Home Baking

I've always been partial to a nice home made cake. This has been especially true since I discovered a better recipe for sponge cake. Previously I had been using a ratio of 4oz flour to 2oz sugar and fat with one egg. It works much better if you use 2oz of everything to 1 egg, the sponge is moister and generally tastier. Of course, you get slightly less mix and if you're adding extras then a little extra touch of baking powder sometimes helps.
There you go, some baking tips. This blog isn't a total waste of time after all.
This last week has been biscuit week. I bought some funny shaped cookie cutters as the big craft fair held in the NEC a little while ago and they came with some basic biscuit recipes I wanted to try. To say that they had turned out well would be a bit of an understatement as the first batch lasted about twenty four hours even with a break to ice some of them. Joseph loved the biscuits and the icing even more. Well, he's a little boy - what's not to love about fat and icing sugar mixed together with a little artificial flavouring? It's probably the least messy finger food I've had, not that it doesn't make crumbs but he seems determined not to waste any.
Cheese straws are another hit. They're dead simple too - twice as much margarine to flour and mix in as much grated cheese as you fancy (lots). Roll out and cut up into small pieces, bake at gas mark 4-5 depending four about twenty minutes.
I started making them small and finger shaped but Joseph seems to prefer them cut out into rounds and not too crispy. I have to admit though, if I didn't have a great little food processor then I probably wouldn't bother with the home baking, I'm very much of a "throw it all in there and press the button" sort of person. It's one of the reasons I bought a bread maker many moons ago. Anticipating a fresh loaf of bread early in the morning I eagerly put all the ingredients in the evening before and set the timer.
Alas the mixer on it wasn't as good as I'd hoped and did not to a very good job. The "dough" was risen twice and baked in the machine and when I got up in the morning I opened the machine and found -
It had more in common with poor Joseph Merrick than bread. Whenever I can be bothered to make bread, which isn't very often now, I have to watch it all through the mixing process lest another mutant loaf be born. It is quite good at pizza dough, I have to admit.
I'll have to set too and make one of the cakes for Joseph's birthday soon. I'm doing a mix of cakes as there's no family consensus over what makes a good cake and a good fruit cake is best made some time in advance. I like my fruit cake with lots of cherries and almond flakes and some treacle to make it rich, I can't stand those so called light fruit cakes, in my opinion they're just too dry and a cake isn't good if it's dry.
Joseph likes cake. I'm yet to find a cake he'll refuse. I'm going to trial bake a chocolate cake next and I'm sure that will go down just as well as the others.