Last month I found a great challenge called Classic French by Blue Kitchen Bakes. This is the first time I’d come across it. With twitter it’s all about being in the right place at the right time. There are so many great things happen but if you blink you can miss them.

September’s Classic French challenge was choux pastry which I managed to achieve within the month but didn’t get around to posting until now so couldn’t officially enter. And having looked at the entries, there’s some stiff competition.

I used the official choux recipe and decided to fill mine with raspberry cream, top them with white chocolate and serve them on a circle of nougatine. I could probably do with improving the presentation but my husband did give me top marks for taste.

This month’s challenge is Tarte Tatin – one of my favourite desserts but one I’ve never attempted. Best get practising!

Apples, cider and calvados

My theme for this month’s afternoon tea is apples so I’ve been trying out some different recipes to serve. Today I thought I’d have a go at apple scones.

I’ve made apple scones before but I wanted to try baking them with cider. I wasn’t sure whether it would work but I thought the bubbles in the cider would help with the rise but I didn’t want to substitute all the milk and I had to be careful not to make them too wet.

My solution was to use sour cream instead of milk and then use the cider to give the right consistency.

My husband then came up with the idea of making calvados cream to go with them and randomly I found a jar of apple pie jam in the cupboard.

All in all I think the experiment worked. Let’s hope next week’s afternoon guests agree.

Making real bread

For those of you who follow me on twitter or have come to one of my secret afternoon teas, you’ll know that I spend a lot of time baking. But I tend to do more sweet baking – cakes and patisserie – and don’t really ever make bread. It’s probably a weakness in my baking reportoire (as Mary and Paul would say!) So when Carole from Love Bread in Calderdale tweeted me about the next bread workshop I didn’t have to think twice.

LoveBread is a not-for-profit social enteprise, set up in January this year that aims to provide real bread for the local community of Brighouse, Rastrick and Calderdale. They bake with schools and community groups to promote the benefits of real bread.

And what a great day it’s been. There were six of us altogether and two very passionate bread experts showing us how to master three different loaves and how to use one to make a focaccia. In Carole’s words ‘you can’t fail with bread … there’s always a solution.’ I think today showed me that bread isn’t time-consuming and there’s nothing to be afraid of.

The sponge made by Carole earlier which gives a depth of flavour and texture

Making the olive oil bread

Olive oil bread ready for the oven

Turning some of the olive oil bread into focaccia

Lunch!

Seeded brown on the rise!

The seeded browns

Making honey and spelt bread

The end results

So if anyone wants to give real bread a try I would definitely recommend LoveBread. The workshop lasts approximately four hours and you make three different types of bread, you get lunch and refreshments which includes delicious homemade cake and you go home with bags of bread as well as all the recipes including the sponge starter. What a great way to spend a Sunday and all for only £20!

Clandestine Cake Club comes to Huddersfield

This Friday will see the first ever Clandestine Cake Club event take place in Huddersfield. We’re taking inspiration from the Huddersfield Food and Drink Festival, which starts on Thursday, for this ‘Festival of Cake’.

Visit the Huddersfield Clandestine Cake Club page for full details and if you fancy an evening of cake on Friday why not book a place. But hurry there are only a few spots left!

Happy Baking!

Cake and wine anyone

Two of my favourite things in life are cake (I bake most days) and wine (I drink it most days) but it’s not so usual to put them both together. The customary combinations are cake and a cuppa, and wine and cheese. However, I think some of the best combinations are sweet cake with fruity wine!

Sunday was my cake and wine matching afternoon where as well as the sandwiches, savoury tarts and scones, guests get to taste four cakes with four different wines. This is the second time that I have done this kind of afternoon tea event and I think it’s one of my favourite themes. Last year we found matches for lemon cake, sticky toffee cupcakes, carrot cake and brownies (see the wine matching page for the wines that worked) so my first task was deciding which cakes to chose this time.

Having done a patisserie course at Betty’s recently (more about that in another post), I decided to use my new skills and make a gateau opera (almond sponge with chocolate and coffee filling.) A sample was immediately dispatched to Rob Hoult from Hoults Wine in Huddersfield for him to examine, investigate, sample and find the winning combination.

I also wanted to make some cakes that people would eat frequently or could quickly bake so I chose vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and strawberry cake with strawberry jam and buttercream. Due to the high sugar content these weren’t quite so easy to find matches for – Rob and I tried quite a few different combinations! The last cake (and one my Grandma made quite a lot) was an apple and cinnamon crumble cake.

So what worked? Well I think they all did. The hardest pairing was the vanilla cupcake but I think Rob excelled himself and found a perfect match. Here’s what we had:

Strawberry cake: Cono Sur Pinot Noir Sparkling Rosé—Chile

Vanilla cupcakes and vanilla buttercream: Niento Senetiner Torrontes—Argentina (2010)

Apple and Cinnamon crumble cake: Sables and Galets Gewurztraminer—Austria (2009)

Gateau Opera: Bremerton Selkirk Shiraz—Australia (2009)

Oh yes I also made salted caramel macarons but being so sweet we ended up having a lovely Austrian sweet wine with them!

I’d like to give a huge thanks to Rob Hoult for all his time, his palate and of course the wine. His wine knowledge made sure that all the pairings worked.

And I have a few other cakes that I want to find pairings for so watch this space ….

Rhubarb, rhubarb!

I’ve never been a big fan of February, the weather is normally either wet or snowy and spring still feels a long way away. However, on a postitive note West Yorkshire celebrates the humble forced rhubarb at the annual Wakefield Festival of Food, Drink and Rhubarb, so I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate this month’s afternoon tea event to one of Yorkshire’s protected food.

The first task was to source my rhubarb and thankfully Cowling’s greengrocers in Queensgate Market had plenty. I bought what they had available on Thursday but was assured that more would be in stock on the Friday. And with my request for 2 kilos I think I again bought most of his stock on Friday.

The afternoon tea menu was in part inspired by BBC’s Great British Food Revival. I used their recipe for the chutney which was served with the savoury items and I opted for the rhubarb meringue tart as my show piece sweet. For the sandwiches I chose meat and fish fillings that I knew worked with rhubard (ham, duck and mackerel) and for the sweets I baked classic combinations (rhubarb and custard cake) along with patisserie that I like to make regularly (macarons). I even managed to find some rhubarb and ginger jam from Pickles in Queensgate Market which I used as a filling for the pink macarons and as an accompaniment for the scones.

I also decided to serve a non alcoholic rhubarb drink at the afternoon tea. I took inspiration from Jo, the Icelandic cook, and after making her rhubarb drink recipe I added soda water and apple and lemon slices to make it more of a punch. And it was of course served in a tea cup!

This was the first time that I have baked with rhubarb so I was very pleased with all the flavours and how recipes turned out and I think my guests enjoyed sampling the finished products.

The Lent Challenge

Last year I decided to go that bit further than just giving up crisps and alcohol for Lent and I also gave up supermarkets inspired by a fellow tweeter. I actually enjoyed the experience and learnt a lot more about the local shops and markets in Kirklees.

But last week when Ash Wednesday arrived I still couldn’t decide what to give up apart from the usual salted treat (crisps are my weakness and I have no willpower when they are in the house or office!) I knew that I could just give up supermarkets again but as I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment I decided that I wanted to go further and do something even more challenging.

So by the end of the day I came up with the decision to not only give up supermarkets but to also give up all chain stores and just use independent shops. As it was a decision made in haste I’d not even had an opportunity to stock up on anything that we were running low on – this was going to be a true test.

Well it wasn’t long before my first challenge came along – my foundation ran out completely. I couldn’t even think where I could get it from – I’ve always relied on Boots or a department store. But by chance I had to go to the health food shop in Huddersfield, Dodd’s, to get some baking ingredients, and by the door I found a whole selection of cruelty free make up. They say it’s the small things in life that make you happy and I felt a great sense of relief wash over me that I’d managed not to fall at the first hurdle. And what’s more I saved quite a bit of money.

Well the challenges haven’t stopped there as my husband decided on Friday that we needed a new bed as he was sick of not getting a good night’s sleep. He annouced that he was going to visit Dreams and see what they had on offer. I didn’t know what to say as this was going to be quite a big purchase. However, it seems Dreams no longer exists in Huddersfield and after a bit of research he found an alternative local bed shop, Time 4 Sleep, in Milnsbridge that not only stock some great frames and mattresses, they are also very competitive on price. So after paying them a visit today it looks like we will be buying a new bed and mattress from a very knowledgeable independent shop and what’s more I didn’t even need to persuade him that we had to look for a non chain store.

I am sure that these are not going to be the last of the challenges but I am looking forward to visiting lots of new shops that I don’t normally ever try. Although I’m also slightly scared about what we are going to run out of next!