Other Bloggers

I wouldn't usually promote other bloggers but this is a special exception.

Jane Beedle, former Great British Bake Off contestant started blogging just after Christmas and I have read her blog right since the start.
It is an excellent blog if you are getting bored of me (which I expect you are) Jane's blog has always got something different on it sweet and savoury compared to my incessant baking habits.
What impressed me the most was that I emailed Jane a question about baking and within one hour I had a reply with a recipe attached!
This is the first time that any famous chef had ever replied to one of my messages and it was within two hours of my message!
Read Jane's blog: www.janebbakes.com

I hope you find this useful,

Croquembouche!

This is the almighty croquembouche.
This dessert requires a little skill but is sooo worth it. I made this last Monday when all of my great uncles and aunties came to my house for dinner for the first time ever so my Mum wanted to impress them. Naturally, she came to me. I decided to make a croquembouche which is perfectly achievable if you follow the recipe carefully.

55g butter

150ml water

75g plain flour, sieved

2 eggs (beaten with a pinch of salt and sugar)

300ml double cream

150g granulated sugar

For the pastry:

Preheat the oven to 200C 180Fan.

Weigh out all the ingredients.

Heat the butter until fully melted and boiling.

Add the flour and beat with a wooden spoon until there are no lumps of flour left and the mix comes away from the sides of the pan.

Leave until fully cooled.

Add the beaten egg bit by bit to the bowl with an electric whisk until it has a stringy consistency.

Pipe into small balls onto grease-proof paper (on a baking tray) and dab with water to make sure that there are no dobbles sticking up.

Bake for 12 minutes the reduce the oven temperature by 20C for around another 12 minutes.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR UNTIL YOU THINK THE PASTRY IS COOKED!

Remove the pastry from the oven and stab the balls to remove the steam then put the balls back into the oven (turned off) and leave for around 10 minutes until dried out.

Whip the cream until stiff peaks have formed.

Pipe the cream into the balls and place on a cooling wrack.

To make the caramel put the sugar into a pan and heat over a low temperature not stirring but tilting and swirling the pan occasionally until the sugar is thick, golden in colour and shiny.

If you burn the caramel don't worry just add boiling water to the pan, discard and try again.

To construct the croquembouche dip the balls into the caramel and start to construct a pyramid (this is easier than it sounds as the caramel sets very hard).

If the caramel is too hard just reheat it again until liquidy.

Drizzle any leftover caramel ontop of the pyramid and serve.

Enjoy!

Soda Bread

There are many different recipes for soda bread many of which I have tried. The strangest thing is that the 1st one that I ever tried is still my favourite. This recipe was given to me when I was 9 years old by my scout leader and was one of the 1st things that I made on my own which makes this recipe very special to me. This is a loaf of bread that you can have on the table in under an hour made just using store cupboard essentials. This isn't the most Irish soda bread so I have a couple of adaptations should you wish to use them: you can use white flour instead of wholewheat if you don't have and I prefer to shape the bread into a round shape and slash a cross in the top instead of baking the bread in a tin.

550g (1lb) wholewheat flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp salt
237ml (1/2 pint) milk

Mix all of the ingredients together to form a dough.

Place in a well buttered dish and cover with another dish.

Bake at 220c or gas7 for 30 minutes.

Remove the top dish and bake for a further 10 minutes to brown the crust.

Enjoy!

Confectionery and Baking Booklet Now Available ONLINE!

HELLO Readers,
I just wanted to tell you my booklet: Confectionary and Baking with The Food Kid is now available online by following the link.
Thanks,

The Food Kid Investigates-Why We Shouldn't Drink Coca Cola

Hello Readers!
It's a new year so its time for a new start and therefore its time for a new section-The Food Kid investigates.

For my 1st investigation I decided to keep it simple-boiling 500ml of full fat cocoa cola.
To be honest I wish I never had as the results are shocking.

I can honestly say that I have only ever drunk cocoa cola once in my life and hated the taste so will never do it again. Nobody in my family likes cocoa cola so my mum buys one bottle a year at Christmas for when my family come around and that's it. So, now the Christmas season has ended I decided to use some of the leftover coke for my investigation.

I boiled 500ml of full fat cocoa cola and saw (to my horror) that when all of the water is evaporated from the drink the carbon dioxide (the bubbles) began to evaporate as well. This stinks everything out in your whole house, don't do it.

Then it gets worse as the coke starts to become like syrup, the coke has now become a sticky, black, revolting mess that I wouldn't feed to a rat-yes it was that bad.

As the experiment continues it gets even worse as the syrup becomes a sort of mutant fizzing caramel that had begun to look like some kind of deadly poison so I finally decided to remove the pan from the heat. The sugar set and became rock solid and stuck to the pan-just like a caramel would.

My message to you is when you see the amount of caramelly substance (molten sugar) there was left in that pan you'd realise just how bad for you cocoa cola is for you and hopefully think twice before drinking any more.

If you don't believe anything that I say see for yourself below.

Just a quick reminder that the Confectionary and Baking with The Food Kid booklet is available by emailing thefoodkid@chef.net any time.

Thanks for reading!

Mary Berry's Chocolate Shortbread

This recipe is taken from  a Daily Mail Mary Berry Christmas pullout and is good for gifts if you know a real biscuit lover.
Makes 16-18

75g semolina
140g plain flour
75g light muscovado sugar
25g cocoa powder
175g cubed butter at room temperature
100g chocolate chips


Put all the ingredients in a bowl (except the chocolate chips) and rub the butter into the mix to produce a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs.

Work the dough with your hands and add the chocolate chips until a dough is formed.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a 1/2 cm thickness and use a cutter (of your chosen size) to cut out the shortbread.

Place the shortbread on a lined tray and chill for 30 minutes.

Bake at 160C 140Cfan 325F Gas 3 for 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Tom's Tips-A Note on Apps

This post is to help everybody become more aware of the apps available to help with cookery and food preparation skills, I have no less than 16 food apps on my phone as I find that they are an excellent resource as you can find almost any recipe you want on a food app and best of all, most of them are free meaning you can use reliable recipes for free.

Yummly
This app excellent as anybody can contribute to it and therefore you never know what you are going to get and there are so many different varieties of each recipe so there is bound to be one to your taste.
An additional feature of this app is that you can select your dietary preferences and favourite types of food so that the app can produce a page of recipes especially selected for you. If there is any downside to this app its that because of the sheer volume of recipes it takes a while to choose the one you want.
Price: Free
Rating: 4 Stars

The Great British Bake Off-Better Baking
This app is great for a beginner baker who want to learn how to make the most simple and traditional cakes in a simple and fool-proof way which teaches you how to do each steps with pictures and detailed description with the finishing touch of inbuilt timers for cooking so you don't overbake your bake.
The only problem is that the app only provides recipes from the classic cakes section and bakes from the previous series of bake-off for free (every other section (there are so many of them (too many to name))costs 79p).
Price: Free (There are in-app purchases)
Rating: 3 Stars

Jamie Oliver
There are three apps from Jamie Oliver:
Jamie's 20 Minute Meals:
I've never got this app as it doesn't appeal to me as it isn't very good value for money-only 60 recipes for £4.99 and its from the TV series which I have already seen so I'm afraid I cant rate this one.
Jamie Oliver:
This is a sort of free trial version of Jamie Oliver ultimate but with less recipes so for more details of the app read the section on Jamie Oliver Ultimate.
Price: Free
Rating:3.5 Star
Jamie Oliver Ultimate:
This app has over 600 of Jamie Oliver's finest recipes available for use, the app has many features including that it has a shopping list feature so that you can add all of the ingredients from a recipe to the in app shopping list with the click of just one button.
Other features include that there are video guides, collections of recipes for ease of access, a search tool and a cooking now mode which gives step by step picture guides and timers for fool-proof cooking.
Price: £5.99
Rating: 5 Star

In Mary We Trust:
This app has over 60 Mary Berry recipes which means that I would say that this is good value for money.
The app has a Christmas section which includes all of the elements for a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimming, in addition there is a shopping list, timer and cooking now mode as well as a search tool- these features are very similar to that of the Jamie Oliver Ultimate app.
Price: £1.99
Rating: 5 Star

Allrecipes
This is a simple app on which many people post recipes of anything and everything. It has a dinner spinner to help you decide what you want for dinner as well as a search tool which allows you to select your dietary requirements.
Price: Free
Rating: 3.5 Stars

What not to get
Of course there are some good apps and some bad apps so, here are some of the bad ones:
ANY James martin app-they are unreliable and not good value for money, they are only useful if you think you are a professional chef.
Allrecipes video-this app doesn't work on my phone at all.
Great British Chefs-This app isn't helpful and gives difficult and expensive recipes meant for professional chefs with unclear and difficult to understand recipes.

Some Other Good Apps To Get
Nigella
Schwartz Recipes
Hairy Biker's Missisipi Adventure
Betty Crocker Cookbook
Smart Recipes
One You
Waitrose Food
John Lewis COOK

Happy Downloading,