The Gingerbread House Fail

HAPPY BELATED CHRISTMAS AND HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

OK now that's out of the way... 

As Christmas is basically finished, I have reached the point in which proper work is supposed to be done to prepare exams coming up but I am just not feeling it, so I am trying to cling on to any thread of Christmas that I can. If I am still doing festive things it is still Christmas and I don't have to work... shh... It is the truth.

So I decided to build a gingerbread house with my brother... 

I used Mary Berry's Recipe as I have never done this before and the quantities are TOO big to make one of my own... 

And we began and it seemed to be going fine, after a slight hiccup about measurements, the dough was coming together. But then when we tried to roll out the dough it wouldn't stick together. 

We tried everything, and I mean everything, we added milk, water, butter, but nothing worked... HOW DO YOU FIX THIS?! Seriously I want to know, so any ideas leave in the comments below! 

Instead of throwing about a kilo of mixture away, we salvaged it and made millions of ginger biscuits. We even put crushed boiled sweets in holes in the middle of them, to make them like stained glass, oooooooh. Well fancy, I know.

I don't have a picture of them because they are just not pretty but they look like iced biscuits and they taste lovely. Claps for Mary!

Anyway, I should get back to eating the mountain of biscuits as I don't want to spend the whole of 2014 living off them.

Rocky Road Bites

A simple delicious thing which you can make from pretty much anything in your cupboards.

220g Chocolate: 120g Milk and 100g dark but this can be edited.
75g Marshmallows
75g Chopped Mixed Nuts

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Once completely melted, stir in the other ingredients - they don't have to be the ones I have mentioned. You could use digestives, sultanas, popcorn if you really want etc. They should be covered in chocolate. 

You can pour the mixture in to a greased tray and cut in to squares but I have been inspired by Nigella and I prefer them in small dollops. They are easy bite size chunks without slicing.

Leave to cool, if you put them in a fridge the shine of the chocolate will fade, but obviously it is often the only solution.

Christmas Countdown: Iman's Cake

On Monday it was my friend Iman's birthday, so I made her favorite cake of mine...

LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

Ingredients:
125 g unsalted butter
175 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
175 g self raising flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons milk
For the syrup
juice of 1 ½ lemons
100 g caster sugar

23x13x7cm loaf tin lined (you can get slot in pull out ones)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan/ gas mark 4
2. Cream together the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat the eggs and lemon zest in to the butter and sugar.
4. Slowly fold in the flour and then add the lemon juice and milk. 
5. Once all combined, pour into the prepared loaf tin and back for 45 mins or until risen and golden. To make sure it is cooked, insert a cake tester or skewer and make sure it comes out clean.
6. The prepare the syrup, put sugar and lemon juice in to a pan. Heat until the sugar dissolves, make sure that it doesn't burn.
7. Take the cake out of the oven and stab it in order to create holes in the top of the cake.
8. Pour the syrup over the top and let is absorb it while the cake cools.
9. Remove the cake from the tin once cooled, not before or it will all fall apart due to the liquid.

insert boring photo of a loaf cake..

I promise it tastes lovely and if you want to make it prettier you can make a glaze by mixing icing sugar and lemon juice and drizzling it over the top. 

Christmas Countdown: Christmas Tree Meringues

Yes, I have got rid of the day countdown as I have not exactly been consistent...

I love meringues, they are basically sugar, what is not to love?
But they are not very festive... so here is a simple way to make them so. TURN THEM INTO CHRISTMAS TREES!

Easy.

If you follow the meringue recipe which I have shown earlier on this year =  http://girlbaking.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/perfect-meringue-recipe.html

BUT, add green or blue and yellow food colouring once the sugar has been added.

Then with a slightly spiky, or zig-zagged nozzle, pipe the meringue. I find that the easiest way to fill a piping bag is to rest the nozzle in the bottom or a tall glass, then roll the bag around the rim so that it stays open. You then just drop the mixture in.

Pull away from the greaseproof paper in short bursts to give a slightly layered affect.

Once they have all been piped, this may take a while to perfect a tree shape (some of mine were a bit lopsided), add a small sugared star on to the top of the tree to give it that christmas tree.

DO NOT USE SILVER BALLS. they melt and burn holes in the meringue, but other decorations should be fine... edible glitter maybe?

Bake for about 35 mins and then remove.

For the final touch, take some "Rolo"'s or other similar chocolates. Melt them at the ends. Then stick them to the base of your meringue to create a trunk-like effect.

Then, ta-da! your meringues made festive and perfect little bites of Christmas.

Pre baking... they look white but I promise that they were green!

The finishing touches... they do stay green the lighting is lying to you...

Christmas Countdown: Days 9/10: Easy Victoria Sponge

For those fussy people who don't like christmas cake... There is always one....

So.....

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or gas mark 4.

Cream 225g of butter with 225g of caster sugar until paler and fluffy. Standard.

Add 4 eggs bit by bit alternating with half of 225g of self-raising flour. eggs. bit of flour. eggs. bit of flour. Repeat.

Then stir in 2 tsps of vanilla extract. (to make it more Christmassy, you could use cinnamon instead)

Fold in the rest of the self-raising flour, incorporating as much air as possible.

If the mixture is too stiff add some milk.

Put half the cake mix in one greased tin and the other half in the other greased tin.

Bake for around 30 mins. Or until golden brown.

To test if the cake is cooked, a knife should come out clean when stabbed in the top and bounce back when tapped gently on the top.

Sandwich the cakes together, with cream, jam, or in summer fresh fruit... perhaps not at Christmas...

Then ice festively!

Christmas Countdown: Days 6/7/8: Christmas Tree Biscuits Recipe

No posts for a few days, blogging every day is harder than I expected it to be...

Anyway these are very easy, delicious biscuits which are especially good around Christmas as they are full of spices. Very simple dough, no resting required and a quick bake.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees fan and grease a couple of baking trays.

Cream 125g of butter and 125g of caster sugar together. Once creamed add one egg. 

Then mix in 225g of plain flour and 2 teaspoons of mixed spice in to the mixture.

Then make in to a dough, dust a surface and rolling pin with flour and then roll the dough in to a thin sheet. 

Cut in to shapes and place on baking trays. As these biscuits can be used for Christmas tree decorations just cut a small hole in to the top of the shape so that a ribbon can be pushed through.

Bake for 10 -15 mins or until golden brown.

Leave them to cool and then decorate as you wish. 

I have just splattered the biscuits with different coloured icing to make it even quicker, obviously you can spend more time on them...

See, bit messy, but simple.

Christmas Countdown: Day 5: Quick note to say...

REMEMBER TO KEEP FEEDING YOU CHRISTMAS CAKE WITH YOUR LIQUOR OF CHOICE!

(Rubbish post I know, but I have nothing else to say!)

Christmas Countdown: Day 4: Apple and Blackberry Streusel

Another autumnal cake thing today, with blackberries and apples again... bit of a running theme apparently... oh well...

This is similar to something that I have made before... which I can't remember the name of...

Anyway, it is like a cake, with a fruity compote and then a crumble layer on top. What I have realized as I write this is that it is basically a crumble with a cake layer. The fruit used can be substituted with any fruit you want really, plum would be nice.

The cake is basically a normal sponge, a recipe to which is here. The fruit is then added on top, you don't have to do anything to it, all you have to do is rest it on top of the sponge. You then sprinkle a normal crumble which is made by mixing butter, sugar and a bit of cinnamon to give it that festive punch.

I don't have much to say about this as it is not my own recipe except that you should definitely try it as it is very warming as a pudding so perfect for this time of year.

Christmas Countdown: Day 2: Lemon Macaroons

No, not the most festive of treats, but treats none the less.

Anyway, for those who don't know a macaroon is basically a meringue with ground almonds and extra sugar mixed in to it, it is then colored, pastel shades normally, and then piped in to small discs. The discs are then stuck together using a butter cream or other paste.

I chose lemon flavor as that is what John Whaite makes. However, from what I can gather, the flavor comes mainly from the filling, not the macaroon itself, meaning that I made a yellow macaroon with lemon butter cream. Simple.

I have never attempted macaroons before, and to be quiet honest it was very hard and I nearly cried while trying to put the mixture in to the piping bag. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT?!

I had, also, never eaten a macaroon before in my life, ever. So I don't actually know what it is supposed to taste like. But on a general cake scale they were yummy.

Mine were a little irregular after the whole piping disaster, which concluded with my having cake mix up my arm and on the verge of tears, but they were fine in other ways, and it's what is on the inside that counts!

Well that's what I tell myself anyway...

Christmas Countdown: Day 1: Gingerbread

HAPPY ADVENT!

In the run up to Christmas, I am going to post every single day.

So to start it all off... Gingerbread...

Usually when one thinks of gingerbread, one thinks of a gingerbread man and family altogether happily in their little gingerbread house. Or if you are of my generation (but mainly if you are younger), Gingi from Shrek...

(property of es.shrek.wikia.com)

Anyway this is not gingerbread like the above, this is proper gingerbread, as in bread-like consistency gingerbread, the hard core stuff.

The main difficulties with making gingerbread is that it contains black treacle, which is a pain to get hold of and rarely have in your cupboards so you have to go and buy it specially. However as luck would have it, there was a tin of it already in my kitchen cupboard....weird...

Gingerbread is made by heating butter (150g) with muscovado sugar (110g), ginger from a jar, sliced, (2tsp), cinnamon (1tsp) and a hell of a lot of golden syrup (200g) and black treacle (200g) together over a low heat so that they melt.

You could also add a bit syrup from the ginger jar to make it more sticky and gingery.

*QUICK TIP: Pour a bit of oil over the spoon which you are going to use to measure out the treacle as then it doesn't stick, it just slides off!*

Put 1tsp of bicarb in 2tbsp of hot water until it has dissolved and is cool. Then mix with 2 eggs and 230ml of milk. Add this to the mixture which has just cooled. 

Beat the liquid ingredients in to 300g of plain flour, sifted. Mix this thoroughly until there are no pockets of flour as I have found in the past that the flour tends to clump together, which isn't so nice when eating... 

Pour in to a greased rectangular tin of about 30x20x15. And bake for 45 mins.

Then I find that if you pour a lemon glace icing over the top using water, lemon juice and icing sugar. Left to set, the lemon cuts through the musky ginger flavor making a nice contrast, and decreasing the heaviness.

Perfect to get you in to the festive spirit.