recipe

When I watched The Great British Bake Off this week, I did actually consider doing the technical challenge. Then it got to the weekend, I still hadn’t gotten around to baking, and I have felt exhausted. So I went with a good old pasty instead. I wasn’t organised at all so it all started going wrong straight away. First of all, I decided to attempt my own puff pastry, for the first time! Bad idea. I think it was the mixing that went wrong; I tried rolling it out – no, didn’t work. I couldn’t rescue it either so it went …

One of my favourite cakes has to be black forest cake. Chocolaty, creamy, and fruity – is there a much better combination? Using actual cream for these makes a delightful change from using butter cream. And you can’t have a black forest cake without cream, can you? They are absolutely perfect for afternoon tea with friends. Ingredients (makes 12) 150 g butter 150 g caster sugar 120 g self raising flour 30 g cocoa powder 3 eggs 300 ml double cream, whipped 12 black cherries Method Preheat oven to gas 4/350F/180C. Place cupcake cases into a 12 hole muffin tin. Cream together …

First of all, I just want to say thank you to Jenny for awarding me Star Baker for my tart last week! You can see my badge at the bottom of the page! So this week was European bakes. It took me a day or two to make a decision on what I was going to make, then I finally decided on kugelhopf after looking through my recipe books. I was crossing my fingers all the way through that it was going to rise properly, and it was a complete success! The original had fruit in but I thought I …