Macaroons

I made these French Macaroons for my recent photo sesssion. I decided to make these just filled with whipped cream but in future I would make a nice chocolate ganache to compliment them. 

I used the following recipe for these: 

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1369639/chocolate-and-raspberry-macaroons

which was very easy to follow and I feel worked very well. I'll briefly run through it and what I did. 

First step is to grind up the almonds and icing sugar in a food processor. I think the idea is to break them down and make the mixture really smooth, however, I struggled with this and found that my mix was still quite bitty. It says to run it through a sieve but mine wouldn't go through so I just poured it in as it was. 

Into that mixture I poured in half of the egg whtie. For convienence I actually used the liquid egg white you can buy and so I could pour and measure the exact amount. I found this quite useful and if I was making them again I would probably do the same thing rather than using actual eggs and splitting them. 

I heated the sugar with water as directed and kept a close eye on the thermometer. I then beat up the egg whites and added it slowly. I certainly find steps like this are much easier with a thermometer and a food mixer. 

Mix it all together by carefully folding it. You want to make sure you aren't losing all the air in the mixture so take your time on this step. 

I piped out the mixture and left it out to form a nice skin. As my kitchen was REALLY warm when I made these it didn't take long at all. 

I added mine to a too hot oven so in future I'll turn the temperature down a little. They took exactly the 14 minutes it stated and they only came off the paper when they were ready. I use the reusable non stick stuff for these as I fine it much better. 

I was please with how these formed the properly little feet and they seemed to work very well. I whipped up some cream and filled them and then it was all about the staging for the photos. I think they came together very well, what do you think? 

French Macaroons

These were certainly fun to make and something I'd like to try again in the future. Maybe with more colours and more varieties. For this purpose they worked well. 

Sunflower and Parmesan Biscuits

I wanted something else savoury to go with the sandwiches and quiches but really struggled to know what to choose. In the end, with mum's help, we decided on these Sunflower and Parmesan biscuits from "A Step by Step guide to Cakes, Biscuits and Slices", which I can't find on any book website so can't be very available anymore!!

As this book isn't available I'll give a little more detail than usual on how to make these, in case anyone is particularly interested.

The first step is to beat the butter (150g unsalted butter) until it is creamy, to this add parmesan (3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese) and chedder cheese (1/3 cup grated chedder cheese), beating until combined.

I then poured in the flour (1 1/4 cups plain flour) and sunflower seeds (1/4 cup sunflower seeds). The recipe states that you should add some seasoning at this stage, 2-3 tsp lemon pepper seasoning, however, I couldn't find this in the shop so I just ground a little plain black pepper into the mixture.

This mixture is then combined well by hand and turned out onto a lightly floured surface and kneaded to 2-3 minutes. Mum then rolled out the dough and cut into round circles, you can use whatever shape you fancy. Placed them on greaseproof paper on a baking sheet and sprinkled with a little more parmesan cheese. This was then placed in the oven for around 10-15minutes at 180oC until they were golden.

Verdict: This is the one recipe, out of all that I made, that I'm unable to give a verdict on. I don't really like cheesy biscuits and so I didn't try these as the smell was enough to put me off. Many people in the room really liked them and they were happily taken home in doggy bags so I would have to assume these were nice. Maybe those that tried them can leave a mark out of 10 in the comments to give people an idea?

Interestingly I also don't have a single picture from the process of making them or the end product, I obviously wasn't interested!! So I'm sorry but the closest I can get is showing you the 3 tiered stand they were displayed in and say they were on the top!!

On the left at the top of the 3 tiered stand

Lemon Tarts

I wanted a balance with my chocolate tarts and decided to create this by making some lemon tarts. This recipe was from the book Muffins, Scones and Teatime Treats. 

I made the pastry the day before to give myself less to do, the recipe doesn't state this is necessary stating it requires only 20mins in the fridge. 

The pastry is made by combining plain flour, salt, butter, caster sugar, lemon rind, egg yolk and water together. Start with just crumbling the flour and butter and then add the remaining ingredients together. I then wrapped this in cling film and placed it in the fridge overnight along with the other varieties of pastry I'd made that day. 

Pastry wrapped and in the fridge.

When we were ready to start the following day I commisioned my mum to make the pastry cases while I made the filing. To do this she carefully rolled out the pastry and cut them using 8cm round cutters. This was the right size to fit in a cupcake tin, which is what we used to bake them. She found that the pastry easily made 24 cases, in fact we ended up making 30 due to having left over pastry and filling. 

The pastry cases were pricked with a folk and then baked for 10mins, unusually they did only require this length of time to bake and therefore the timing was correct. 

To make the filling I combined cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks together until smooth. I then added lemon juice and condensed milk beating this until the whole mixture was well combined. 

Smooth, light mixture ready to be spooned into cases.

I filled the cases by adding 2 teaspoons of mixture to each one and then these were baked in the oven. The recipe stated they should be baked for 5 mins but we started off with 10 and this seemed to be the perfect length of time. 

These were served on a 2 tiered cake stand.

Lemon tarts ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave the tarts 7/10, I thought that the filling was really nice and light, however, it didn't taste strongly enough of lemon. The first taste I got was condensed milk and then the lingering after taste was lemon. I wanted to be hit a little more strongly. Gary also gave the tarts 7/10 stating that they were nice and refreshing, however, more lemon was needed. I also got my mum to guest mark these and she gave them 8/10 stating that they were creamy and smooth, her favourite so far but they were nothing special. Overall these tarts received a mark of 22/10, they were OK but definitely didn't create a wow. 

I have to apologise for the lack of pictures of this recipe, I forgot to take many as I was carrying out the various steps!! 

Scones

No afternoon tea would be complete without scones with jam and clotted cream. As I'd found so many good recipes on BBC I thought I'd look on there. Of course there was a basic recipe on there which is all I needed. This is the recipe for Classic Scones from the website.

The recipe was pretty basic and standard. I mixed together the margarine, flour, baking powder and salt until they were breadcrumbs. I then stirred in the sugar. Whilst I was doing this mum prepared the milk by heating it slightly and adding vanilla and lemon juice. I then poured the wet mixture into the dry and combined these fully.

Mum was then in charge of preparing the scones, she kneaded the dough for a few minutes and then rolled it out. The recipe stated that the mix it should be 4cm high, using a 4cm cutter, she then cut out the scones.

I brushed them with beaten egg and then we placed on the baking sheet where they were cooked for 20 minutes or so until they were golden brown.

Scones in the oven

Verdict: I had these scones with jam and clotted cream a few days after they were made, so not the freshest but OK. I would give them 5/10, as they are OK scones but nothing special or outstanding. The thing that made them tasty and me want more was the toppings!! Scones are pretty plain anyway so maybe these were just what a scone should be, a plain accompaniment to the yummy jam and clotted cream!

Fruity Teacake

I like fruit cake but I also find it quite heavy so I wanted a lighter, easier solution to this. I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food website for Fruit Teacake. This is cooked as a loaf rather than a round cake, meaning I could slice it more neatly into pieces. 

The first step was to soak the dried fruit in tea, the recipe states this should be for at least 4 hrs but preferably overnight. Unfortunately I didn't see this until we started to make it so we left it for 3-4 hours during the day. The fruit really plumped up and absorbed all the tea making it them lovely and moist. 

Once the fruit was ready I mixed together the spread and sugar until they were light and fluffy. I then added the egg and flour mixing until the mixture was light and fluffy. The mixture was quite dry at this point. I then added the fruit mixture and mixed it in, this made the cake a much lighter mixture. 

The mixture was then placed in a lined loaf tin, sprinkled with demerera sugar and baked in the oven, the recipe states for 1 hour, however, we left it in for a futher 30-45mins and still the knife was coming out dirty. I decided that we would just have to leave it and risk it. I left the cake to cool. 

Cake fresh out of the oven

To serve the cake I sliced the loaf up and then cut these in half, arranged them on a cake stand. 

Cake sliced and ready to eat.

Verdict: I really liked this cake, I found it very moist and fruity. It probably could have done with a little longer in the oven, so next time I'd leave it for even longer. I've decided to give the cake 9/10. I don't know whether baking it for a bit longer would dry out the cake but it would be worth trying it out. Gary says the cake is nice and fruity, he likes the sugar on the top with the extra crunch. He gives it 8/10 saying the fruit cake is pretty good. 

Chocolate Tarts

I decided to make chocolate tarts as they would provide a little bitesize piece of flavour and I like chocolate!! The recipe I used to these was found in a book called Scones, Muffins and Teatime Treats.  

I made the pastry the night before, so I had less to do on the day, though the recipe says it only needs around 20mins in the fridge to cool. The pastry consists of plain flour, custard powder, butter, egg yolk and water. I used margarine instead of butter, as always! 

First step was to combine the margarine and the flour together:

Flour and marg crumbling together

As you can see from this picture my machine wasn't very good at combining the mixture using the aluminum blade and left a lot of flour around the outside. Using a spatula this was easily mixed in. Once that was done the liquids were added and the mixture combined to a nice pastry. 

Combined pastry

I then wrapped the pastry in cling film and left it in the fridge overnight, along with the other varieties of pastry I made. 

Pastry in the fridge

When we were ready to get started the next day I set my mum the task of making the pastry cases. This was a case of rolling out the pastry in flour and then cutting with a small cutter. We were using a cupcake tin to bake these so she used around 8cm cutter to achieve the right size cases. Once they were cut she placed them in the tin (first sprayed with oil so they don't stick) and they were ready for filling. Unusually the pastry wasn't baked blind in this recipe. 

Pastry cases all cut and ready to be filled

For the filling I combined cream cheese and sugar (in the mixer) until they were nice and creamy. Then added in egg and melted chocolate, finally adding ground almonds. This was all combined together till it was a solid colour, no streaks, and was smooth and then spooned into the pastry cases.Each case contained around 2 teaspoons of mixture. 

Cases filled and baking

These were baked in the oven, the recipe suggested 15mins but as usual they required longer than the recipe said and ended up having around 30mins in total. This was when they had just started to firm up under touch. 

Chocolate tarts cooling

They were left to cool and then drizzled with white chocolate, placed in the fridge so the chocolate could set. 

Drizzled chocolate Tarts

To serve the tarts I placed them on a 2 tiered stand. 

Cakes plated and ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave these tarts 8/10, they were very rich and had a lovely intense chocolate flavour, however, I did find it quite heavy and sticky making them difficult to eat. Gary gave the tarts 9/10 and his comment was they were very nice. I also had my mum as a guest judge for these, she gave them 9/10 saying that they were very chocolatey and lovely. Overall these tarts get a total of 26/30, a very good score. 

Bakewell Cheesecake

Whilst browsing afternoon tea recipes I came across this idea, a Bakewell cheesecake, and I couldn't resist. I do like Bakewell tarts, however, I usually find that they are a little dry and I struggle to eat them, however, I really enjoy the flavour combinations.  

I found this recipe on BBC Good Food website. I'm so glad I did, as you'll see from the verdict, this was an outstanding success. 

First step is to make the biscuit base, this is made by crushing almond biscuits and flaked almonds before adding melted butter and almond extract. I struggled finding the almond biscuits as they didn't have them in the usual supermarkets but fortunately my sister found them in M and S and was able to get us some. I'm glad she did as I think they probably really added something to the base. Definitely worth investing in some if you can. 

Once the base was all mixed together this was placed into a loose bottomed tin and baked for 10 minutes. I've never baked a biscuit base before so this was a novel idea. This was then left to cool whilst I made the filing. 

Biscuit base filling

I made the filing by mixing the cream cheese until it was soft, to this I added in the sugar until it was combined. Finally I added the flour, vanilla, eggs and soured cream until the whole mix was fully combined. 

Creamy Cheesecake Mixture

To make up the cheesecake I added spoonfuls of the cheesecake mixer onto the base with spoonfuls of cherry jam placed in the middle. I tried to add these so they were scatter throughout the cheesecake so there were lovely clumps of jam amongst the mixture. 

Spoonfuls of Jam Amongst the Cheesecake

The made cheesecake was then placed in the oven and baked for 10 mins at 200oC, the temperature was then turned down to 110oC and baked for a further 35 mins. The oven was then turned off and the cheesecake was left in the oven for a further hour to cool. The recipe states that you should leave the cheesecake where it is with the oven door open, however, we just didn't have time for this as well so we took the cheesecake out at this point. The cheesecake is then left to cool at room temperature before placing in the fridge overnight to set. 

Scattered with Almonds and Baked

The cheesecake needed to stay in the fridge until it was time to serve it, we did try and get it out sooner, but it started to melt so it went back into the fridge. I served the cheesecake as a whole piece and on a cake stand. 

Cheesecake placed on Cake Stand

Inside View of the Cheesecake

Verdict: This cheesecake was delicious, the combinations of flavours was really tasty and balanced. I liked that the cheesecake mixture balanced nicely with the strong flavour of the biscuits and the sweet fruitiness of the jam. I gave the cheesecake 10/10. Gary also gave it 10/10 as did my mum. So in total this recipe got 30/30. There is nothing that needs to be changed and the flavours are just perfect. This is certainly a recipe I'll be keeping and I'm looking forward to enjoying my final 2 pieces that are left of the current one. Would definitely recommend this recipe. 

Quiche Lorraine

I have made mini quiche Lorraines in the past, however, not for many years and therefore no longer remember which recipe I used to use. So I did a quick search online and found a recipe on the BBC Good Food Website. 

I made the pastry the night before, just to save me a task, the recipe doesn't even state to place it in the fridge at all but I've always been told to cool pastry before rolling (prevent shrinkage) and I wanted to try and minimise tasks on the day. 

To make the pastry I mixed together flour and margarine until a breadcrumb like mixture and then added water to bring the mixture together. This was then wrapped in pastry and placed in the fridge overnight. 

When ready to make the quiches I got my mum to roll out the icing and cut them out using an 8cm cutter which is the correct size for a cupcake tin. I wanted to make mini bitesize quiches, I suspect the recipe is for larger quiches, however, it doesn't state this anywhere. 

Pastry cases ready to be filled

While mum was doing that I prepared the filling. I combined the milk and egg in a jug and then added the cheese. I then fried the bacon, onion and tomatoes. No where on the recipe does it say to chop these up but since I clearly wasn't going to get 1 rasher into 24 cases I guessed this step was missing. Gary chopped up the onion and the tomatoes into little pieces for me and I cubed up the bacon. I ended up using double quantity of onion and bacon to ensure there was enough mixture for all the cases and to balance out with the tomato. 

Filled with the fried ingredients

Close up view of the case with filling, no liquid added yet

Once this was fried I then spooned this into the pastry cases (which don't need prebaking) and carefully poured the liquid mixture on top. I found this quite tricky as the cheese and egg made it come out in chunks. If I was to make these again I would grate the cheese up more finely, which I think would help. 

The quiches were then baked in the oven for around 30 minutes until the tops were golden brown and they were nice and firm. 

Mini Quiches are cooling

I served this in a butterfly basket 3 tiered stand having had a night in the fridge. 

Stand in the left, bottom layer, contains the quiches ready to eat. 

Verdict: I really enjoyed these and have happily finished off the extras we had. The balance of the filling was good making them not too eggy but certainly not dry and I like them being that small size. For me I would give them 9/10. Gary gave them 8/10 and stated he would have preferred them warm but they were much nicer than the store bought equivalent  I would agree with this, I'm not usually a fan of quiche and wouldn't choose it but homemade is completely different and so easy. No excuse not to make them!! 

Afternoon Tea Baby Shower

For my "baby shower" I decided that I wanted to invite all of the female members of our family over for afternoon tea and some games. I wanted it to be a relaxed environment giving people a chance to catch up and nibble on some good food. 

I've spent time planning and choosing some yummy recipes for the gathering. I knew there'd be loads of food for the number of people but I wanted there to be lots of choice and plenty of each item so should something be more popular there was enough. I hadn't made any of the recipes before, which was part of the fun, so everything was new and exciting. It took 12 hours of baking but we ended up with a great feast of food and I think it was all very nice. I will be making posts of all of the individual baked items over the coming weeks so more detail will follow, however, I'll add in a little teaser that one of the items got 30/30!! 

All the goodies ready to be eaten

To plan and pick all the recipes I did some google searches for afternoon tea recipes, I found that the BBC food website was really helpful and gave me plenty of ideas, in fact, most of the recipes I ended up using came from there and they worked well. 

So let's start at the beginning, my first thoughts went to what savoury items we should include. I wanted a traditional tea so we couldn't have any of the pizza or crisps ideas that my mum suggested!! So we had to think a little harder. Of course sandwiches were essential but what flavours? After some thought we decided to keep it simple and go with some tried and tested fillings:

• Tuna and Sweetcorn
• Ham
• Cheese and tomato
• Smoked salmon and cream cheese

We made all the bread fresh so on Friday, using a bread machine borrowed from my mum, which was baking away producing 3 loaves for us. I cut off the crusts and made them into neat little squares, originally I was thinking of making sticks but this would have resulted in tiny sandwiches so it wasn't worth it. 

Tuna and Sweetcorn

Ham on the left and Salmon on the right

So to go with the sandwiches I wanted a couple of other items. Years ago I remembered making some mini quiches that my mum liked, I didn't still have the recipe and I haven't made them since but I thought they would be a good addition. To go with these we looked through the recipe books and chose parmesan and sunflower biscuits. 

All afternoon teas have to have scones so of course these were a necessity along with some kind of fruity cake. We decided on a a fruit tea loaf which could be neatly sliced up. 

Finally the cakes element of the meal, and this is where we had the most fun, I looked through the lists and my "short" list ended up being quite long :-\ so then came the process of narrowing it all down. I wanted a balance of fruits and chocolate so we didn't have too many similar items but I also wanted things that could be made in bite size pieces. So we finally narrowed it down to:

• Chocolate tarts
• Lemon tarts
• Double Chocolate Loaf Cake
• Bakewell Cheesecake
• Pineapple and Coconut Cupcakes

I hoped this would create a nice mixture of items and have something to suit everyone. 

The food went down very well and I only received nice comments on it all, as I said, I will be writing about each item and marking them all separately with links to the recipes. There was lots of food left over, as expected, so my guests also got to leave with goody bags of their favourite items. Poor Nanna had 2 bags of salmon sandwiches as no one else wanted those!! 

Now a quick diversion off of baking to show some of the other things we also had going on. Last minute this week we decided that some bunting might look nice around the room, so my mum rushed out on Wednesday to try and find some that we could personalise. We ended up with 3!! 

Firstly the fabric bunting, we got a fabric one from Lakeland, which was a lovely mix of colours in checks and strips. To personalise this she purchased some stickers and iron on pictures to put on each flag. She chose some baby designs and some tea party designs along with Mia's name (our expected baby). 

Fabric Bunting in room

She also got some paper bunting as back up but we decided to put these up as well. The first was a flowery design and the second had bears, horses and solid colours to mix it up. 

Flowery Bunting

Bear and Rocking Horse Bunting

These made a nice difference to the room and made it feel a little more partyish!! 

Finally I'll finish with a big thank to my mum, who worked SO hard to make my vision come to life; my husband, who was lumbered with all the cleaning and tidying up; and to my guests who came with wonderful gifts, lots of chatter and provided fun. 

Overall a great day was had, hopefully, by all. :). 

A Taster of the Week to Come

I haven't been able to do much baking recently because the Hyperemesis is still going strong, if anything it's worsened towards the end. However, in the week to come I will be doing a fair bit of baking in preparation for a family gathering under the guise of being a baby shower. I decided to just invite family but it gives all the ladies a chance to get to know each other better and share some chatter and laughter. 

Now I don't want to give too many things away at this stage, a bit of surprise is fun!! but I can give a smaller taster of what is to come. I will be spreading the posts out over a few days/weeks in order to not use all my material at once so you'll have to be patient with news on these ones. 

The plan is to create a traditional afternoon tea like one you'd get at a nice hotel or restaurant. My wonderful mother helped me achieve this look by purchasing some cakes stands for me. Most of these were purchased from BHS in the new year sale with a few additions from Hobbycraft, I believe.

So here is a selection of some of the stands that I got. I've kept this one boxed up for now but his is a lovely 2 tiered cake stand with gingerbread characters on it. 

2 Tiered Cake Stand

This is a larger single cake stand to display the whole cake on

Cream Cake Stand

 Finally this is a 3 tiered basket stand with some butterflies on the outside, this was a hobbycraft purchase. 

Butterfly Stand

We (me and my team of helpers) have organised our online shop to come on Tuesday, it's going to be quite a large shop full of goodies. As with all afternoon teas we are going to create some sandwiches, scones and cakes. No I'm not telling you any more than that but I can safely say that they'll be plenty of food and busy hive of activity here on Friday. 

Thanks to my Mother in Law we now have a table clothe for the table, completing the nice smart look we're going for. 

The rest of the baby shower won't be quite so classy as we have games planned like guess the flavour of baby food, guess my waist measurement and pin the dummy on the baby!! I hope that the reusable nappies will have arrived by then so we can all have a good study of them as well. 

So the countdown begins, this time next week hopefully people will start arriving ready to join in the fun and participate. Hopefully I'll survive the weekend and have some fun. I'll keep you posted... got a flat to clean now ready for my guests!! 

Afternoon Tea at Woolley Grange

 Since I haven't been able to do much baking recently I've decided to branch out a little on here and include some other items. The first is a review of a recent trip to Woolley Grange. Thanks to Tesco Clubcard we were able to treat ourselves to a special afternoon tea whilst on our recent holiday to the surrounding area. This lovely hotel is located close to Bradford-Upon-Avon and Bath. It is a beautiful hotel with lovely grounds and somewhere I'd like to visit again on a warmer sunnier day! 

Picture courtesy of their own website. 

We went straight inside and were quite promptly told to take a seat in the lounge, we chose seat next to a warm log fire and settle into the sofas. Very quickly we were brought a pot of tea, closely followed by our food. Unfortunately, they didn't offer my poor husband an alternative to tea assuming that we both drank it so I just drank it all!! 

The food consisted of 3 plates, at the bottom there were little finger sandwiches. Salmon, cucumber, egg and cheese, we were provided with 2 of each so we were both able to try them all. These were surprisingly good considering I don't really like salmon and I enjoyed them. For my husband he would have preferred larger portions but he isn't really a dainty afternoon tea person!!

The plates of food with all my tea!!

The next plate was the small cakes plate, again 2 of each kind, we had a profiterole  little victoria sandwich, a coffee slice and a little tartlet with fresh fruit on top. I'm not a huge fan of pastry and cream so my husband had the joy of having 2 profiteroles, he tells me they were very tasty. The little victoria sandwich was a lovely idea, however, I found mine to be quite dry and tasteless. The coffee slice was layered with chocolate, sponge and coffee layers. Neither me or my husband like coffee so this wasn't a particular favourite, however, I thought that the flavours balanced nicely and the coffee wasn't too overwhelming. It was lovely and moist. I enjoyed the one I had but wouldn't want any more. Finally, and my personal favourite, we had the little tartlet filled with creme patisserie and topped with fresh fruit. That was delicious, I just wanted more!! The fresh fruit perfectly balanced the creme patisserie which had a lovely background vanilla flavour. Really good. 

The little cakes plate

The final plate had 2 scones, 1 fruit and 1 plain. I opted for the fruit scone. It was accompanied with clotted cream and strawberry jam. I found my scone was a little over cooked therefore resulting in a crispy exterior but dry interior. My husband informs me that his was just right. The whole combined mix, with plenty of clotted cream and jam, was lovely. It's been a while since I had proper clotted cream on a scone and I really enjoyed it. 

Overall we had a lovely relaxed afternoon by the fire. We got given nice food and of course I had great company!! For the price, I'm glad we did it through tesco rather than paid outright because it did seem a little expensive but would I do it again? oh yes, definitely. Really lovely way to spend the afternoon. Now I need to convince my husband to visit some of the more local tea rooms for a similar experience!! :D