Vintage china

I've been to the auction this week as I needed to stock up my etsy shop.  My usual competition for china wasn't there so I came home with quite a lot.

Sometimes it's sad to see peoples belongings,  collected over a lifetime,  relegated to a tray at an auction sale.  On the other hand I imagine elegant dining and tea parties using beautiful china ..... Ayr is much more glamorous than it appears to be on the surface!

And it comes in all different shapes and sizes - Some pieces have obviously been lovingly used , others are so pristine I imagine they have only been admired through the doors of some equally fancy display cabinet.  It's a good job I don't have one of those as this would be my tendancy!  ...... I could see myself getting seriously obsessed with collecting some of these beautiful things.

So here's a sample of some of the vintage china that is temporarily staying at my house.

This one is so perfect, I can't imagine it's ever been let out of the display cupboard.

Lovingly used shabby chic look!

Doesn't get more elegant than this .....

Or this!

And these teeny tiny coffee cups are so cute.

Chocolate chip and vanilla marble cake

Did I say already, I really love doing the weekly bake challenge, it's nice to be told what to do for a change and not have to make ALL the decisions.  Thank you Weekly Bake-off.

Tray-bakes are not new to me I make them a lot, they are really handy for feeding lots of kids or kids over a few days.  I don't generally buy biscuits or cakes .... only in emergencies! or the 25p pack of reduced chocolate digestives I bought last week!  so the kids need something to put in their packed lunch and something for after school.  sometimes they even have some after diner.  Now you may raise your eyebrows at 3 pieces of cake a day, but if you are aware of the phenomenal amount of sugar in the average child's diet - 3 pieces of cake is a drop in the ocean -  I don't buy cereal so my kids don't start the day with cardboard covered in sugar.  Any way - I digress!

Back to tray-bakes, heres the recipe.  In my Mary berry baking bible it's page 251.

225g butter
225g caster sugar
275g self raising flour
2 level tsp baking powder
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 level Tblsp cocoa powder
2 Tblsp  hot water
50g plain chocolate chips

Pre heat the oven to 180C, grease and line a 30x23cm baking tin.

Measure all the ingredients except the cocoa, hot water  and choco chips into a bowl and beat until combined.

Spoon half the mixture into the prepared tin, dotting the spoonfuls apart.

In a small bowl blend the cocoa powder  and hot water to a smooth paste and add to the remaining mixture along with the chocolate chips.  Spread in between the plain cake to fill the gaps.

Bake in a preheated oven until the cake has risen and is firm.  leave to cool in the tin.

To decorate, separately melt 50g of white and 50g dark chocolate (39%)  drizzle over the top once the cake is cool

and here it is nicely cut up on a plate

Now you may or may not be saying ...thats a nicely risen cake ... and I was thinking that myself :)  Many of Mary berry's cakes are made using the method described above ie,  everything in a bowl and whisk.  I was taught the long version, beat butter, sugar .... gradually add eggs to prevent curdling.  I have noticed that many of the cakes in the weekly challenge have been well risen ... not mine!  and so this time I did it the traditional way and my cake is much lighter and fluffy.  It's obviously the way that works for me.  Having said all that, the kids didn't notice and i'm sure no one else will.  

It was a very tasty cake!  

Royal icing

last week we made our fruit cake this week we made the royal icing for it. The teacher doesn't believe in electric whisks,  he reckons not enough air is incorporated and that the clash of metal (bowl to electric whisk) will give the icing a metalic flavour .... blah blah .... at home, i'll be doing it with a whisk! ..... an electric one

This is the recipe we used.

100g icing sugar,
3 egg whites
10ml glycerine
1tsp lemon juice

Beat the egg whites and sugar until smooth.  Add the glyerine and lemon juice and continue beating until thickened.   You'll know when it's thick enough when you pipe a line between two open fingers and the unsupported line doesn't break.

An hour's hand whisking is not a pleasant experience ....It was painful, one poor girl still hadn't got hers to thicken by the end of the lesson.

We stored the icing in a plastic container,  covering it with 2 layers of cling film and a lid.  Once you've excluded all the air and the icing will keep for a couple of weeks.

We kept some back for experimenting with colouring.  It's best to use the pastes as water based colours will water it down and it'll loose some of that hard earned stiffness.  Christmas Red didn't seem to work very well.  Some in the group had tried to colour larger amounts of icing and got hot pink! which just got hotter the more colour they put in....

My fruit cake has been resting at home becoming nice and moist in it's wrapping.  To add to the flavour and moistness we have generously brushed the outside with brandy.  Next week I'll need to take it to the lesson as we'll be covering it with marzipan.  Until then ..... happy baking.x

Weekly bake off - Apple and cinnamon cake.

Sunday is a good day for baking and that was my plan,  that was my first mistake .... making a plan.    I forgot about the clock thing and was up at 5.30!  Once daylight arrived and and everyone else emerged,  it was looking like a lovely day so I spent the morning gardening.   I came in at lunchtime to drop hubby at the station and get going with my cake.  hubby dropped and cooking apples purchased i headed home to do the cake.  son was waiting on the doorstep to turn me back round ... there was a problem with the train and back I went to drive hubby to glasgow airport - 2 hours later I was able to finally get going on the cake,  at this stage I was quite tired but there was no turning back, my brood had been promised Mary Berry's apple and cinnamon cake.  You can get the recipe on  Amy's blog (and  while you're there take a look at what the weekly bake off is all about).

Heres the first layer with the grated apple,

All in the tin!

And in the oven .... I put it in the oven and then remembered I was supposed to sprinkle nuts and sugar.....oopsy

The finished cake, partially cooled because middle daughter couldn't wait

and sliced 

It does taste very yummy, but then you can't really go wrong with apple and cinnamon, it's such a perfect combination.

Strathaven Ethical fair.

On saturday I took my fair trade goodies to a fair at Strathaven Academy. It was very poorly attended so I didn't sell much ..... which is always a bit disappointing! .  But,  I love going to their events as they are very supportive of fair trade and don't charge a stall fee .... so even if you don't sell anything  it's essentially a great opportunity to sit and chat with other fair traders and the lovely ladies who run the event.

As usual I spent nearly as much as I earned and came away with some wrapping paper from Neema fair trade and ethical gifts.  This paper is gorgeous and i'm not sure if I'll be able to cut it up for wrapping.  I may have to save it for crafting.

  A beautiful handmade basket from Rwanda

and a tea towel from India.  I love this pattern.  We have a picture in a similar style, clay painting from Gujerat.

These traders will be at the Kyle Academy Fair trade christmas fair, so if you also like what you see, I'll be putting out some more information soon.

Weekly bake off callenge

I recently came accross Amy's weekly bake off challenge and decided to give it ago, I like the idea of baking with people sharing disasters, triumphs and tips.

The challenge aims to bake its way through all the recipes in mary berrys 100 bakes and cakes. I don't have that book, but do have her Baking Bible hopefully that will suffice! I've arrived on the scene a bit late, they are already on bake 9 luckily, still 91 to go! 

So the bake this week is Raspberry meringue roulade, page 360 in my book.    I had similar problems to Amy, the roulade seemed to be buring with the temperatures and times given.  I turned to oven to bottom heat only and that seemed to help.  It would be useful if cookery books said something about the different oven option!

Here it is out of the oven

and turned on it's back

and the finished roulade

As it was all puffing up in the oven, I did wonder how I was going to roll it, but with a little poking and prodding, it came out ok in the end.

Like amy, I used frozen raspberry's and combined with the whipping cream,  the inside is a bit sloppy.  Next time I think I'll try whipped double cream and fresh raspberry's.

As an update to a previous blog on the GBBO technical challenges .... the pork pies were not a huge success, the pastry was really difficult and did't come out of the tin easily.   So ...... full of holes I didn't get to do the jelly thing.  Next time!  However, it's not all bad, they did taste absolutely delicious.

Great British bake off and the technical challenges

Love it or not bothered about it the Great british bake off has a lot of people talking, baking and blogging!   I personally have found it fab and really enjoy trying out some of the technical challenges.  It's not always possible to fit some of these tricky bakes into a busy family life.   They can be quite time consuming and things I wouldn't normally bother with, but the programme has the effect of encouraging you to indulge yourself and find the time to take on the challenges.

I've successfully made lemon tart before and also the odd Focaccia ..... but I can see from GBBO that the Foccaia in particular could be so much nicer and so will try that again.    So thats another reason I like the programme, us amateurs love to try something new,  but we also like to try and do it better.  We don't mind if it doesn't turn out exactly as the professionals say it should, but we've tried, are always appreciated for our effort and highly praised on the occasion it all goes to plan.

Here are a few of my technical challenges

The first one I tried was battenburg.  I didn't use the recipe from the show but  from Mary Berry's book

Next I tried macaroons - This effort, I am sad to say was a complete disaster.   My daughter was very taken by the very pretty ones made by all the contestants and so had been particuarly keen for me to try this.  We scrapped them off the baking parchment, filled them with cream and they tasted delicious,

I'm not sure what I did wrong but that recipe is on the back burner for another day.  

I then tried Iced buns .....OMG, they were so delicious and are definately on the family favourites list.  

Next I tried Sachertorte 

The cake and it's shape were the business but the icing didn't quite come right.  Since watching Mary's masterclass ... perhaps it was overheated.  I also made the mistake of using cooking 70% dark chocolate, which made the icing a wee bit bitter .... thats important because otherwise my chief cake eaters leave it all to me and thats not good!

Going to try Pork pies tomorrow, so watch this space.