I’ve had a crack at making almond croissants. I strongly suspect these would have turned out better if I’d parked the almond element for my first attempt, but no. I had to go full croissant.
The end result appears quite nice, but to be fair, a sprinkle of icing sugar and a kindly Instagram filter, and I’d probably look like hot stuff too.
We’ve had the Bake Off challenge final… I came… drumroll please… third. Of five. A distinctly average performance among my peers, but I definitely had some highlights.
I’ve been hanging round third place on our GBBO leaderboard, and it’s sadly too late to change that now. But, I’m determined to go out fighting!
Here’s my double chocolate and raspberry tart. I got lucky with these raspberries – look at them, they’re neon! – as they’re almost out of season, but these were really tasty.
This might be the best pudding I’ve ever made. And it still came second to my friend Charlie’s cinder toffee version in our GBBO challenge!
I used this BBC recipe, but I’ve got fancy pants vanilla essence which contains vanilla seeds, which I used in place of the vanilla pod because I’m not made of money, it gives a lovely flavour and you still get the flecks of vanilla. I also used this almond puff pastry sticks recipe to serve with them, but I found them a bit too dry.
I, along with several of my friends, am watching this year’s Great British Bake Off very carefully. Don’t get me wrong, I always watch it, but this year is different.
I put a call out on Facebook to see which of my friends would be interested in a GBBO challenge – baking our version of the contestant’s weekly contest in a mini competition of our own. I did exclude my lovely friend, Lenka, who is insanely talented on the baking front (check out her Facebook page), so she’s judging (albeit remotely), and showing us how it’s done. She’s basically a young, Slovakian, Mary Berry.
When the Morrisons man hands you onions, you make… French onion soup. Idiot that I am, I ordered six bags of onions, not six onions, in a recent online shop (Barry did the same with oranges a few years ago), and made it my mission to use them all in delicious recipes.
I do most of my grocery shopping online (the “big” shop), so I don’t even remember how I found them, but JUS-ROL have started making pain au chocolat in a can*. They give you the pastry and the mini chocolate sticks and you take all the glory of hot pastries, straight from the oven.
One of the things I wanted to do this year was to make certain desserts from scratch. One was New York Baked Cheesecake (I’ve made this twice now, it was so delicious), another is profiteroles (which I haven’t managed yet), and the third, after watching many episodes of Masterchef, was pannacotta.
OK, so don’t get excited. The craft fair was a total bust. I was a bit sad about it because I’d been so excited, but these things happen.
I was very proud of the way my stall looked. I went into this with my friend Lenka, who bakes beautiful cakes, and we were supposed to be sharing a stall, but when we arrived they’d given us an extra long pair of tables as someone had called in sick. Continue reading
I was recently a bridesmaid for my beautiful friend Charlie, and what a wedding!
I (among many people) made various bits for the wedding, including baking this collection of buns to look like a wedding dress for the hen do (it received good reviews from Charlie’s auntie) and sewing the tie for Charlie’s two-year old son for the big day.
I also made a couple of bits towards their wedding present, including a Mr and Mrs framed photographic print and Mr and Mrs bunting (notice a theme?). We gave them those (along with a picnic basket that I really wanted to 
keep!) the week before the wedding, but I didn’t realise they’d feature on the big day too!
Neil, the talented photographer from our own big day (who is also a friend) was also the photographer for our friends’ wedding (he’s the groom’s brother). His wife, Amy, helps him with the photography business and is aspiring to become a wedding planner – my bunting got a nod in her recent blog post! Click here if you would like to have a gander, and that beautiful cake at the end? My friend Lenka made that. What a lovely wedding!