I’m not sure if a baker is every supposed to admit this, but I actually prefer savoury snacks, especially if they involve puff pastry.

We had some guests over last night and a few have given up sugar so I made a small selection of savoury snacks that I wanted to share with you all…

1. Cheese & Chive Palmiers 

I’d never attempted to make palmiers before so was pleasantly surprised at how simple and quick they were to bake.

Ingredients

• 1 sheet ready rolled puff pastry
• 5 tablespoons parmesan cheese, finely grated
• 3 tablespoons mature cheddar cheese, finely grated
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons chives, chopped
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Take the sheet of puff pastry out of the fridge and leave to rest for 15-20mins at room temperature.
2. Once pastry sheet has become slightly more pliable, roll out onto a flat surface.
3. Sprinkle both cheeses, pepper, cumin and chives evenly onto pastry sheet.
4. Begin rolling pastry from both long sides towards each other until both sides meet and pastry resembles a scroll.
5. Brush entire scroll with egg wash and leave to chill in the fridge for about 30mins, keep any remaining egg wash.
6. Preheat oven to 200ºC and remove pastry from the fridge and brush with egg wash once again.
7. Cut pastry into 18 even slices, discarding the end bits.
8. Place slices face down onto oven tray, leaving plenty of room around each slice (may require more than one baking sheet) and flatten slightly with palms to form that classic palmier shape
9. Brush top of slices with eggwash and bake for 15 – 18mins, until golden brown.
10. Leave to cool on oven tray for 10mins before removing onto a wire rack and let cool for a further 10mins before serving.

2. Spicy Chicken Sausage Rolls 

These are a firm favourite in my house. Of course you can use any sausages you’d prefer but as my family don’t eat pork, I use the Heck Chicken sausages.

Ingredients

• 1 sheet ready rolled puff pastry
• 1 pack Heck Smoked Paprika Chicken Sausages
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic granules
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
• 3 sprigs thyme
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds
• 1 tablespoon za’atar

Method

1. Take the sheet of puff pastry out of the fridge and leave to rest for 15-20mins at room temperature. Meanwhile, remove the sausage meat from its casing and place into a medium bowl.
2. Into the sausage meat, add the salt, garlic granules, chilli flakes, thyme leaves & lemon zest. Mix to combine.
3. Spoon meat mixture onto pastry sheet in a cylinder shape along the length of one side of pastry, leaving 1 inch from the edge.
4. Roll the pastry around the sausage meat tightly and brush the entire roll with egg wash. Place into the fridge for 30mins and save the remaining egg wash.
5. Preheat oven to 200ºC and remove chilled roll from the fridge.
6. Brush roll with egg wash once again and sprinkle with sesame seeds and za’atar and cut into 16 equal rolls.
7. Place rolls onto baking tray with enough space around each roll. Bake for 20 – 23 mins, until golden brown and sausage meat is thoroughly cooked.

Hope you enjoy trying these recipes out

Happy Baking 🙂

My plan to bake copious amounts of gingerbread and mince pies over Christmas came to a sudden halt when my oven decided it also needed a holiday a week before Christmas. I managed to get someone to fix it a few days before Christmas but ended up being so rushed off my feet I didn’t have a chance to post anything. 

Hope your holiday season was a little less frantic than mine and you’ve settled into the new year!

Two weeks in, and this year is already gearing up to be a challenging one, to add to that, my first big baking challenge of the year is to find or create the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. I’ve spent years trying to bake cookies with the right balance of crunch and chewiness and just the right amount of chocolate. At the moment my best find is the Carnation recipe with a few tweaks. 

Last week I decided to try out Tasty’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have to admit I didn’t quite follow the recipe exactly. I ended up using light brown sugar instead of dark because I didn’t check my cupboard before going shopping. Whilst I liked the brown butter element, it added a caramel-y richness to the cookies, they weren’t as great as I was expecting, the cookies were still very soft and chewy, however, the dough spread more than it should have in the oven leaving them extremely thin and big, so there wasn’t much bite to them. I used smaller balls of dough and baked for a shorter length of time when making the second batch and they were definitely a better size and thickness. 

I’m hoping to try out the Carnation recipe in the next couple of weeks to compare and then perhaps combine the best parts of both to create my ultimate chocolate chip cookie. 

If anyone has and recipes they think are pretty perfect then drop me a message.

Wishing you all a great year ahead, filled with joy, good health & lots of baked goods

Happy Baking 🙂 

One of the reasons I got into baking was to make celebrations that little bit more special and personal. I love seeing the surprised look on people’s faces when their cake is being brought out – it makes all of the hard work (and sometimes even tears) worth it.

This was definitely the case a few weeks ago. I’d offered to make an engagement cake but I didn’t realise it needed to be eggless until a few days before the event. Panic set in as my previous attempts at eggless cakes had not been so successful – flashbacks to trying to saw my way through a cake a few years ago.

I had a quick search and turns out red velvet is quite a popular eggless cake to try as the vinegar & buttermilk react with the baking powder to create a rise. However an excess amount of any raising agent can cause the cake to sink, which I did not realise until after the cakes had cooled down with a huge dip in the middle! The recipe stated to use plain flour & baking powder but I used self raising with the additional baking powder, which was just too much for the cake to handle. I let the cakes cool then tried to level them but they were so soft, almost pudding like in the middle that they were breaking at any slight movement, so I popped them in the freezer overnight and hoped for the best. They did firm up slightly and I managed to trim the edges and pack the crumbs into the centre to level each cake.

 My attempt at cream cheese frosting was much better this time. I made a normal vanilla buttercream and lightly folded in the cream cheese to keep the spreadable consistency.

The cake wasn’t as tall as I’d hoped but the finished product didn’t look bad and more importantly it still tasted good.

Moral of the story: Follow the recipe as stated!

If anyone has any tips on baking without eggs then please get in touch.

Happy Baking 🙂

In an attempt to make the most of the last days of autumn & pumpkin spiced everything, I tested out Bon Appétit’s recipe for BA’s Best Carrot Cake this week, before Christmas takes over and it all becomes about gingerbread and peppermint.  I have to admit, I have a slightly worrying obsession with Bon Appétit. I’m constantly refreshing their Youtube page in hopes of a new video & if I can’t find a recipe on their website, I seriously think twice about making the dish – I just can’t find fault in anything they do. Anyway, enough of the shameless plug….

The recipe has far more components than any other carrot cake recipe I’ve tried, but the extra ingredients and steps are definitely worth the hassle. The carrots are grated and left to sit in the buttermilk; they absorb most of the moisture which leaves the cake extremely soft and slightly more dense than other carrot cakes. The quantities of spices gives the cake a very strong autumn spiced flavour – if you’d prefer a more subtle hint of spice I’d recommend halving the quantities.

The only thing I always struggle with is cream cheese frosting – no matter what recipe or cream cheese I use it’s always so runny. I’m not sure if I’m over working the cheese or using the wrong type? I managed to salvage it this time by adding more icing sugar and leaving it in the fridge for an hour, it was still a thick pourable consistency. But if anyone has a foolproof method, please get in touch!

Overall the cake still tasted amazing. It was decadent, super soft and the perfect balance of sweet, spicy & tangy. Definitely worth a try if you’re a fan of carrot cake.

Happy Baking 🙂

If I ever get the chance to New York the first place I’ll  be heading to is the Two Hands Cafe in Tribeca…….A picture of their Banana Bread with Espresso Mascarpone popped up on my instagram about a year ago and I’ve been obsessed with it ever since! But, as I haven’t made it there yet I’ve had to settle for my version, which isn’t half bad.

The recipe uses mascarpone in both the banana bread and cream which adds a richness and keeps the cake extremely moist, and the banana and the coffee flavours work very well together.

Banana Walnut Bread

Ingredients

• 50g walnut halves, plus extra for decorating
• 4 bananas, ripe
• 200g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 200g dark brown sugar
• 55g butter
• 75g mascarpone
• 2 large eggs

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Butter and flour a 2lb loaf tin and line with baking paper.
2. Toast the walnuts on a baking tray for 8-10minutes. Once cooled, chop into smaller pieces and toss in 1 spoon of flour. While waiting for walnuts to cool, mash bananas to a fairly smooth pulp. Set both walnuts and mashed bananas aside.
3. Sift flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt & cinnamon in a medium bowl.
4. Whisk the sugar, butter & mascarpone in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one.
5. Reduce the speed of the mixer to low and add the flour until just combined. Then add the bananas and mix well, scrape the sides and bottom of bowl to ensure everything is evenly mixed. Fold in the walnuts and pour batter into prepared tin. (Optional: Place a few walnut halves on top before baking)
6. Bake for an hour, until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. If needed pop back into the oven for another 5-10minutes. Once cooked transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cake cool completely in tin.

Coffee Cream

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons of strong coffee, chilled
• 225g mascarpone
• 240ml double cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
• 40g icing sugar

Method

1. Add the chilled coffee, mascarpone, double cream and vanilla into a medium bowl and beat with an electric whisk on medium speed, until combined.
2. Increase speed of mixer to medium high and slowly add sugar to the mixture until soft peaks form. Take care not to over beat.
3. Store cream in fridge until ready to serve.

To serve, cut a generous slice of banana bread and spread a few spoons of cream. Top with a few crushed walnuts and a drizzle of honey or maple syrup.

Happy Baking 🙂

A few months ago I visited Paris for the Easter break with some friends, and naturally the first thing we had to do was stuff our faces. So being the millennials that we are, we were straight onto our trip advisor app looking for the best brunch spots around us. We found a coffee shop called 5 pailles a short walk from Gare du Nord. My friend ordered one of their chocolate scones and we all helped ourselves to a bite. They were amazingly soft and buttery with a chocolate hazelnut crumble on top. She got talking to the chef and surprisingly she agreed to send us  the recipe. I found the recipe in my inbox a few weeks ago and decided to give the recipe a try and they did not disappoint.

I’m sure to some Brits it would be considered an offence to add chocolate to a scone but it you’re looking for a slightly luxurious take on a classic then try adding a few chocolate chunks into your normal scone recipe and just before popping in the oven sprinkle with a crumble mixture of chocolate chips, crushed hazelnuts, sugar, flour & butter. Or better yet, if you find yourself in Paris anytime soon then pop in to 5 pailles.

Happy Baking 🙂

A few years ago my neighbour gave me a pumpkin she’d grown and I had no idea what to do with it, so I decided to take inspiration from our friends across the pond and make a pumpkin pie. It was really hard work and didn’t actually taste that great! My pastry was overcooked and shrunk, my pumpkin puree still had chunks of pumpkin in it and the pie didn’t really taste of anything. Nevertheless my little pumpkin made me 8 pies, that I sent out to my friends & family, and have been doing so every year since.

I must admit I still haven’t quite mastered the pastry crust so I do use ready made dough from time to time, but the pie definitely tastes a whole lot better than that first one.

This year I used the BA’s Best Pumpkin Pie recipe for the pie and the BBC Good Food recipe for the cream, with a few extra crushed pecans for good measure.

The pie set really well, no cracks formed when cooling, and the mixture of spices complimented the cream wonderfully. I was slightly reluctant to use all of the sweet components of the recipe; sugar, condensed milk and maple syrup seemed like overkill, but the pie was not overly sweet. If you do find the filling too sweet you could add less maple syrup to the cream or use a savoury pastry crust.

Hopefully you get a chance to try out some pumpkin recipes while they’re still in season.

Happy Baking 🙂