Displaying items by tag: baking

Since starting her home bakery Moo Moo Cakes in July 2014, Fiona has been creating rustic wedding cakes. Packed full of flavour and looking naturally beautiful, all are baked using un-refined sugars, even the icing sugar, giving the buttercream a depth of flavour, richness and golden colour that you don’t get in processed white icing sugar. Big flavours come from amazing ingredients, all essentials being organic. Added to that a mix of local and delicious seasonal produce.  Fiona's wedding cakes come in many gorgeous forms, shapes and sizes. Like this four tier organic vanilla wedding cake dressed with seasonal berries and organic edible flowers (above).  Or this two tier elegant ‘barrel’ style naked cake(below). The base tier is organic vanilla, buttercream and Tiptree (she's a big fan) strawberry jam. The top tier is a luscious lemon cake, teamed with a lemon juice buttercream and Tiptree lemon curd. Dressed with cream roses and ribbon.

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Fiona offers wedding cake consultations at her home. She says it's a fabulous time to drink tea, eat cake and talk about how she can make your wedding, magical and delicious.   How about this gorgeous ‘drip’ cake?  Two tiers of triple layered vanilla cake layered with chocolate ganache & wrapped in vanilla buttercream. Dripping in homemade salted caramel and topped with homemade salted caramel popcorn. Drip cakes can also have chocolate (dark or white) drips, topped with crushed nuts, meringues, chocolate shards, flowers.  Ooh! now you're talking!

...we have lost 48 feta and pepperdew muffins...! Did we sell them by mistake thinking they were cornmeal (but they had great big pieces of feta sticking out...hard to miss) Or are they still in Granny's freezer? We have no idea where they went. If you think you saw them - or even ate one, let us know. Unless of course you took the whole lot (we did have one teenager breaking into camp-kitchen looking for a 3am cheese scone) in which case - we hope you liked them.

We really need to post the recipe up for these because it's soooooo good, easy, cheap and very impressive. Here are some we are making for PettaFiesta. We put a shake of smoked paprika on the bottom and some grated cheese, then changed our minds and on the next bake put it on the top. Great with soup instead of bread - we will be serving them with the chili - and maybe for breakfast too.

We really enjoyed having Amy, our work experience student from Thurston Community College, this week. She showed us her favourite recipe: Birdy's Brownies! 

Birdy’s Brownies!

Ingredients:

• 185g unsalted butter
• 185g cooking chocolate
• 85g plain flour
• 40g cocoa powder
• 100g best dark chocolate
• 3 large eggs
• 275g golden caster sugar

Method:

1. Cut 185g unsalted butter into smallish cubes and tip into a medium bowl. Break 185g cooking chocolate into small pieces and drop into the bowl.
   Melt over a pan of boiling water.
2. Turn the oven on to 160C/conventional or 180C/gas, so it has time to warm up. Using a shallow 20cm square tin, cut out a square of non-stick baking parchment to line the base.
3. Now tip 85g plain flour and 40g cocoa powder into a sieve held over a medium bowl until all lumps have gone.
4. With a sharp knife, chop 100g of dark chocolate into chunks (rough squares) on a chopping board.
5. Break 3 large eggs into a large bowl and tip in 275g golden caster sugar. With an electric mixer on maximum speed, whisk the eggs and sugar until they look thick and creamy, like a milk shake
6. Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the eggy mousse and gently fold together with a rubber spatula. Plunge the spatula in at one side, take it underneath and bring it up the opposite side and in again at the middle. The idea is to marry them without knocking out the air, so be as gentle and slow as you like – you don’t want to undo all the work you did in step 4.
7. Hold the sieve over the bowl of eggy chocolate mixture and resift the cocoa and flour mixture into it. Gently fold in the powder, in the same figure of eight action as before. Finally, stir in the chocolate chunks until they’re dotted all of the way through.
8. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, scraping every bit out of the bowl with the spatula. Gently ease the mixture into the corners of the tin and paddle the spatula from side to side across the top to level it. Put in the oven and set your timer for 25 minutes.
9. Leave in the tin until cool. Once cool, cut into small squares or triangles.
   • melt choc and butter
   • stir until glossy
   • sieve flour and cocoa
   • place eggs and sugar into bowl
   • whisk until fluffy
   • chop the chocolate
   • mix melted choc and eggy mixture
   • add flour, cocoa and chopped choc
   • pour into tin
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Pratik cooked us a mean burger, topped with Kiddertons Ash Reserve Goats cheese and a fabulous tray of chocolate brownies.  My idea of a perfect guest.

A fellow Suffolk food blogger - lots of good recipes, especially baking .. that means cakes.

Very excited about being invited by Tesco to tour their bakery in Lowestoft - this was an opportunity to address everything we think is unethical about the mega-supermarkets and be reassured by them that they are making progress in the right direction. But not even the very big and extremely heavy goodie-bag-for-life stuffed with tiger bread and almond soya milk can make up for the corporate-speak-with-prize we took part in as part of their female only audience of bloggers and customers. If this is how Tesco top brass see their customers' world, no wonder they were in court this week. We may only be club card holders or housewives on the surface, Tesco, but underneath many of us are industry professionals. 

Cronuts are going to be the new cupcake.  Dominique Ansel bakery in New York has created the Cronut.  Half croissant, half doughnut. Customers are queuing for two hours to get their hands on one. My money is on Pump Street Bakery in Orford to be the first in Suffolk to have some on the shelf.

From the Pump Street bakery -  a Bear's Claw - something I had never heard of or tasted before, orginating from the northern USA and Canada.  It's so hard to choose from their selection of amazing bread, cakes, pastries and patisserie that we bought a box full of different things and half a dozen crisp fresh doughnuts filled with rhubarb jam and lemon custard. It made me want to say 'au revoir' when I left the shop.

Once a month Shauna Tate invites keen bakers to join her at The Beaters Hut Bakers Club.  Shauna started the club last July and each month she comes up with a theme for the baking.  Last month I went along to Cheese. I ate so much and came away with enough food for the next day.  No judging takes place and all you need to do is bake or make something that can be shared beweent 8 to 10 people.  Next months meeting is on Monday May 27th and the theme is Picnic. All are welcome to attend although spaces are limited in order to allow everyone to get to meet each other.  I think this could become the perfect dating agency?