Monday, 19 August 2013

Treacle Tart

I'm back! Sorry about the silence, there has been a new addition to the family and having a toddler and a newborn has kept me so busy I haven't had the time for baking! Littlest one is just starting to entertain himself for a few minutes at a time these days and is napping a little longer too, so I'm starting to get on top of things again.

I've been watching re-runs of The Great British Bake Off over the weekend and I was inspired to try out a tart since I have had a lovely new tart tin sitting in the cupboard for a few months now. I've seen a few programs where James Martin (I do rather like James Martin :) ) makes treacle tart and it seemed simple enough so I thought I'd give it a go.

The most time consuming part was actually the pastry. I had to make it, chill it, then blind bake it before adding the filling. Moulding it into the tin was quite difficult as the recipe I used included flour, butter and an egg which made quite a dry, crumbly pastry. Rolling it out was a complete waste of time as it just tore so I just stuck the whole lot in the tin and pushed it out to the edges making sure it was nice and thin and even. After 30 minutes of chilling it went into the oven until it was just brown, and then I added the filling, which consisted of an entire tin of golden syrup (!!!), bread crumbs and lemon rind/juice. It really is a simple recipe so if you buy ready made pastry it's one you can do very quickly. Interestingly, there is no treacle in a treacle tart recipe!

Half an hour of baking later and this is what I ended up with:

Fresh out the oven

Cooled and removed from the tin

Served with a big dollop of whipped double cream

For the record, it was delicious! I was expecting it to be incredibly sweet, given how much syrup went in there, but the lemon cut through it nicely.

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Thursday, 24 January 2013

A look back at my journey

I've put together a collage of all the large cakes I've ever decorated, in the order I did them. I was interested to see if there is a notable difference in them based on what I have learnt over the months.

On some of the pictures it seem like I have perhaps taken a step back since decorating the previous cake, but I think the quality levels are quite dependent on who I am making the cake for and what the occasion is. For example, the wedding cake is (in my own opinion) the best cake I have made, but of course a wedding cake is one of the most important parts - materially speaking - of the wedding. Whereas some of the cakes have been made for myself, just for fun, and I think it shows that I cared slightly less for these!


Today's cake is not included in this collage for the simple reason that it was not about the decorating. It was more about baking practice, and about the CHOCOLATE FUDGE! :-D