Carrot cake, Salmon and watercress tart AND Hot cross buns

On a sunny September afternoon, with the leaves sun kissed on my quiet suburban road, my fellow bakers and I cuddled in the warmth of my kitchen to bake some culinary wonders. The menu for the day, as the title suggests, was a line of real treats.

I had been dying to bake a carrot cake for a while. I'd been told it was reasonably easy to make but i hadn't actually tried my hands at it. Dragging my fellow bakers kicking and screaming, we set out to bake this recipe:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/carrot-cake-with-maple-cream-cheese-frosting/

We chose to bake the double-decked version rather than the cup cakes and it was absolutely devine!



The choice of canola oil also gave the batter a uniquely orange look that the other bakers thought was quite unusual. We also used half the sugar the recipe recommended - we would have been fast tracking to diabetes otherwise!



As it turns out, it was possibly the easier of the recipes to get together, so we rustled it together and stuck it in the oven to bake. The finished product looked devine and it was delicious! It was a huge piece of cake so we shared it amongst ourselves and i ended up giving most of mine to friends and family who were very complimentary! Score!




The second recipe was the Salmon and water cress tart for which we used:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/salmon_and_watercress_05414

The crust was probably the hardest part but it worked very well and i think i will be using that recipe for my pie bases going forward. The end product did not only look good but it tasted fantastic and went very very fast!!



The final recipe, but by no means the least was [my favourite] hot cross buns, which again, i was totally aiming at baking at some point. It was also a bbc recipe used:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hotcrossbuns_70059

It's a great recipe and we definitely enjoyed making the buns!

Haryo took on the brave kneading task given his strong, masculine wrists!



We then left it to rise...




And rise...



Then we added the trimmings and set it to bake. Doesn't it just look great?



Is your appetite whet yet?



Yusuf had a crack at eating all of it but don't worry we stopped him. Can't have that!



We devoured these creations with relish!




Increasingly we're finding the combination of sweet and savoury baking tasks to work well and broadening our repertoire. Our stomachs are certainly broadening their experience, much to the detriment of our waistlines!

Stay tuned for the next destructive episode :)

Courgette & Harissa Pasta and Cinnamon Sugar Tear-Apart Bread

Seeing how it's winter now,

I thought it's only right to update the summer Bake Club.

And with me moving out of the flat then,

it seemed only natural to have the Bake Club at mine.

Through some magical voting system,

we decided to bake a Cinammon bread.

And how else to have the energy to bake it

other than cooking some pasta with courgette & harissa.

The courgette & harissa pasta was so yummy

that we regretted not making more of it :(

Courgette & Harrisa Pasta

Heat some butter (or olive oil if you want to be healthy) in a pan.

Add some chopped garlic into the pan and fry it until it smells lovely.

Add the chopped courgettes and fry until it's soft

Boil some pasta of your choice in a large pan (we used fusilli)

until it's al dente (springy to the touch)

[Alternatively you can just throw the pasta onto a tiled wall and see if it sticks]

Then strain the pasta and put it back into the large pan.

Add the harissa & courgette mixture and stir on a low heat until evenly mixed.

And voila!

Deliciousness on a plate!

Pardon the tacky placemat :S

A member of Bake Club gobbling up the rest of the pasta!

Cinnamon Sugar Tear-Apart Bread

Can I just say how yummy this bread was?

Well done to whoever found the recipe.

And an even bigger round of applause for Joy The Baker

for creating such a yummy recipe.

See recipe below..

http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2011/03/cinnamon-sugar-pull-apart-bread

Members of Bake Club discussing the recipe..

(or perhaps the filthy state of the kitchen)

Adding the flour to the egg dough mixture..

Stirring the sticky mixture..

Using a chilled bottled of Pimm's to roll the dough out..

I know..

Every baker should have a rolling pin in their kitchen drawer.

Pouring the melted butter onto the dough..

Sprinkling the sugar & cinnamon mixture onto the dough..

Until it looks like this..

Dividing the dough into 6 equal horizontal strips..

Stacking it on top of each other..

Slicing it again into 6 equal vertical strips..

Stacking it in the loaf pan..

Until it's all completely stacked up..

All squashed up and ready to bake..

We decided to put more sugar mixture on top of it..

Added butter pieces as well..

Diabetes in a pan :P

Fresh from the oven..

Yum.. Yum..

The destruction of a massive baker

This blog post is so late that I can't even remember how late it is! So much has happened though like moving flat and losing my job and finding a job and breaking a rib and mentalbozoness.

Anyhoots I do absolutely remember the deliciousness of this bake club. It was total amazeballs. We again decided to make something savoury and something sweet. For savoury we decided on a chicken pie and a chocolate tart to finish.


Bake club went off with a hiss. My trusted food processor of eight years is with us no longer.


Lucky for bake club I am eternally single and have developed great wrist action. COZ I BAKE A LOT. Filth. Anyway ... we made the pastry by hand. Shortcrust if you must know. Filth.


The other prepared the filling. Oh. My. Gapes. It was such a tasty filling.


We had to distract him from eating all the chicken goodness ...



So we gave them pearls.


Wasn't distracted for long!



But just long enough for the serious bakers to get things going.

What came first - the chicken or the pie?

Greco-Roman chicken pie. This b**ch is winning Olympic medals baby!

(The chocolate tart wasn't all that great. It was great, but the pastry wasn't all that. I blame my food processor for dying). The chicken pie was just to. die. for. I am actually now dead and I am writing from my grave. It was worth dying for.

Ultimate Chocolate Cake

As always.. My blog is very very late. LOL.. Sorry about that everyone (especially those of you that follow our blog religiously). You know how it is like sometimes, life takes a hold on you and everything you can imagine happens all at once and 24 hours a day is not enough! Well the past few months has been like that for me so here it is.. The Ultimate Chocolate Cake.. 4 months late! :D

As it was my birthday month, everyone at Bake Club decided that it should be held at my place. Birthday boy can't have everything, can he? He's got to clean up as well. I think it was the Bake Clubbers' idea of playing a prank on me.. Not really to be honest. They are a very nice bunch. They think it would be good for me to choose a cake that I like and we all bake it for my birthday :)

I LOVE CHOCOLATE so it is only natural that I chose a chocolate cake (the host of the Bake Club gets to choose the recipe subject to everyone's approval and it's only fair that we host it in one another's kitchen so that everyone gets a chance to clean up :P) I got the recipe from BBC Good Food Guide and the recipe is shown in the link below..

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/3092/ultimate-chocolate-cake

I don't remember which mixture this is!

Nana pouring the divine chocolate mixture...

And Yusuf mixing it..

Doing his final stir..

And me pouring it gently into the tin.

"This bowl is so freaking heavy!!!"

Finally out of the oven..

And out of those painful tins..

Nana showing off the goods

"Boy it's so hard to chop these chocolates into bits"

The Ganache without sugar added

Yummmmmmm...........

Isn't that handsome?

We didn't have chocolate curls so

we shaved the chocolate using a cheese shaver.

(Please don't ask why)

As Nigella Lawson would say...

"Lovely!"

Nana was impatient and had to go

so we had to cut the cake before it sets.

Still very yummy I can assure you..

We didn't add sugar to the ganache cos the recipe already seemed very sweet and boy we were glad we didn't do that as the cake was very sweet indeed. That means something coming from someone who has a very sweet tooth!

I think every single of the Bake Clubbers agreed that it was a very yummy recipe. Definitely worth doing but try and use the best chocolate you can becos it makes a big difference. The downside is we had to get a bank loan after baking this cake! But boy it's worth it. So moist, rich and..... LOVELY!