molten marshmallow on the bottom of the oven, and dripping on the rack.  I put the tin onto a baking tray, and straight under the grill for the top to get the S’more chargrilled effect, but the marshmallow ooze-fest continued, leaving a not very aesthetically pleasing finished product.

I left it to cool/set for a good few hours before tucking in.  It looks quite impressive (in a disgusting kind of way), but it was a nightmare to cut from the foil, as the marshmallow had stuck to everything.  And the taste?  Underwhelming.  I’m not sure what it is, but it just doesn’t seem to have baked properly.  The brownie seems to be both over and undercooked.  The biscuit layer is soft rather than crunchy, and as so much of the marshmallow ended up over the sides, it’s quite a thin, yet sickly, layer.  I’m really disappointed, as this has been my first disaster from the book.  And my sister didn’t even like it!  Not that I really blame her.  I think the morals of this story are to make sure there’s plenty of excess foil around the edges, and if you have a smaller brownie tin than stated in the recipe, keep some back and make another batch, rather than cramming everything in.  Ah well, you live and learn. 

Hope you've had a more successful week of baking - happy baking!