Week 7 - Chocolate - Chocolate cupcakes

Ahhh, chocolate. You just can't beat it. A bit of an open-ended baking theme though. So I decided to keep it simple with some basic cupcakes. I adapted the recipe from here and it made 48 cupcakes. We're going to turn into cupcakes if we eat any more. 

Basic cake ingredients: plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, eggs, sugar, milk, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and cocoa powder. 

 Chuck it all on the bowl in one go. I love recipes like this.

Mix until combined and then add just enough boiling water to make the mixture really smooth. What you end up with is a glorious bowl of chocolate heaven. 

Plonk it in cases, hopefully a bit more neatly than I managed.

First batch (of four) out of the oven. They tasted alright straight from the oven but by the next morning they had become more moist and gooey and much more delicious. This is not a good thing when you have a tin of 48 sat on the kitchen counter. 

Next time, the theme is gluten free. I may possibly attempt French macaroons, if I can summon the courage. 

Week 6 - Bread - Garlic and herb focaccia

Hello again. This week my baking skills have been put to the test with the challenge of baking some bread. I do not enjoy making bread, although I love the end result. After last week's post, kind reader Sabrina suggested that I might get on with this recipe for no-fuss focaccia. And I most certainly did!

For the first time this year, I had all the ingredients already in my cupboards. This boded well I thought. 

Flour, yeast and salt. 

Mixed up with the water. I think it could have used more water, didn't seem loose enough really. 

Next I was supposed to drizzle olive oil into the bottom of the greased and lined tin. I did a bit more than drizzle, and ended up with a big puddle of olive oil. I soldiered on. 

After leaving the dough in my airing cupboard for an hour it looked like this. Promising I felt. 

Ah, then a slight problem became apparent. The recipe said to poke dimples all over the bread, but I couldn't do this as the dough simply clung onto my finger for dear life. I eventually worked out that I could do it using the handle of my pastry brush. 

Then I drizzled (read poured) on yet more olive oil and sprinkled it with oregano and dried garlic. Looking good, but I think it should have spread out to the sides a bit more. 

Out of the oven and looking great. Could it be that I had finally overcome my bread curse?

Well, yes and no. On the plus side, it tasted fab and had a good texture (what Paul Hollywood would refer to as a "good crumb"). On the not so positive side, the excess oil had caused the baking paper to become welded to the underside of the loaf.  We had to choose between eating some extra fibre in the form of baking paper, or peeling off the bottom crust completely. 

So there you have it, I'm not completely useless when it comes to baking bread, just partly. 

Next week - chocolate! Should be a good 'un. 

Week 5 - Chinese New Year - Sesame cookies

Here we are at week 5 of the Reddit 52 Week Baking Challenge. Another tricky one this week - Chinese New Year. I'd have loved to have done steamed pork buns, but there was lots of debate going on over at the subreddit as to whether steaming really counted as baking. Also, I don't own a bamboo steamer. So I found these sesame cookies on Google and they looked simple enough. Better yet, the only thing I needed to buy was sesame seeds.

No step-by-step photos this week (because I forgot!) but they were really just a normal biscuit recipe (that's cookies to my American friends) rolled in egg and sesame seeds before baking. I used this recipe and halved the quantities. Turns out halving a beaten egg is tricky, so my dough was a bit wetter then it should have been.

In the photo on the recipe page, the sesame seeds are evenly distributed over the cookies. Mine decided not to do that. I blame the egg. 

They taste... interesting. Somewhere in between savoury and sweet. Not the best cookies I've ever baked. 

Next week, I'll be taking on bread. Having never successfully cooked an edible loaf before, it should be interesting to say the least. 

Week 4 - Australia Day - Lamingtons

G'day mate! It's week four of the Reddit 52 Week Baking Challenge, and this week we are celebrating Australia Day. 

Honestly, I didn't have a clue where to start with this one, so played it safe and went with one of the suggested bakes - Lamingtons. According to my mum, they used to talk about them all the time on Neighbours. Who knew?

Settle in folks, this is a long one. 

A quick Google brought me to this recipe and, for once, I have followed it (almost) to the letter.

Flour, sugar, butter, eggs (I forgot to put them in the picture), baking powder, milk, vanilla extract and salt. Fairly standard cake stuff. 

Greased and floured tin. I've never done that before, usually grease and line. But then I've never made Lamingtons before either.

Sifting the flour, baking powder and salt.

In a different bowl, cream the butter sugar and vanilla extract.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each. 

Then alternate between milk and the flour mixture until it's all combined. 

Pour it into the pan and stick into a preheated 190 degree oven for about half an hour. 

I was worried that it hadn't risen very much, but it was just right in the end. One of my better sponge cakes in fact.

After leaving it to cool down, chop it into 24 pieces. 

Next lot of ingredients for the icing: milk, icing sugar, butter cocoa powder and coconut. 

Mix the icing sugar and cocoa powder together. I was supposed to to heat the milk and butter in a saucepan, but had just cleaned the top of the oven, so microwaved instead. Seemed alright to me!

Mixing them together results in gooey chocolatey loveliness (although it was a bit lumpy, probably should have sifted the icing sugar).

This was the fun part. Each square of cake gets dipped in chocolate icing...

then rolled in coconut.

Had to take a picture of my first finished one. So proud. 

Bonza. A bit messy to eat (because I didn't give them enough time to set) but otherwise a success!

Next week - Chinese New Year (?!)

Week 3 - Breakfast - Mexican eggs

The challenge this week was to bake something for breakfast. I decided that my choices so far have been fairly standard, so it was time to spice things up. Hola, Mexican eggs!

I adapted a Gordon Ramsay recipe (this one) to make half the amount and to leave out some of the spice. I swapped the chilli peppers for a sweet red one and left out the chilli flakes. Because who really wants chilli for breakfast?

Chop up the onion, pepper and garlic...

Then sauté them in olive oil for about five minutes until they look done. Add the cumin seeds and continue to fry until "aromatic". All frying food smells good to me so I just guessed on this one. 

Next add chopped tomatoes (note the mildly interesting upside down label) and the black beans and leave them to simmer for a few minutes. 

While my glamourous assistant was keeping an eye on the frying pan, I was busy greasing a baking dish with olive oil and then lining it with overlapping tortilla. I think my tortilla were too big, because one would have done, but the recipe definitely called for three. 

Looking good, smells even better.

Tip the whole lot into the tortilla lined dish. Then the recipe said make wells in the mixture and tip a whole egg into each. Easier said than done. The egg white had a mind of its own and spread all over the place. As usual I simply ploughed on regardless and sprinkled some cheese on top before putting it in a preheated 180 degree oven. 

15 minutes later, voila (or however you say that in Spanish)! I sprinkled some dried coriander on before serving. Very tasty, but probably a lot more effort than I would usually put into breakfast. 

Next week - Australia Day...

Week 2 - Bitesize - Glittery Chocolate Cake Balls

The challenge this week was to bake something bitesize. Instantly I thought of cake balls! I've been slightly obsessed with cake balls/pops ever since discovering bakerella.com a few years ago. And as luck would have it, I received the necessary equipment for Christmas. There are two schools of thought when it come to cake balls: some people bake a whole cake then crumble it and mix it with icing in order to form balls; others bake the cake as little balls to start with. Having tried both, the second way is my favourite. Here we go then...

The recipe I used for the cake balls couldn't be simpler, 115g of butter (or margarine), sugar and self-raising flour and three eggs.

Plonk everything into a bowl...

...including the eggs...

... and beat until light and creamy. My mother would kill me for using the all-in-one method, but I can't do it any other way.

Here's the nifty bit of kit I received for Christmas - a silicone cake ball mold!

The first time I used this gadget, I only half filled the holes and ended up with too-small cake balls, so this time I really went for it. Occurred to me afterwards that I should have used a piping bag to make it less messy. 

Lid on and ready to go in the oven - 180 degrees C for about 25 - or until it smells good and cakey. 

Here they are! Plus some bonus cupcakes with the extra mix. Some came out a bit like rugby balls, I may have over done it with the mix. But mostly spherical!

Final step, melt a load of cooking chocolate and ready the sprinkle shaker.

I used two teaspoons to dip each cake ball in the melted chocolate. The glitter sugar not only looks pretty but adds a satisfying crunch when you bite into them. Crunchy on the outside, soft and cakey on the inside. They didn't last very long!

Come back next week when I'll be making Mexican eggs for the breakfast theme.