Coconut Macaroons

I am sorry that I haven't blogged recently but I have been baking so here are my thoughts on Coconut macaroons.

Coconut macaroons are a popular afternoon snack in our family but I have never made them myself and the ones that we buy are not exactly the same as the ones in the book. Annie Bell's have jam in the middle whereas the ones we buy are dipped in chocolate but other than that they are pretty similar.

Anyway, macaroons have a meringue consistency and are basically a meringue with desiccated coconut mixed in to the normal whipped egg white and sugar. They are then dolloped on to a baking tray and then a little hole is made in the top which is then filled with jam.

They are then baked.

The problem with these were that they weren't particularly cakey as I had expected them to be. They were more chewy and in many ways... bouncy.... they were strange.

They tasted fine but the texture ruined them a little bit.

Anyway when I make them again, if I make them again. I will try the traditional way, with chocolate. 

Next Recipe: Smartie Traybake and Black Forest Traybake

Saratoga Torte

Or Cowpat pudding...

The pudding that requires no special tray, just a baking tray. A bog standard baking tray. 

This was one of the main reasons that this was picked to be the next pudding as this had to be a pudding that could be made in a holiday house. And it is one of the only puddings in the whole book (besides biscuits) that can be made without a cake tin of some description. 

The reason it is called cowpat pudding? well it looks a little like a cowpat with cream on top. Sounds delicious doesn't it? 

It is a digestive biscuit and pecan meringue with whipped cream and pecans on the top. Sounds pretty simple and it was pretty simple. As my friend and me found an electric whisk so in that respects it was very easy to whip up. 

However while baking this giant digestive biscuit, I discovered something about myself. 

I hate cooking with other people. 

Cooking is MY activity. And I cannot deal with other people trying to aid me. except my mother. This has nothing to do with the person who I was cooking with or anything like that it is just something I have realised. 

And that is what the saratoga torte taught me; cooking is a lone activity. for me. 

Anyway it was strangely yummy and I can see me cooking it again if in a holiday house without any interesting baking trays and desperate for some whipped cream and a digestive meringue. But otherwise probably not. I didn't blow me away, but I am glad that I made it.

But obviously if I do cook it again I would cook it alone.

Next Recipe: Coconut Macaroons

Poinsettia Cake

Poinsettias are a traditional Christmas flower popular in festive films etc. and the only reason this cake has the name that it does is because it is iced with poinsettia shaped things on top. Well it’s supposed to… mine didn’t really but on to that later.

The sponge itself has no flour and the flour is replaced by ground hazelnuts and almonds. The other ingredients it contains apart from sugar, butter, egg etc. are cinnamon and other spices, which also add to the festive theme of the cake.

During the making of the cake there was a bit of drama as my brother was trying to assist me in the most unhelpful way possible as there was little time so in the end I screamed at him. He had thrown in more ground nuts which turned out to be what the cake needed but I didn’t know how much he had added, or how much we needed, or how much was already in there.

It was nuts (pun intended).                                            

Anyway I then had to make the butter cream which for some bizarre and unknown reason to me contained custard and as hard as I tried it didn’t want to be butter cream consistency. So I tried again. Still no luck. So I filled the cake with apricot jam which I had to cover the cake anyway for the icing to stick to.

Back to the icing. The poinsettias with the aid of my friend ended up looking like sea creatures but I refuse to take full responsibility for that as my friend did contribute a lot to it.  Anyway you can make up your own minds.

Next Recipe:  Saratoga Torte

Lebkuchen

 For Christmas I got these really cool biscuit cutters, yes biscuit cutters can be cool, and they print words into the biscuit.  One of them is square with “eat me” and the other is heart shaped with “homemade”. So I felt that they kind of had to be used.

Lebkuchen are German biscuits which are very similar to gingerbread except the fact that they don’t have ginger in them. The main ingredient is honey and is full of spices like cinnamon and other festive flavours.

Annie Bell makes them for her Christmas tree but thanks to the new biscuit cutters, I decided not to bother with that. I also didn’t ice them as I felt it was unnecessary.

An interesting fact about the biscuits, if you are considering making them, is that they get better if you leave them in an air tight box for a couple of days.  They stay crisp in the box and the flavour gets stronger. Also dip them in milk for extra yumminess.

Next Recipe: Poinsettia Cake

Chocolate Swiss Roll

One word can summarise this recipe: A disaster. I am going to list the many disasters that occurred as I don’t really know what else I can do.

1.       The tray was too thin so the cake burnt and became a little bit like a biscuit

2.       I set fire to an oven glove

3.       There were mountains in the swiss roll so it wasn’t very flat. THERE WERE MOUNTAINS

4.       The chocolate cream in the middle was actually chocolate and cream

5.       The cake cracked as I rolled it up.

6.       The chocolate was solid so quite difficult to eat

But in other ways it was very yummy… Also there is no picture with this because well it looked awful... 

Next Recipe: Lebkuchen