Apple and Blackberry Strudel

This is a recipe I got from the Good Housekeeping website and for the first time in a while, I actually followed all of a recipe!

This was pretty easy to make and takes around an hour and a half. The apple is cooked with a little butter, sugar, ginger and cinnamon. Personally, I think that it needs a little more sugar and less spice although I'm sure it would have helped if I hadn't forgotten one of the apples! (doesn't count as changing the recipe if it's not deliberate, right?)

The pastry is a little tricky to work with. Filo tears so easily but there are so many layers that the odd rip in a single sheet doesn't matter too much. I did get a tear all the way through when wrapping it up and attempted to patch it up with a little extra pastry. I think it worked actually. I still had another major rip though and a smaller but very long tear all around the back edge at the bottom (hense why the back isn't in the photo!). If you can make this without a single tear then tell me about it because you are obviously a filo god!

As for the baking, the recipe says 20 minutes. the pastry was cooked but I think it needed another couple of minutes. Other than that, highly recommended! Autumnal yummies!

Recipe: http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/food/recipes/blackberry-and-apple-strudel-ring

Biscuits

Slightly more conventional today: custard creams and jammie dodgers. I was disproportionately proud of these given their simplicity! There's something very satisfying about making something that actually looks like an everyday thing!

 

I used a basic biscuit recipe I got from school and also made up some butter icing (100g icing sugar, 50g butter). Perfect amount for the amount of biscuits. The dough was really nice to work with, soft but not sticky and very easy to get off of the baking tray. I made the top half of the jammy ones with a large round cutter and a tiny round cutter to take the middle bit out. These on their own reminded me so much of party rings! I think I would've made some if I had icing and food dye.I may have gotten a little trigger happy with the little cutter and had to blend the middle bit back into the whole circle!

Overall, fun, quick and easy to make. Very satisfying, simple finish and most importantly, very yummy!

Tea Loaf

This was another semi-improvised recipe. It was supposed to be an orange and cinnamon tea loaf that I adapted from a chai tea loaf recipe on BBC Food. I left out all the spice mix part of the recipe and added 2 orange zests and 1 tsp cinnamon and replaced the dates with currants. Its not so much an orange and cinnamon loaf but tastes almost exactly like a hot cross bun!

The recipe says to mix it using an electric mixer with a dough hook. I don't have one of these so I did it by hand. It also didn't say to knead it. I'm not sure why but the loaf turned out very dense. I'm guessing it either needed longer kneading, proving or both. I'll try it again and see what works.

It wasn't exactly what I was aiming for but it still taste good, particularly toasted with butter :)

Recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chai-spiced_ginger_and_38256

Chocolate and Marshmallow Bakewell Tart

Bit of a different one today. This was a task for food tech to make a variation on a bakewell tart... I may have gone a bit overboard but it seemed like a good idea! This has a sweet shortcrust pastry, chocolate spread at the bottom, chocolate cake and marshmallow on top.

I pieced this recipe together using the school recipe as a base. I guessed at how much of the flour to replace with cocoa powder in the cake (15g cocoa powder, 35g self raising flour) and I added a little extra baking powder to make up for the lost raising agent in the flour.

took the marshmallow from the baked alaska recipe because it was easy and its the only marshmallow I've made before and it worked pretty well last time. I've also got a time limit in food tech and I knew I'd have time to make it.

I also used a different pastry recipe. The school recipe had lard in which is an ingredient I don't really like. It also only needs 25g and I didn't want to get a block of lard for such a small amount. I don't seem to have used any of the school recipe actually! I used a pastry recipe from the BBC Good Food website. I think I had a problem with the butter though, the dough wasn't exactly wet but incredibly soft. Should spreadable butter not be used for pastry??

I intended to pipe the marshmallow in peaks on top but it turned out very messy and uneven so I spread it instead. I tried sprinkling cocoa powder on top to improve the appearance but apparently cocoa powder does not sprinkle lightly! In the dish, it really didn't look as good as I'd hoped, unfortunately this seems to be quite common in food tech lessons.

Other than not quite enough marshmallow, it tasted really good! Despite my worries about the pastry, it did not have a soggy bottom! :)