Bake it like Berry - A few summer bakes

Firstly, thank you for all your comments and messages about where you are from. David is delighted to find such a wide range of places coming up. He is even excited to look up where those of you closer to us here are too. I'll post his map with the pins on it next week.

Moving on for now though.

Bake it like Berry took another bit of a backseat over the summer. That's not to say that there wasn't any baking from the Baking Bible going on, just not many new recipes.

Starting with the most recent bakes, here are the latest new recipes from the book that I have tried out.

Banana & Chocolate Chip Oat Slice.

This is the first time I've been less than happy with a Mary Berry recipe. I know, I can hardly believe I just said that! The recipe asks you to rub the margarine into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs but the ratio of margarine to flour is such that there is no way that it will ever resemble breadcrumbs. More like a dough texture! Perhaps it was a typo though, and with an extra 3 oz of flour it looked more like it should.

I adapted this to make it dairy & wheat free, and Calum loves it. Next time I might actually put the choc chips in the middle layer with the banana though, as they tend to fall off the top.

Traditional Apple Pie

I made this a couple of weeks ago with our freshly picked apples. Normally when I make apple pie I have a pastry layer at the bottom but in this recipe there is only pastry on the top. that's one way of avoiding a soggy bottom I suppose! The next recipe in the book after this one is for a slightly different apple pie, and that one does use a pastry base.

Chocolate Crispie Cakes

These are in the chapter for baking with children and so Alasdair (5) tried them out. After I had melted his dairy free chocolate for him, and helped him weigh out the ingredients he managed to make the rest by himself. He was rather pleased with the results!

Lemon Drizzle Traybake

There are a few different Lemon cake recipes in the Baking Bible and so far each one I have tried has been equally good! 

Malt Fruit Loaf

This was the first time I had made a cake using malt extract. It made a slightly sticky cake that was full of flavour. David (8) really loved this cake and has been asking when I will be making it again!

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Baking like Berry

There wasn't much time for my Bake it like Berry challenge this week.

 

That's because the boys' school were holding a Spring Fair on Friday afternoon and I was organising the afternoon teas. We sent a request out to all the parents for donations of traybakes and cakes, but two of the other mums and myself volunteered to bake all the scones.

 

I did more than just scones though because you never really know how many donations you will get!

 

On Wednesday afternoon, while Fraser napped or the other boys entertained him, I made (from left to right below): 2 dozen free from cupcakes (these were actually more to keep at home than take with us), a rocky road Traybake, a mint aero Traybake, 2 dozen butterfly cakes (seen here before being turned into butterflies) and 2 dozen mini cupcakes.

 

On Thursday I made 2 dozen scones and a dozen treacle scones.

 

 

 

And finally, this cake for the Bake Off competition at the fair.

 

It was based on the Lemon cake I made last week from Mary's Baking Bible. Only this time I made it in round sandwich tins rather than the square tin. I sliced the two halves of cake in half again to make four layers and then layered them together with a lemon mascarpone icing. I left the assembly of it until I got to the school as I didn't think it would survive the journey in buy train and bus! I had planned to make up some glacé icing with lemon juice to put on top of the cake, but I was so busy setting up the tables, putting all the donated cakes out, getting the teas ready etc that I had about 1 minute to see to my cake! So I just slapped the mascarpone icing and some lemon curd between the layers very quickly, sprinkled some icing sugar on top and finished it off with some lemon peel I had brought along.

 

 

The afternoon teas were busy, busy, busy! There were only two of us - and Fraser in the baby sling - serving, and we literally didn't stop serving tea, coffee, juice and cakes for nearly three hours! I kept thinking that surely the queue would go down soon and it never did! Still, it made a lot of money for the school funds!

 

Most of the action was taking place in the school playground and the other boys had a lovely afternoon wandering round the various stalls with their friends.

 

The school holds a Christmas Fair every year as a fundraiser but this is the first time they have run a Spring Fair, and it seemed to be a big success.

 

In the midst of the busyness, one of my friends came in and said to come with her for a minute. She took me running into the playground, where there was an auction taking place. The reason wasn't because of the auction though, but because my cake had won the competition!

 

I got this lovely hamper of goodies as my prize.

 

 

 

 

Then it was back to the teas, where we sliced up the bake off cakes to serve as well. I joked that we should charge extra for the winning cake!

 

 

And that's how this week I really was, in a way, baking like Berry!

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Bake it like Berry - Cakes and more cakes

 

Since I didn't get round to posting about last week's bakes here they are along with this week's.

 

 

The first thing I baked from the book after the last bakes I shared was Mary's Key Lime Pie, which was absolutely delicious. I made it to have for pudding one night when we had friends round and as I sat down with it I remembered I had forgotten to take a photo. 'Never mind, I'll take a photo of the leftovers afterwards,' I thought, as I didn't want to take one there at the dinner table. Later on in the evening, when we had all left the table, my husband sat down next to me and confessed that when he had been topping up the coffees in the kitchen he had also polished off the rest of the Key Lime Pie as he had enjoyed it so much!

 

I have since made the same pudding again, this time when my parents were round for dinner, and again it didn't last long! Again, no photo!

 

 

 

Next bake was this Coffee Traybake. Mary's recipe is actually for a Coffee and Walnut Traybake but I wasn't going to add the nuts for our household. I also made it gluten and dairy free and it worked perfectly. I really liked the generous quantities of coffee icing for the top of the Traybake.

 

 

 

 

One of Calum's favourite cakes is a gingerbread and so as he flicked through the Baking Bible one afternoon, he asked if we could try one of the gingerbread recipes. There are two or three of them in the book. We chose the traditional gingerbread recipe and again made it gluten and dairy free. It is a similar recipe and method to the gingerbread recipe we make (see wheat free recipes tab) but Mary adds a lot more treacle than we use. This recipe didn't ask for icing on top but Calum loves icing on gingerbread and so we added some to this one too.

 

 

 

 

The final new bake this week was this really beautiful Lemon Cake. It was so light and lemony. A perfect summer sponge cake. I took some along to our parents' craft group at the boys' school this morning and the empty tin I took home spoke for itself!

 

 

As well as these new bakes we've also made a couple more batches of those delicious chocolate cookies from the last Bake it like Berry post and another batch of the griddle scones.

 

There are so many lovely looking recipes in this book that I can hardly decide what to add to my to do list for next week!

 

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The return of Bake it like Berry

 

 

A little over a year ago I set myself the challenge of baking my way through Mary Berry's Baking Bible.

 

Only a couple of weeks after I started it I discovered I was expecting Fraser. And then the pregnancy sickness hit me! Even just the thought of cakes made me feel ill for all 9 months and so I only baked the essentials - the usual free from bakes for Calum and Alasdair.

 

I had to stop scrolling through my Pinterest feed, usually filled with lots of inspiration for yummy cakes, as even looking at cake made me feel sick!

 

I didn't want to forever associate the Baking Bible with how horrible I felt and so I postponed my challenge.

 

Those of you who followed my pregnancy updates will remember how out of character I felt by this dislike of sweet things. It wasn't new to me though, as in each pregnancy I have felt the same.

 

Now that Fraser is 6 months old, and in some sort of a routine, I'm ready to take on the challenge again. I should also add that he was more than worth every moment of that sickness.

 

So, here's what I tried out this week....

 

Firstly, some Double Chocolate Cookies.

 

These were so, so easy to make. They were so good that James (14) made up a second batch a couple of days after I had made the first.

 

 

 

Secondly was this Lemon Swiss Roll.

 

 

The recipe is actually the same as the one I use for our Jam Rolly Polly (recipe in the recipes tab above) but with some lemon zest added. I told Calum (11) that I was going to make this and asked if he wanted it made free from, as Jam Rolly Polly is one of his favourites, but he wasn't too keen on the idea of lemon! So I didn't.

 

It was a really lovely and light cake.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally I made some simple Griddle Scones.

 

 

Each weekend we have pancakes for breakfast and I always my granny's griddle for them but it was scones just like these that my granny used to make all the time.

 

 

 

Again, another simple recipe. These could easily be rustled up quickly for a last minute visitor and don't even need an egg in them.

 

They were especially good warm from the griddle and reminded me of summers at my granny's when she would bake endless batches of scones on the old stove. All that was missing was granny's homemade Rhubarb Jam!

 

 

So that's the roundup for this week. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of the kitchen this coming week!

 

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Bake it like Berry - Weeks 3 & 4

With all the extra spring cleaning over the last couple of weeks, and then this week we have had a horrible sore throat bug in the house, there hasn't been a huge amount of cake baking going on.

 

That's not to say that there hasn't been any though, and so here are the latest bakes from Mary Berry's Baking Bible.

 

~ Firstly was a nice simple Victoria Sponge, which I made gluten and dairy free.

 

I quite often make a Victoria Sponge because it is so quick and easy, and Mary's recipe is very similar to mine, as I guess most Victoria Sponge recipes are.

The main difference is that I don't usually add baking powder as I am already using self raising flour. Mary does ask for some, despite using self raising flour, and so I added it too. I think it made the cake even more light and fluffy.

 

It certainly didn't stick around on the plates for long!

 

 

 

~Secondly I made a Strawberry Pavlova. I love a pavlova but I only make it if we have visitors coming as three of the four boys can't eat egg whites. This one was for a fellowship lunch at church.

 

 

~Lastly, I made a Lemon Drizzle Traybake.

I forgot to take a close up photo of this one, and when I remembered that I needed one, the cake was gone!

That's it on the left of the blue plate below.

I didn't make any allergy changes to this recipe and the two boys who could eat it absolutely loved it. They especially loved the crunchy sugar topping. I make a Lemon Drizzle Loaf, recipe here, which also has the crunchy topping but I think as the traybake is cut into squares rather than the thin slices of a loaf, you get a lot more of the sugary crunch per slice, which made them enjoy it all the more.

 

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Bake it like Berry - Week 2

First of all, thanks for all the great suggestions for a title for my baking challenge. I put them all to the boys to choose a winner, since I'm hopeless at deciding these things for myself! As you can see from the title, Bake it like Berry was their favourite.

I've also added a new page tab at the top to keep track of my progress. 

I only managed to try two recipes from the book this week, as there was also Pancake Making and Valentine Cake making to fit in as well.

This week's bakes were:

~ Chocolate Swiss Roll.

I made this with gluten free flour, which makes it a bit trickier to roll as gluten free cakes are always a bit more crumbly. Still, I rather like the rugged, slightly cracked look.

The recipe is very similar to my jam roly poly recipe I posted here before Christmas.

I filled it with raspberry jam and some dairy free chocolate butter-cream.

I think the empty plate answers the question as to whether or not it was a hit with the boys!

~ Scones.

I didn't make these gluten free as I haven't had much luck in the past with gluten free scones! 

We had these with jam and creme fraiche for supper one night.

I would have liked them to rise a little more, but they tasted delicious. Next time I'll just leave the dough thicker when I'm rolling them out!

I am so loving this new challenge, as are the boys' tummies!

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