Mid-week Moment

by Kirsty @ Bake Good Posted on September 25, 2013

mm5

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1. Gallery Walls - Need my own flat so I can create a wall like this.

2. Autumn - By far my favourite season, everything looks so pretty and it includes my birthday! (this Saturday, yay!)

3. Chocolate Babka - This looks perfect for my continuing journey into bread baking.

4. American Apparel hoodies - It’s probably been about six years since I last bought anything from American Apparel, mostly because I’m not that cool (or rich) but you can’t beat their hoodies, especially when they are fresh and super soft. Sadly I discovered I’ve gone up a size since I last shopped there.

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Apple and Sultana Focaccia

by Kirsty @ Bake Good Posted on September 24, 2013

Bread again!

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I always really enjoy making bread, or yeast based recipes I should say, even though I don’t make them very often. It’s always a bit of an experiment because of my lack of confidence and familiarity with bread techniques. It’s getting there though, practice makes perfect as they say!

One of my main problems is that I don’t stick to the basics enough. The best advice would be to start with a simple recipe, perfect it, and then start to play around with the flavours. Sometimes there just not enough time for all that and you just want to dive right in to combining two recipes with a dash of your own ideas.

Sometimes this is a disaster. Sometimes this is a success.

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Now, perhaps if this focaccia recipe was presented to Paul Hollywood he would not be handing out any star baker accolades (sorry, I just finished watching the Bake Off) , but I thoroughly enjoy it. The bread has a slightly crispy exterior with a spicy, fruity, chewy interior and the maple glaze adds a perfect extra sweetness. It equally makes a great breakfast and bedtime snack served cold or warmed in the oven.
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Carrot Cake

by Kirsty @ Bake Good Posted on September 22, 2013

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I’ve talked before about building up a base of classic recipes to have in my back pocket to pull out at a moment’s notice. Tried and tested recipes that I can almost do with no recipe and with simple store cupboard ingredients. Last time around it was scones, which reminds me that I need to work on scones recipes and expand my repertoire!

Carrot cake definitely falls in to this category. In almost every cafe, coffee shop or tea room some form of carrot cake can be found. Useful for its flexibility of form, it will work as a tray bake, a loaf or a sandwich cake the carrot cake is ever popular. The only problem is there is always a vast range of quality, or perhaps it’s just what certain people decide is the perfect formula.

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For me, the perfect carrot cake should be moist, spicy and nutty with light as a feather, creamy frosting on top. The worst offenders in the bad carrot cake category (try saying that more than once!) are dry sponge and crispy frosting, it also makes me sad if the frosting is too cheesy – not good.

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The sponge portion of this particular recipe is from a Mary Berry cookbook and unusually contains mashed banana in the batter. The banana does impart a recognisable flavour but it also helps the cake retain moisture. Contrary to what I’ve said above, this perhaps is not a classic carrot cake however it is an excellent revision and is surely super healthy*, I mean it contains not only a fruit but a vegetable too!

* This completely false, this cake is extremely tasty but sadly not at all healthy.
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Snickerdoodles

by Kirsty @ Bake Good Posted on September 12, 2013

We are heading straight in to the midst of autumn. The leaves are falling, the days are getting colder and the heating is going on. Many are mourning the loss of what was a delightful summer, and don’t get me wrong I loved summer, but autumn is my favourite season so I’m delighted.

The three main reasons for my enjoyment of this time of year are my birthday (two weeks on Saturday!), crisp, multi-coloured leaves and being able to use warming flavours and spices in my baking!

Pies, crumbles and pumpkin recipes will most definitely be coming this way over the next few months but today I’m starting with something simple. Snickerdoodles. An amusingly named American simple biscuit. I’ve often seen these biscuits online and in recipe books but never made or tasted them before.

Snickerdoodles are slightly crispy on the outside, light and fluffy on the inside with a delicate cinnamon flavour. These biscuits have freshly grated nutmeg and cinnamon inside and are rolled in cinnamon sugar before being baked.
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Mid-week Moment

by Kirsty @ Bake Good Posted on September 11, 2013

So this week instead of four small things that make me smile, I have one giant thing that has made me ecstatic!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d been selected in the top 6 of the Border Biscuit Big Baking Bonanza, well the winner has been announced.

Yup, my chocolate, fudge and peanut cookies won!! That ridiculously cheesy picture is proof. You can read the Border Biscuits feature here.

I’ve actually known for a couple of weeks so it has been such a nightmare trying to keep the secret from everyone (my work colleagues can’t quite believe how good I am at lying), I’m so glad I can finally let everyone know.

I was in work when the phone call came through from Border Biscuits letting me know the great news, cue me getting very excited and raising a few suspicions in my office about the result. The following week I was invited to the factory in Lanark for a photoshoot with James Morton from last years Great British Bake Off, who was very lovely, to show off my very own biscuits, in their very own box! Whilst there, the head recipe developer Nicola gave me a tour of the factory which was really interesting and smelled AMAZING. I was in the huge room where they have a conveyor belt of Chocolate Gingers in production, complete with molten chocolate in pipes above your head. It was pretty much a biscuit lovers dream.

The last two days have been surreal and exciting. Borders released the news to the press on Tuesday morning, after which I had two radio interviews (Real Radio and MFR) and phone interviews with The Inverness Courier and STV. The story was also featured in today’s Scottish Daily Mail and The Highland News (readers of which must be seriously sick of me by now!)

So, the cookies should be going on sale at the end of October, I will no doubt be posting more about them between now and then. Now I’m off to plot what to spend my £2000 winnings on!

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