Anzac Biscuits

Tuesday evenings are always really busy and we often end up having beans on toast for tea. Tonight was no exception. I tend to feel a bit guilty about this - not that beans on toast isn't healthy, and not that I don't cook proper meals the rest of the week, but it just seems a bit inadequate.

*** we interrupt this blog to make a statement  - yes, beans on toast is inadequate! But if we get cakes or biscuits, we don't mind! signed Adam n kids *** 

Thank you Ad, anyway, this feeling of guilt made me turn to the Baking Bible.
In the book, these Anzac biscuits are also known as Diggers. They are an Australian biscuit, and as Mary says, they are really easy to make. What she does not say is that they are really yummy.
She said that they made 45. I actually made 35, as I thought they seemed a bit small. They spread quite a bit, but I managed to fit them on the two trays.
They cooled very quickly, which was a good job, as I had several, clearly malnourished children - not to forget Adam, queuing up to taste them. They were very very good, and come highly recommended, especially as they get a thumbs up in the new TnT test - taste n time.  A score of 9.5 for taste, and 9.5 for time. Not sure I will give all bakes a TnT rating, but you get the idea. You must bake these, although, not if you are on a diet - I had no idea just how much saturated fat is in coconut. Oh well, if you only have beans on toast for tea, its ok!!!!
p.s we gave away a dozen to our neighbours to help share the calories around! I bet you wished you lived in our street!

Swiss Roll

I confess that I made this at 9am last Sunday morning before going to church. Actually, it only took me 30mins from start to finish, and I even managed to practise the piano while it was baking.
I already had the cream whipped - it was left over from the meringues, and it only took a very short time to fill and roll up.
Compared to the hours spent making chocolatines and mokatines, this was a dream, and was very well received by the kids at lunchtime.
It scored 8.5 for taste, but in some ways it should get more because it was so quick and easy to make. Maybe I should start a new rating of taste compared to effort. This would score highly.

Chocolatines & Mokatines

 These are not for the faint hearted! Of all the recipes that I have made, these have been the most effort, and while they were very tasty - receiving 8.0, I wanted them to be fantastic!
Although they did look pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself!
So if they were so much effort, why did I make both of them at the same time? Well, when I looked at the recipe for the chocolatines, I realised that I did not have the right size tin, and also that they only made 9 cakes. I noticed that the mokatines had the same basic sponge mixture, so thought I would make enough for both in a larger tin, and get two difficult bakes out of the way at the same time. Thankfully, I did this stage of the baking on Friday, and left the icing until Saturday morning.
The icing, now there's a story! You may think that this is just ordinary butter icing - wrong, this is "creme au beurre chocolate", translated, "very complicated chocolate icing that tastes just a bit better than ordinary butter icing, and is a nightmare to make"!
Firstly, I had to make a syrup mixture from sugar and water. Unfortunately on my first attempt, I heated it for too long, and when I added it to the egg yolks, it went completely hard, like a lump of brittle toffee. I had to abandon this and start all over again. The second time was much better, and I remembered to get the mixer going before slowly adding the syrup. Butter and chocolate were then added after that.
The decorating of the chocolatines was quite fun, although by this time I was feeling a bit stressed, especially knowing that I still had more sponge to make the mokatines with.
What I had failed to notice was that the mokatines required not one type of icing, but two. For the inside of the cakes - the bit that no one was going to see, I needed to make a ridiculously small amount of "creme au beurre moka" Help! This was to be followed by soft coffee icing which would cover the cakes.
I took a momentous decision to disobey Mary, and only make the soft coffee icing. I just couldn't face making syrup again, and decided that no one would have the first clue, or even care about what I had done! Adam says that I have "crossed the Rubicon" now!
Now, I don't tend to look at the other baking bible blog (rising to the Berry) very often, unless I am not sure how things should look, but thankfully this time I did, and learned that the recipe needed more soft icing than Mary suggested, (and especially if I was going to use it as filling as well) and also needed to be left until it went a little bit firm.
Cutting a long story short, I managed to ice them, and although they were not quite as pretty the chocolatines, the coffee ones were more popular.
The verdict was, very pretty, pretty tasty, but never again!

Basic White Meringues

Apologies that I am behind with my blogging again. Where does the time go? Anyway, last weekend, Adam and I went to a friend's 25th Wedding Anniversary party. Once again, it was a good opportunity to offer to bake, so I made these meringues, as well as the chocolatines and mokatines  - these will appear on the next post.
I used Mary's basic white meringue recipe, and piped the mini meringue shapes onto the baking parchment. It made 20, so I did two batches as I was planning to sandwich them together, and I didn't think 10 would be enough. As it turned out, one 11year old boy managed to eat 5, and no, it wasn't Ben!! They were very well received, and although dipping them in chocolate (my idea, not Mary's, well, actually something my mum used to do with her meringues) was rather a pain, and quite messy, it really did add to the taste and texture! They received a score of 9.0, and were demolished very quickly.

Strawberry Dessert Cake

I prepared this completely on Saturday and kept it in the fridge overnight. I then baked it on Sunday for lunch, and we had it warm with creme fraiche (we thought we'd be healthy and have that instead of cream!!). It was delicious, and everyone in our family liked it, although some of them  picked the flaked almonds off the top!
It was very easy to make, and I would definitely recommend it as a prepare in advance pudding.
The mixture is thicker than a usual cake mix. Half of it goes in the bottom of the tin, this is followed by quite a thick layer of freshly sliced strawberries, and then covered by the rest of the cake mix. The strawberries when cooked go lovely and soft, and almost like a jam.
Mary says it also works well with fresh sliced peaches, and is excellent with apples. Will be sure to make this one again - once I have finished baking all the other recipes in the book. 68 baked, only 150 to go!
It scored 9.0, and although it was nice cold, it was definitely better warm.

Crunchy Orange syrup loaves

On Saturday afternoon, I was about to make a banana loaf with some rather over ripe bananas - having made all the other banana recipes in the book apart from banoffee pie-  when I spotted this recipe on the opposite page. I decided that it would be better to bake something new rather than make the banana loaf again, so the kids ended up having a smoothie instead.
This recipe says to make two 1lb loaves, but I only own one 1lb tin, so I made a 21b one instead, and just baked it for longer than it said.
Mary says that these loaves "may not look madly exciting, but they are very popular and delicious". Well, not in our house. The trouble is that I think we are now getting spoiled, and have become more fussy about our cakes. This only scored 7.0, and most of it got eaten by Tom. He finished it off in his lunch box today - he's not complaining!

Very Best Scones

I managed to go 5 days without doing any baking last week, so by Saturday I was raring to go!
As it happened, Adam was helping some of our neighbours cut down a large tree in their garden, so I thought I would make some scones for the workers.
The cutter that I used was a bit small, and I managed to get 30 scones instead of 20 - still, they looked very sweet, and I was able to put 10 in the freezer.
They went down very well, and everyone thought how light they were - especially with all the cream and jam!!
I can't remember what they scored, but they were very good, so probably about 8.5