The Great Bloggers Bake Off 2016!

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How is August almost over already? It feels like yesterday that I was celebrating my 24th birthday, and now we're almost into Autumn. With the end of Summer comes one of my absolutely favourite TV shows, The Great British Bake Off. Who doesn't love watching Amateur bakers compete in three weekly challenges, sprinkled with perfectly British innuendo courtesy of Mel and Sue, the cold stare of master baker Paul Hollywood, and the ray of sunshine that is Mary Berry. Now I'm not shy about telling people how much I love Mary Berry, I don't think I really knew what an idol was until I came across her.

Bloggers Bake Along to GBBO: Mary Berry's Apricot Frangipane Tart

Before we start with the recipe by my absolute baking idol, Mrs Berry herself, I have to announce that we got Star Baker again last week in the Great Bloggers Bake Off 2015 as hosted by Jenny of Mummy Mishaps for our Bzzzzy Bee Dairy Free Ice Cream Roll! Granted it was because no one else attempted the ice cream roll, but I like to think we would have gotten it anyway!

I was very surprised that no one else attempted the ice cream roll as it seemed the obvious choice for me, but was very happy to see my name in the Star Bakers round up post again...

This week I decided to make a Frangipane tart. Ever since the Bake Off began and I first saw this mysterious tart I have wanted to try my hand at one, so when I saw it was in this weeks episode I knew without a doubt I would make one. As mentioned above this apricot frangipane tart is from the great Mary Berry herself, and I found this recipe here. 

I was surprised to see that for this week's bake there were only a few ingredients, much less than I have used in the past few weeks...

I started by making the short crust pastry, which thankfully I have made several times before, so I wasn't at all stressed about. For some reason this recipe doesn't say anything about chilling the pastry before rolling it out, so I didn't bother. It also doesn't say anything about blind baking it, so again I just did as I was told and didn't bother.

Once that was done I moved onto the frangipane, which is made by creaming butter and sugar together, then mixing in beaten egg, before finally stirring in the ground almonds and almond extract. This honestly smelt amazing, and I just wanted to stuff it into my face, however I just about managed to restrain myself!

Next I drained my two tins of apricot halves and then dried them individually with paper towels. Then I careful placed them onto my pastry base, before carefully spooning on the frangipane and smoothing it out. Then I popped it into the oven for 45 minutes. I check it at 30 mins to make sure it wasn't browning too much, and to pop some foil on top to ensure the pastry didn't burn.

Once it was baked I made up a quick icing using icing sugar and some of the syrup I saved from the drained apricots and dripped it on in a zig zag pattern.

There we have it my Apricot Frangipane Tart, I must say considering it was the first frangipane tart that I had ever tried, it was seriously yummy, and I already can't wait to make another!

Bake Along With The Bake Off

Who doesn't love The Great British Bake Off? Mary Berry is my absolute baking idol, so it's a no brainer for me to love GBBO. Knowing that it's only about a month away I have been rewatching the last series, which had some of the most talented bakers ever seen on the bake off!

I have mentioned before that I am a keen baker, but to be honest since Tim and I moved out of the flat, and I started my makeup course I haven't baked a single thing. Which is such a shame because baking makes me feel so happy, and I love getting complements from people regarding what I have made...

With all this in mind I decided that this year I wanted to do something alongside my favourite show, so this year I will be 'Baking Along With The Bake Off', and I want you to join me!

The idea is we will watch an episode of bake off, then in the week before the next episode will make something related to the episode, and write a post about it. For example you could either make your own signature to the same challenge as the bakers, recreate the blind challenge, or create your own show stopper to the same brief the bakers were given. The post would go up before the next episode aired, and then we would all link up together and share what we have made. Now I am aware that GBBO probably won't grace our screens until August, but it's good to be organised right?

If you would like to get involved then please fill out the contact form below and I will email you nearer the time! Alternatively I have created a Facebook group for us all to share our posts when the time comes, so feel free to join that.

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Wishlist Wednesday: Recipe Books

Now we all know that I love baking.. I bang on about it enough, right? Well I was talking to a colleague today and she recommended a baking book to me, and I realised, I haven't had a look to see what baking books are on the market in a long time. One cheeky look later, and this wishlist was born.

1. The Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking: I love GBBO, I already own one of their books, so why wouldn't I want this one?
2. Mary Berry's Baking Bible: Mary Berry is my absolute baking idol, I seriously love this woman, I want every single book she has ever written. Seeing as this one is called her 'baking bible' I assume it's a must have!
3. Crumb: The Baking Book: To be honest, I wasn't a big fan of Ruby on last year's GBBO, but after seeing the 'Where are they now?' episode showing her book, I've been intrigued about it.
4. The Hummingbird Bakery: Home Sweet Home: I was recommended the other Hummingbird bakery book on this list by a work colleague, as mentioned above, so I thought why not put this in my list too.
5. The Great British Bake Off Christmas: Do I really need to explain this?
6. No-Bake Baking Book: This one really grabs my attention... as it's a baking book. containing things you don't actually have to bake... It blows my mind.
7. The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook: This is the book I was recommended by my colleague, and she says every single recipe she has tried from this book has turned out perfectly. Strong claims, so I think I need to try this one out for myself.
8. Mary Berry 100 Cakes and Bakes: 100 recipes from my baking idol? Yes please.
9. Peek-a-boo Cakes: This is another book that intrigued me. Recently I made a hidden chessboard cake, and it's made me want to try and make other cakes with hidden surprises. This book would certainly help me achieve that.

Baking Lately...

Recently my love of baking has be reignited, what with The Great British Bake Off being on TV, and me reading a couple of baking related novels, I couldn't wait to get stuck in. I thought I would share with you a few of the things that I have made over the last few weeks.

First up I made this Chocolate and Vanilla chessboard cake with Caramel feathered icing. This cake was pretty challenging, as I had to pipe rings of each mixture into the tins, and the mixture was quite runny and my piping bags were not working in my favour. When I took the cakes out of the oven, I was sure this cake was going to look ridiculous. Nevertheless I iced it and crossed my fingers, thankfully when I cut into it, it was pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good!

My brother came over to stay last weekend, and we decided that we wanted to bake something together. After thumbing through every single baking book I owned we settled on a recipe from the BBC website for peanut butter brownies, they turned out brilliantly, and they were certainly fun to make. 

These are something I make a lot, as they are so easy and yummy, and they are chocolate covered cake bites. All you do is make a basic cake, pop it in a food processor, mix the crumbs with icing, roll into balls, and cover in chocolate. These were actually made with the left over cake mix from the Chessboard cake. I took these over to my Boyfriend's brothers house when we visited last weekend, and they went down a storm!

I actually only finished this cake this morning, as it's for my nan's birthday today. It's a coffee and walnut cake, which is her favourite, and the recipe is by the one and only Mary Berry, and you can check that out here. This cake was pretty straightforward, apart from my layers didn't rise enough, so I had to make a sneaky third one, but I won't be telling my nan that the recipe didn't work out as it should have! The icing on this cake is amazing, with a very subtle coffee flavour. I'm taking this over to her later, so I can't wait to see if she likes it!

This recipe caught my eye when I was catching up with the GBBO Masterclass Episode Three yesterday morning and I just knew I had to give it a go. These are Paul Hollywood's Mini Sausage Plaits, or as he called them on the programme, 'Either a posh sausage roll, or a poor man's wellington'. This was probably one of the most difficult recipe's I have ever undertaken, considering the four different components, and having to make a shortcrust puff pastry, which I have never done before. These were also only made today (well I made the pastry yesterday), and they turned out much better then I expected, and the taste is like nothing I've ever eaten. I can't wait to see my families faces later when they tuck into these!

Let me know in the comments what your favourite is of all my bakes, and also let me know what your favourite GBBO recipe was from this season, and I might give it a go!

Berkshire Bloggers do #SBBC: Things I Love...

There are a million things that I love, most of them are food based, but we won't go into that too much! I think the easiest way for me to tackle this is to make a list. I'm going to limit it to my top 5 favourite things in the whole wide world! So in no particular order, here are a few things that make me happy.

1: Dogs.

 My beautiful Maizey!

My Nan's puppy, Pippa.

Little Poodle puppy that I got to cuddle yesterday!

I grew up around dogs, and as such I have always loved them. Nothing makes me smile more than getting to have a cuddle with a dog. No matter what breed, or size, I love them ALL! I was bought a puppy when I was only 1 year old, and she was the best dog ever. She reached the ripe old age of 14 before we sadly had to have her put down. That never deterred me from wanting another dog. My mum got a border collie cross called Annie, for her birthday from my Nan, and she is the dopiest, soppiest thing you would ever meet. Unless she see's a clown... then she will rip it's throat out (no lie). I begged mum to let me have my own dog, I desperately wanted (and still do want) a teacup yorkshire terrier. We were struggling to find any yorkie puppies around our area, and then mum spotted an advert for Jack Russell puppies. She knew as soon as I saw them that I wouldn't be able to resist. So that night I left that farm with my little baby Maizey! She's now four years old and I'm desperate for her to have little puppies of her own! I literally cannot contain myself when I am around dogs, I went to a family fun day when I visited my cousin in Wakefield, and there was a fun dog show, and I almost had a heart attack at all the cute little doggies. I swear if I ever am lucky enough to own a big house with a bit of land, that I will own ALL the dogs!

2. Baking:

Mary Berry is my IDOL! I don't know what it is about baking, but it makes me feel really happy. I just love making (and eating) sweet treats. I find that a cake is all the more delicious when you've made it yourself, from scratch. I ALWAYS make my own pastry when I make a tart, and nothing makes me prouder than when I cut a slice and flip it, to find NO soggy bottom! I am slowly getting back into baking, and I have a little bit of a plan to start up a small business, but we'll see on that front.

3. Youtube:

I've talked about my obsession with Youtube so many times on this blog. I've been a loyal watcher of many Youtubers since their humble beginnings. I aspire to have my own channel with 1000 followers. I have started making Gameplay videos much like Pewdiepie, and you can check those out here. I am also working on videos for my main channel, which will focus on short films and vlogs. So watch this space!

4. Chart Music:

I tend to get a lot of stick for my taste in music, but it really doesn't bother me. I like a song with a good tune, with decent lyrics that I can sing along and dance to. It doesn't mean that I dislike other kinds of music, I'll happily listen to rock music, or heavy metal. I enjoy music in general. It just so happens to be that my favourite music is the stuff that is in the charts.

5. Horror Films:

My love of horror films has always been present. When I was about 10 years old, my dad rented the original Nightmare on Elm Street, and I watched it about 15 times before we took it back. In fact I'm pretty sure he extended the rental so I could watch it more. That makes me sound like a really creepy child right? It wasn't really until I was in sixthform, studying Media, and we researched Slasher movies for our coursework, that I really unlocked my love of horror. Since then I have attended a few horror film festivals whilst at university, and my love of horror continues to grow. Now I know a lot of you are probably sat there thinking I am a total weirdo. I don't know what it is about horror. I love the feeling of being scared, or grossed out. I've never seen a film that I literally couldn't watch because it was too gory. I think what I love the most about horror is that it really pushes the boundaries of what is actually SHOWN on film. I hope that some of you will agree, and all I will say is that I think everyone should give horror a go. If there is one thing I have learned from attending the festivals, it's that there is a horror for everyone. Comic, thought-provoking, or just down right scary, there's a lot off cool stuff out there, just dig a little deeper than mainstream horror, and you might find a gem, like I have.

So there you have it, five things that I love, and that make me who I am! Sorry that this post turned out MEGA long, and I'm hoping some of you have stayed until the end. Let me know what you think on my views in the comments, I love to hear from you!