The addiction that is Biscotti making and why I can't handle it.

I recently posted an apology on my facebook to all my friends saying that I'm sorry for the last year when I became a complete flake or just ignored them, doing a masters and a full-time job isn't the easiest thing ever, and their are people that do all this while being a loving wife and mother, wtf? amazing! Anyway the point is that I think this blog deserves an apology also.
When I sat down to write new years resolutions this year there were actually two resolutions dedicated to this blog, including 'Update every week.'....................erm fail! Anyway the masters took more out of me than I expected and every other area of my life suffered, sorry. This last moonth of August is gonna be the worst because this is the countdown to the big thesis hand-in. I'm not even a hundred percent sure that I will manage to get it in on time but I'm gonna give it my all, which mean, no or very little baking =(

I had been trying to write a post about Biscotti for the last 2 weeks and somehow it hasn't quite happened. I was inspired to make Biscotti after seeing an episode of 'Extra Virgin,' where Gabriele Corcos makes them. Debi Mazar makes fun of him because she says that he has become obsessed with making them, to the point where she has found him in the middle of the night surrounded by flour and cookie dough. That sounded funny, but it's not funny.

Biscotti making addiction is no joke, it's a serious and debilitating condition where the baker has to make biscotti over and over again until they are happy and the biscotti look right. To my dismay I have succumbed to this harrowing condition. I thought I could make one batch and have fun but one turned into two turned into thinking about it day and night wondering if a pinch more or less of baking soda or a little more citrus zest or slightly less chopped nuts would make the difference. I'm not gonna lie, I spend a lot of time thinking about recipes and how I can improve them or tweak them to make something different but this Biscotti thing has become ridiculous. The problem I think lies in the delicate balance between how easy it is to make biscotti and how difficult it is to perfect them. It's actually difficult to tell at any stage whether or not this will be the time until they are completely done and even then the real test is a day later to see how the crunch and taste develops in the air-tight container, because it does, for better or worse it develops.............and now I sound like a crazy person.

Enough is enough, I will keep working on my thesis and hopefully find some time to make another batch of Biscotti that i consider good enough to post here but until then I'm dreaming of better days to come when I can bake and post every week without study to worry about.
Bye =)

A edible centrepiece, classy and cookie?

I saw an episode of DC cupcakes recently that inspired me to want to make a bouquet of cupcakes. So when my boyfriend's parents got me a really cute set of mini cupcake cases it seemed like the perfect opportunity. I think this would be a perfect center-piece for a fancy party or even a wedding when the host wants to be a bit quirky and classy as well. I don't like the idea of putting them in a pot however it feels a little too earthy. Therefore I have gone with a few real leaves and the little rose cupcakes on, well I would ideally use Styrofoam but I didn't have any so I used an orange with the bottom cut off to flatten it. The results were pretty nice and I hope you'll agree.

The cupcake recipe I originally went with had to be altered because when I put it into the mini cases it expanded too much and overflowed, despite the fact that I only filled it 1/2 way full. Therefore I went with a recipe I remember from when I was a child. It's really REALLY basic but then it worked and I used really good ingredients so that they would shine despite the simplicity of the recipe.

Mini-Cupcakes Vanilla with Chocolate Frosting


125g Self Raising Flour
1/8 tsp baking powder
80g caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
60ml whole milk
25g melted unsalted butter
1 lrg egg
1 1/2 tsp really good vanilla extract (as Nigella Lawson would say)

Frosting

Best ever Chocolate frosting
with added chocolate.

The cupcakes are mixed together using the muffin method surprisingly. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Sieve together the dry ingredients, including the sugar. Whisk together the wet ingredients and then mix them together. Don't over mix, just mix them enough to incorporate everything. Spoon into the cases up to 2/3rd way full and then bake for 15 minutes or until the top starts to brown.
Let the cupcakes cool fully on a wire rack use this time to prepare the frosting. Then pipe it into rose shapes with a star nozzle starting in the center and then going around that in a smooth circular motion.

To assemble the center-piece I used real leaves and washed them thoroughly with soap and water. then I put tooth picks into the styrofoam(orange) and places the cupcakes around the leaves.
Here's some more pictures to get a good look at the overall effect. I would add more cupcakes if I had styrofoam  and maybe do the frosting in white also but I think it looks pretty elegant. Enjoy =)

Switched at Birth- review

Switched at Birth was one of the summer shows pushed pretty hard over on ABC family in America. The concept is an interesting one. Two families, each from different socio-economic and cultural backgrounds are going along doing their own thing and then they find out that their daughters do not belong in the right families and that they were switched at birth, this could be the basis for an interesting and intelligent look into the difference between blood and water, into the effect that growing up in a different culture than your genetic family has on an individual and into the struggle that would naturally occur once the truth came out. That did not happen in this case.

Switched at Birth decided to make the whole show into a ridiculous sitcom about different families coming together and living in the same place without ever knowing each other. They spend ridiculous amounts of time focusing on situations involving love triangles and gambling problems. Within 3 episodes the daughters appear to have completely adapted to the fact that the new woman in the situation is their real mother and they all appeared to have established some degree of familiarity and love based on.........

The mother's seem to have the emotional and intellectual maturity of 16 year olds while the red-head mis-placed daughter appears to be the only one in the situation with the slightest grasp of reality and level-headedness.

If I am fully honest I must say that I have only watched maybe 4 of the 8 episodes that have shown to date and even then that's something of an exaggeration because the dialogue is so ridiculous that I literally had to skip whole scenes within each of the episodes. I decided to watch this based on the fact that Vanessa Marano (Luke's Daughter in GG) was a main character. Honestly she does not impress. To me, in my humble opinion, it looks like she is still playing the same character as she did in the Gilmore Girls, except now that she's hit her television teen years, she's showing a wild side, which leads to her making several crude jokes and one really awkwardly sexy scene that I skipped through, it was just too forced and awkward, yuck! Anyway suffice is to say that I will not be watching this ever again and despite the dismal amount of summer tv I wouldn't recommend anyone else to watch this either.

On a brighter note I am watching True Blood season 4 and I hope to do a review, Wednesday next week of the season so far.

French Macarons for Bastille Day

 Seven years ago I spent a year living in France, studying the great language and the great philosopher Sigmund Freud in all his perverse glory. It was during my time there that I was introduced to french macarons. Every Sunday I would take a 'me day.' Get up early and walk to 9am mass in the cathedral, then on to a swimming lesson and then spend the afternoon doing whatever I felt like before an evening cycle around the beautiful village of Angers. After my evening cycle I would come home to enjoy a little treat, usually one that I had purchased that morning from some bakery or another. I had one favourite bakery that was on the little street leading to the cathedral.
To set the scene a little more this bakery was on a little shopping street. The street was pedestrianized and first thing on a Sunday morning it was usually abandoned. The only people around would be on their way to mass or in the apartments above the shops. It gave the street a slightly festival feeling with no cars or rushing business people around. The little bakery was on the corner of a row of shops 3/4 way down the street and to be precise it was more of a patisserie, chocolaterie than a bakery. The windows of this place where a sight to behold, always filled with different beautiful sweets and treats. They had everything from the traditional to the seasonal treats and usually they had a selection of macarons, sometimes even arranged into a wedding 'cake!' These were art, not food and I dreamed of one day being able to make something so tantalizing and so perfect.

I have not yet reached that day but I have made steps towards it.

Touch of summer macarons

125g      Ground almonds (sieved)
175g      Icing sugar
25g        Freeze dried strawberries and raspberries
3            Egg whites (1 day old from fridge)
25g        Caster Sugar
Tiny Pinch Cream of Tartar
1 Pinch Salt

Smash up your freeze dried fruit in a baggy. Sieve your almonds before weighing as some bits don't get through the sieve and it is important to be exact. Sieve together the ground almonds, salt, icing sugar and crushed freeze dried fruit. The result should have just a few specks of the red throughout the dried ingredients.
Whisk up your egg whites with the cream of tartar until stiff then add the castor sugar and whisk until you reach the stiff peaks stage. Add the dried ingredients to the meringue and fold in until all thoroughly incorporated. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe 1 inch circles onto a lined baking sheet. Allow this to sit for 30 minutes before cooking in a preheated oven at 175 degrees for 5-10 minutes
Let them cool before removing from parchment or silicon and remove carefully as the macarons can easily break. Fill with buttercream or seedless raspberry jam. I also used a lemon curd here but I would not recommend as it was too heavy

Summer time = Fresh Strawberry Jam

Ok well it would be nice to say that this was a family tradition, that each year we would pick dozen of strawberries and make jam from the family recipe, but that would be a lie. There is an amazing recipe for apple jam somewhere but I've gotta find it before autumn. My Mum was more the sporty, musical type so we spent our summers playing tennis, swimming, playing outdoors and going to susuki conventions.  We did pick blackberries behind the tennis court and have them with ice-cream which was amazing. However today is strawberry jam and it's pretty amazing also.

This Sunday was amazingly sunny and myself and my friend went walking, then we stumbled upon a berry-picking farm and well what kind of a foodie would I be if I hadn't suggested we go picking. So we each came home with about 2Kg of strawberries and slightly burnt shoulders ; ). I love strawberries and while I could have eaten them all I think I might have turned red. Therefore after some debate I decided to make a small batch of jam. It being my first time and with a severe lack of any jam making accessories the ultimate recipe had to be Jamie Oliver's quick strawberry jam that he made in an episode of Jamie at Home. He crushes together 150g of sugar per kilo of strawberries (with his hands) and cooks this for about 30 minutes, while scrapping off the scum that forms on top. My strawberries weren't quite as perfectly red as I would have hoped and some were less sweet than others so I decided to up the sugar to about 185g per kilo and increase the cook time to 45mins to account for the extra sugar. The jam turned out amazingly and although it doesn't look very thick in the saucepan as it cools it gets to the right consistency pretty fast. As you can see..

 

Any small amount of food photography mojo I may have developed has clearly disappeared but take my word for it the jam is amazing and delicious.  It tastes fresh and sweet like freshly picked strawberries in a jar and not like that crap I sometimes get in the supermarket.

Birthday Cake and presents

I finally managed to finish the taught part of my Masters and therefore have a tiny bit more time on my hands. This time started the day before my birthday so I had relatively little time to plan but I was determined to make the best birthday cake ever. Therefore I hit Tastespotting for some cake ideas and I was struck by a beautiful cake made by Naturally Ella. Then I thought of another cake I had seen on Food network that used Pirouette cookies around the outside. I wish we had pirouette cookies here but alas I decided to make do with cadbury finger biscuits and the design I wanted was complete.


My Basket of roses chocolate and vanilla marble cake

The roses are piped icing and are actually relatively easy to do. I found a few tutorials on youtube and I was away. The cake inside (again inspired by Naturally Ella) is marbled chocolate and vanilla. I used a completely different recipe however and enhanced the chocolate flavour using some freshly brewed coffee. This picture was taken at my birthday dinner with my family and I also tried to get some photos of people happily eating the cake. unfortunately the people in question look demented, I will assume that they are just too excited about digging into the cake and not possessed somehow. (Side note: this cake is not known to cause demonic possession but you may look crazy while eating it, purily because you are destroying the beautiful flowers ; ).

The recipe

150g Butter
125g white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 egg yolks
4 Tbsp Milk
250g Cake Flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Chocolate part
150g Cocao Powder
50ml Freshly brewed coffee

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and whiter in colour. Add the egg yolks and beat. Sift together the flour, salt and baking powder and add the vanilla to the milk. Slowly add the flour and milk mixtures to the butter in thirds and mix thoroughly. When mixed put 2/3 of mixture into a greased cake pan.
To make the chocolate just add the cocao powder to the mixture and add the coffee to achieve the desired texture.
Put the chocolate mix on the top of the vanilla and swirl just enough to get the marbling. Then bake for 45mins on gas mark 5.

When the cake is cooled divide it into 2 and use chocolate icing in the centre and to form a crumb coat.
The roses icing is a tradition buttercream with a crumb coat of chocolate butter cream. I applied the roses once the chocolate coat was dry and then attached the basket of Cadbury Fingers with a little extra chocolate icing et voila..

It has been a while crocodile

I don't like college and yet somehow college has taken over my life this year, well college and work. I wonder if my dislike for college is related to it's ability to take over your life and your brain. See that's exactly the type of thinking that happens in college. The point of this tiny rant is to say that I am sorry I have not posted, more angry at myself than anything cos I was so determined to post once a week, but that's enough of that.
This week I wanted to make carrot cake. My boyfriend's mother likes carrot cake and I wanted to make one for her. Trouble is I don't have a recipe so I decided to try Alton Brown's recipe and review it here. The recipe is in his show on carrots (S8E17) and plays a very small part in the episode towards the end but the results from this recipe are delicious. I remember making carrot cake as a child from a Delia Smith book and her methods were very different and to my tastes, much less satisfactory! The cake and the frosting he makes are delicious. It is quite heavy, not for the faint-hearted. I substituted half of the yoghurt with milk, due to a lack of yoghurt so this may have affected things but the heaviness of the cake is quite appealing.

This is the original recipe

And here is the result -

It is sweet but not too sweet, slightly heavy but not stodgy. It is crumbly and delicious and definitely moreish.I will definitely be making this again and I would recommend you to try it too = )