Recipe

You may remember a few weeks ago that I reviewed a steam combi oven from Panasonic. I cooked so many things in it – including (but not limited to) chips, fish, chicken, bacon, beans; but the thing I was most excited to try in it, was baking a cake! Obviously, you could also make this in a normal oven. I was so impressed that I could actually bake a cake in the combi oven though! One of my favourite cakes is coffee cake. I love coffee. I love cake. Put them together – I’m in heaven! I also had some coconut flavour …

As soon as I heard what the challenges were going to be for pastry week of GBBO, I was drooling. Danish pastries? Yes please! I was really tempted to try to make them but then I watched the show and, well… My mind was swiftly changed, ha! I think I’ll stick with ready bake ones, thanks… Anyway, I didn’t fancy fiddling about with filo either so I decided I would go with the technical (again!) of a bakewell tart. I made mini bakewell tarts a couple of months ago for my Macmillan Summer Lights fundraiser, but I’ve never made a big one before. …

I was quite excited when I heard there would be a newly introduced batter week in the GBBO, even more so when I saw what the challenges would be! I did consider doing them all, believe it or not. In the end, though, I just went with the signature, as churros were pointless because we don’t own a deep-fat fryer, and the pancakes just looked too technical for me to bother with. I wanted to be different, so I went for sweet Yorkshire puddings. It’s getting to autumn now, and it’s such a great season to have crumbles for pudding! …

Bread week. I may have mentioned before, but I hate bread week. Me and bread making just do not mix. Nevertheless, I joined in anyway as I want to try and do every week this year! During the show on Wednesday, I decided I must be crazy as I was actually considering doing the technical for the third week in a row. But then chocolate bread won me over so I went with the signature. I’ve never really made bread from my own recipe so I went searching my old friend Mr Google and came across Paul Hollywood’s chocolate and cherry …