MESSY BAKER

I really need to get better at this – its past mid-May and I am only just posting April project. But – the good thing is that I just finished May bread, so next post shouldn’t be too far behind.  My planning was completely off this month – I decided to bake Colomba Pasquale – a traditional Easter cake – for Easter celebrations this year. But, what I forgot to do is to check my calendar - I celebrate both Catholic and Russian Orthodox Easters – both of them fell at the beginning of the month this year, plus I had booked a trip to Russia with my little ones at the beginning of the month, so there was no way on earth I was going to finish my baking on time.  Anyway, I got there at the end, and to make up for the lateness, I’ve made five (yes, five) loaves just to test out different recipes and shapes. I tried using very traditional as well as more available ingredients, tall and round panettone cases and shallow and wide “dove” cases, and I finally came up with something I a...

This is not strictly a baking post, but I haven't made sourdough for a while, so I thought I'd amuse you with some pancake stories. Pancake challenge (nothing to do with the ridiculous ice bucket challenge doing the rounds at the moment) is a challenge I set for myself - to make the fluffiest and also the easiest pancakes ever known to man kind. I want them fluffy - think American style rather than French crepes, and I want them easy - Ms Rantlet aged nearly three and Rant-a-Baby at 11 month don't leave much time or effort for elaborate pancake-making. We recently went to a wedding in Kent - Buxted Park hotel is highly recommended if you are after a bit of luxury by the way. Post wedding breakfast included made to order pancakes, and thats what Ms Rantlet went for - honestly, she would eat pancakes for breakfast lunch and dinner if I let her. When they arrived, it was a heaven on a plate - a stack of super fluffy golden-brown pancakes drizzled with maple syrup an...

What better treat can a girl have for her birthday than a home made lemon cake? I did consider making a chocolate one just for a minute, but decided it was far too hot, but a nice tangy lemon cake would but just perfect. You wold think that it would be easy enough to find a recipe for a Lemon cake, but I checked all the usuals – Marry Berry, Delia, Paul Hollywood, even Gordon Ramsey, but they were all either too bland or too fancy (three guesses who was the fancy one J ) So I went with my all-time favourite – Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. This is a book I keep coming back over and over, it has such a good collection of recipes, something for every mood and occasion, and the recipes are very easy to follow. I do play with the recipes, of course, as I find Hummingbird US recipes way too sweet, and I have had a couple of duds from the book, but its all part of a learning baking cycle.   Lemon and Poppyseed Cake Adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook 100g uns...

I’ve been thinking about making lemon cupcakes, and been looking for a recipe that is very lemony, but also very light, with a soft creamy finish. As you can guess, thats pretty much mission impossible, as most of the recipes I see are either too dry, too cake like or not lemony enough. So, the two recipes I am considering at the moment are “Making Cupcakes with Lola” by Victoria Jossel & Romy Lewis and “The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook”. I want to try the recipes as they are, which means that, due to the copyright restrictions, I am not allowed to post the recipes, however, I think I can talk about generic comparisons, measures and formulas. Amazingly, both recipes state that you will get a dozen of cupcakes from each recipe; however, the Hummingbird recipe uses nearly twice the volume of total ingredients as compared to Lola’s ingredients weight. I have only tried one of Lola’s recipes (see Cinnamon Twist Cupcakes blog), but I have found their recipe a bit too stingy on the ingred...

A whole week of not baking, I am itching to get back to the kitchen now. Went to Moscow for a quick holiday, believe it or not, it was super hot, 30C every day and so humid!! Cold ice-cream for me and cold beer for Mr Ranty every day – the only way to deal with it. I put my starter to sleep in the fridge while I was away, took it out on Monday and started feeding it 30g water and 30g rye flour every morning and evening. It was looking reasonably active this morning, so might try baking tonight, that is if this cold London weather doesn’t kill it. While I am waiting for my starter to come alive, I’ve decided to make a cake out of the " Hummingbird Bakery " book again. A recipe I’ve tried out and tweaked a number of times, a favourite in my household. Mr Ranty is a big fan on lemon, and this particular lemon cake always doesn’t down really well. Super-Lemon Cake Adapted from “Hummingbird Bakery” cookbook Cake 3 eggs 260 g sugar zest of 2 lemons 400 g flour 1 ½ tsp baking powder...