New Year: New Bakes (Almost)

Meeting 19 - New Year: New Bakes (Almost)

Date: 18th January 2011
Place: Bradley's
Members: Bradley, Faulkner, Polson


Welcome to 2011, fellow Cake Brigaders! I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I redesigned the CB Blog a little, what do you think? I'm going to change the content somewhat too, to make it somewhat more instructional rather than documentary. I'm also going to link what recipes we use, in addition to Faulkner and I making our own Cook Scrapbooks, so as to avoid loosing the recipes we liked!

Welcoming back Polson from her travels, we started off the Cake Brigade this year with hope in our hearts and excitement in our eyes. This year, we are going to make NEW THINGS and be more adventurous. After all, the whole point of the Cake Brigade is for the enjoyment of baking just as much as it is for the eating, if not more so, so we came to the conclusion some time ago that we needed to branch out somewhat. So, this meeting, we intended to make Chocolate Fondant, Lamingtons, Coffee & Walnut Cake, Flapjack (for old times sake) and an entirely new thing for the Cake Brigade by baking something savory, BREAD.

However, obviously we once again overestimated what we could achieve in the time we had, so only made half of these things.


CHOCOLATE FONDANT:
We used this recipe from the BBC Food website, and they turned out quite well. The only problems we encountered were that the flour didn't settle into the mixture particularly well, and even though they were in the oven for at least the suggested time, they still seemed a little undercooked, being more fondant than sponge. Other than this, they were surprisingly easy to make, and tasted great both hot and cold. They looked great when they first came out of the oven, but obviously dropped after a few minutes, which was disappointing but to be expected.

RATING: ****
Recommended and would make again, but some adjustments needed to the original instructions.





FLAPJACK:

An old favourite, this idea was thrown in at the last minute purely because we fancied it at the time. We don't use a set recipe for our CB Flapjack, instead just throwing together the melted butter, sugar and golden syrup with the oats then baking for half an hour, which is why it turns out different every time. This one, in my opinion, wasn't particularly good or up to our usual standards. It was a bit too dry, which is surprising as the mixture was stickier than normal.

RATING: ***
You cant really go wrong with Flapjack, but maybe we should start measuring the ingredients rather than just throwing them all in. We should add something new into them to make them a bit different.




BREAD
We used the basic white bread recipe from the Women's Weekly 'Muffins and Bread' bakery book, and were very happy with how it turned out. We were a little apprehensive as none of us had ever done anything like baking bread before, and we didn't have particularly high hopes. We didn't follow the recipe exactly, as it was meant to be our dinner and we were hungry, so couldn't be bothered waiting for it to rise as long as we should have done. Also, even though we topped it with oats, they didn't stick, but this was due to us cutting corners again, but despite this, it was soft and fluffy with a good crust.

RATING: ****
Highly recommended and would defiantly make it again. There is a whole host of options open to adapt this recipe, from toppings to shapes, but to get the best result, it is probably best to follow the recipe!



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