A Tale of (apple) Tarts

As you can tell, I've had a break from blogging. A wedding, job change, house move and making the decision to leave the country all took their toll and I needed to eliminate the extra pressure and guilt that comes from frantically trying to catch up with blog posts.

So now autumn is upon us, my winter coat has come out of hibernation and I've bought a new pair of gloves which should last about a week before I lose one and have a cold left hand. I'm trudging through autumnal leaves to work and millions of apples seem to be suicidally throwing themselves from trees. 

Both at home and work, I am being given more apples than I know what to do with. I have filled my spare jars with chutney and my friends with apple crumble cake but still the bags of apples lurk in the corner of my kitchen. 

So I've been perfecting the art of the apple tart.

A Wedding Feast

Apologies for being so absent recently, I have been rather busy getting married! I am also in the middle of changing jobs and moving but I will be back to baking and blogging soon I promise! In the mean time I thought I would share some photos of the baked goods we had on offer for our 'big day'.

Our wedding was very much a DIY affair, I called in a lot of favours to make bunting, chutney, cake stands, flower arrangements, cookies - the list goes on! For food we opted for a hog roast instead of a traditional 3 course meal and then a table of cheese, bread, crackers and chutney later in the evening. Pudding was a tables of cakes, biscuits and other sweet treats made my myself, my friends and family.

Garlic Bread

I've had this post all ready to publish for a while but it hasn't seemed appropriate in this heat! However this week I am all about comfort food and it doesn't get much more comforting than this! It's a relatively quick and easy recipe so no slaving away in the kitchen and I think it makes a great addition to a summer salad.

I love garlic. I love garlic WAY too much! My housemate and I used to roast whole bulbs and eat it as a snack (probably a good job that out boyfriends lived about 150 miles away at the time!)

Garlic bread is a great way to jazz up and bulk out a regular meal. I realise that you can buy a garlic bread sticks cheaply and chuck them in the oven but let's face it, nothing beats freshly baked bread. This recipe really doesn't take long and you can easily mix it up and leave to rise and you prepare your lasagne or cottage pie).

Cake Decorating

A few more photos of my cake decorating and proof that I have no idea what I'm doing....

A year ago I didn't know how to cover a cake with sugarpaste. I had never really worked with it at all apart from an extremely poor attempt at making a football themed 21st birthday cake for my boyfriend! So I've very much taught myself as I go along, as much out of necessity as anything. This process occasionally involves me discovering that I'm 'doing it all wrong'!

Gluten-free Red Velvet

My baby sister turned 18 last month - something that was very scary and made me feel rather old! I wanted to make her a special birthday cake so decided to attempt my first tiered cake. It needed to be gluten free so I turned to my trusty red velvet recipe - a wheat-free variation of the Hummingbird classic. This recipe made a deep 8" cake, a regular 6" and mini cupcakes.
Gluten-free Red Velvet Cake Batter:

375g caster sugar

950g margarine

6 eggs

1 tbsp vanilla essence

3 tbsp red food colouring

65g cocoa powder

750ml

950g gluten free flour

1 tsp xantham gum

1 tbsp bicarbomate of soda

1 tbsp salt

3 tbsp white wine vinegar

Cream the sugar and margarine until light and fluffy. Beat in three eggs until well mixed and then add the other three and mix well. Mix in the vanilla, red food colouring and cocoa powder and scraoe the sidesto make sure you don't ose any cocoa powder! Alternate adding the milk and flour until it is all mixed in. Add the bicarb, salt, xantham gum and white wine vinegar and beat the btter until smoot, making sure there are no lumps stuck to the bottom of the bowl.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

900g icing sugar

150g butter

350g cream cheese

Beat the ingredients together until smooth and will spread easily.

In terms of the decoration, there was no obvious theme so I wanted to work with the colour of the cake and use bright colours to create a fun and slightly kitsch look.

Baked and decorated, the main challenge with this cake was the transportation from St. Albans to Brixton, keeping it safe and away from 'tasters' overnight and then up to North London. But after two trains, two tubes and two very achey arms the cake arrived safely at my parents house in time for a birthday barbecue.

Happy Birthday!

I have a few blog posts in the pipeline but have been far too busy eating, drinking and generally enjoying being the birthday girl to do anything productive!

So for now I will leave you with a guest blog post over at Cakes for Dorothy, another baking blog which is written by Emma...

http://cakesfordorothy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/guest-blogger-mixing-bowls-cookie-dough.html

Let them eat brioche!

I love baking bread. I also love eating bread. To be honest I'm an all round bread lover!
Despite this I am definitely a beginner when it comes to bread baking mainly due to time constraints - I may have time to whack together a dough but leave it to prove, knock it back, prove again and THEN bake...?

When I do get the time however, I love to organise a day around baking (and then eating) some doughy treats. So with a lazy Monday ahead of me, out came my baking hat and Paul Hollywood's '100 Great Breads'. I decided to make Brioche Tetes mainly to see whether I could and the prospect of freshly baked brioche was very exciting!

The recipe was very easy to follow and I was pleased with the results (I have had mixed success with bread so I had my fingers crossed!). They didn't rise as much as I expected in the proving stage and turned out rather wonky but they smelt amazing when they came out of the oven and tasted delicious.

Although the dough does need to be left overnight, the first stage doesn't take long at all so I mixed the dough in the evening and finished it off the next day so it needn't take up too much time. Just try it. Go on...!

Recipe

375g strong white bread flour

40g caster sugar

15g yeast

1 tsp salt

75ml milk

3 eggs

185g softened butter

Mix the flour, sugar, yeast, salt, milk and eggs by hand for about 8 minutes until it's a smooth dough (or 5 minutes in a food processor). Add the butter to the dough and mix for a further 10 minutes (or 5 minutes in a food processor). Put the dough in a bowl, cover and leave in the fridge overnight. 

In the morning the dough is easy to work with, break it into 75g pieces and shape each pieces into a larger and a smaller ball. Put the larger balls in the muffin case and push the smaller balls onto them. Leave to rise in a warm place or 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 200C, brush the dough with eggwash and bake for 15 minutes until golden. Leave to cool on a wire rack.