The Great February Muffin Feud

The next installment of the Matt and Hayley Bake-off took place today.

This time, the challenge was to make 12 muffins, involving chocolate in some way, shape or form.

I'm really interested in the idea of chilli and chocolate, so I thought i'd make some sort of chilli chocolate combination. A search through my cook books found a recipe for Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes from the Cox Cookies and Cake book. This book was bought for me by a friend ages ago and I hadn't had a chance to make anything from it, so i was really keen to go ahead and have a go at one of the recipes. It's a really stylish book with a sense of humour and a lot of glitter!

I used 1 and a half quantities to adjust for muffins... And the result was, well, pretty spectacular to be honest:

The taste of these muffins is truly amazing... They are definitely the best muffins I have ever made. The muffin mixture contains cinnamon and nutmeg, and the chocolate buttercream contains cayenne pepper.

The independent judge this time was Lisa, Newcastle's Clandestine Cake Club organiser. Who better to ask to judge a muffin contest? So, we took the pictures, and we sent them to her, and she (very slowly and dramatically) reached her decision. Would it be muffin 1 (which I knew to be Matt's effort) or my muffin 2 (I must admit to feeling confident, but what if Lisa wasn't a fan of chilli?!)

Before I tell you who won, here are some more pictures of my effort:

Lovely rich, squidgy moist inside

And here are some pictures of Matt's muffins, which were chocolate muffins with a chocolate topping:

Note the slightly dry texture... explanation to follow

Lovely precise decoration.

It turns out that somehow, Matt managed to forget to put any butter into his cake mixture, hence the rather dry-looking texture.

And so, the results came in and it turned out that my muffins won, so I am the muffin queen. I am slowly but surely starting to claw back my self respect following the cheesecake debacle and loser pie episode.

Black Forest Bake-Off

Those of you who have been following the blog for a while will know that, on weekends when we're not together, boyf and I will often have baking competitions, which are then judged by picture alone by independent judges.

We couldn't decide what to bake, but the lovely Lisa suggested black forest gateau. Neither of us have ever made black forest gateau so it seemed like a good challenge.

I chose a recipe out of one of my reliable old cookbooks and away we went to produce our masterpieces. Mine ended up looking like this:

I learnt 2 main things in the process: 1. applying chocolate sprinkles to the outside of a cake is hard and 2. Kirsch is very tasty. 

And here is boyf's effort, a very worthy affair with some expert piping. And particularly worthy considering he later admitted to never even having seen or tasted a black forest gateau.

The independent judges (my mum and dad and grandma, and boyf's mum and dad) agreed that mine was more "black forest gateau"-like and mine was therefore pronounced the winner :D

Hooray! 

Tonight is Cake Club!

Tonight's the night folks,

It seems like ages since the last Clandestine Cake Club. But now, the cake is baked, the venue is known, and in a few hours I shall be in a gluttonous sugar- induced coma of cakey joy.

I have many blog posts to catch up on, as per usual. A Black Forest Gateau Bake off is not least of these... They will *hopefully* not take me too long to get uploaded.

Speak soon,

Hayley xxx

Baking Battle- Pie Edition

And so, dear friends, we find ourselves in Bake-Off territory again.

There has been a lot of talk about pie in my life at the minute (more on this later) and so a pie-based bake-off was clearly the way forward. The rules were such:

1. Home made pastry, no shop bought laziness
2. The filling had to be sweet
3. The pie had to be wholly covered in pastry (no American style pie for this here challenge.)

Nancy and I had that day at work been discussing the theory of rhubarb and custard pie. A pie with inherent, built in custard. And i found this recipe, which had our mouths watering. So this was the obvious choice, wasn't it? Yes, I know the crumble topping would breach the rules, but i figured i would just ditch that for pastry, and away we go. So, armed with my shopping list, off I went ingredient shopping.

Except... THERE IS NO RHUBARB! anywhere! I went to numerous places in the market, no rhubarb. I went to a supermarket, hoping to find some GM mutant version from Chile or somewhere... Not a stick to be seen, except for the Encased-In-Tin variety. Tinned rhubarb felt like cheating though for a bake-off, so instead i grabbed the nearest fruit, which happened to be pears. I haven't actually had a pear for years, and could barely remember what they tasted like, so i thought this would be high-risk, but fun. I added some pecans into the mixture too, and a handful of sultanas, just because they were there. I had to blind bake the base, and i'm still not 100% used to the quirks of my oven, so the crust of the pie was a bit overdone.

Alas, no. Despite the fact that the pie tastes divine, it was unanimously voted against in favour of The Boy's Pie. Like me, he had to have a last minute ingredients change as he intended to make an apple and blackberry pie but could find no blackberries. So he opted for an apple and raspberry option. A robust, if a little on the safe side, choice of filling. And yes, lets give him a few extra points for his geeky decoration shall we? And let's kindly ignore the fact that the tail on his pi symbol is the wrong way around ;) (sorry, I am bitter about losing this challenge)

The Boy's pie

Pi Pie... See what he did there?

The judges this time were: Boy's parents, and brother. They were instructed to each come to an independent decision. And they each chose The Boy's pie. Suspicious? Lets hope so. "They said pie number 2 was burnt and they thought it was meat filled" he says. Well, please. Clearly the idea of a pie with integral custard is just too advanced for this world. Pff!

The Great Sachertorte Skirmish of 2011

Hi all,

This weekend saw another bake-off between The Boy and I.

The challenge? Inspired by the Great British Bake-Off, we decided to make Sachertorte. I've wanted to make this cake for ages, and having had a taste of some at the Clandestine Cake Club, I wanted to make it even more. So off we went to get ingredients, at Saturday at 4pm saw us lock horns in our little inter-city, pan-regional baking event. This bake-off was very important to me after The Great Cheesecake Debacle. My baking pride was at stake.

The recipe I used (I will get round to posting recipes on here one day, I promise), called for a lot of egg white whisking, which is very hard work, but worth it for the light, fluffy texture of the cake. Then, in a high-risk, high-potential pay-off move, I went for a topping made with a sugar syrup instead of a cream-based ganache. High risk, because i don't own a thermometer and i know how precise you have to be when it comes to sugar, so i just had to guess when it got to 120o. Luckily I remembered to buy a new piping set as my trusty old piping syringe got lost in my move after christmas.

The cake baking started out ok, with a nice sized, nicely risen cake. I then covered it with apricot jam, and attempted to top it with the chocolate topping. This was far too runny though, and lots and lots of coats had to be applied before it would start to stick. Even after being left in the fridge overnight, the topping still hadn't set, but i had enough on there to pipe the decoration on. Sachertorte traditional has the word 'Sacher' (after Franz Sacher, the inventor of the cake) on the top in chocolate. Herein lies an inherent problem i have with baking: Just go ahead and wing it, and hope for the best, or practice, and risk doing it perfectly on your practice then messing it up on the real thing. I decided to have a practice on the basis that The Boy is very precise, so i would have to be too in order to win. The piping turned out ok, although the practice was definitely better than the real thing.

The apricot jam is applied

Runny chocolate coating is ridiculously messy!

Practice went ok!

The real one didn't go quite as ok, but is still acceptable

The cake went back in the fridge, then when I checked on it later, the S had migrated as the cake had been at a bit of an angle in the fridge. This was a total disaster, but all was not lost as i managed to gently nudge the rogue letter back to its rightful place.

Rogue S!

Once he had finished, it was time for judging. As you know, we take great pains to blind our efforts from our 'independent' judge, Nancy. However, she felt she had to bow out of this competition as she thought she had guessed whose was whose from the piping (and obviously, knowing she wouldget cake from me if i won, this would put her independence into jeopardy.

So this time, we had a grand total of 5 judges. 3 of my friends, and 2 of his. And the score? 4-1 to ME!! And, if i do say so myself, my sachertorte was a triumph. It was baked perfectly, tasted wonderful, and looked alright in the end, despite the slightly dodgy topping. It was very quickly snaffled by my friends and colleagues.

note the uniform texture inside. I'm well proud of that, I am!

Part of me wants to make this again, immediately. The rest of me is saying "don't you ever, ever make this ever again. Quit while you're ahead!". I guess we shall see....

Aaaand here they are... The long awaited photos of The Boy's *losing* cake...

Very precise piping, but the lack of swirly bits may have decreased  the prettiness factor.

More gooey than mine, which is good, but not as uniformly baked...

I know, I know, I am a terrible winner. And I am also a terrible loser, which doesn't matter in this particular case ;)

Hayley xxx

The Baked Cheesecake Challenge

a.k.a. The Great Cheesecake Disaster.

So The Boyf and i decided to do another baking challenge after the success of the focaccia competition. This time we each had to make a baked cheesecake of some description.

I decided to make an apple crumble cheesecake. I was going to assemble the recipe myself- ie make a plain baked cheesecake, top with a spiced apple compote, then crumble topping, but instead i decided to go with this recipe, and to be honest, it didn't go to plan at all. Nothing in particular went wrong, when i was making it, but i think my springform tin leaked a bit (so i ended up with melted butter all over my oven,which then created an alarming amount of smoke), then the mixture rose more than expected around the outside and burnt a bit, while the middle didn't do much at all.

Anyway, after it has been left in the fridge overnight i was hoping that a miracle may have occurred or a little emergency cheesecake fairy had appeared to make it look prettier, but alas, there it was, looking sad and forlorn and very, very ugly.

i am a very ugly cheesecake. that is all.

I've had a little taste today for my sunday lunch dessert and i'm pleased to report that it doesn't taste as bad as it looks, it's actually quite nice. It looks much better inside than it does on the outside, which is probably a lot like myself (beauty comes from within, right, and in my head i am Lily Cole) I do think that just making a plain cheesecake with an apple crumble topping will work better though, maybe this is something to try sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, he made a double chocolate cheesecake which looks A-mezzing. It really does look lovely:

Last time we took great steps to ensure an independent judge and appropriate blinding. This time I can't bring myself to waste such effort as he is the clear winner. Even my mother, who should be heavily biased towards me, has said that he has won. Her exact words when she saw mine: "oh dear, what on earth is that?"

All of this means, dear people, that i have lost a cheesecake baking competition to someone who had to ring me to clarify what cream cheese is. I hang my head in shame and crawl into a corner to cry gently for many hours.

The score is now 1:1. And this is before proper judging.

UPDATE: Well of course he won. I mean, no contest at all really.