Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies, not to be mistaken with the previous Double Chocolate Cookies.
These ones were made with egg, whereas the others were made with condensed milk.
Again, these were simple to make, although the recipe did require the egg to be mixed in slowly to the butter and sugar. My experience of this is that it usually curdles, but not today!
The cookies only took 10 mins to cook, and were slightly chewy.  As you can see, some of the cookies were more well done than others, but I hid those ones underneath! Isn't that what they do on the British Bake Off?! Also, Mary said it made about 20, but we only made 16. So far, I find Mary to be quite optimistic about portions - or maybe we are just greedy!
Score 8.0

Chocolate Victoria Sandwich

Well, I did bake, and not just one, but two recipes!
It was rather a case of which ingredients I had in the cupboard.
This chocolate victoria sandwich cake was fairly straight forward.
It had a nice texture, and was quite light, but we felt it lacked enough chocolaty flavour. As a result of this, it only scored 7.5 in our house.
Thankfully, there were others close at hand (naming no names) who thought it was delicious, so we were able to share generously!

Sponge Christening Cake

 This week, it was my lovely Nan's 96th Birthday, and I had the privilege of baking her a cake.
I had a good look through the book and decided to bake this sponge cake with lemon curd and cream filling.
This recipe was probably the most complicated one that I have done so far, but thanks to Mary's clear instructions, I got there.
The recipe required me to  whisk the eggs and sugar over a bowl of hot water until creamy and thick. This took a lot longer than I had expected. Probably about 10 minutes - my arm ached by the end!
It was worth the extra effort, as the sponge was light and delicious. My Nan loved it, which was the most important thing. It received a score of 9.5, my highest yet!
I have not done any baking since Tuesday - my longest break so far, so I am beginning to wonder whether I've got time to bake something for Sunday tea. Watch this space.....
p.s Apologies to my regular testers, but the cake was demolished by family!

Double Chocolate Cookies

I made these last Monday, but have only just got round to posting them.
As you may remember, we had a lot of snow last Sunday, so on Monday morning, the kids lined up to hear whether their schools were going to be open. It was bad news for all the boys - they would have to trudge through the snow, but good news for Ellie.
We decided, that as it was cold outside, we would bake!!
These cookies were very simple to make, and didn't take long. You have to leave the mixture to chill before making the biscuits, but it didn't take long - probably about 15 mins.
In Mary's book it says not to overcook the cookies. Unfortunately I was rather distracted at the time, and so what did we do? Thats right, we overcooked them! Still, they were not burned, just well done, and more crunchy than they should have been.
They received a score of 8.0, and were obviously popular with the kids, because they did not last long - nor did Ellies time off school. Much to the relief of her brothers, she was back on Tuesday!

Lemon Drizzle Traybake

Yum!
As the battenburg didn't seem to last long, and as we have friends coming round, I thought it would be a good idea to bake this lemon drizzle traybake.
As is becoming quite common, I didn't have the right tray. Apparently you need a 12 x 9 inch  traybake. Actually, I think I need to buy one of these as there are several recipes that need one this size.
I had something smaller which was quite shallow, and meant that the mixture ballooned a bit over the sides. However, it did not matter - I just cut the extra bits off. They were good for doing a taste test on.
The taste test gave it 8.5
This recipe is easy and tastes lovely. It cuts into quite a lot of pieces, so hopefully this will last longer than the battenburg!

Battenburg

First of all, don't laugh. My husband took this photo of my battenburg alongside Mary's one in the book. He thought it would be good to compare them!
No, I didn't use green food colouring, it was red, and no, it wasn't past its sell by date, I bought it this morning!
Having made the sponge mixture, I divided it into two parts, and added red food colouring to one part. Mary said to use a few drops. This did not seem to do much, so I added some more. The colour still didn't look that great, but more lilac than green! I was worried that if I put more colouring in, it would change the consistency of the sponge, so I left it at that. I reassured myself that the colour would become more vibrant on cooking - Wrong!!
What a disappointment!
Having said that, I was told by my family, that as long as you eat it with your eyes closed, it gets 8.0.
It certainly can't be that bad, because its all gone!

Cupcakes

 A good friend of mine asked me to make some cupcakes for her daughter's birthday so on Friday I made these cakes from Mary Berry's book.
I have to say that although I used the recipe, I used more mixture than Mary suggested in the cupcakes in order to make large ones - she says it makes 12, but I would say it only makes 8 large ones. It would be fine if you had the smaller cases. Also I had to double the quantity of icing in order to have enough to ice them like this. I did put some Asda edible glitter on them, but was rather disappointed as it didn't show up much.
We of course, still did a taste test, and they recieved 9.0 from our family, however what was most important was that the birthday girl liked them, which I hear she did!