Rhubarb & Strawberry Crumb Bars

In two weeks time, I've been invited to meet my boyfriend's grandma for the first time at her 90th birthday party...

I'm crapping myself a little bit, since I haven't yet had a chance to meet the extended family! So a good impression is needed, and impressions means gifts- because I can't very well turn up empty handed, can I?

I was going to buy some flowers as a nice gesture, but for some reason the boyfriend is less than partial to the idea...

So the only other thing I can think of is to bake something. Which stresses me out even more, since I'm pretty sure a large majority of all the ladies at this event have done their fair share of baking, and I don't fancy embarrassing myself, trying to impress with the skills that are less than comparable to theirs :(

So, after getting over the initial shock of what I was about to throw myself into, deciding what to bake was the next challenge.

Cake?
A bit too cliche for a birthday party... And i'm pretty sure there'll be cake there.

Biscuits?
They're a bit boring, I don't want to look like a plain jane.

Cookies?
There will be old people, and I'm pretty sure cookies are a little overrated for them.

A traybake.
This is what I've settled on. It's just a matter of finding out which one will last the journey, presentation-wise and texture-wise (since I'll probably want to make it the day before).

So starts the beginning of my short experiment til the event, to find out which effing traybake to make!!!

...Trying to dance this confusion around my final major project for uni is an absolute nightmare.

I opted for a rather attractive looking Rhubarb & Strawberry Crumb Bar tray bake. I found the recipe off of foodgawker. The original recipe is found here. Her's definitely look a lot more palatable than mine, and i forgot to dust mine off with icing sugar -_-' D'oh!!

I think going down the fruit route is better than say, choosing a millionaires shortbread- it's more summery and I think people can eat more of it if it's not too rich.

Anyway, the recipe was pretty standard to follow, the only thing i was unfamiliar with was:
1) cooking with rhubarb, and
2) putting icing sugar into a cake mix

I was actually quite skeptical about using icing sugar in the cake batter, worrying it would be too sweet, but surprisingly, it turned into a very light and bouncy sponge cake! My housemates compared it to the weirdly bouncy sponge cakes you get in the shops that you don't usually get at home. So that's gotta be a plus.

Another thing i was worried about was the size of the rhubarb the recipe said to cut it to (half an inch). I understand that if you undercook rhubarb, it's very stringy and pretty inedible, and putting it raw into the cake.... ughh i dunno.. So attempting to avoid disaster at all costs, I chopped it all into quarters of inches, just to make sure. I don't know whether that was a better idea or not but either way, the rhubarb cooked all the way through and was soft and sweet, and the strawberries gave it a satisfying mush :)

The crumble topping is pretty self-explanatory, except, to the EXTREME. There was a lot of it, and when you pick up a slice, it just falls apart everywhere- it was bloody delicious though, even more so if i'd sprinkled some sugar on top before i baked it, I reckon. But because of the crumble value, I don't think it would make the cut for Grandma's birthday. I have a feeling I'll get there, take off the lid and there's just a apocalypse of crumble and giant red mush.

It was a pretty successful bake otherwise, very tasty, and I reckon it'll be even nicer cold.
It's just a shame it didn't look as nice as the original recipes. How did they get their's so red?!! :( Boo...
Oh, and next time, I'd put the mix into a bigger tin, these slices were pretty tall and mighty.

not the most attractive picture, but just so you can have a look at the squidginess (sp?!)

I'll need to look for something just as fruity, more robust but still as light as these..

The search continues..

Dark Chocolate Tart

So i've been working "really hard" for my final year at uni. And today, me and Lizzie just weren't feeling it.

No work for us today, thanks.

I had an amazing work-free day. Not quite relaxing, but more fulfilling, productive and decadent.

Decadent? I hear you say? Well yes let me explain.

As a thank you for the birthday cupcakes I made for Lizzie's mum, I was taken to Nisbets and treated to some equipment. "SQWEEEEE!!" said I. And i bought a rather attractive palette knife and some baking beans, perfect for the dark chocolate tart I had decided to make later.

After this little trip, we went to a small town nearby called Moseley, and lost ourselves in an extremely cute Delicatessen and were "Ooooooh!"ing and "Ahhh..."ing at all the diverse ingredients. And then we saw these beautiful little Italian pastries in the window. I'm still not quite sure what they were, they were very crispy pastry, filled with different flavours. I chose a lemon and custard and Lizzie opted for a safe chocolate.

They were bloody tasty morsels, I could have had 10 in my mouth if i had the chance.

With our mouths covered in flaky pastry, we glanced across the road to see a cafe bakery, selling fresh bread and even had a garden area. Unfortunately, we were running short on time but promised to go another day :( boohoo..

So we got home, and i got my head down and started following a recipe I'd been meaning to do for a while. Dark chocolate tart from the Primrose Bakery book. And whilst I baked, Lizzie was turning the kitchen upside down for a thorough spring clean. So apologies if you can see some clutter.

I've never made sweet pastry before, so i was trying to be super careful and gentle and make sure my hands were cool at all times.

And i think it's fair to say, it turned out pretty spot on! For a first time, I was pretty thrilled :)

sweet pastry pre-chilling

When I rolled out/ pushed the pastry out, i was quite nervous about the whole thing cracking and disintegrating. I followed the technique advised and just pushed the rolling pin into the pastry to form ridges, turned it round and continued, til it was about the width of a 50p coin.

Getting into the tin was the hardest part, this pastry was seriously prone to cracking. I managed to slide the tin under just in time. But i did have to do some surgical patching up work.

And as i have nails, i pushed the pastry into the sides using a balled up spare bit of pastry. 

Look! you can see my new palette knife! I also brought my rolling pin back from home. No more smirnoff bottles for me!

Using my classy new baking beans ^_^ simple pleasures for simple student

I then patiently waited until my pastry case was all blind-baked. It needed maybe 5 more mins than stated in the recipe, but that's because my oven is very temperamental.

my first sweet pastry blind-baked! i'm quite happy :) minimal shrinkage.

a fuzzy close-up of the edge

Next, was to make the filling. Using copious amounts of Green & Blacks, double cream and butter. O_O"

I only faced one problem when making the filling. After heating the cream, you're meant to add it to the cut up butter and chocolate and stir to melt it.

I hadn't cut up the chocolate properly in preparation (as the book didn't state! but then again i should have known -_-)

So it didn't melt properly so i had to heat it over the steam of some simmering water.

And that's when the whole thing split. The oil was just sat on the top and the bottom was just like curdled chocolate.

I just couldn't come to terms with just loosing 450g of pricey chocolate, so i got out the electric whisk and forced it back together. And thankfully, it worked.

Thank God. Disaster adverted.

Looking pretty shiny- left to set for 2 hours

I then dusted it with cocoa. Forgot to move my sieve to, so i had a massive clump in the middle. WHOOPS!

close-up of the side

Me and 2 of my housemates shared this after dinner. 

IT WAS SOOO GOOOOOD especially served with leftover double cream and strawberries.

But the title doesn't lie, it was extremely dark.

And the pastry was short and crumbly :) no soggy bottoms here, Mary Berry!

I seem to be a fan of my close-ups.

And that was about it for today, besides painting our nails, watching X-men and having a bubble bath :)

Me having a bubble bath by myself that is.

Also, Hollie my housemate tried her hand at some food styling... The lighting is a little off, as by now it was evening. But either way, she did a much better job than I could ever do!

Italian Buttercream

I've been sooooo busy! to the point, that i leave blogging for so long that i forget to even know what to write when i come round to it!!

Well last week, i was commissioned by the same friends as always, to bake her mum some cupcakes for her birthday- all experiences are good ones!

We decided on a super chocolatey sponge (naturally i suggested the buttermilk sponge that worked so well last time.) teamed with an italian buttercream- both recipes found from tea with Bea.

attempting to create less mess

piping my buttermilk poos

My funny little doggy poos

my nakie sponges

Now, i've NEVER made italian buttercream before, and never made anything quite so technically challenging. I even bought a sugar thermometer for the occasion.

Unfortunately,  i wasn't even able to take many pictures of the actual buttercream being made as i was so stressed out on keeping my eye on the thermometer, i totally forgot :(

There were ups, and there were downs. More downs in my view, but then i'm a pessimist :P

So as this blog is more a diary of my successes and failures, let me tell you what happened (what i can remember anyway)...

So it all started well at the beginning, me happily separating out my egg whites and popping them into the mixer with the other ingredients and whizzing it up into a soft peak meringue- all good so far.



After this, i seem to remember making my sugar syrup, adding my precise measurements of golden syrup, egg yolks and caster to a saucepan, then brushing the sides (as advised!) with clean water to dislodge any rogue grains. Check.

Then i popped it on the heat to start boiling. Cue stress.

I wasn't sure whether to stir the sugar or not, as i remember that you're not meant to with some sugar recipes (caramel is it?) i can't remember. Anyway, i did timid little stirs and shakes as i didn't want it to burn.

I'm sure those that are more technically able might be able to see where i'd have gone wrong!!

So as soon as the syrup was boiling, i popped in the thermometer and read the temp. But "Mon Dieu!" the thermometer barely reached the surface of the sugar?!! because it's in a metal casing. So i had to do a little bit of a tilt the saucepan and try and read the temp.

As soon as the temp read 120C- well into soft ball stage, i took it off the heat.

Now, the recipe says to let it cool for a bit before you add it to your whites, but i wasn't sure just how cool it had to be? and by now, it was starting to set and soon i wouldnt be able to get it out of the pan! So i thought i'd put it in.

And soon, my beautiful soft beaked meringue became flat. I don't know if that's normal but it made me a little bit sad, because in the pictures, it still looks pretty airy.

Also, the sugar in the saucepan had strands. And i thought to myself, threading sugar requires less heat than softball... did i not heat it enough or is that normal?!

Obviously, having never made this, or seen anyone make it, i seriously started to doubt myself.

So i whisked up my meringue (until it cooled slightly), but this is again when i had troubles.

Do i seriously just whisk until it's cold?!! Meringue breaks up if you over-whisk it and i didn't want that to happen, so i just whisked it until it was as far as it would probably go and left it to go a bit cooler, before adding the butter.

And of course, with my luck, the butter melted the entire thing.

And i now had scrambled eggs.

I wanted to cry. So i put it in the fridge for an hour to let the butter go harder.

After that, I changed the attachment on my mixer, and whacked it on high and forced it back together again. Which resulted in a light, but rather yellow looking buttercream. Not at all like the one in the picture. Infact, it just looked like the normal buttercream you make with icing sugar and butter.



D'oh!

I had no choice but to use it. And it tasted just like butter. Like i was eating an actual block of butter.

My friend insisted it was fine and we just smeared it on the cupcakes. And i'll tell you why.



Because when i tried to pipe it on, it separated and slide everywhere.

Shame, because italian buttercream was not made for the smear.

I definitely.

did not.

make it right.

But at least they look okay.

Chocolate Buttermilk Sponge with Cookies & Cream Buttercream (Cookie Apocalypse)

This week, my sister came to stay with me- and since we both love a good bake, we decided to make a cake together (nawwwww)...

We decided on making a rich Chocolate Buttermilk sponge (found from tea with Bea) and pair it with a rich American vanilla buttercream and smashed Maryland cookies into it (mmm, mmmm)

Now we weren't sure what to expect with this buttermilk sponge, since neither of us have really made one, or knew the different between this mix and an average one.

Let me tell you now, that whenever in the future, when i crave to make a chocolate cake, i will FOREVER choose this AMAZING buttermilk sponge recipe. The cake mix looked light, airy and almost mousse-like, and the CRUMB! oh the crumb was INCREDIBLY light and feathery, if you touched the cake it was just the softest!! I can't stop raving about it!

It came out as a beautifully soft and airy sponge, but the taste was rich and fudgey, the sponge melts in your mouth like a brownie... an amazing experience i tell thee!

There was quite a lot of mix for my 8" cake tin, so we managed to make a full batch of cupcakes too! Bonus!! We crumbled up a few and decorated the big cake with a crumb coating- very pretty... shame about the bright red Celebrations box lid i had to put it on -_-'

For the buttercream, it was just a normal american vanilla buttercream (with quite a bit more milk added in as it was supppperrrrrrrrr sweet) and crushed up a packet of cookies and added them in. 

My sister taught me how to put a crumb coating on the cake before properly covering it with the frosting as it was pretty thick and chunky to work with... Something to apply to future layer cake decorations..

Speaking of decorations, we got a bit crazy with another packet of cookies and chucked them all ontop because we wanted to... COOKIE DEVASTATION!!!

Like a beautiful natural cookie disaster.. Nom.

As i said, we had a batch of cupcakes to decorate too so here are some pictures of them

Belgian Blondies

It was a stressful day today... So i thought i'd rustle up something rich, naughty and that would probably give me coronary heart disease in one bite.

I followed the recipe for Belgian Blondies in the "tea with Bea" book.

I've never had these before, but from what i gathered, they're pretty much like white chocolate brownies. But i only like one variety of white chocolate- Green & Blacks. So i had to fork out for this before i could get my hands on them.

Oh, and by the way, i could not BELIEVE how much butter this recipe involved!! Oh well... I guess i can just survive on one slice a week. :(

I think i overdid these on my first try though (forgot to take pictures of the caught sides of the tin)... I got a bit confused, as you set these brownies by leaving them to cool and then shoving in the fridge for 2 hours, so when you take them out of the oven, they're meant to be gooey... so i guess with a little bit of wobble still??

But i got a bit scared as i'm not used to not stabbing everything in sight with a toothpick before i take it out of the oven... Therefore, leaving them in there for a bit too long...

The sides of the batch are still edible though and i conveniently forgot to take pictures of these ones <:D

Anyway, these turned out VERY buttery and VERY rich, and they had a delicious warming from all the vanilla inside the fancy white chocolate- sooooooo tasty but i do feel very guilty after eating a slice...

They kinda reminded me of what shortbread would be like if it was a brownie... (and with more white chocolate)... it had the moreish texture of a soft fudgey brownie and the creaminess of 400 million sticks of butter from 6 billion cows.

All i have to remember for next time is to just trust, and take them out of the goddamn oven earlier!

Rhubarb & Custard Cupcakes

I've never had rhubarb, like proper rhubarb.

Not even in a crumble.

I've had rhubarb and custard sweets before- but that doesn't count.

Either way, i knew i liked it, which is why i was so excited when Lizzie commissioned me to make these as the second batch of cupcakes for her sister's hen do. (Mocha cupcakes being the other batch- see previous post)

I even got to use the jazzy cupcake cases my sister gave me for christmas ^_^

I've never made these cupcakes, and i was following a recipe from my newly acquired Mary Berry book "The Great British Bake Off- How to Bake". So not only this, but i've also never baked cupcakes under Mary Berry's instruction.

I was nervous.

Especially as there was even proper vanilla in the custard i was making. Like the real stuff- out of a pod! I did not want to screw this up.

So basically, if you're wondering about the construction of this deliciousness, it was:

Vanilla sponge, with a rhubarb compote and a homemade custard filling and a vanilla buttercream frosting.

I had to make a few changes to the recipe:

1. Sainsburys had no rhubarb compote so i used rhubarb filling used for crumbles instead, which worked just as well (i'd imagine! Ha..)
2. I realised just before baking that i'd need a thermometer to make this fancy buttercream in the recipe which i don't own, so i had to quickly change and opt for a normal vanilla frosting from the Hummingbird Bakery book "Cake Days"... But even with this recipe i changed it. I added the ingredients by eye so that i reached MY desired consistency, as when i made this frosting ages ago, it turned out runny... and i didn't want to risk it with a commission in mind! Btw, turned out fine :P

fresh out the oven- pretty consistently sized :)

Oh! and to make things EVEN better! The timer on my oven decided to break and not even count down -_-"... So i had to just guess, luckily i THINK i was right??! The ones above could probably have been taken out 2-3 mins earlier.

sitting pretty in their fancy cases! (unlike that lovely dirty grill they're sitting on.. apologies, i ran out of space on my cooling rack... which is actually just an upside down utensil tray)

My intention was to get fancy with the frosting, and create that 2-tone pipe on the top. 

Forgetting, obviously, that i fail at piping... Whoops. 

Above is just the vanilla buttercream, one with some pink food colouring.

the "prepared" piping bag

The swirl on the right turned out fine, (reminiscent of a poo) but it used up like HALF of the frosting i made, and that wasn't allowed. So i had to quickly think of something else- i.e. the lovely weird creations on the left.

Don't worry, i wouldn't dare do this on a professional commission but Lizzie was quite willing for me to experiment since i looked like i was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

They make me giggle a bit- they look pretty crazy!

At least these turned out to look fun.

i finally decided to make more frosting and then just frost the rest of the cupcakes with a palette knife.

But whilst i was doing so, even the slightest hold of the cake, squeezed out some of the rhubarb compote, and the frosting would not stay, it slid everywhere and i wanted to cry.

I soldiered on though and i think they all turned out okay.

A light buttery sponge with a creamy, tart surprise in the middle :) pretty moreish! But i think, after having made 2 batches of cupcakes and no lunch, i was getting impatient towards the end, meaning the quality of the frosting suffered and it was far too sweet, it made my teeth melt!!

Have to remember to stay focused. No matter how much i want to curl up in the oven and cry.

Mocha Cupcakes II

I was commissioned by Lizzie to make 2 types of cupcakes for her sister's hen-do. This being one of the batches! Thankfully it wasn't a proper professional commission so i wasn't under too much stress!

I've made Mocha Cupcakes before and they turned out to be an amazing hit! I just wanted to make these a little different, so i added crushed roasted walnuts, sprinkled on the frosting to really marry up the espresso  and chocolate in the sponge.

I just used the Mocha Cupcake recipe from The Hummingbird Bakery book "Cake Days" and added the walnuts on top. However, i did change the quantities of the ingredients used for the frosting, as this never really turns out right for me, so i did it by eye, texture and taste. It seemed to work a lot better for me.

Obviously, being me, i couldn't make anything without a few hiccups... and thankfully there are many pictures- some quite interesting, and some, not so necessary.

action shot of filling

some cakes getting "tongues" from over filling! whoops!

These ones amused me somewhat :D but they were the nicest ones to frost

Domo lovin' life

my hot chocolate frosting- altered from the original recipe

I think my frosting skills with a palette knife have improved... Obviously still much to be desired but it looks much better than what it used to be!!

having said that, here's a "rustic" lop-sided topped cupcake :P

roasted walnut pieces, waiting to be crushed... which i had to do by hand!! Too poor to own a chopper :(

a painfully badly lit photo. Basically just sprinkled and crowded the nuts on top.

Getting super fancy with the shots.. A bit orange but it looks a bit nicer than that one up there!

Lizzie was very kind and let me have a cupcake from each batch so i could taste and improve for next time. The sponge was light and moist, with just the right amount of frosting. Which, by the way, i think i will always make by my own measurements now, as it always seems to turn out better, consistency wise. 

I don't know if i'm just doing it wrong with the measurements they give me in the book, but i feel it's better to be safe than sorry.

Oh, and the walnuts were a hero decision and they definitely made the cakes look a lot posher :P