Fold in the Flour ...

The recipe for the Weekly Bake Off this week was Mary Berry's Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Loaf. Got to admit, this one was a bit of a revelation, as the recipe itself did not look very promising. No real chocolate in it, see? (You can tell I've become spoilt.) Instead, it relies on its chocolate flavour from  simply cocoa powder. I thought that, given the ingredients, it would be on the dry side. But I was wrong. It was deliciously moist, and the icing and white chocolate drizzle just added to this. Mike and I haven't had much of a look-in with this one, as Josh has somehow managed to polish off the lot himself. Just as a reminder, the Weekly Bake Off is organised by the lovely Amy, and her challenge is to bake her way through Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes , one recipe (or sometimes more) every week. There is an open invitation to join in with her and bake along. I've lost track of where we are, and I haven't been able to take part every week. But ...

It's been a great couple of weeks in the Bake Off , as Amy has chosen some fantastic chocolate recipes from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes . Although I made last week's American Chocolate Ripple Cheesecake, I didn't enter it. Not because it was a disaster (it was incredibly delicious though very rich - Josh has been able to eek it out all week as he only needs a little piece to get his daily chocolate fix!), but I simply ran out of time. So this week, I decided to get my skates on and make the bake early. Particularly as it's brownies. Yes. Brownies. Those dark, fudgey, chocolatey little bites of heaven. But for me, this week was an experiment. You see, I already have a fantastic brownie recipe . It's been made countless times and been played around with to give an endless variety of treats. (Have I ever mentioned Maya Gold in brownies? Yes? Well I'll have to post about them someday soon because they are amazing - like some sort of out of body exp...

This week's challenge for the Weekly Bake Off , set by the lovely Amy, was the Ginger and Treacle Spiced Traybake. The Bake Off is Amy's idea to bake her way through the recipes contained in Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes . This is a fantastically handy little book, featuring many of the recipes drawn from her other books, such as the Ultimate Cake Book, or Baking Bible, which is also amazing value at under £4, so that's 4p per recipe! I was really happy with this challenge, as I love ginger. This recipe uses stem ginger in syrup, and ingredient that I had not actually used before, but which was very easy to handle. Doses of allspice and mixed spice help to give a lovely warmth to the cake. The cake mix is  easy to put together, as it's a question of simply measuring out the ingredients into a bowl and then beating it so that it comes together into a smooth mix. I was a bit disappointed though, as I had a total senior moment and misread the oven temperatur...

When Amy announced this week's challenge for the Weekly Bake Off , I felt conflicted. Great - it contained chocolate. Not so great - it was the roulade! Featuring on last year's Great British Bake Off as one of the technical challenges, it's utterly delicious, but can be tricky to make the sponge and then roll it to form the roulade shape. And I've never made one before! There was another reason I had nerves though. The recipe (which can be found here on the BBC Food website) calls for the separation of 6 eggs, and the beating of yolks and sugar until light and creamy. You then add melted chocolate to this mix, before folding in the egg whites which you have whisked to stiff peaks. Now this never goes quite right for me, whatever recipe this step is in (eg chocolate mousse). Its the adding chocolate to the egg yolks and sugar - it always seems to just congeal in a grainy mess. I then panic as I'm folding the egg whites in, as the mix never seems smooth and I...

It's late in the day for an Easter post perhaps, but this week's recipe for the Weekly Bake Off , as chosen by the lovely Amy, was Easter Simnel Cake. The Weekly Bake Off is Amy's masterplan to bake her way through Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes , a beautiful little baking book which is so reasonably priced (under £4 at the moment) and with so many varied recipes that I really encourage you to buy it! Although I knew what it was, I've never even tasted Simnel Cake before (a little bit put off by the amount of marzipan - especially without the Christmassy covering of royal icing - I mean I like marzipan, but this has always seemed too much). The recipe can be found online at My Kitchen Table, so I won't repeat it here. It's actually quite a simple recipe, chock full of sultanas, currants and glace cherries. The trickiest part is fitting the dividing layer of marzipan into the cake tin. I ended up using the loose bottom from a cake tin of ...

There are times when I wish I had taken more notice of the stories and reminiscences my nan and mum used to tell me. My grandparents died quite a long time ago, and my mum has sadly given up her memory to the ravages of Alzheimers. The treasure trove of family history has, for the most part, gone with it. I wish that I had these strories written down, as my own memory of them is starting to fade, too. There are some that are still with me though, and one is the story my nan used to tell me of selling Hot Cross Buns at Easter, in pre-World War I Cardiff. My nan's family were originally a farming family from Hereford, but at some point they lost the family farm, eventually moving to Cardiff around 1900, when my nan was two. They began a dairy business, delivering milk and other goods from the back of a horse drawn cart. As she grew slightly older, my nan would often accompany her father, sitting up front with him while he made the deliveries. At ...

One of my strongest childhood memories is the ritual of our family's Sunday Tea, which always took a certain form. My nan would put the kettle on at just before 4pm, and a pot of steaming hot tea would soon be brewed. There were sandwiches, and always, always some form of cake. Quite often, if nan and mum had had a busy weekend, it would be provided by Mr Kipling. My brother and I looked forward to this with some enthusiasm, as there were quite often French Fancies and Vienniese Whirls, which were our hands-down favourites. We could leave the Battenburg Slices, and the jam tarts were often a bit too dry  for us (definitely not as good as homemade). But the soft sweet inside of an iced French Fancy (my favourite being the lemon yellow ones), and the moistness of the Viennese Whirls were something to savour. Of course, you can still buy these. But they just don't seem to taste the same somehow. So when Amy announced this week's Bake Off challenge as the Aprico...