Bonus Post: Lil Ms Squirrel's Chocolate and Cherry Cookies - Food Blogger Cookie Swap

While I was on my mad blogging mission last year, I came across the Food Blogger Cookie Swap a day too late to participate.  In a nutshell, it's a postal 'Secret Santa' between food bloggers.  You bake three dozen cookies and send a dozen to three different people.  You get a dozen cookies from three different bloggers.  So unlike regular Secret Santa, you're never going to be disappointed with your gift.  Hopefully!

Ready for posting

So this year, I decided to take part but my new blog was too young at the final entry date so I had to enter via the 366 Recipe Challenge Blog instead.  I then used this as an excuse to try out several new cookie recipes, held a vote amongst my colleagues and the favourite biscuits were posted out to my (hopefully) lucky recipients.

In third place in the taste test were Dan Lepard's Ginger and Macadamia Cookies.  I had my heart set on using these for my exchange cookies, but there were mixed reviews from my co-workers.  Ginger is a bit of a Marmite flavour which divided opinion.  There was a complaint that they were too thin - they're chewy cookies so they spread a lot on cooking - and one person ate two together, thinking they were thicker than they were.  I then saved some of the dough to bake a few days later and managed to burn this batch so eventually decided not to risk attempting to bake thirty-six of them.

Freshly baked and drizzled

Second place went to another Dan Lepard recipe.  This time his Chilli and Almond biscuits.  I picked them because when people think biscuit, they generally think sweet and I wanted to be different.  You can read all about these over on my new blog 'How to Eat an Elephant'.

And the winning cookie?  Well originally, I was going to bake Nigella's Chocolate Mint Cookies as I liked the idea that they could be an alternative to After Eight's.  I had several half-used pots of chocolate chips in my cupboard so was merrily tipping them all into my bowl when I realised I'd mixed one of the half-empty pots with a load of left over dried cherries the week before when I'd been making my Chocolate and Cherry Bagels.  Luckily I'd not added the peppermint essence first.

As I had made all three batches of cookies on the one day, I'd also managed to run out of plain flour at this point so threw in a bit of pasta flour for good measure.  I think this made for a nice, soft cookie because when I made them with all plain flour for the actual Cookie Swap, they were a little crisper (although it might have been to do with me and my timings!)

Anyway, the cookies went down a storm at work in the taste test and when I took the leftovers from the ones I made for the swap in to work, there was a small scuffle as people rooted through the box seeking out the chocolate and cherry ones.

So here is the recipe, adapted Nigella's original recipe.


For the cookies

• 150 grams butter (soft)
• 225 grams light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
• 2 medium eggs
• 150 grams plain flour
• 75g 00 (pasta) flour
• 55 grams cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 200 gram dark chocolate chips (I use Waitrose ones)
• 100g dried sour cherries

To decorate

• 75g white chocolate, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/gas mark 4.  Lightly grease two baking trays with spray oil.
2. Cream the butter and sugar.  Beat the eggs together with the vanilla bean paste then combine with the butter and sugar.
3. Mix the flours, cocoa and baking powder in a bowl and gradually beat in to the creamed mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips and cherries.
4. Scoop out walnut sized balls of mixture and space evenly across the baking trays.  You will probably need to bake in two batches.
5. Bake in the oven for 12 minutes and then let them sit on the baking sheet for a couple of minutes before  moving them to a cooling rack. 
6. Once cold, drizzle with the melted white chocolate.

And a massive thank you to Gill, Jen and Laura for the cookies they sent me!

Dan Lepard's Fresh Ginger and Coffee Cake

This is looking like a cake just for the connoisseur rather than a crowd.  Initially attracting a lot of admiring glances, my trusty cake box hadn't had its lid removed once by the time I lifted the lid today.  I'm assuming that perhaps people were put off by the flavour rather than that they were just snubbing me and my cake.  But it's their loss because with just three more days at work before I bring this challenge to its conclusion, it's the very last time they'll be getting cake.

Coffee cake is admittedly a bit of a marmite choice.  You either love it or hate it.  In a room of a hundred people, you'll probably have around half of them eschewing coffee in favour of tea or soft drinks.  Working in IT as I do and being one of the many who mainlines caffeine on a regular basis, I figured that this slight boundary push was a risk worth taking.  And so far, it's spectacularly failed.

Much as they eat a lot of cake, they don't have a passion for Dan Lepard cakes as I do.  Or at least they really like them, but couldn't care less whose recipe it is that I'm using.  The recipe is one from the Guardian website and I chose it purely because I was interested in the flavour combination.

Having baked the sponge late yesterday, I was up at 5am icing it.  For once, I cut a piece out of the whole cake for photographic purposes and I decided to try a bit as I was curious.  The flavour combination works.  My brain struggled a little to compute all the flavours as they were going in but it works so well together, the cake is a taste sensation for anyone who doesn't think that Mr Kipling is the be-all and end-all of cake making*.


Filled with chopped pistachios and both fresh and stem ginger; and speckled with real, rather than instant coffee, the flavours are subtle enough to compliment each other and the lemon-cream cheese icing on the top adds another subtle dimension.

Coffee cake is one of my all time favourites and if I'm honest, I'd probably make a bog standard coffee sponge with coffee buttercream for nine out of ten coffee cakes but this is definitely something I'd share at cake club in the future.

The cake was slightly drier than I would've expected but this may be to do with me baking it in a rectangular rather than the recommended square tin.  I had to extend the cooking time a little to ensure it cooked through and of course, it's the corner pieces that always pay the price for an extended baking time.  Lesson learned - but the square tin had my disasterous marshmallows in it.

If you fancy testing your cake connoisseur credentials, you can find the recipe here.

*My father in law does

BBC Good Food Coffee Semi Freddo with Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce

I'm known for bemoaning my husband's lack of interest in what I do.  Tonight was one of those nights when I wish he'd ignored what I was doing.  Because I had to end up sharing possibly one of my favourite dishes of this year.

With days to go and a whole heap of work and personal stuff going on, I've not had a minute to sit down and leaf through my cookery books and have to confess to increasingly resorting to t'internet to help me track down suitable recipes.  Instead of focussing on the end of this challenge, my mind has already raced ahead to future projects (writing for other blogs, Christmas hampers, my own new blog, getting back into running).  I'm probably in denial that I'm going to have a huge hole in my evenings between the child going to bed and my own bedtime and need to find something to fill it before the husband makes me do cleaning.

So this in turn led to lots of middle of the night 'window-shopping' on the BBC Good Food website where I happened across this recipe for semi-freddo.  I would love to visit Italy one day - it's something I doubt that will happen with my husband as he always gets to choose our holiday - but a girl can dream.  I want to stuff my face full of pasta although I'm less keen on gelato.  So the idea of making semi-freddo was a bit of a hit and miss chance.

Messy, but soooo tasty

For the uninitiated, semi-freddo is basically a frozen mousse so there's no faffy churning like you'd get with real ice cream.  It's texture is far lighter and it melts quite quickly so is more like an ice-cream that's been out of the freezer for a fair while.

The BBC recipe recommends using Toblerone but I could only get hold of a massive one and in my world, Toblerone is something you only ever buy in duty free and scoff on holiday (I did this once with one of the 2kg packs and it's pretty much put me off of Toblerone for life).  So I went with Green and Black's Burnt Toffee chocolate instead.

To complement the ice cream, and because I love caramel syrup with my lattes, I made Dan Lepard's Caramel Sauce from Short and Sweet and spiked it with a healthy dose of sea salt.  This stuff is lethally addictive.  I tested it several times to get the sugar/cream/salt ratio correct to ensure the slightly burnt flavour wasn't too intense but complimented the coffee and burnt toffee chocolate flavours.  Then I tested it several times more just to check for consistency as it cooled of course.  And a few more times for luck.  It's a good job I only made half the recipe or I'd be in a sugar-induced coma right now.

I did the same with the semi-freddo - making it in my 500g loaf tin.  The tin is long and shallow so the slices aren't as elegant as on the BBC website but it's all about the taste for this post.  Plus I thought I would be eating it all (over a few days of course) and semi-freddo apparently doesn't keep well with the egg whites forming little frozen blobs after a few days.

I won't be able to test this theory.  Especially now.  Because for the first time since last November when I made Mary Berry's chocolate roulade, the husband seemed hell bent on stalking my every move all evening.  He normally slumps in front of the telly until midnight but everywhere I went he was a couple of paces behind.  Consequently, he asked to try a bit of my pudding.  He ate half of one slice and said he liked it but then insisted that I make him his own bowlful.

I left him watching the X-Files to come and eat mine in peace and type this post but knowing him as I do, he will have licked the bowl completely clean.  And I when I say licked, I mean licked.

This is definitely on the make again list.  You can find the semi-freddo recipe here.  For the caramel sauce, you can use this recipe here although the one from Short and Sweet doesn't use butter or golden syrup and is flavoured with vanilla bean paste and a touch of salt (or a big pinch for the salted caramel I used)

Dan Lepard's Spiced Baklava

With just two weeks to go, I had to get my act together and try making baklava.  It's something I've wanted to do for years and it was on my list for the Olympic Food Challenge but because it could have been a recipe from about three of my countries on the list, I kept putting it off until I had no suitable countries left.  I'd gotten as far as buying the filo, but that was it.

So today, having promised my work colleagues at the other office that I'd bring them cake, I figured it was time to get my pastry thang on and put another tick on the list.  And who better to guide me through the minefield of recipes than Dan Lepard?

Partially syruped baklava

The recipe is simplicity in itself.  The only problem I had was with the power of my food processor with it taking nearly ten minutes to process the nuts to a dust.  And a bit of stupidity on my part where I didn't quite pay attention to the instructions for the dark sugar syrup and put all the water into the pan at the start - thus having to try and ladle it all out again without removing the sugar.

Using shop-bought filo is one of those acceptable kitchen shortcuts that even the most capable of bakers will do.  I'd love to see them have a filo-from-scratch challenge on the Great British Bake Off - it would probably make great entertainment.  Most people shy away from making their own filo but the lovely Lauren from the Eighty Bakes blog made her own in an epic version of baklava.  I am in awe of her patience.

The recipe calls for 500ml of syrup which seems massively excessive.  I was in two minds about whether or not to use it all, but knowing Dan's recipes always work pretty well (see the chocolate cake disaster) I ended up using it all.  Having just popped out to check on it as it cools, it seems pretty soggy so I'm hoping it will set once its cold.  This will be one of those posts where I'll have to update with feedback tomorrow.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

You can find the recipe here

Updated 12th September @ 12:10

I should have gone with my gut instinct.  500ml of syrup was way too much.  It wasn't so much a soggy bottom as a drowned bottom.  The whole lot ended up in the bin at about 5am this morning.  Saddened is an understatement - especially as the nuts and filo were so expensive.

I'd recommend anyone trying this recipe to add the syrup in stages and review after each addition has had time to soak in.

Rhubarb and Custard Tarts

Today was a lesson in how to not transport cakes.  After lovingly baking a batch of tarts, I stupidly put the tin into a carrier bag and forgot to check that the tin was flat when I picked the bag up.  Consequently, when I realised my mistake, the tin was already full of sloppy rhubarb curd.

Let me take you back a few steps.  One of my colleagues is a massive fan of my rhubarb and custard cupcakes.  I came up with the recipe long before the Hummingbird Bakery published the recipe in 'Cake Days'.  I'm sure it features in many other books as it's such a classic combination.  I fill mine with a spiced rhubarb centre and then top with custard buttercream.  P is intrigued as to how I achieve the hidden middle.  He's quite intelligent but he really can't work out how I do it.  At first I thought he was joking when he asked, but he's asked so many times now that I know he's truly curious.

P is also a huge fan of custard tarts.  Whenever he brings in cakes to work, he'll always ensure that 50% of the batch are custard tarts.  I had never eaten one until recently as I really didn't think I would like the cold custard thing but I was pleasently surprised.

So when I happened across this recipe, I knew I had to make them for him.  I made the curd last week when another friend gave me a batch of rhubarb.  If I'm honest, I was a little disappointed as the curd took away a lot of the sharp tang of the rhubarb which I love.  It was also a bit 'eggier' than some of the citrus curds I've made in the past - this may have been my mistake in cooking it.  If (or when) I do this again, I'd probably make a rhubarb jam instead.


The rest of the pie is based on a Dan Lepard recipe.  I used up the rest of the beautiful pastry I made for the Botswanan Chicken Pie I made for the Olympic Food Challenge and the custard is also a Dan recipe.  I loved the idea of putting a cupcake case into the pastry cases to hold the beans for blind baking.  And I was happy that the pastry came out of the tin far easier than when I made Thomasina Miers' mince pies at Christmas.  I have to experiment now as I'm not sure if it was the blind baking that made them come out more easily or if the pastry I made at Christmas was a bit rubbish.

Oops!

Anyhow, when it came to baking the custard part, the blogger (Ms North) recommended filling them half full with custard to leave room for the topping.  I found that on baking the custard had decreased in volume somewhat - whether it was because it settled or dried out a little I'm not sure.  I'd definitely recommend going for two-thirds custard to one third rhubarb.  Plus it means you won't have so much spare custard to force yourself to eat!

The overall flavour was good with the orange complimenting the rhubarb nicely, but as I said it was just a tad too sweet for me with the custard and the curd.  But that's just personal preference.  The pastry was lovely and crisp on the one that I'd saved to test and photograph - it was also the worst looking pie before the disaster.

I would also recommend making them and serving them straight away.  After being in a tin all day, the pastry had gone soggy - I'm guessing from the dampness from the curd.

You can find the original recipe here.

Olympic Food Challenge: Botswanan Chicken Pie - Botswana

With four competitors in two disciplines at the main London 2012 Olympics, Botswana managed to gain a silver medal in the Men's 800m.  Unfortunately, Botswana had to pull its team from the 2012 Paralympics due to financial irregularities in their Olympic Committee.

Moving swiftly on to the food (sorry for the short post), Botswana has its own unique cuisine, but is also influenced by its neighbouring countries.  Having already made Pap and Chakkalakka (just because I liked the name) when I did Lesotho, and lacking a three-legged iron pot (commonly used for cooking), I plumped for Botswanan Chicken Pie as chicken cooked for a guest shows special hospitality.

Mmmmm....pie....

Sadly I had no guests and I was just cooking for myself.  The appeal in this recipe was that it was for individual pasty-style pies so I could make just one.  I must confess I cheated a little as I was trying to hone my pastry making skills which leave a lot to be desired (see the Apple and Rhubarb Pie and Quiche Lorraine trials) and so I'd a piece of Dan Lepard's Shortcrust Pastry lurking in my fridge instead of the pastry recommended by the recipe.

Whenever I make pastry, it's too short and consequently crumbles everywhere.  As a last resort, I put my faith into Dan.  This is the best pastry ever.  He recommends using half butter and half lard.  I didn't have any lard so went with the 'you can use all butter' caveat and it turned out to be the tastiest, butteriest pastry I have ever had the pleasure to eat.  I expected nothing less and yet again, Short and Sweet delivered.  Miss A even now refers to Short and Sweet as 'Mummy's favourite recipe book' even though I have never uttered these words in her presence.  I'm pleased her two-year-old mind is capable of forming such opinions already.

As for the pie filling - it's a mix of chicken, apple, onion, tomato and currants.  If it wasn't for the OFC, I never would've tried the sweet and savoury thing.  But I was amazed at how much I enjoyed it.  It just worked.  The recipe mentions the filling as being a little dry so I roasted a chicken breast at 190c fan for 17 minutes so it was barely cooked.  I immediately chopped this and popped it into the pan to fry, thus finishing the cooking and stopping it from being too dry in the finished product.

Do try these. My picture is a bit rubbish as I wanted you to see the filling of the pasty and the crisp pastry meant it shattered perfectly, but wasn't very photogenic!

You can find the recipe for the pie here and watch Dan making one of his shortcrust pastry recipes here although I used his basic eggless pastry from Short and Sweet.

Dan Lepard's Dark Chocolate Berry Cake

There are a few things that I've tried several different recipes for over the course of this year in the hope of finding the perfect recipe.  I've found my favoured recipes for naan bread, vanilla cupcakes, lemon cake and meatballs (this is a cheat because we settled on Waitrose ones).

Poor lighting - taken at 4.57am!

But good chocolate cake has eluded me.  Pre-blog, I had made Angela Nielsen's Ultimate Chocolate Cake and after a disaster with a vanilla cake, it gave me a back up base cake for this challenge.  I then tried Nigella's chocolate cake  which I really wasn't a fan of.  I had a disaster with Dan Lepard's Brown Sugar Chocolate Cake and a similar crisis with a chocolate and clementine loaf cake that Miss A and I tried to make the other day that I was too embarrassed to blog about.

So today, having made a bargain with Miss A that if she'd make a lemon cake for my Grandad's birthday on Saturday (he hates chocolate cake, she believes that all birthday cakes should be chocolate), we set about trying Dan Lepard's Dark Chocolate Berry Cake for me to take in to work tomorrow for my lovely colleagues on my Business Process Excellence course.

Having made a deal with the trainer that if we finished by 4pm today, I'd bring in cake tomorrow, I was a little nervous that I'd have a further disaster (I'm touching my laminate floor in the hope I don't now jinx myself and drop the darn thing on the way into work in the morning!).  But so far, so good.

I nearly forgot the butter - which is the very first ingredient - but managed to redeem myself at the last minute.  Then I didn't realise that if you start the timer on my mobile phone and then plug it in to charge, it stops the timer.  Thankfully I'd double checked the time on the cooker clock when I put the cake in so I was able to work out how much longer it needed and now it's nicely risen and cooling in the tin.

Hutch plays mother

Of course, by the time it's completely cooled I will have to be in bed, meaning that I need to ice it first thing in the morning.

My only comment (so far) is that the instructions are a little scant for the novice.  For example, with the icing, it doesn't tell you to melt the chocolate in a bain marie.  I'm partly tempted to do it straight in the pan but I could do without a burnt chocolate crisis at 5am.  Nor does it tell you how to cool the cake - in the tin or on a rack?  I'm going for the in the tin method.

Keep your fingers x'd for me and I'll update the post tomorrow with a picture of the finished article and some feedback.

You can find the recipe here.

Updated 5th September 2012 @ 19:58

Having gotten up at 4.30am to ice the cake this morning, I'm afraid it's not particularly photogenic and the picture is poorly lit.  However, I'm loving the chocolate icing with the subtle hint of berry coming through from the jam.  I used cherry jam with mine and I absolutely recommend buying the Mirabel jam that you can get in Lidl which I used for my cherry Viennese whirls.  It has a really strong, sharp cherry flavour and cuts well through the chocolate.  I find English cherry jams far to sweet and I think they'd be lost in the richness of the frosting.

One miniscule criticism is again surrounding the food photography.  This time, it's the Guardian's website.  The stylist seems to have used a buttercream type frosting rather than the chocolate/jam/icing sugar version that Lepard suggests.  The icing in the official picture is very smooth and thick, showing no hint of cherries lurking in it - which is a shame.  Or maybe they just used a sieved cherry jam?  Nobody's ever going to taste that picture so they probably only cared that it looks aesthetically pleasing.  And in this instance, there's no picture in Short and Sweet to compare it to as the recipe isn't in the book.

Anyway on to the reviews.  My chief cake tester is on his holidays at the moment.  The second in command (on the cake testing front) gave it the seal of approval, as did the rest of the course delegates and the assorted managers who came to review our final presentations.  In fact, I've now been invited to attend twenty training sessions taking place between now and Christmas by one manager who was told that I always take cake when I got to a training session.  He'll be lucky!

My personal opinion from the tiny sliver I had was that it was a good, flavoursome, solid cake that would stand up to a wide variety of fillings and could probably slice well into a three layer cake.  It was a little drier than I would've liked which is purely my own fault.  Partly because of the timer issue (see above) and partly because I was trying to juggle Miss A into bed around the time it was due out of the oven so it got a few minutes more than it should have had.

Nevertheless, I will definitely be making this one time and again.  Chocolate cake recipe?  Sorted.

And finally, thanks to Hutch who got press-ganged into having his pic taken for the blog - just to prove I don't eat all the cake myself!

Dan Lepard's Plum Glitter Jam

Had I known about (and watched) Julie and Julia before starting this challenge, I never would've made it past the first post, let alone be just thirty more recipes from The Last Post.  I knew the name of the film and that it was about cooking, but that was all.  It wasn't until I met the lovely Edinburgh Cake Ladies in June that one of them told me about the plot and recommended that I watched it.   A few weeks later, one of the ladies at my cake club also asked if that was why I was doing this.  So I bought it on Amazon and finally settled down to watch it on Friday night.

Glittery jam

For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a real life story about a writer who challenges herself to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Or to put it another way 568 recipes in 365 days.  That's pretty serious commitment.  The rules for my own blog were pretty loose, but some of the highlights in the movie included boiling lobsters, making seven lots of things in aspic (nope, not going there - too much like pet food) and learning to bone a duck.

I was amused by the similarities.  Julie is apparently rubbish at housework and blames it on her ADD.  Her husband tells her she won't see the year out as she loses interest in things quickly.  Her mother doesn't understand why she's doing it when she has a full time job, a husband and a cat to fill her life.  She refers to childish and teary outbursts when it all gets too much.  Her husband calls her a selfish bitch at one point.  I sat there, transfixed, mentally ticking off each of these things in my own life.  Swap the cat for a toddler and two dogs and set the scene in Wiltshire and I am Julie.

Actually, I the 'selfish bitch' thing only came out on Friday.  I went up to bed and bumped into the husband (we generally only inhabit the same room at the same time when there's dinner on the table).  He asked if I'd enjoyed the film (I'm rarely allowed the luxury of the tellybox to myself in the evening). I started raving on about how spooky it was that it was just like the last eleven months of my life (the lobster episode is coming next weekend) and I said that the only differences were that a) my husband wouldn't rescue me from an exploding pot of boiling lobsters and b) he hadn't (yet) called me selfish.

"Oh yes," said the husband "you have been really selfish.  In fact I'd go so far as to call you a selfish bitch."  I missed the point there by excitedly replying "Yes, that's exactly what her husband called her" rather than taking the insult at the face value that it was said with.  In case you've not read any other posts, we have a few "issues" with each other.

Anyhow, here I am, counting down the days and realising that there are still so many things on my foodie bucket list that I won't tick off in thirty days.  To be honest, the doing something every day got boring about six months ago, but I'm determined to prove to the husband that I can actually see something through - especially if it means I can ignore the mounting housework.  So I'm looking forward to just doing something new once in a while and writing a slightly different blog.

Plus, I still have a small number of hurdles to get over before this year is out.  And when my grandad offered me 3lb of Victoria plums and a pile of Bramleys earlier this week, I couldn't refuse and didn't want to make plum and apple crumble so picked a couple of new recipes to try with them instead.

First up was the jam.  I had originally Googled recipes for Dan Lepard recipes for cakes using plums and Bramleys (I didn't have Short and Sweet to hand) but when the glittery jam recipe came back, I knew I had to do that.

Two years ago, I made my very first batch of jam and at the time had a glass thermometer which was housed in a test-tube style contraption (also glass).  As it neared setting point, the outer tube burst into my pan of jam, meaning I had to throw the whole lot away.  This time, with my trusty Heston Precision Thermometer, and a Dan recipe in my armoury, I knew it would work.

Some of the harvest from Grandad's garden

It's such a simple recipe - although I guess most jam is.  What I liked was not having to faff around with the 'wrinkle test' and to keep freezing tea plates, testing bits and then finding out it didn't wrinkle and starting again.  If you're going to do this kind of thing, I would definitely recommend investing in a decent thermometer.

And the glitter just makes the jam look that bit more special.  I used up the rest of the gold stars I had left from my Jubilee Bundt Cake.  I didn't realise, but not all edible glitter is actually really edible.  I've got several pots as free gifts from various places, all of which say that it's just for decoration.  Erm, what's the point of that?  You dust your cupcakes with it and then can't actually eat the frosting?  I guess it's good for people who are on a diet...

Having burnt my tongue licking the spoon just after putting the jam into jars, I then had to toast a piece of yesterday's eight strand plaited loaf just for jam testing purposes.  Perfect.  Just the right amount of cheek tingling sharpness.

I will definitely be doing some more glittery jam in preparation for Christmas.  The non-fruiting ornamental cherry tree we bought from B&Q when we first moved here also grows greengages (I swear it will be like The Faraway Tree in a hundred year's time) so when they're ripe, I will be harvesting them and using this recipe to start prepping for my festive hampers.

You can find Dan's recipe online here.

Dan Lepard's Saffron Peach Cake

There's a rumour going around that I'm writing a cake blog.  This is not true.  I'm writing a blog where I try and cook something new every day for 366 days.  The original idea was to attempt to broaden my family's food horizons.  I thought I was doing pretty well, having clocked up 322 different recipes on consecutive days.  In fact, sometimes I've made more than one new recipe each day, but they haven't always made it to the blog.  I've survived two weeks on holiday, Christmas with my fussy family, various bugs and so on and every day made something new and written about it.  And yet, everyone still thinks I'm writing a cake blog.

Summer in a cake

Admittedly, these opinions have come from two sources.  My best friend who has discovered the delights of baking and whom I have gone from talking geek-speak to, to discussing the merits of Willie's 100% Cacao and the joys of owning a bundt tin.  The other source of the rumour is from my work colleagues who have been the (lucky) recipients of the majority of the cakes I've made over the past (nearly) year.

This is probably because it's where my 'knack' (I hesitate to call it talent) and passion lie.  In baking.  I enjoy cooking from scratch but when you live with someone who has to eat a dish that tastes exactly the same every time you make it, the joy can be taken out of cooking when you fear the reaction if you happen to have run out of xyz and replaced it with abc just this once.  With cake, most people are polite/complimentary about it.  I can't remember ever giving anyone (apart from the husband) a bit of cake and them not at least saying thank you, but more likely they provide very positive feedback.

The one thing I've gotten from this year of cooking and blogging is the confidence to be a little more creative and experimental in the baking department although I still have much to learn.  The fabulous Great British Bake Off is back on our screens tomorrow night.  It was watching that this time last year that inspired me to do this rather strange challenge to myself.  The only way to progress in something is to practice and evolve.  I have learnt so much this year about cooking and baking and flavours and little twists that I feel I'm in a better place than I was a year ago.  I will be watching avidly this year to see what other gaps in my knowledge I should consider plugging once I get underway with my new blog.

Top of the learning list is that when you use something up, remember to put it straight into the Ocado shopping app so when you have the urge to bake, you don't wind up having to adapt and cut corners on certain recipes.  Or if you happen to be going to the shops for one ingredient, double check the cupboards before you go to make sure you've got everything you need.  Which is why I ended up making an almost almondless almond cake.

I still can't let go of the Olympic Food Challenge

I always always always have two or three bags of ground almonds in my cupboard plus a big jar that I pour all the ends of packets into.  Usually because I forget I've got some and then buy another bag when I'm baking something so build up a stock.  So when I picked this cake, it was with some confidence that all I needed to buy was saffron.  Not so I discovered when I turned all the cupboards out to find every permutation of nut (Brazils, macadamias, walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, pistachios...) but nary a bag of ground almonds to be found.  I'd put them all in my mum's chocolate and coconut birthday cake the other day and not replaced them.  Oops.

So I ended up flavouring the sponge purely with almond essence and replacing the almonds weight-for-weight with more flour.  It seemed to work okay although the little slice I tried was quite crumbly.  I'm sure the almonds would've made the sponge much moister.

But this is a fabulously cheery cake with it's sunny saffron hue and topped with sliced peaches.  The perfect antithesis for a miserable August day.  You can find the recipe in Short and Sweet or on the Guardian website.

Dan Lepard's Dark Banana Ginger Cake

I first came across this recipe a couple of months ago when I was looking to make a banana cake for my then mentor at work.  Dan had published a pair of bare banana cake recipes in his weekly column for the Guardian.  Last time I went for the first recipe.  Today it's the second recipe from the column.

183 cals of yumminess

At the time the recipes were published, I was trying to convince my mother that Dan is a bit of a baking deity.  She wasn't convinced despite me raving about all the recipes of his I've baked during this journey.  The weekend the column was published was the first time she'd had a chance to taste one of my Lepard bakes when I made his Cinnamon Cake with Blackberries.  She'd raved so much to her work colleagues about it that they asked for pictures and they then insisted that she try one of his recipes and bring it in for them to test.

In a bout of spooky coincidence, we both made banana cakes on the same day although she made both, I only made the Melted Butter Banana Cake.  Given that it was a week when I was pretending to diet, I didn't actually try my own cake but that weekend, she bought me a small sample of both of hers to try.

Her taste testers, like mine, had wolfed down the Melted Butter one, but were less enthusiastic about the Dark Banana Ginger Cake.  I tried both and had to agree with them.  The dark cake was lacking in something but I wasn't quite sure what.

Queen Abigail, chief banana masher

Until I made the cake myself that is.  Although the husband is on a diet (as am I), he decided that he quite fancied a banana cake.  I used to have a diabetic-friendly recipe that I found on the BBC Food (not Good Food) website from Diabetes UK, but no amount of Googling could turn up the original one and I know my handwritten notes got lost when we moved house.  But Dan's recipe ticked a lot of the boxes.  It uses oil rather than butter and is made from wholemeal rather than plain flour.  Two ticks in the 'vaguely healthy cake' box.

At the outset, I figured the 'healthy' bit was why this cake was less successful in my mum's taste test than the buttery one.  But I have a feeling she possibly tampered with the recipe.  Unlike her own mother, my mother doesn't like ginger.  My grandma adored the stuff.  For me, it's one of those things that I suddenly started liking when just after my grandma passed away.  It was really spooky.  I'd never liked smoked salmon or ginger before then.  And yet around that sad time, I became addicted to those things.

So I think mum omitted the ginger and this recipe absolutely needs it.  I bet if I ask her she'll probably deny it and say she stuck religiously to the recipe.  Maybe she did, but I don't remember chunks of ginger in the sponge.  Plus I cheated and modified the recipe a little myself, adding a teaspoon of ground ginger and a half teaspoon of salt to the batter to bring out the flavour.  And I used stem ginger rather than glace ginger so I poured in the last spoonful of ginger syrup for good measure (the rest having been used in the triple ginger butterflies from Saturday afternoon).

Lots of cake!

If you've read any of my other posts, you'll know I've labelled my husband as having a 'discerning palate'.  When it comes to cake, he's my harshest critic (see some of his other feedback here).  And his scathing Ramsay-esque criticism is no longer exclusively reserved for me.  He recently ate some cheesecake (I won't say where it came from but it wasn't mine) and declared that it was vile and he could make something ten times better.  I'm still waiting to see evidence of his culinary genius - personally, I thought it was one of the nicest homemade cheesecakes I've had in ages, but I'm willing to be dazzled by the husband's cheesecake prowess.

Anyhow, he declared this to be the best banana cake he's ever eaten and that he wants to eat it every day forever.  High praise indeed.  And it comes in at just 183 cals per piece - made in a 20cm square tin and cut into 16 pieces.

Verdict from work colleagues to follow tomorrow.

The original recipe can be found here (it's the second one down)

Dan Lepard's Zopako

Early yesterday morning, I had a yearn for freshly made bread and was delighted to see Dan Lepard tweet his recipe for Zopako - a Basque Soup Bread - and Castilian Garlic and Bread Soup.  Perfect.  Despite the fact that my fridge was rammed solid with things purchased for other recipes, this seemed like just the ticket for today.

It has to be about the simplest loaf recipe ever.  Chuck everything in a bowl, give it a quick knead (10 seconds), leave overnight, shape, rise and bake.  Job done.  Lovely and crusty rustic loaf with minimal effort.

I duly made the dough last night.  It only requires a 1/4 tsp of fast action yeast for the rise as you leave it out overnight.  This morning it had doubled in size nicely.  I shaped it as instructed.  Did the rising part.  Popped it in the oven.  It all seemed to be going too well.  Within two minutes, I could smell freshly baking bread.  I thought that was a bit odd given that it had literally only been two minutes.  But never thought to go and investigate.  As a rather seasoned - if not good - baker, I know that you don't check things until they're at least halfway through their baking time otherwise you can expect disaster.

Toasted loaf!

The instructions were to bake for 20 mins at 220c and then reduce the temperature for the last 15 minutes.  But still that baking smell pervaded the air.  At around fifteen minutes, it started to have a 'burnt toast' kind of smell.  But I resisted for another four minutes.  Which was when I realised that having made toast for Miss A, I'd upped the temperature for the bread bake but had forgotten to switch from grill to oven mode.  So I'd literally grilled my loaf.  And the burnt smell was the flour dusted on the top singeing.  Oops.

Slightly panicked, I removed it from the oven, setting off the smoke detectors whilst I did it (and rousing a less than amused husband from his slumber at 9am).  Because we live in a modern townhouse, the smoke detectors are linked so if one goes, all three (one on each floor) go in unison.  Of course, that set Miss A crying and the dogs howling.  I'm now about another fifty places down the husband's scale of things he likes (my last ranking was #483).

The loaf was left to cool while Miss A and I escaped for our regular swim, and babyccino with Sainsbury's Cheese Scone (see Sconegate).  I assumed that when I returned, I'd end up chucking it away.  But actually, it's turned out to be a really nice loaf with a beautiful crumb and the slightly charred crust only lends to the rustic flavour.  I think I was saved by the tray of boiling water used to help create a steamy atmosphere in the oven.

Will definitely be making again as it's so very easy (if you remember to set your oven correctly) and I want to have a go at making the garlic soup one day - when I won't be in polite company.  I the bread it for lunch with the 'soup' I made from last night's leftover sauce and the hubby and Miss A had ploughmans.  I'm now planning to have it for tea too, alongside some more of the lovely Three Tomato Salad that I made on Friday.  All I need now is some early evening sunshine and a bottle of Chablis and I could pretend I was somewhere a little more exotic than North Wiltshire.

Recipe can be found here.

Dan Lepard's Sour Cream Sandwich Bread

Bread is also off the menu once we get home.  I'm supposed to be following this diet so Miss A will have to forgo homemade bread as it's the one thing I can't resist.  Cake, yep I can let that go.  Fresh bread, no way.

Of course, after 'Sconegate' I may well get vilified for being such an awful mother as to give up making home made bread for my child just because I selfishly want to lose weight.  So I'll make sure I feed her a deep fried Mars Bar or two while we're on holiday.  Just for good measure.

Again, quick, pre-authored post for the day.  Will update when we're back in civilisation.  The recipe can be found here.

Updated 1st July 2012 @ 20:15

Despite my detailed packing list and the fact that I ticked that I had my electronic scales, when we arrived at our first destination, I discovered they were still sat on the worktop in my kitchen about four hundred miles away.  Both houses kindly provided scales, however, I probably would've been just as accurate (or not) guessing at the need for a third of a bag of flour or three-fifths of a block of butter or whatever quantity was needed because both pairs of scales looked to have come from Poundland.  There's nothing wrong with Poundland (other discount stores are available).  Once I'd swallowed my middle-class-aspiring-pride, I discovered some great bargains in there.  But when it comes to precision baking, you need a decent set of scales.  Of course, who in their right mind - other than me - would want to do precision weighing when they're supposedly on holiday?

It made a good fish finger sandwich

I'm so sad that I now even weigh my liquids, having worked out how much various oils and milks weigh (it differs based on the fat content).  Weighing liquids is much easier when you have a measuring jug that has lots most of the numbers off of the side and are as blind as a bat and can't read the measurements anyway.  So I blame my lack of appreciation of this loaf on the fact that I forgot my scales.

It was a good, bog standard white bread.  I'm not sure that the sour cream did much to alter the crust on the loaf when compared to Dan's standard Easy White Loaf.  I was expecting a softer crust but it was actually quite firm.  This could also be because I'm used to cooking in my fan oven and had a conventional oven on holiday.  I guess the way to tell would be to make both loaves simultaneously (and not over six months apart!) and do a side-by-side taste test.

I also did the first rise for this loaf in the fridge.  I did all the faffy kneading early in the morning, then popped it in the fridge whilst we went out for the day.  When I came back, I did the second rise which took about two hours and popped it into the oven and hey presto.  A word to the wise if you want to try this method - reduce the yeast by half.  This was a useful tip I found in Short and Sweet - I've made fridge-risen bread before and it's always tried to escape from its bowl overnight but half the yeast with this one and it was nicely contained.

It kept quite well - we had it a couple of days later for fish finger sandwiches.  I usually have mayo and salsa in mine but with a lack of mayo, I made up some more of Paul's Pico di Gallo and it was awesome!! The last couple of slices were fed to the local sheep.  Who eat anything.  I thought it was only goats that did that but they eat spaghetti, Cheerios, bananas, bird seed, polos, apples and toddler fingers.

I'm in no hurry to bake this one again - it's more expensive than the easy white loaf but if I had some sour cream about to expire in the fridge, I have at least one extra way of using it up rather than forcing myself to eat nachos and sour cream.

And a final post-script.  Sconegate blew up in my face whilst I was away.  Some people are quite happy to dish criticism out but the minute they think you've slighted them (which I didn't) they're happy to get the virtual hatchet out and head straight for your jugular.   And so I've now blocked said person on Twitter.  That was a sad day as Twitter is generally such a nice place to inhabit.

Dan Lepard's Easy Chocolate Birthday Cake

So right now, we're in hopefully (sunny) Scotland and by the time you're reading this, we will have produced a stunning Father's Day cake for the husband.  With it being our seventh wedding anniversary tomorrow as well, I figured what better way to tick off a new recipe than to bake a celebratory chocolate cake.  This also helped justify why I needed to pack my sandwich tins for holiday.

Artfully decorated by Miss A with giant jazzes

We always take basics with us to cope with the first night just in case we don't make it to the supermarket - normally Weetabix, bread, frozen milk (it can defrost on the way) and a few other odds and ends.  Our favourite Scottish hideaway used to have a well-stocked pantry of basics left by previous visitors but this new location is an unknown quantity so I included all of the dry ingredients weighed out already and then threw in my scales too - just in case neither location had a set.

Then it just needed a quick trip to the local shops for eggs and cream and some magic from Miss A and hopefully at some point during this week, I'll be able to furnish this pre-written post with a picture of the finished cake.

In the meantime, here's a link to the recipe online.


Updated 17th June 2012 @ 21:10

There's just something about me and chocolate cakes (excluding brownies) that just don't seem to be working well together on this blog.  When we finally arrived at our destination, I realised that despite ticking them off from my holiday packing list, I actually forgot to bring my scales with me.

My holiday packing list

Unfortunately, the scales at the cottage are a bit hit and miss (although if I'm honest, my own scales are temperamental) and so this cake was destined from the start to not be perfect.  Add to that my decision to halve the recipe and baking in an unfamiliar oven; plus, not checking that the batter was evenly spread in the pan, I was lucky it even resembled a cake.  And because I was so worried about it sinking, I didn't dare look at it until 25 minutes had passed.  By which time it was cooked, but a little dry.

Lepard's cake is stuffed with whipped cream and jam before being slathered in chocolate icing.  Because we already had an amazing cake in our holiday fridge on arrival (more on that another night - it deserves its own special post), I decided to cut down on the cream and just make a simple ganache for Miss A to spread over the top of the cake.

The flavour of the cake was really good.  It just probably need a little less time in the oven and a little more filling/topping to disguise it's dryness.  Miss A was really proud of her efforts and it was a good recipe to allow her to help with every single stage, apart from melting the butter and heating the cream for the ganache.

I owe it to this recipe to bake it in its true form another time.  In the meantime, I'm off to polish off some more of the other cake before falling into a sugar-induced coma.  Laters!

PS: It's been mostly raining with a tiny glimmer of sunshine!

Dan Lepard's Apple Turnovers

After yesterday's pastry-fest ready for the sausage rolls, I ended up with a fair bit left over.  Some I froze, but I decided to keep a small portion back to make something else for the picnic.  We're on a long journey today - eight hours of solid driving, provided there are no traffic jams and excluding stops - and so I needed to be prepared.

Having a bagful of apples that also needed either eating or adding to the picnic, I saw an opportunity to make Dan's Apple Turnovers - a recipe that he recommends alongside his All Butter Puff recipe.

No cardboard in sight!

Earlier this week, the husband went out to buy wine and I asked him to bring me back something nice.  He came back with Tesco's Apple Turnovers.  They were stale and had no taste.  What a waste of calories!  So this seemed like a good time to show the husband how an apple turnover should taste.

The apple filling tastes amazing.  I used three apples-worth to make two turnovers (I like them packed with fruit, not air) and had a bit to spare.  The butter, sugar, lemon, vanilla and cinnamon combination is fantastic with Pink Lady apples.  And they keep their shape well without turning into mush like if you use cooking apple.

I have to blog really quickly as the husband is downstairs, huffing and puffing about how to fit everything into the car and if he knew I was writing this, I wouldn't be very popular!

And if he ever asks me to buy shop-bought apple turnovers again, I will hand in my notice as his wife.  Seriously, if you have the time to try the puff recipe, you need to make these.  They really are a treat (I've always hated the apple-pie-filling-stuffed-sugar-topped-cardboard that you get from the supermarket) and it's worth the effort.  Also a great way to use up leftover pastry - make mini ones from pastry scraps.

Right, got to fly before the husband purposely leaves behind my baking tins!

Recipe is here.

Dan Lepard's All Butter Puff Pastry

If we're off on a long journey, it's mandatory that I pack sausage rolls.  Not any old shop-bought things.  Even Morrisons ones won't do in this instance.  I doubt the ones from Downs Bakery would even past muster on this occasion.  They absolutely must be homemade ones.  Made using JusRol regular puff pastry and sausage meat from Les Smith's butcher in my childhood village.

They're  disappearing like hotcakes

I've tried subsitutions before - such as making them with The Black Farmer Sausages when I've not had time to go home before the trip.  Despite those being the sausages of choice for every other sausage-related meal, they make an inferior sausage roll filling according to the husband.  Likewise, I once tried JusRol All Butter Puff Pastry.  There was too much butter and they were too greasy.  Neither of these errors prevented the husband eating them all, but I learned not to do it again.

Generally, the husband will have his usual breakfast before we leave.  Normally this would sustain him until midday.  But for some reason, if we have a long journey ahead, he automatically starts whining he's hungry before we've even hit the M4 (about six miles from our house) and the sausage rolls have been broken into before we've made it to the next junction.

This year, I've decided to rock the boat again, all in the spirit of trying something new.  So I've spent today making Dan Lepard's All Butter Puff Pastry.  Having mastered both his Spelt Rough Puff Pastry and his laminated dough for Danish pastries earlier this year, I figured that proper puff was the last hurdle to pass before this year of blogging was out.

I also took the opportunity to absorb all the good advice that he imparts in Short and Sweet to help make the pastry experience a happy one.  The key point being that this is something that needs you to take a whole day to do.  Which is why I began at 5.30am, allowing me time to do two turns before work at 7am.  I eventually lost count of how many turns I did which reminded me about a lesson I should've learned from a blog post by my lovely Twitter pal Sadia about when she made this very pastry.  Do have a look at the post.  Her photography is stunning and she's got some good advice on the recipe.

I was very wary that I've gotten a little cocky following Dan's recipes and didn't assume that this would work well (see my tale of pre-bake smugness before the disaster that was my attempt at Brown Sugar Chocolate Cake) but thankfully, for the sake of the sausage roll demands it did what it said in the book.

The temperature of the pastry/butter is very important. I left my butter out overnight to soften.  Normally when i do this, it's still pretty solid, and I end up having to soften it further in the microwave.  But just to spite me, the butter was at the perfect consistency for cake making - not what I needed for pastry.  I used some from the fridge to do the first step of rubbing fat into flour and then refrigerated the rest before the layering began.  Thankfully my fridge has a super-chill setting for when you've been shopping so I stuck it on this for half an hour and it firmed up a little.  Normally I'd use the freezer, but sometimes I've ended up getting distracted and thirty minutes in the freezer becomes two hours and suddenly I have frozen rather than firm.

Work in progress

I think too cold butter was the problem that I had when I had my first attempt at making laminated Danish dough, using another recipe, just before Christmas.  Call it a lesson learned.

Once the layers start getting thinner, the butter has a tendency to escape so I found that strategic checking and re-flouring during rolling worked quite well.  But you have to be careful not to over-flour or the layers won't stick together.

Having snaffled one for taste-testing in advance of tomorrow's journey (with Miss A also being partial to sausage rolls, I probably won't even get one tomorrow), I am so pleased with them.  The pastry is light, flaky and beautifully buttery.  Obviously chock-full of calories, but hey we're on holiday.  Diet definitely resumes in earnest in July.  My only disappointment is that the pastry is a little lacking in salt.  It probably could've done with another quarter teaspoon.  Quarter of a teaspoon in a kilo of pastry isn't much.  I think it's because the sausage meat is so savoury, the pastry tastes a little bland against it.  Baked on its own though (I baked a scrap sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon) it tastes great.

I won't be buying pre-made puff again.  If you want to have a go yourself, you can find the recipe here, but I definitely recommend reading the good advice in Short and Sweet.

Dan Lepard's Lemon Butter Cake

The Queen was fifty-one when I was born.  At eighty-six, she's spent the weekend in the spotlight, travelling up the Thames on a freezing cold barge; listening to a quite frankly terrible concert (was it bad sound on the BBC or was it just that the majority of the performers can't sing live without auto-tune?); and then attending a series of services to celebrate her sixty years on the throne.  I'm worn out just thinking about her doing all that!

This evening I'm suffering from Jubilee fatigue.  In the same way that come December 27th, most of us will happily see out of the year without further turkey/chocolate/alcohol/party food.  I just wanted to eat something light for tea.  We've not indulged in the same way that we would at Christmas; but having spent the last couple of weeks eating salads every day, I'm struggling with all the meat I've eaten these past three days.

If all else fails, there's always lemon icing!

I'd planned to make the Telegraph's Diamond Jubilee salad - a modernisation of Coronation Chicken - but when push came to shove, I realised that I'd be happier with a bowl of berries and Greek yogurt. 

Luckily, I got guilted into baking a cake to take to my colleagues at my home site when I paid a cake-less visit to them kast week.  This got me out of today's hole of trying something new.

I've made several different lemon cakes (sorry, the previous link is to 'lemon' so it will pick up the lemon lamb recipe too!) since I started my blog, with my favourite being Dan's Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake.  I picked this one, not because I'm a huge fan of lemon cake but because I had an open tin of condensed milk in the fridge that needed using up.  Lepard says in the blurb that this keeps the cake moist.  I can't confirm that because the cake is now boxed up and ready for serious testing at work tomorrow.

The batter follows a very different method to pretty much any other cake I've made before.  It involves making a meringue from the egg whites and folding this into a mixture of egg yolks, melted butter, condensed milk, sugar and flour.  It had a really strange texture.  I would've expected the meringue to go in before the flour and found it quite hard to get an even mix through the batter.  I was also worried about losing the volume from the egg whites, but it baked okay.  I'll be interested to see how it comes out when it's cut and I'll update this post with the verdict tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can find the recipe on the Guardian Website. 

Dan Lepard's Sourdough

Tea. Just need to practice my loaf cutting skills.

It feels somewhat appropriate that my 250th recipe is baking related (top tag with 92 recipes) and by Dan Lepard (favourite book/baker) with this being recipe 29 of his and bread recipe number 22.  I didn't exactly plan it this way - I started this journey a week ago - but looking at my stats, it seemed to be worthy of comment.  And so I did.

Sourdough bread appears to be the holy grail of bread baking.  Of course, this is only me setting my foot on the very bottom rung of the ladder that is sourdough.  Nevertheless, you appear to not be able to call yourself a bread baker until you've tried this feat.  Why do I say this?  Well a while back, I was Googling the lovely Lorraine Pascale's bread recipes when I found a post questioning her credibility as a baker because she dared to make bread that didn't take a week to prepare.  And this wasn't even her 21st Century Cheese and Ham Bread (which I believe you can make in less than an hour but as the husband doesn't like cheese bread, I've not tried it).  This was a regular, yeasted bread that takes around 2-3 hours from mixing to baking.  But this particular blogger had a beef with Lorraine's loaf not being tasty enough for him and was very scathing about it.

That post angered me that someone could be so rude and condescending.  Not everyone has the privilege of being able to sit around all day waiting for endless kneading and rising and knocking back and more rising.  Surely anything that is homemade is far superior to something that is bought from a shop and packed full of preservatives?  I've made plenty of nice breads over the last year, all of which used yeast.  Maybe sourdough knocks the competition into a cocked hat but sometimes good enough is absolutely fine.

Derek - fresh from the oven

And we're not all lucky enough to have an Artisan bakery at the end of the street - or the budget to buy all our bread there.  And if this guy has an issue with Lorraine, then he will have an issue with pretty much every baker on the planet.  Some people need to get their heads out from their own backsides.  I wonder how he feels about Marco Pierre White advertising stock cubes or Dan Lepard revealing that he uses Smash in some of his bread recipes?  The blog turned by stomach so much I didn't read further.

Anyhow, because this has been an epic recipe, I'm afraid you're going to get an epic post - because I have lots of pictures and another topic I need to get off my chest.  Washing up!  I hate it.  And I only married my husband because he used to be really good at cleaning up.  To the point that he'd even rotate the plates in the cupboard to make sure they wore out evenly.  Post wedding, his kitchen cleaning declined and, having married someone who isn't a fan of cleaning, we often have 'disagreements' about me and my baking.  Especially when bread dough is involved.

I've yet to find an effective way of cleaning bread dough from a bowl without gunking up the scrubby sponge or scrubby brush that we use for manual washing up.  Then there's the issue of the bits of dough that do eventually make it out of the bowl and into the sink and weld themselves to the stainless steal before you have chance to rinse them away.  So of course, when Derek (yes, I've named my sourdough after Derek Branning - a volatile character in Eastenders) decided to escape for a better look at my worktop, I knew this wasn't going to be a 'disagreement' free week in the Crowdey household.

Day #1 Derek is born

Day #2 first signs of life (top right of jar)

Day #3 it's working!

Derek has needed nearly as much attention as a small child since he first escaped.  Luckily, unlike Miss A, he hasn't mastered the art of unlocking and opening the front door and letting the dogs out.  But with the need to remove some of his volume (dough in the sink - see above) and carefully feed him, plus check he was okay in the confines of his new home each day, I've felt like I've had a third child to care for for the last seven days (Miss A being number one and the sunburnt husband being number two).

Lepard reccomends a 500ml kilner jar which is exactly what I used for Derek's first home.  It looked like he had plenty of space to grow, but after his escape, he got moved to a 1.5l kilner.  Just in case...

Day #4 In need of a new home

Day #5 Re-homed

Day #6 - bubbling nicely

Day #7 after his last supper

Still, we made it through the week eventually.  And this morning, before work, I began his first rise.  Of course being a Lepard recipe, this involves the three ten-second kneads over half an hour rather than the traditional ten minute knead.  But it gave me time to make breakfast and coffee in between.

Although it's a Dan Lepard recipe, I got the instructions for the leaven from Azalia's Kitchen.  Short and Sweet doesn't have a full recipe for sourdough.  There are two pages of instructions about how sourdough should work but I'm guessing that Lepard and his publisher probably want you to buy a copy of The Handmade Loaf.  It's in my Amazon basket but there are so many more things I want to try (more than I'll manage before I finish this blog) that I've not yet purchased it.  Thankfully, the well documented online guide from Azalia was really helpful getting the starter made and I then used Dan's Short and Sweet advice (plus some online research) to prep my first loaf.

And we're off!

If you use Azalia's method, you really need to read all the comments too because there is extra clarification around some of the points there.  In a nutshell, however you feed your starter, a ratio of 1 part flour to 1 part water works.  Where she's specified water at 20c, I've used the water from my kettle when it's cooled so I know it's roughly room temperature.

The one thing I hadn't really been prepared for is just how long sourdough can take to rise.  Having done some research, the best ballpark figure I could find for how long it will take to double in size is between four and 12 hours.  Even Lepard himself is vague on the subject.  There are so many factors that can affect a sourdough rise apparently - from the quality of the leaven to the temperature of your room to whether or not there is an 'r' in the month (okay I didn't really read that, but I'm sure someone has said it somewhere).  I then asked Twitter's opinion and @EversNanaJules replied that it's quite happy to be left to rise overnight.  Great idea.

In need of a little more water and some rye

So yesterday morning, I gave Derek one last breakfast in anticipation of starting the bread off last night as it works best 8-24 hours after feeding.

But then I read another online article about how there is a window of opportunity for the rise of bread which is pretty predictable with commercially available yeast, but not so with sourdough.  I decided that given the currently warm weather, I didn't want to slope off to bed and find that my lovely sourdough had peaked and fallen irreparably whilst I was asleep (I needn't have worried as Miss A was awake for most of the night again so I could've checked on it).

So because I had the luxury of working from home today, I fed Derek again last night with 25g of flour and water so I could prep him this morning in that critical 8-24 hour window.  I decided to use Dan's Easy White Loaf recipe because he tells you in the book the exact measurements for replacing the yeast, flour and water with leaven.

Ready to rise

The bit I missed was a comment a few paragraphs before these instructions that a small amount of rye or wholemeal flour will help stop the dough from being so sticky - a trait of an all white loaf.  I also found I only needed 180ml of extra water so I'm glad I followed his advice to add it gradually rather than just putting it all in (he says 225ml of water).  Because the dough was so sticky as I was kneading it, I added 25g of rye flour during knead two which certainly seemed to help smooth it out.

First rise complete.  Looking smooth Derek. He's so grown up!

I left it the loaf starting its first rise at 6.45am - I love that my commute meant that I was at my desk by 6.47am (we live in a townhouse so I had to navigate two flights of baby-gated stairs with my coffee and laptop bag).  With my lunch break at 12pm, I had a half-hour window for knocking back and shaping and  it was then left for the second rise until 5pm.

Thirty minutes in the oven, and a little time to cool on the patio table and I had me a late tea of sourdough with butter and jam.  Lush!

One final picture :)

Was it worth the effort?  Yes, actually it was.  For the following reasons.

1) It tasted like bread that had been bought from a posh shop.  Even better than regular homemade white.  But not something I'd do every day purely because I don't have the time and I would come to not appreciate it.  It's a really special treat.
2) My Proud Mummy Moment (PMM) for the day was when Miss A looked at the loaf and rather than calling it 'Toast' as she does with all homemade bread, she announced that it was 'Sow-dough'.  My heart burst - she's such a little foodie at only two.
3) Because it gave rise to an interesting conversation with the husband about bread containing yeast or sourdough - both of which are live and fungus related.  He has now decided he's never eating bread ever again.  I'll relay the full conversation on another post on another day.