Sunday bakes – ‘Making out’ meringues

There is nothing sweeter that those first few kisses with someone you have really liked for a while and in the baking world there is nothing sweeter than meringues. These little cherry flavoured meringue kisses are light and crumble sweetly in your mouth from the first touch. 

Ingredients

4 egg whites

225g caster sugar

1tsp cornflour

½ tsp white wine vinegar

1 cup of cherries

Method

Heat the cherries in a saucepan until they start to split then mash them against the side of pan. Once the juices are reduced to a syrup, sift them and set aside the juice for later.

Whisk the egg whites up and a very clean bowl until they hold stiff peak. Gradually sift in half the sugar whisking as you go. The mixture should thicken and get shiny. Add in the cornflour and vinegar to give your meringues that gooey marshmallow centre and whisk in the rest of the sugar.  

Pour in the juice but do not mix. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a large star shaped nozzle.

The oven should be heated to about 140°. Pipe the meringues onto a greased paper. To make cute little meringue kisses hold the nozzle perfectly straight above the paper and pipe in a steady stream. The juices should make a pretty ripple pattern throughout. 

Cook gently on a low heat to dry and create that lovely crunch when you bite into each of these kisses. 

Sunday bakes - 'Crappy week at work' carrot cake

This was a tough week at work so today I wound down with a little baking before it starts up again tomorrow. This recipe is actually from a cookbook that I have, you can buy a copy of it here. 

Ingredients

225g self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

150ml sunflower oil

3 eggs

200g light soft brown sugar

400g grated carrots

Zest 1 orange

60g roasted chopped pistachios – plus extra for topping

Frosting

200g cream cheese

75g icing sugar

1.5 tsp lemon juice

Zest 1 lemon

Method

Sift the flour, baking powder and spices in together before beating the oil sugar and eggs separately and combining the two sets of ingredients.

Add the rest of the ingredients. Pour into a lined 20cm cake tin and bake at 180° for an hour or until the skewer comes out clean.

Beat the ingredients for the icing together until light and fluffy and then spread over the cake with a palette knife, sprinkle the pistachio nuts over the top and eat it all in front of friends with a vase full of sunny daffodils to yourself to make your week a bit better. 

Sunday bakes - 'Mothers' day' macaroons

Mothers' day is a lovely day, we get to spend it with our family, do family-friendly activities and there are copious amounts of spring flowers.

This year my mum, my godmother and I had a picnic at Standen, one of my favourite national trust properties. As a child I had a friend that lived in one of the on-site cottages so we used to play in the beautiful gardens.

I made a big picnic and slightly over did it on the baked goods but one of the things I made that went down the best was the raspberry ripple macaroons. 

Ingredients

6oz icing sugar

5.5 oz ground almonds

120 ml egg whites – about 4 eggs

5.5 oz granulated sugar

1 tbsp raspberry puree

50ml water

Filling

4 oz butter

8oz icing sugar

A few drops of raspberry ripple cupcake flavouring

Food colouring -  add to your desired colour level

Method

Sift the ground almonds to get out any large lumps and put it into a food blender with half of the egg whites and the icing sugar. Blitz with about 15 pulses.

Put the water in a saucepan and add the granulated sugar, heat until it reaches a gentle boil. Use a sugar thermometer to measure and it will be ready when it reaches 110°. Whisk up the rest of the egg whites in a clean bowl. It would be easier to do this with a kitchen aid style mixer because once the egg whites are beaten to soft peaks slowly start to add in the sugar syrup, with the whisk on high. The mix will become smooth and glossy, keep whisking until it is cool.

Fold in the almond mixture, take care not to over fold. A pattern of mixture poured over the top should sink back into the rest of the mixture within 30 seconds. Fold in the raspberry puree at the same time. The mixture will turn a dusky pink but add in more food colouring if you want a darker colour.

Fill a piping bag with the mixture and pipe onto sheets of baking paper. I found the technique that works the best is to draw a circle of about 2cm diameter and then hold the bag in the centre and squeeze out a dome of mixture. This seemed to be the best way to make sure the circles are even. 

Leave the mixture out for at least 30 minutes at room temperature so that the circles form a skin then bake at 170° for 14 minutes. 

 Whisk the butter and the icing sugar to make the butter cream and add the flavouring and colouring to taste.

Sandwich two of the cooled macaroons together with the buttercream filling and serve with a cup of tea and family laughs.

Thank you Mum for another wonderful year. 

Sunday bakes - 'Take me back there' tibetan bread

A little while ago a few friends and I went to Nepal to visit someone we used to work with. She moved back to Kathmandu a couple of years ago and about a year after she left we went out there. Nepal is an amazing country and we did some wonderful things, among them was a trek around the Annapurna region up to a mountain town called Ghandruk. On our trek we became accustomed quickly to standard trekking fare, dhal Bhat in the evenings and Tibetan bread with honey in the mornings. It was amazing food, made even better by the lovely people we met and the incredible surroundings.

It took a little while to find a recipe for Tibetan bread, but I adapted one that I found and consulted a dough expert until I found one that works and turns out just as I remember it. 

Ingredients

1.5 cups of self-raising flour

1tsp baking powder

½ cup whole milk

2 tsp sugar

Pinch of salt

Methods

Add the milk bit by bit to the flour and mix before adding more. Once all the ingredients have been added, knead the dough in the bowl for ten minutes, cover with cling-film and leave in a warm place for at least 2 hours. The longer you leave this, the better it will fluff up, as long as you keep it covered so it doesn’t dry out.

Pour some un-flavoured oil into a frying pan, so it is at least a cm deep, but more would be better, and heat. Be very careful when using the hot oil, it can spatter and burn you or could cause fires. The oil needs to be hot but not bubbling.

Take a section of dough and pull it out in a circular motion until it is about half a cm thick. Cut 3 lines in the centre of the dough. Place gently into the oil and fry until it is golden brown, then turn onto the other side. The dough should puff up and float on the surface.

Take it carefully out of the oil and serve with honey drizzled over the top, the same way they serve it in the mountains.