Dad's Birthday

First of all I'm going to tell you as far as I'm aware Mother's day is certainly not on march 10th and is really next weekend (this is not my excuse for forgetting to buy anything) so this blog won't be on Mother's day at all, sorry. This weekend has been my Dad's Birthday but he was away so we celebrated it yesterday, meaning we already had a birthday cake in the house and there was no need for a Mother's day cake (one of the reasons why Mother's day is next weekend). 

So this is the monster Birthday cake! I got the recipe from 'The Great British Bake Off Showstoppers' but I won't be typing out the recipe, sorry, because it would take up a lot of time and space. 
It may just look like an ordinary cake smothered in butter icing from the badly taken photograph, and this is partly true; it is smothered in butter icing, but this is no ordinary cake. Underneath the mountains of butter icing is a almond meringue sandwiched with butter cream to a genoese orange flavoured sponged, sandwiched to another meringue, sandwiched to another layer of sponge covered in almond praline and orange flavoured butter cream and topped with more almond praline. Wow. Weight watchers and the ambulance are now on speed dial and if no other blogs are written you may presume I have died of heart disease. I have to say though, it tastes good.

On to the presents! Well Dad being the modest, practical and not really having an interest in the luxuries of life is really quite hard to buy for. We eventually decided to stick with the traditional annual T-shirt (from Boden) a hankie for each day of the week (from not on the high street, great gift site!)and Mumford and Sons older album, 'sigh no more' (mainly because I wanted it).


I don't think we did too badly this year and finally I just thought I share the Birthday card we bought him. It's not particularly Birthday related but the dog reminded me of one of our three dogs and I loved the illustration, extremely cute indeed! I hope if you decided to be Orthodox and celebrate Mother's day today you had a very happy day too. 

Guess who met the fabulous baker brothers?

The answer to the above question is me, not once but three times in fact!  

All of yesterday afternoon was spent in my kitchen making and baking to enter the Kendal festival of food competitions. After many spillages of food dye, a few minor disaster and lots of taste testing I managed to finish my entries. They had a theme this year from the sponsor which was 'Herdy, the face of the lake district', a really cute cartoon herdwick sheep. They had two categories for this: children's decorated cupcakes and a novelty cake decorated with a herdy theme. I entered for the cupcakes with my Guinness cupcakes but changed the Guinness to a different stout from my town's brewing company which made them taste even nicer than last time. I managed to come first in the cupcake competition  with my knitting themed cakes and a seal of approval from the judges (Channel 4 Fabulous baker Brothers themselves!).  

Here's a picture of the novelty cake winner which I thought was amazing but also very clever.

The other competition I entered was the multi-grain bread competition, I entered pecan and maple syrup bread and managed to come third. I've come to the conclusion that I'm more pleased with this result than the cupcakes because this round had more entries, was more technical, against adults and Tom Herert is a professional baker so I'm guessing knows a whole heap about bread.
We made the bread from one of our many cook books the other week and the flavors go really well together, when my Mum suggested it I was a bit sceptical about it being to sweet but it tastes just great.

Maple and Pecan Bread from 'cakes and bakes from my mother's kitchen' by Linda Collister 

Makes 2 loaves

• 350 grams of strong wholemeal bread flour
• 350 grams of strong white bread flour 
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 7 grams of dried yeast
• 375 ml of warm water
• 150 grams of maple syrup
• 200 grams of pecans (we found this too many last time so used 150 grams this time)

1. Mix the flours salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl and make a well n the centre.
2. Pour in the warm water and maple syrup and mix until you have a soft, but not sticky, dough.
3. If the dough is too dry add a little bit of water, if too soft add a teaspoon of flour.
4. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it becomes elastic before returning to a clean oiled bowl. Cover with cling film and leave to rise for 1 1/2 hours.
5. Oil two loaf tins, take the dough out and punch the air out of it, divide into two and place into tins. Cover loosely with oiled clingfilm again and leave for another hour, or until double in size (this bread is a labour of love!).
6. Preheat the oven to 200oC/ 400oF (gas mark 6.
7. Take off the clingfilm and bake for 30-35 minutes, it should make a hollow sound when tapped and be brown on the top.
8. Leave to cool on a wire rack and enjoy within four days.

The rest of the festival was great fun too, there was lots of made in Cumbria produce stands and cooking demonstrations, even a farm animal tent. We met the baker brothers in waterstones before meeting them a second time for their demonstration, which they posted on twitter. I got to hold the dish they prepared in the front which was 'gunpowder lamb with carrot and pepper salad on roti), 'twas very nom. Lastly I met them when they presented the 5 competition winners and got my picture taken with a signed copy of their new book, a lakeland voucher and a herdy apron. 

the farm animal tent

My signed book

I hope you had a good weekend too and I've inspired you to read up on the fabulous baker brothers if you've never heard of them, I can strongly recommend their new book!

Thurday's adventurous tea time!

Well through this blog you'll obviously find out about my personality, interests, hobbies, etc, etc. And one thing that I love to do is cooking and baking!

My favourite cook book to find tea time recipes for the fam is from our wagamama cook book which we bought five years ago in Windsor where we went to our first ever wagamama restaurant. It's all about quick, healthy, flavoursome and of course (if you looked at the URL) noodles!

this is the new recipe we decided to try tonight 'spiced mussels with wide rice noodles' which was absolutely nom despite us not being able to find any coriander in our town. I'm sorry about picture quality, as I said on my first blog most of my pictures at the mo are from an ipad. My Dad loves mussels and spicy food and this wasn't too spicy, a surprise from the amount of garlic and ginger, but also coconuty and creamy. 

On New year's eve I baked a orange and white chocolate panettone but sadly it has gone a bit dry, my Mum suggested we should make a bread and butter pudding from it so we changed the traditional recipe a little.

(before baking, it might not look appealing here but it tasted SO good)

Panettone bread and butter pudding

1. slice up quarter of a smallish old, dry panettone and spread generously with butter on either side (triangles are easiest to layer up)
2. butter an oven proof dish and layer up the buttered panettone before generously dolloping lemon curd over the slices
3. instead of dried fruit slice an orange up and scatter over to make it taste even more christmasy
4. beat 3 eggs and 50g of caster sugar and 1tsp of vanilla essence in a bowl
5. heat 450ml of milk until almost boiling and add to beaten sugar and eggs until it makes a really thin custard and pour over the panettone
6. leave the pudding to soak for 10 mins or a longer
7. place in a bain marie and cook in the top oven of a two door aga for 35 mins (our families recipes all use an aga) or for 40-50 mins in an oven at 180oC/350oF/ gas mark 4

This original bread and butter pudding recipe was from my Mum's favourite chef, Nigel Slater.