In a cupcake comfort zone

One of the joys of authoring this blog – aside from getting to relive baking triumphs (let's not talk about the catastrophes) – is that it provides an outlet for non-work writing. Late last night, with my ‘work’ hat (more like a helmet actually) firmly in place, I was doing battle with an article about norovirus outbreaks in rest homes and hospitals. Basically it was about how people need to wash their hands more. Pretty unappealing stuff, if I’m honest, but this article, among countless others, helps pay the bills. Sadly, tinkering with icing sugar and cake tins does not.

Unfortunately the work helmet has barely come off these past four weeks. Don’t worry, the kitchen hasn’t fallen into disuse, my oven hasn’t become storage. But the baking over the past month has been more, what I would term, ‘survival baking’ – no croquembouche or croissant creations this time; think more muffins, cakes and slices.

For those loyal followers who recall my first attempts at muffins, you’ll be pleased to know I’m improving, thanks to the help of my trusty sous-chef – Dan. Note his cute little rugby apron, kindly sewn by clever Kylie.

 

My banana cake went down a treat with Ella and friends for a morning tea over the school holidays...

...as did my second attempt at chocolate caramel slice (better this time) and my first go at Louise cake. Who was Louise, I wonder? I think she and I would have been friends.

I also made a jam swiss roll - my first attempt at a roulade, which I thought was ok, until Neil commented, with a just-sucked-a-lemon face, that it was “a bit dry” and then proceeded to cough on the crumbs. 

I tried a Moroccan flatbread which went down a treat with couscous and lamb (and a nice glass of red).

And finally, a blog on standard issue baking would not be complete with the signature morsel – the trusty cupcake. This time I tried chocolate velvet cupcakes with a rich chocolate frosting made out of chocolate, butter and golden syrup. More fondant roses as decorations - I know, I need to get more adventurous.

And I promise I will  get out of my baking comfort zone for the next post.

TTFN x

Cake stall overkill...

My recent blog-silence doesn't mean I've fled the kitchen (although my attempt at croissants almost saw me flinging down the apron and abandoning pastry ship). No, it has been the busy day-to-day hustle of kids, work and even the occasional social event, that has put blogging way down the 'to do' list.

Any excuse to bake. I'll admit my contribution to our kids' Playcentre is rather weak - so when they announced they were having a cake stall, I saw it as a chance to redeem myself. Enter lemon yoghurt cake, banana coconut loaf, cupcakes and lemon meringue tartlets. That should definitely release me from playdough duties and sandpit volcanoes for at least another month.

 

And if that wasn't try-hardy enough, I made brioche and a banana passionfruit cake when it was our turn to provide morning tea at Playcentre recently. I say 'our' as Neil and I do the tag team parenting thing where he looks after the kids for the first few hours while I work and then I take over for clean up duties. You would think that two parents would be a real bonus for Playcentre, but the reality is we're both pretty useless. Actually one more productive parent would probably be more appreciated. Hence why I/we try to buy the love of the other parents with breads and cakes. Aforementioned brioche and cake...



The net result of all the try-hard Playcentre action was a prize for 'the husband/wife team who brings brioche for the morning tea' at the recent Playcentre AGM (yes, sadly this does count as one of the 'social' outings)... I think they may have seen straight through us.

 

When I'm not attending Playcentre AGMs I can be found catching up on The Great British Bake-Off on i-player (obviously all the other nights I can be found at clubs and hanging out with celebs). I like to try my hand at some of the things the contestants have to. This was the impetus behind the creme caramel, which turned out really well AND - definitely worthy of yelling that at you - ANNNND, I successfully made spun sugar. Yussss!

 

 

 

I also had a go at croissants, which were okaaaay, but didn't reflect the hours and hours that went into making them. They were served to a polite and receptive audience: aka Kylie, Harry, Sarah, Glenn and Neil. 

 

The above is yet more brioche (as I've mastered the brioche, it was my stand-by) and below are the croissants. Sadly a caption is necessary - hopefully next time there won't be need for one!

 







My name is Jude Barback and I'm a bake-aholic

Okay, so I know addiction is no laughing matter, but whenever there is a remote lull in the day (or night) I find myself gravitating towards the kitchen and reaching for the flour sifter. I started to recognise the symptoms when I discovered my birthday-new electronic scales were not working and felt mild panic wash over me. Even though I’d managed just fine without aforementioned scales for the last decade, I couldn’t imagine continuing my baking crusade without my scales (which are now working again, thank goodness).

So here are some of my efforts. I’ve had a concentrated effort on pastry over the last fortnight. My choux pastry, stuffed with a lemon curdy-creamy-white chocolatey filling was excellent. But I had hoped to drape it with spun sugar. Three attempts at making caramel, one whole bag of caster sugar and one rather disgruntled husband later, I was no closer to making spun sugar. I am still at a loss where I’m going wrong, even after consulting my epic culinary encyclopaedia (thank you Johanna and Aidan – I am so reliant on this now!) Anyway, dinner guests (and guinea pigs) Kylie and Harry appreciated the dark chocolate alternative.

The spun sugar-less profiteroles with Kylie and Harry looking on

I’ve also ventured into shorter pastry. Check out these tarts: unfortunately the photos don’t hint at the lemon curd and raspberry centre, topped with frangipane and raspberry drizzle icing. I know.

And these cute little tartlets with salted caramel and banana stars...

...and these lemon and chocolate tarts...

...and my first attempt at tarte tatin. After watching the current series of ‘The Great British Bake-Off’ (God bless i-player!) I decided to have a go at more unorthodox flavours. So this rather well-done looking specimen features pears with vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, fresh ginger and hazelnuts. With the British bakers constantly berated for their “soggy bottoms” I was nervous about under-baking my pastry and therefore perhaps lurked a little too close to ‘burnt’ territory. However, it tasted a-mah-zing.

Beyond pastry I’ve also ticked off another ‘first’ that has been hanging out on my baking ‘to do’ list since I started this challenge – macaroons. They turned out really well. Unfortunately the chocolate I dipped them in was the cheap stuff – next time I will not offend such perfectly baked coconutty morsels: it’s 70% cocoa or nothing.

And finally, bread. Focaccia, naan, even a rather disastrous attempt at a hazelnut, apricot and honey plait – I’ve been there, done all that. The naan (not a huge Gordon Ramsey fan, but this is his recipe – credit where credit is due) was probably the highlight.

That brings us up to date. Congratulations if you made it this far!

TTFN x

The 'help'

My family is full of Leos. While I don't really buy into horoscopes, the strong-willed natures (translation: sheer stubbornness) of me, my mum, my dad, and now my daughter, can sometimes be a recipe for disaster. But it does mean that July and August are chocca full of cake and pressies. And now, very sadly, with the end of August, comes the end of birthday cake season for my family.
I saw Mum's birthday cake as an opportunity to try a cake I've been lusting after in my new 'Best of British Bake-off' book (thank you, Gem - I love it!). It involved making a paste which was swirled on baking tins, freezing the tins and then covering with chocolate sponge cake, baking, then lining a cake tin with the swirly pattern facing outwards, filling with a rich chocolate mousse and then topping with more more swirly sponge mix. Fiddly and time-consuming, but not as hard as I imagined and tasted fantastic!



So I now need to turn to different chapters of my recipe books and learn new things. Starting with pastry. With a beef, mushroom and red wine filling already made (I know, scarily close to domestic goddess territory here) I made some beautiful pastry simply out of flour, butter and icy water that looked great (even closer to goddess-ville) but tasted....bland. Next time I'm definitely seasoning more, herbing up and possibly going to add a few dollops of cream cheese. Then I'm going to move swiftly on to sweet pastry. I'm not really into savoury baking - in fact it even sounds a little paradoxical to me. There's a scene in Miranda where Gary brings her a savoury muffin and she loses it, saying "isn't life hard enough without savoury muffins?" I am in total agreement. But anyway, I digress. Here is my pie:

Dan and Emily are complete baking fans. They hear so much as a rustle in the kitchen and Emily has her apron on (thank you Aunty Kylie), Dan has a mixing bowl and an array of wooden spoons out and they are there to 'help'! Pikelets are the all-time fave because they don't require too many ingredients, are sweet, are cooked in minutes and can be served with lashings of jam (to go all Enid Blyton on you).

This post seems to have gone downhill... from complex cake, to ho-hum pastry, to child's play...but in actual fact, there are few things that make me happier than baking with my kids! And on that note, I'll say TTFN x

The epic birthday cake week

Emily's second birthday gave me ample opportunity to hone my cake decorating skills. That may sound like I used my daughter as an excuse to practise my baking. Actually, that's fairly accurate. 

First there was the Play Centre birthday cake, which happily coincided with our name appearing on the morning tea roster that week. I believe I have solved that age-old question of how to simultaneously feed a dozen hungry sweet-toothed parents, practise your fondant icing techniques and celebrate your daughter's birthday...the answer, as it so often is (or should be), is cake.

Cake 1: Play Centre party

Just in case this blog isn't nepotistic enough, here is a clip of the Play Centre birthday!

Then of course, Emily's pre-school needed a birthday cake. When I asked whether I should bring in a birthday cake, I was told "No, you don't have to; we can give the children a play dough cake instead. Most parents bring a cake though." I know my daughter. She is not stupid. Nor is she likely to humour her pre-school teachers if presented with a play dough cake in lieu of something with pink buttercream icing. I suspect I'm coming off as one of  'those' parents... but with this baking challenge also in mind, it was a no-brainer. Pink buttercream icing it was.

Then of course, there was the big '2' party - not really a party, more of an adult-friendly day out in Rotorua with the family and grandparents, including Nana Barback, all the way from England. With 'pink' as my guide, and Emily's penchant for cats, this was the result...

I was very proud of this effort, although credit must be given to Neil for very reluctantly helping me roll some of the strands of 'wool' - surprisingly tricky and time-consuming. Actually, Neil, would rather I didn't mention that he helped with cake decoration, so I'm doing this partly to pay him back for his remark that the cat looked more like a possum. I am not a fan of possums, so this was highly insulting. I breathed a big sigh of relief when Emily exclaimed - "it's a cat!"

So yes, three cakes. I know. I went a bit overboard, but I learned a lot in the process. And of course, every stir of the mixture, every curse at the fondant icing, was delivered with the greatest of love.

It doesn't end there though - my dad's birthday (27th July), which has played second fiddle to mine (24th July) for the last  - cough - 30 years, and was further relegated by the birth of granddaughter Emily two years ago (26th July), is often overlooked. So I was determined he should get a cake. What sort of cake should you make a 56 year old dairy farmer?

Well, naturally, a cow cake. Not, as my dad said upon seeing it, "a cow with milk fever" cake. Up there with the possum insult, I tell you. Men.

So that was birthday cake week. What a week. Dan has put in an order for a "tractor with a trailer with a quad bike on the trailer" as his 4th birthday cake. Thank goodness his birthday isn't until November...

TTFN x

Cupcake heaven

Emily's last day in the Fantail Room at her pre-school (New Shoots) warranted a gift of cupcakes, for the hard-working teachers who invest their time into trying to make our daughter into a decent human...and her pint-sized little friends who have put up with Emily's bossiness. She now joins the 'big kids' (i.e. the 2-3 year olds) in the Kea Room.

It also gave me an excuse to try two new things: making fondant roses (thanks to a youtube tutorial  - youtorial?! - delivered by a very posh English person) and another cupcake recipe - one given by Barbs, my work friend from Wellington, who declared it the best cupcake recipe EVER. I'm always skeptical when recipes are presented as such - not because I doubt other cooks have found them so brilliant, more because I may be the first cook EVER to actually stuff it up.

However, I managed to avoid failure on this occasion. The recipe called for buttermilk and I think it was the ingredient that made them special.

Emily checking out her 'thank you' cupcakes for her teachers and friends in the Fantail Room at her preschool.

To test my theory on the awesomeness of buttermilk, I added it to the standard Edmonds recipe instead of milk and the result was fantastic.

Since word has got out about my new passion for baking I have received some beautiful gifts like these paper cases and cake decorating accessories and the best pinny in the world (thank you Laura, Jon, Sarah and Glenn).

My mother-in-law arrived from England on Friday armed with all manner of retro doilies for presenting cakes and cutesy Olympic cupcake holders, so keep an eye out for more creations.
TTFN x

Nailed the brioche!

If a picture paints a thousand words, I wonder what the word count is for the smell of freshly baked cinnamon brioche. Until technology advances, you're stuck with looking at these babies...



I believe the word is voila!

The perfect coffee break: with freshly baked blueberry, passionfruit, white chocolate brioche

I'm not one to shrink from self-praise; they were awesome. Definitely worth a night of the dough proving in the fridge. I strayed from the cinnamon sugar rolls to a passionfruit, berry filling as well, but Neil, clearly a brioche purist, prefers the cinnamon. The berry ones were delish, but I  have to reluctantly agree. Thank you to the wonderful Ripe recipe book (kindly lent from Ange and Crawford).

Cook books have become my friend since I've started this challenge and I've earmarked an overwhelming number of goodies to add to the baking list. The Hummingbird Cafe blueberry muffins were perhaps my best yet, but since then I've produced some yummy boysenberry and white chocolate ones from good old Alison Holst and even some of my own creations turned out well... so maybe I'm just getting the hang of it!

On the path to muffin greatness: blueberry bad boys

Dan & Emily 'help' with the baking

Lemon drizzle cake and chocolate caramel slice also made their way out of the oven and into the mouths of friends. The base of the slice was too coconutty and there was too much of it in comparison to the caramel and chocolate - in my opinion at least; everyone else was too nice to offer any criticism (note Neil wasn't there - he doesn't hold back). The drizzle cake seemed to improve over the next few days. Definitely make that one again.

Chocolate caramel slice and lemon drizzle cake

(L-R) Vicky, Crawford, Cara and assorted children sample the morning tea fare

Have some serious cakes to make soon with Emily's and Dad's birthdays fast approaching. Emily's cake request is simple - she wants a 'pink one'. So watch this space...
TTFN!