MESSY BAKER

In our households we don’t do hints – we use loud direction or loud swearing. One of these things must have worked, as Mr Ranty got fed up with me and have ordered me a shiny new oven to replace a rubbish gas one that came with our new house. The house is Victorian, and I am pretty sure the oven was near-Victorian as well – a split level gas oven that managed to burn everything on top while keeping bottom completely raw. Anyway, you get the picture, and now, thanks to my lovely Ranty Man I have a shiny new Smeg oven – massive gas burners and a large electricity powered oven. I am in love, that’s all I can say.   To test the new oven I wanted to do nice and simple bread – focaccia seemed like a good option. I must admit that most of the focaccia recipes I see online I am not impressed with. I have a book by Mr Silver Fox, aka Mr Great British Bake Off, aka Paul Hollywood, but his focaccia looks quite thin with tight crust. What I look for in focaccia is fluffy, textured dough w...

For the last three years I have been using a FreshLoaf recipe for Hot Cross buns (lost the actual recipe now) – my very first year attempt was quite successful, but lately I was getting a bit disappointed with the recipe, the buns were coming out small and quite dense. So, I thought its time to try a new recipe and decided to start trying out recipes well in advance of Easter. Hot Cross bun is basically a sweet dough with a lot of fruit and spices, and when you are after a sweet dough, you can’t go wrong with The King of sweet dough – Richard Bertinet. I found his recipe for Hot Cross buns online and it looked like a good place to start. You know me, I can’t live a recipe alone, gotta mess with it a bit, otherwise my name wouldn’t be Messy Baker J Hot Cross Buns Makes 13 250ml milk, warmed up 1 egg 50ml whiskey 1 pack of instant dried yeast 2 Tbsp (heaped) caster sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract 80g unsalted butter, melted 370g white flour 130g whole-wheat flour 1 ...

I’ve finally been shamed into updating my blog – can’t believe how rubbish I’ve been. Especially as I did promise to improve last time I posted on here. Lesson learnt – don’t make promises, full stop In my defence, I do have an excuse for the lack of posts, last three months were a bit hectic to say the least, we finally got on the property ladder and now I am officially a co-homeowner! Moving houses a week before Christmas has made the holidays ever so special and stressful. New house is wonderful, thanks for asking, with lots of room and a lovely garden, but the most important thing – a different oven, and a gas one too. What I forgot to mention is that the house is a Victorian house, and the oven seems to be near-Victorian one too. I decided to take that as a challenge rather than an obstacle and week 2 in the new house I had made a sourdough. Well…… Its been a while since I had such a disaster – flat (poor shaping), under-proofed (cold Victorian house), under-baked on t...

Last weekend I made a “Canadian” Pumpkin pie, and if you think that is weird, wait till you hear the reason for the pie. It was to take to a farewell dinner with our lovely neighbours – socialising with neighbours, in London – UNHEARD OF!!! J Anyway, our neighbours is a lovely Canadian couple and they are going back home, they have invited us for dinner to their house and cooked New Zealand lamb in our honour and I have decided to make a “Canadian” pumpkin pie for them. Now, I know a few people have a bit of a thing about pumpkin pies - its too sweet, too soft, too bland, too American, whatever. The first time I’ve made it, I followed Humming Bird Bakery cookbook recipe – it turned out looking just like it did in the book, but Mr Ranty wasn’t too impressed, and I was determined to make a pumpkin pie that will woe him. So, here it is, a Maple, Bourbon, Pecan Pumpkin pie – aka “Canadian” Pumpkin Pie. The recipe mainly follows “ Maple-Bourbon Pie ” recipe from MyRecipe...

Has it seriously been nearly a year since my last post??!!! Shocking!! Well, I’d better change that!! Rightto , I am committing to post something at least once a month, but hopefully it will be more frequent than that, especially with Halloween and Christmas coming up. Man, I love holidays !! Any excuse to bake :) So far I am planning : -           Halloween themed cupcakes – I am thinking pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing and chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing -           Pumpkin and Bourbon pie -           Gingerbread house -             Panettone -           Christmas cake -           Mince pies Hmmmm….. I think that’s about it – pretty ambitious, but lets see how I go. Ju...

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...

This is just a quick bread, but is looking to become one of my favourites. I didn't follow a recipe as such, and its not as exciting and imaginative as some of my previous loaves. I pretty much just looked around the kitchen and in the fridge and threw in everything I could see. Only 20 minutes before Ms Ranty wakes up, so this is going to be a quick post. Here is the basic recipe, feel free to tweak juice/water/cream ratios as well as white/wholemeal flour mix - let me know what you get 120 g starter 200 g water 90 g orange juice 20 g single cream 300 g white flour 200 g wholemeal flour 1.5 tsp salt Pour starter, water, juice and cream in a mixing bowl and give it a good stir with a spoon, to make sure that the starter is well mixed in with all the other liquids. Add the flours to the mixing bowl and mix the dough on speed 1 for 6 minutes - pressuming you are using a free standing mixer, like KitchenAid. Cover the bowl and leave to rest (autolise) for 20 minutes. Add salt and mix ...