A Pumpkin Experiment

I have been meaning to blog about my pumpkin experiment all week. Sorry I haven't managed it until now.

Why pumpkins? I don't like waste and my colleague was just going to throw away her perfectly good pumpkins because she didn't get round to carving them for halloween. This, I decided, was a travesty. So I set myself the challenge to prove to her that two pumpkins could make a lot of food. Hence the pumpkin experiment was born. (I'm making it sound kind of epic... It's not)

 At this point I wasn't even sure I liked the taste of pumpkin. 

I had certainly never cooked with it. I searched the web for a recipes and settled on soup, cupcakes and roasted seeds.

First I made the soup.

I doubled all of the quantities because I had a huge amount of pumpkin to use!

I also added chilli and cumin seeds, I like a warming soup in Winter (Yes I have decided that it is winter) and if it turned out I didn't like the taste of pumpkin it would be masked by the spice.

I made enough for 5 portions. Unfortunately I didn't really like it. Jamie did though and we worked out it tasted much better with lots of cheese.

 Next I roasted the seeds, this was a huge success. and so easy. I just followed this recipe and Ta Da - a really yummy and semi healthy snack.

 Last I made the cupcakes. I followed a hummingbird bakery recipe for these and substituted pumpkin puree for mashed pumpkin. 

I decided in my wisdom to double the amount of pumpkin in the recipe because I had lots. (bad idea and worst reason ever) Unsurprisingly they turned out pretty dense.

 But they did taste nice, so not a complete disaster.

Challenge completed, I would definitely do it again and maybe play around with the soup flavour more and FOLLOW THE RECIPE for the cupcakes. How could I forget the first rule of baking so regularly. Oh well.

#Thankfulthursday Family Traditions

  This week I am thankful for family traditions.

Nearly every year my Dad and I Make a Christmas cake.

 

The Christmas cake recipe we usually use is from a really old cookery book of my Mums, it is the same recipe that my Mum and I followed when making our wedding cake.

This year when Mum and Dad visited we made our Christmas cake, we had to use a different recipe because we didn't have Mums recipe book. but that doesn't matter. 

The tradition and the time together is what matters.

An attempt at making Macarons

  My lovely friend Rachel has had the misfortune of being diagnosed as intolerant to Gluten, Dairy and soy. She is also highly allergic to peanuts and some other nuts.

 This is a problem as Cakes and treats made without proper flour are often a little gross. I tried to make Rachel a gluten and dairy free birthday cake- it didn't go well. It was a bit like a large biscuit. 

I expressed my concern that her intolerance is limiting her treat and cake intake and I like making cakes for my friends, So we came up with a plan...

Make things that are naturally gluten and dairy free first then move on to using gluten free stuff.

We started with Macarons!

We needed egg whites, ground almond, caster sugar, icing sugar. vanilla essence, gel dye and we cheated by using Betty Crocker icing for the filling (it is shockingly dairy free!)

I don't have an electric whisk so we used a hand whisk. Rachel was very impressed with my whisk - it has a little cage and a ball inside it.

 We got a little confused when making the first batch and made it far to runny, 'pipping it' didn't really happen, it was more of a pouring action

 We gave up trying to make them neat and just flooded the tray.

It was very funny. We just kept laughing - which probably didn't help!

 It was not good - We threw it away and tried again.

(the best sad face ever)

 Our next batch was MUCH better!

 We left them to rest for over an hour, we forgot about them whilst we were chatting. 

Baking with a good friend is great. 

Chatting over a cup of tea whilst baking is even better.

We eventually baked them and the turned out like this...

 They aren't very uniform or as shiny as they are meant to be, but we still felt proud of our creations.

 They didn't crack which I think is down to the excessive resting.

Rachel liked her's best dipped in a cup of coffee - we couldn't eat too many they are very sweet!

We will continue our baking adventures soon. It is really fun to have baking plans and to experiment with a friends, if it all goes wrong we can laugh and start again.

#ThankfulThursday An Autumn Harvest

Early Autumn is great for free fruit.

For this I am very thankful.

This year I managed to get Jamie on board with the foraging.

We managed to pick many juicy little yellow Plums, Black Berries and 2kg of Elderberries.

 

 With this haul I made: Apple and Blackberry pie

Plum and Chili Chutney

 

Apple and Blackberry upside-down cake, obviously inspired by the Great British bake Off. 

Unfortunately I didn't cook it for long enough, I had to  re-cook it before we ate it - it still tasted good, but did not look as pretty.

With the elderberries we are making wine.

 I will let you know how that goes in about a year. 

I have discovered that wine making is not a quick process!

I have also discovered food photography is really not my thing.

Croquembuche (30 before 30)

Croquembuche- from the french meaning 'Crunch in the mouth' is a desert that consist of Choux pastry balls filled with flavoured cream, piled in a cone shape and held together by caramel.

Before embarking on this challenge I had never even tried making choux pastry and had never made a successful caramel.

Thankfully my friend Alison came to stay for the weekend, Friday we went for a wine tasting, Saturday we ran a sponsored Dog walk in the beautiful sunshine then Jamie and I went to a wedding reception in the evening and on Sunday after church we made the croquembuche. 

A pretty epic weekend! 

Thankfully I own the great British bake off recipe book from last year which has brilliant step by step instructions on how to make a croquembuche.

 

First we combined the pastry ingredients on the hob, Alison is good at stirring 

After leaving the mixture to cool and adding eggs, I piped little balls on to baking sheets. 

 The cooking instructions for Choux pastry is really complicated We had to wave the door of the oven to let steam out and then had to pierce each ball during cooking. (I sometimes wonder how people come up with this stuff).

It worked.

 We then made the white chocolate and lemon cream whilst the balls cooled.

 It was yummy!

 Piping the cream into the balls was surprisingly difficult, but we managed.

 The first attempt at making caramel didn't go well.

 Neither did the second, but Alison had the right touch with the third batch. 

I can see why they worry so much about it on the Great British bake Off!

Once we had managed to make the Caramel we assembled.

 We both took many photos! We were proud.

 Very proud...

I can happily cross off another one of my 30 Before 30 aims.

I have now completed 5 only 25 left to go!

The day of Cupcakes

 All of the practising and preparing for making the cupcakes for James and Hannah's Wedding paid off. 

 It took a whole day and three people to make and ice 130 cupcakes.

The day of baking arrived and my super talented friend Abbie proved immensely helpful and lovely because she gave up a whole day to help me.

The (A) team... 

The naked cakes...

 

 Jen who I have also mentioned before (she is beautiful) came and did a stirling job of icing with me whilst Abbie whizzed up the frosting.

 Some of the finished cakes

It was an exhausting and long day, but I think it was worth it!

The cake of many proposals...

 This post could have had many titles including: 

* The best cake I have ever made

* Once you have had this carrot cake you won't go back

I even considered "The Cake that launched a thousand ships", though it is not technically true. 

I like to think many people would travel by boat to to have a slice of "my" carrot cake.

 I adapted the recipe from the Hummingbird bakery carrot cake recipe. I made the cake for my friend from work who is on maternity leave at the moment and every time she visits I make a cake. She doesn't like cinnamon and I don't like ginger so I had to improvise the flavourings. 

I ended up replacing the flavours with nutmeg and all spice. I also left out the walnuts. I do like walnuts but I think it they ruin the texture. (Its the same reason I don't like chocolate chips in cake)

 It is a really simple recipe really but it went down an absolute storm at work. 

5 of my colleagues proposed off the back of a slice!

200g of dark brown sugar

100g of caster sugar

3 eggs

300ml of sunflower oil

300g plain flower

1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp of baking powder

I tsp of Nutmeg

1 tsp of all spice

1/2 tsp salt

1/2tsp vanilla extract

300g of carrots

I Mixed it all together and put it in a big round cake tin. 

The recipe suggests 3 cake tins but I seem to only have two cake tins one for cupcakes and one for big round cakes.

Bake in a preheated oven (175c gas 3) for about an hour (if using only one big tin, if you are using 3 tins 25 mins should suffice) 

When cooled slice into three and layer with cream cheese icing and then smother the whole cake with it.

 

 I don't care too much about the presentation of cake, as long as it tastes good I'm happy!

 And it tastes GOOooooD