I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.

Julia Child

Julia Child, one of a few chefs I truly aspire to be like. Not only was she strong-willed and talented, but she was also a regular person who loved food - just like you and me, and who decided to make her passion into a hobby which then turned into her profession...so far I have 2 of those down and am working on the third and final one ;)

I think it's safe to say she made a lot people (I won't say just women) really get back into cooking and truly think of what they're eating. I once heard someone say 'If it wasn't for her, I think american cuisine would consist of mash potato and hot dogs'. I can't remember who said this but I have to say I think they may be right.

As many of you probably know, today marks what would have been Julia Child 100th birthday. So in honour of this (and, let's face it, it's as good as any excuse to bake) I went into my kitchen hoping to be inspired to create something maybe Julia would have like.

This normally wouldn't have been as difficult as it was today...I open my cupboards only to realise I've nearly run out of caster sugar, vanilla extract and chocolate! Oh dear! I also didn't have many other options, basically all I had was flour (plain, whole wheat and self-raising), eggs, brown sugar, milk, home-made chocolate chunks (that were incredibly soft even after freezing - must rectify this in the next attempt!), canola oil and butter. Not very conducive to creativity. Still, in true Julia style, I didn't let this deter me.

I had initially planned to bake one of Julia's own amazing recipes but with this lack of ingredients that was definitely out.

So what else is left to do but try and make a basic recipe a little more fun?

I decided to make a basic biscuit/cookie recipe and add my home-made chocolate chunks. Deliciously simple, right? WRONG! Because of my chocolate chunks being slightly softer than commercially bought ones they didn't stand up to the test of the Israeli heat and humidity. Just taking some out of the freezer, putting them straight in my cookie dough and returning the rest to the freezer (and as mentioned before, our flat isn't big so all this takes place in about 6 steps/1 minute give or take a bit) made them melt...completely!!! I tried to quickly rescue any remaining solids and mix them in but unfortunately my chocolate chip cookie idea now became a chocolate marbled cookie mix.

C'est la vie as Julia might say. Chin up and carry on (or if you prefer "Chin up, boobs out, it's showtime!" in the words of another favourite of mine - Debbie Reynolds).

So it came to pass that my wonderful idea of giving Julia the birthday celebratory baked goods that she deserved ended up a poor woman's attempt at cookies that just look as boring as they taste. In my defence, they taste good...but for an everyday cookie - not for a celebration of such magnitude!

[caption id="attachment_401" align="aligncenter" width="300"] My sad attempt at honouring Julia today[/caption]

 

So, my final words are an apology, to Julia, for this embarrassing creation and to say Happy Birthday Julia, we all wish you were still with us guiding us through the maze that is cooking and baking but your wise words and legacy will forever be close to our hearts (and stomachs!).

So, in true Julia style I will close with simply saying - Bon Appetit!

 

P.S. If you would like to see a unique inside about Julia, head on over to Sheryl Julian’s dinners with Julia article on The Boston Globe's website, it's a good read.

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The trouble with a baking addiction is...

It's an addiction... and addiction is something I should know something about.

Keith Richards

I am, totally, unequivocally, absolutely a baking addict. It started when I was pretty young and has just got stronger as time goes by.

I first started out, like most people, being taught how to bake by my mum. She used to bake so much! Cakes, pies, yorkshire puddings, biscuits, breads etc etc. Anything she could bake at home, she would. I love this about her and have carried it on, not only does it save you a lot of money (sometimes!) but also it tastes better and is so much fun.
When I first started I wasn't very good - no surprise there. It took me some time to get used to the baking terms and ingredients (and I'm still always learning) but I got the handle on it eventually. So I started trying more and more difficult recipes and that progressed into me starting to create my own recipes.

The thing about this addiction, like any other, is it can be debilitating. For instance, when you're not selling your creations (as I am currently unable to, not through lack of trying but location) you're spending money but not getting anything back. Sure you're making lovely biscuits and desserts but all you get out of that is holes in your teeth and a wider waistline every day.

The other thing is saturation - with this I mean you still love the process of baking, the weighing of ingredients, mixing, folding, sieving etc, but the end result loses more and more of the excitement it once held. You want the process without the outcome or the resulting food that needs to be eaten. Also, tied in with this part of the problem is saturating your friends and family...there's only so many people you see regularly enough to give your baked goods to and they can only enjoy them for so long too.

Today was hard for me to resist baking some more biscuits (my own recipe) as I'd baked peach cupcakes only last night...it's only because the peaches were turning bad....I promise that was the reason ;)

So what did I do instead? Sadly, the answer is nothing. I sat in front of my laptop and played silly Facebook games, talked to a couple of friends back in the UK and tried to waste the hours until I can go to sleep. It's not a great way to spend a day and half of me feels worse for doing it...as if sitting here and avoiding the kitchen has made me more unhealthy and lazy - totally guilt ridden.

It's still too early (and too hot) to go to sleep, so now what do I do? To that, I have no answer but I thought sharing this and the physical act of typing it might take up some time and bring a solution possibly.

The conclusion for this post is - I'm still working on it. I even got fed up with writing my recipe book, I love to type but sometimes there's nothing that'll satisfy you other than doing exactly what you want. Right now I can't do or have anything I want - food, baking and cigarettes - so needless to say, life is annoying lately.

Anyone else have a baking addiction? Or anything similar? How do you deal with it?

Happy baking to anyone able to bake today :)

A really depressing development

It's 2:17am here, I'm too hot to sleep and I'm trying to keep my mind off of wanting a cigarette or those nice biscuits I baked earlier that are sitting in the fridge.

So, what do you do in these times? Trawl the internet of course! After all, isn't that what it's for?

As I do so I keep returning to food and baking sites (I did try to be all organised and started looking into wedding prep but to no avail) along with some awesome blogs about these subjects and I realise a recurring, but utterly depressing theme - stealing of others stuff. Or should I say, people reporting when people's things have been stolen. Then I come across a recipe of mine which I posted a few weeks ago...on someone else's blog and they're claiming it to be theirs! Of course, this has upset me quite a bit, I created this recipe, I took the time, effort (and the calories to my hips) and used my knowledge to make it work and someone else goes and nicks it.

I've been warned a few times of putting up my creations, especially since I'm working on my own recipe book but I didn't want to listen or believe people could be so devilish.

I love making these new creations, and when I add them to this blog I love seeing the response I get from them...but this has really darkened the joy I find in it all. I have no other option than to protect myself feeling like this again, so I will be taking down all my own recipes from this blog and won't be sharing anymore (until I finish my recipe book).

I will, however, still be posting classic recipes that I use constantly (or ones I have tweaked) and recipes I try for the first time from other sources.

I hope you can all understand this decision, and still find my blog interesting and useful.

But let's not dwell on such dark things or pathetic people, let's look on the bright side - this is a very good reason for me to try out other classic recipes and post the results and mouth-watering photos here for you all to enjoy and recreate yourselves!

As always, happy baking...

Red velvet cupcakes

 

Friendship is Sharing a Sweet Cupcake.

Marie Williams Johnstone

An American friend of mine gave me this recipe about 9 years ago and only last year did I manage to get round to baking it. It's quite popular that side of the pond and once you've baked this, had the aroma fill your kitchen and dipped your finger in the wonderful cream cheese frosting you'll realise why!

Ingredients:

310g plain flour
45g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
225g butter (or margarine), softened
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
230g sour cream
120ml milk
28g red food colouring
2 tsps Vanilla Extract

For the Cream Cheese Frosting:
224g cream cheese, softened
55g butter, softened
30g sour cream
2 tsps Vanilla Extract
450g icing sugar

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees.

2. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Beat the butter/margarine and sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy.

4. Beat in your eggs, one at a time.

5. Now mix in the sour cream, vanilla, milk, and the food colouring.

6. Gradually add to the flour mixture, beating until just mixed together, make sure not to over do it!

7. Spoon batter into 30 paper-lined cupcake cups, filling each cup 2/3 full.

8. Bake for about 20-25 minutes or until springy and a toothpick comes out clean.

9. Leave to cool in the pan for a couple of minutes, then remove (leaving them in their paper cases) to a wire rack for about 5 minutes.

10. Now remove from their cases to cool completely.

11. For the frosting: Beat the cream cheese, butter, sour cream and the vanilla extract in large bowl until light and fluffy. Slowly and gradually beat in the icing sugar until smooth.

12. Top with the cream cheese frosting.

Enjoy and I hope to see your versions of these soon

Happy baking!

 

Gorgeous Custard Creams recipe!

 

I don't think anyone can say no to these little naughty treats once they've tried them, I know I'm a total addict!

This is exactly why I had to hunt for a recipe to make them at home. Let's face it, if you love to bake and love any certain baked product then of course you're going to have to find out how they're made!!!!

So here's the recipe I used (from the BBC Good Food website with some tweaking by myself)

Ingredients:

For the biscuit:
100g margarine/butter
100g flour
50g caster sugar
50g custard powder
few drops of vanilla essence
For the filling:
150g icing sugar
75g margarine/butter
20g custard powder

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c-200c

2. Cream sugar and margarine, then fold in your flour, custard powder and vanilla essence until the dough is firm and roll-able.

3. Lightly flour a clean surface and roll out the dough to roughly 1/2 cm thickness. Then cut out with a cookie cutter, making sure to have an equal amount of cut outs.

4. Place shapes on a baking tray covered in grease proof paper (or lightly greased and floured), ensuring that one of each pair is put on upside down (i.e. flipped over, rather than rotated).

5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

6. Remove from the oven, don't remove from the tray for a few minutes as they'll be very soft. Then cool on a wire rack.

7. Now mix the icing sugar and margarine until smooth, then add the custard powder.

8. Fill the custard creams once they are cool. Place a bit on the bottom (i.e. non-smooth side) of one biscuit, then put the bottom of the first biscuit's pair onto this. Don't force together as this'll just make the filling spill out.

Let me know how this works for you

Happy baking!

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Basic biscuit dough recipe

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="300"] (Photo credit: Wikipedia)[/caption]

This is a great little recipe to keep handy as you can adapt it completely to whatever type or flavor of biscuit you'd like.

Ingredients

250g butter, softened
140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour

Method

1. Mix the softened butter and caster sugar in a large bowl with a wooden spoon.

2. Add the egg yolk and the vanilla extract and briefly beat to combine.

3. Sift your plain flour and stir until the mixture is well combined, if it's not coming together, this is your chance to get all sticky and dirty just like when you were a kid! Put your hands in there and give it all a good mix and press the dough together firmly.

Note: Now, you'll notice I didn't give an oven temperature or time, this is because it all depends on what you add onto this basic recipe...for that your imagination is the limit! I usually say about 150c-170c is a good basis for about 10-15 minutes.

Let me see and know about your concoctions :)

Happy baking!

Related articles

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I haven't had the time to plan returning to the scene because I haven't left it.

Mick Jagger

I have to start this post off with an apology. I know I have been absent from my blog and all of you (if anyone is truly out there).

This isn't because I've lost my passion for baking, writing this blog, or sharing things with you all. Mainly it's because I wasn't well and have been crazy busy planning for my trip back to the U.K. as well.

Of course I'm totally excited about going back, seeing my family and friends (and maybe baking a thing or two while I'm there!) but this won't mean I will neglect this blog :)

So I'm sorry for not providing more tasty recipes for you all but I'm back on par now and will make up for this lack of attention by giving you 3 new recipes today! How does that sound?

Also, I want to ask opinions, should I add to this blog savory baking recipes? Such as quiches, pies, pastries and breads?

Let me know what you think,

Happy baking!