TBP: The Awful Truth

Hello everyone. There is something I have to tell you. Something awful. The biggest trend in baking at the moment are cupcakes. Beautiful, dainty, colourful cupcakes. Just turn on the Food Network at any time and there will be some cupcake programme showing a couple amateurs churning out a hundred perfect cupcakes. Everyone loves cupcakes. Everyone can make cupcakes: a three-year old child, Nana, the family dog.

Everyone, but me.

The first things I remember baking with my mum when I was a kid were fairy cakes. I have to admit, it's not all bad news. I can make some decent vanilla or chocolate cakes with a lovely glace icing. But who wants glace icing when you can have some incredible buttercream creation?! No one. That's who.

Firstly the cakes themselves. I went for a classic cupcake recipe. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla essence and baking powder. Simple. The only hiccup I had was that room temperature that day was cold. Too cold to soften the butter. I had to stick it by the fire to soften it faster and Baxter kept trying to crawl up unnoticed and eat it all:

Leave it with me, I promise I won't eat it...

I don't ever use a buttercream recipe (probably a mistake), and just wing it. After about five attempts it still hasn't worked but no, I have not learnt my lesson. This time the icing actually stayed stiff enough to pipe and went into the bag well. In an attempt to make a pale pink icing I added a drop of red food colouring, unfortunately added to bright yellow butter it ended up an extremely questionable colour. I believe the comment made was: 'Why are they brown?'.

So here are my cakes:

Look how nice they look: golden, light and risen...

Now, ten minutes later:

EUGH. What is that icing meant to look like?! A dog turd?

Maybe second time will work better...

No. No, it won't.

I tried another technique. 'Maybe just some blobs or something would look nice.' I thought:

The next cupcake decorating phenomenon: anemones

Not awful...but by this point I'd run out of my icing. Good one.

The rest of them got a blob on top which was spread about with a pallet knife. My go to technique once I've tried and failed with a nice swirl. For some reason I then stuck some silver blobs on top. Well they did taste nice, better than my icing, which incidentally I had made with too much butter and not enough sugar.

Tastier than they look

On the plus side the cake was nice...I can only hope mum enjoyed her Mother's Day gift, made with love and thought!

For the purpose of The Baking Project, I would like very much to actually learn to decorate a cupcake nicely. At the moment I use a 1cm star nozzle for piping swirls, and I am coming to the conclusion that I need a much larger one for the nice cupcake swirls you see. Sadly, that is the largest I own. What can you recommend?

S.x

The Baking Project

In an earlier post I spoke about my project to learn how to bake. In this entry I'll get us up to date to where I am in what we will now officially call... 'The Baking Project'.

Bet you didn't see that coming.

So what have I baked so far? I have mostly been using recipes from the The Great British Bake Off book 'How To Turn Everyday Bakes into Showstoppers', and as I mentioned before, my success rate is average at best.

The project to date:

- Creme caramel - success! Couldn't really believe they worked on the first attempt. The caramel could have been darker, but I have never cooked it before and was scared it would burn.

- Meringue swirls - awful. My second baking attempt was not the best. My egg white was stiff, until I started mixing in food colouring which changed the consistency. My piped swirls were not anywhere near large enough, and unfortunately this completely messed up the baking time. The recipe stated 1 - 2 hours. One hour later, I had a dozen or so burnt little meringue blobs. I have made chocolate swirl meringues in the past which worked out great, so I will be trying meringues again later on in The Baking Project.

- Gingerbread snowflakes. These were so much fun to make, I'd encourage anyone to do it. I love piping, so decorating was a highlight.

As these worked so well, and looked pretty I also made a batch for Christmas decorations. I poked a hole in each to string ribbon through to hang up. Although they looked good, the first bake at 10 - 11 minutes were a little burnt on the edges, while the second at 8 minutes were definitely too doughy and undercooked. As a result, most ended up rather sad looking...

His smile is deceiving. 

The recipe is fairly easy - I just need to perfect my baking time - and I would recommend it to fellow beginner bakers.

- Brandy snaps - Failure. Brandy snaps take two - less so, but still a failure.

I'll start by saying that both batches tasted good. Gingery and as J. noticed, reminiscent of Werther's Original toffees. The first problem was, however hard I tried, I could not get them off the tray for the life of me! They were stuck hard, and after much caressing, poking and finally ripping, I had to say goodbye to the brandy snap dream. I took to the internet after this first batch and read that a silicon baking sheet would solve any potential sticky dilemmas. I stomped (drove) off to Homebase, and bought myself a new baking sheet and flat tray for batch two.

I repeated the recipe, and watched them spread in the oven. With trepidation I removed the b'snaps after the stated baking time and waited for them to cool a little. My shaky hands started to lift the edges from the silicon...and voila! They came off and rolled happily around my wooden spoons. I left them to set with optimism blossoming in my heart....but in some hideous twist of fate, they then stuck to the spoons instead. Carefully I pried the brandy snaps off the spoons, and although lovely and snappy on the edges, they were more brandy mush in the centre. I imagine the reason for this is that they were a little undercooked in the centre and therefore became this:

Just like Mary Berry's

- Viennese Fingers - A little ugly but tasted yummy! Relatively easy to make, but I had an absolute nightmare finding the right piping equipment. I didn't have a wide enough nozzle, so I had to go with out. As the mixture is quite thick, the disposable bag burst while I was piping and I ended up with this monstrosity growing out the side:

Like something out of a baking Alien movie

In hindsight, I should have piped in more of a 'zigzag' so they looked less like...well, I'll leave it to you to finish that sentence. Regardless of what they look like, they tasted great and we're eaten up in no time at all.

So, have you had any baking disasters? Or have you found yourself a natural baker?

Stay tuned for the next failure entry in The Baking Project!

S. x

Catching the Baking Bug

There are two people in this world. Those who watch The Great British Bake Off, and those who have not tried it yet.

I must admit, I was late to the Bake Off party. I only started watching it in the last season after hearing rave reviews from friends. I came to the conclusion of my rather bold statement above after my Bake Off experience that season. I started watching the series and was hooked after the first episode. As was my boyfriend, J, even after practically forcing him into watching this seemingly effeminate, repetitive reality show. I was then later surprised to find out that not only were all my girlfriends watching the show, so were my male friends and big brothers. 

So what makes this show so utterly addictive? After all, we are inundated with formulaic reality shows featuring weekly evictions, and possibly even more cooking related programs. One reason may be that The Great British Bake Off is absolutely and completely, quintessentially British. It is a show featuring a pastel colour palette, mugs full of tea and of course, endless shots of delicacies destined for afternoon tea consumption. In a year of British optimism, the show has struck a chord and has been a great success. But a case of connecting with our national identity does not create a successful show. At the heart of the series are judges Paul Hollywood and the queen of baking Mary Berry (I kid you not). The banter between them, along with the sense of camaraderie between the entire 'cast' is infectious, creating a feel good, entertaining watch. It does however, stray from becoming too sickly sweet. It is, of course, still a competition.

Unlike most shows,  for me Bake Off did not end at the final. I became intent on learning how to bake. I rarely cook myself but I am now the worst, by far, cook in the family. As I have always enjoyed baking, I decided to throw myself in, and learn how to bake more than just cupcakes and icing. I therefore set myself a plan for one bake a week.

Since starting my project I have had about a 50/50 success rate. I have heard baking described as a science, and I could not agree more. The slightest error in measuring, ingredients and timing can and will make or break your bake. I have already learnt a lot from my bakes, and also, surprisingly about myself. I am a lucky person, in the sense that I have only failed at a handful of pursuits in my life. However baking has completely shattered that. I am not used to failing, and as such I tend to turn into a stroppy, pessimistic, deflated flan. Luckily for me (and unfortunately for him), J has usually been around to lift me back up with some supportive yet stern words, mainly, you can't just expect to be perfect at everything. And I definitely needed that wake up call.

So I got back to the mixing bowl after every failed bake (and knock to my pride), and tried again.

In an upcoming entry I'll get us up to date on my baking project, and what I have observed about baking so far. 

Also, this: 

Stay tuned!

S. x