Easter baking

I revisited some old favourites this week but put an Easter spin on them all.

Easter biscuits


The CCM (Caked Crusader’s Ma) is getting very bolshie of late in her demands and she made it quite clear that she was expecting me to arrive on Sunday with some Easter biscuits. Seeing as there is only one weekend a year you can make these (and be seasonal) I couldn’t really refuse.


Easter biscuits are like little girls i.e. made of sugar and spice and all things nice! The warm spicy smells that waft from the oven as they bake are the food equivalent for me of sailors being lured to the rocks by Sirens, except in my example I eat a biscuit rather than die, which seems the better deal all things considered.


The recipe for Easter biscuits can be found here on my site.


Vanilla biscuits


Next on the list are my favourite vanilla biscuits. I wanted to make these so I could try out my new biscuit cutter.


You will notice that the cutter has a companion piece which you push into the biscuit for detail. This also provides a template for icing the biscuit. I bought my cutter from Lakeland Limited – whatever did we do before this marvellous company existed? I’ve tried to find a link to the item but it’s not on their site anymore. The stencil part, gives very crisp detailing:


These Easter bunnies look so chirpy it was almost a shame to eat them! (NB. I overcame this feeling in about – ooh, three seconds, maybe less)


The recipe for Vanilla biscuits can be found here on my site.

Genoese sponge


My final item involves Genoese sponge. It wouldn’t be a holiday weekend without some sort of sponge creeping onto the tea table!

Normally I make large cakes out of Genoese so thought it would be fun to go to the opposite end of the spectrum. These tiny little sponges are the cake equivalent of a shot or an amuse bouche. The larger sponge in the background is the size of a cupcake, so you can see just how tiny the sponges in front are:


You can fill the cake with cream or buttercream but I went for my favourite ‘dipping sauce’ filling (recipe set out below).


The Genoese sponge recipe can be found here on my site.

Dipping sauce

Dipping sauce has only three ingredients and is the work of minutes to make but is utterly heavenly:

Ingredients
250g Mascarpone cheese
500ml Good quality Ready-made custard
Vanilla

How to make:
- Whisk ingredients together until blended, thick and creamy.
- Refrigerate until needed.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Fruit tarts

These are oh-so-simple to make but look really impressive. Perfect for serving on a pretty cake stand or when you wish to impress.


The combination of pastry, fresh fruit and creamy filling has everything a sane person could want. If the fruit is not sweet enough, simply sprinkle a tiny amount of sugar over it and let it stand for an hour or so; I find this brings out the fruit's natural juiciness and enhances the flavour.


These little silver trays are actually meant for making pies in, but I thought they were just perfect for these tarts.



Ingredients:

For the shortcrust pastry:

175g plain flour

120g unsalted butter, cold

3 tablespoons icing sugar

2 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the filling:
250g mascarpone cheese
500g ready made, good quality fresh custard
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the topping:
Fruit of your choice

How to make:

- Start by making the pastry: put the flour, butter and icing sugar into the food processor and blitz until you get fine breadcrumbs.
- Add the egg yolks and vanilla and blitz until the pastry just starts to come together.
- Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and bring together into a ball of dough, handling no more than is absolutely necessary.
- Roll the pastry out between two sheets of baking paper and cut to line the size containers you’re using.
- Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/375°F/Gas mark 5.
- Line the chilled pastry with a sheet of baking paper and cover with baking beans.
- Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then remove the paper and beans and cook for a further 5 minutes until the pastry is golden and cooked.
- Leave to cool on a wire rack.
- Now make the filling: beat the ingredients together until you have a thick custard cream that will hold its shape.
- Spoon the custard filling into the pastry cases.
- Top with fresh fruit.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Trifle

There are certain staple foodstuffs one must always have at Christmas and trifle is one of them. I think many of us dismiss trifle because we have had bad experiences of shop bought atrocities with an almost concrete jelly and fruit layer.

A good trifle should not contain jelly. The eating experience should be soft and juicy with a lovely mix of sponge, fruit, custard and cream. I used my final swiss roll to provide the trifle’s base.

Here is my pictorial masterclass to trifle making! Step one - have a fruit layer so tempting that you forget it’s good for you:


The fruit should sit heavily on the sponge base so as to ensure there are no pockets of emptiness; these will only limit the amount of custard and cream you can wedge into the bowl:


Step two - add a creamy custard layer so naughty you feel 4 pounds heavier just looking at it:


Step three – add whipped cream and a healthy, understated decoration (ahem):


The finished trifle should be a visual treat as well as a tasty one!


However gorgeous your trifle, sadly, it will always look messy in the bowl:



Ingredients:
These quantities made me a huge trifle (my bowl was approx 30cm tall and 25cm across), vary them according to the size of your bowl:
1 swiss roll – for the recipe click here
1 kilo of washed assorted fruit – I used raspberries, blackberries and strawberries
1 litre of ready made fresh custard
500g mascarpone
600ml double cream
2 Cadbury flakes

How to make:

- Cut the swiss roll into approximately 1.5cm slices.
- Line the bottom of the bowl with the swiss roll.
- Mix the fruit together and place on top of the swiss roll. Push down gently on the fruit to compact it a bit.
- Whisk together the custard and mascarpone until smooth and creamy. Whatever amount you make, remember that the volume of custard must always be twice the weight of the mascarpone.
- Spread the custard mix over the fruit. It will sink into any crevices in the fruit.
- Whip the cream until you have soft peaks and spread over the custard layer.
- Decorate as required – I used strawberries and crushed flake.
- Refrigerate until required.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Revisiting old favourites with a Christmas twist!

There are so many recipes that look worth baking that I often find myself looking for the next new thing forgetting what has been enjoyed in the past. Sometimes however, it’s worth taking time out to revisit old favourites.

There is very little in the cake world more comforting than a slice of sponge with buttercream. Here’s the proof:


Plus, it’s a good thing to make over an extended holiday period as it keeps very well.

I made a Genoese sponge with buttercream in the shape of a Christmas tree.



This is exactly the same recipe as I used for my nephew’s birthday cake back in September. Follow this link for the recipes.

How can you celebrate without biscuits and dipping sauce? Well, the obvious answer is that you can’t. So I made those too. The Christmas twist here is that I used star shape cutters of decreasing size to build a biscuit tree. Try not to look at the tins of Weightwatchers soup in the background - the sad and bleak necessity of worshipping at the altar of cake!


Here’s my arty aerial shot in homage to the Esther Williams films of the 1940s and 50s (No, I’m not that old but Channel 4 used to show them in the afternoon before Countdown back in my student days so I often saw the last ten minutes or so.)


The biscuits can be decorated however you please, I used piped icing and M&Ms for the baubles. Follow this link for the recipes

I was quite ambitious this time and managed to get my tree to 30cm in height (that’s 12 inches or a foot for those of you still working in old money!). We live in a sceptical age so here is photographic evidence - I removed the soup tins in this one!:


This is a sight that will cheer me in the coming months: the Christmas tea table. The santa bowl contains sweetened cream (double cream lightly whipped and sweetened with icing sugar plus a dash of vanilla) and the dish with the little cupcakes dangling from it contains the magical dipping sauce!

Vanilla shortbread biscuits and dipping sauce

Vanilla shortbread biscuits

I came across this recipe several years back in one of those Christmas recipe magazines that seem to surface October time each year. They suggested tying the biscuits with ribbons and hanging them on the Christmas tree. I can’t quite explain why this upset me so much; it’s just so wrong – you wouldn’t hang pork pies as decorations, or sandwiches, so why demean biscuits in such a way?
Anyway, I love these biscuits – they’re not really a shortbread, but they share that sort of crumbly texture although smoother. They melt in the mouth and leave you with a lovely vanilla taste and the feeling that all is right with the world.

I used an extremely small cutter as I wanted some of the biscuits to top cupcakes…(this photo shows Arsene Wenger talking last minute pre-party tactics with his team’s captain, William Gallas):

…and others to be the biscuit equivalent of crudités. The dipping sauce is quick and easy to make and the recipe follows on from the biscuit recipe; it’s also versatile and is great with a slice of cake or as the topping for trifle:

It's fun to personalise the biscuits too - for instance, to please old ladies who should know better but nonetheless still have 'fondness' for Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho:





The mix makes a lot – in fact, a whole Arsenal squad (including manager Arsene Wenger who can be seen front, centre right) :

Ingredients:
140g Icing sugar
1 Egg yolk
250g Unsalted butter, at room temperature
375g Plain flour
Vanilla extract

How to make:
- Heat oven to 190°C/fan oven 170°C/gas mark 5
- Tip the icing sugar, butter, vanilla and egg yolk into a bowl and mix. I use my mixer for this but it’s possible to do it with a spoon if the butter is soft enough.
- Add the flour and mix to a dough. It comes together quite easily into a shiny, beautiful, golden dough that practical glows with buttery goodness. Using icing sugar rather than caster means the dough is exceptionally soft.
- Shape the dough into 2 discs and wrap each one in cling film. (You can if you wish, freeze the dough at this point. Make sure you defrost thoroughly before rolling out and baking. I have kept the dough in the freezer for 2 months and not noticed any dip in quality.)
- Refrigerate for 20 mins minimum.
- Line baking sheets with greaseproof or baking paper. This saves any worries about the biscuits sticking and breaking when you try to move them to a cooling wrack.
- Roll out the dough. You can do this on a lightly floured board but my big tip is to roll it out between sheets of greaseproof paper. The advantage of this, apart from making it easier, is that you don’t have to dry the mix out with extra flour. I use this method for all my pastry and dough and wouldn’t do it any other way.
- The thickness you’re aiming for depends on the size biscuit cutter you’re using. If it’s a big cutter i.e. the size of a digestive biscuit, then aim for 0.5cm. If it’s a smaller cutter you can make it a little thinner.
- Bake for 10-12 mins, but check after 10 minutes as they can burn quickly. Once they’re lightly golden, remove from oven and let cool slightly before trying to move as they are very fragile for the first few minutes out of the oven.
- Cool on a rack.
- Decorate as much or as little as you desire.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful things you have made.
- Eat.

Dipping sauce

Dipping sauce ingredients:
250g Mascarpone cheese
500ml Good quality Ready-made custard
Vanilla

How to make:
- Whisk ingredients together until blended, thick and creamy.
- Refrigerate until needed.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.

Labels: vanilla, shortbread, biscuits, dipping sauce