Easter bake off - Emily vs Melissa

A belated Happy Easter to everyone!  I hope you suitably overindulged like we did and are ready for another long weekend courtesy of the royal family in a few days' time.

This Easter, instead of giving each other chocolate eggs, Melissa suggested we should bake each other some Easter inspired treats.  I jumped at the idea - not only would we save money, but receiving a homemade gift means so much more than a shop bought egg that anyone can give.  We had a week to plan our presents and budget of £4 each and the challenge was set.

I scoured all my recipe books and what felt like half the internet trying to search for something creative and Easter related, but with the glorious weather outside the last thing I wanted to bake was a big rich simnel cake.  I spent 5 days humming and ha-ing, then I remembered the gorgeous Biscuiteers Book of Iced Biscuits that I was given as a Christmas present by my aunt and uncle and was inspired to make some Easter biscuits.  When Melissa saw me making the biscuit dough and spotted the 'plain biscuit recipe' over my shoulder she cried out - "Is that all you're making for the bake off?  Plain biscuits??"  I sheepishly replied, "I'm putting vanilla in them," which she scoffed at, as she thought her creation was going to take much more effort and it didn't seem like I was trying very hard.

Oh how the tables turned the next day.

More than 3 hours of icing and dozens of piping cornets later, my Easter biscuits were ready:

I knew the biscuits would take a while but I really had no idea what I was in for with that amount of icing and all those colours.  I'll remember to take a very deep breath before climbing that mountain again. 

And in the green corner, Melissa baked up a cracker of an Easter chocolate tart from our trusty Rachel Allen Bake book which was absolutely divine (and this comes from a girl that doesn't even really like chocolate):

And hats off to her for managing to make it in a deep cake tin because we left our fluted flan tin round at her sisters.

PS Although we were both completely full from all the Easter treats, Melissa did have to eat her words afterwards about me not trying hard enough....

Wholemeal honey cake with cinnamon icecreammm...

Melissa and I had our lovely friends (and soon to be neighbours) Laura and Slim down to stay last weekend.  And of course I need the very slightest excuse to get my pinny on and bake up a storm, so I pulled down all my favourite recipe books to search for a new recipe while Melissa rolled her eyes to heaven with a smile usually reserved for toddlers enjoying playtime.

After about two hours poring over photos of dozens of puddings and pies I plumped for a combination of two recipes - a wholemeal honey cake from River Cottage Every Day and cinnamon icecream from Rachel Allen's Entertaining At Home to go on top. 

The cinnamon icecream is a handy no-churn recipe that doesn't need a machine and is a cinch to whip up from just 4 ingredients - eggs, double cream, sugar and cinnamon.  I should say it's easy provided you have an electric whisk, as the cream, egg whites and yolks and sugar all need to be whipped separately to soft peaks - I definitely wouldn't fancy doing that by hand!  Then all you do is fold the mixtures together and freeze overnight until set.  Yum.

The wholemeal honey cake is a fairly standard sponge using a mixture of wholemeal flour and ground almonds which gives it a unique depth of flavour and texture.  It calls for a 23cm tin, but for some reason we have seven 21cm tins but none the required size.  I decided to try my luck anyway, thinking that 2cm can't make that much of a difference.  Turns out that it does.  When I checked to see whether the cake was done at the recommended time it wasn't even nearly done, the batter was clearly wobbling like santa's belly in the tin. It needed a good 20 minutes longer than the recipe said and unfortunately opening the oven door early made it sink a bit in the centre.  It's at these times you really wish your dining table wasn't right in the middle of the kitchen!  Still, it's how it tastes that really counts, and after I'd drizzled more than a healthy amount of honey over the top of the hot cake it was ready to serve up with the homemade icecream:

Although the two recipes weren't written to go together (and each stands up equally well on its own), the combination of the warm syrupy wholemeal sponge with the cool creamy spiced icecream was a good one.  The cake also has a lovely buttery sugary crust at the edge which is a really nice contrast to the soft and comforting sponge.

Laura and Slim's verdict:

And that was after seconds!

The first batch of brownies...sort of...

After our market research on Saturday, we think that there might be a gap in the (farmers') market for a stall selling brownies and tray bakes - sweet mouthfuls that people can enjoy with a cup of tea or even to eat on the way round browsing the rest of the stalls at the market.  With this in mind comes my two favourite parts of the process - baking and tasting!

So I pull down all my recipe books from the shelves and decide to start the hunt for the perfect signature brownie.   And there are many recipes to choose from that all have me salivating, spiked with all different kinds of nuts, flavoured with orange zest, caramel, differing degrees of chocolatiness and fudginess, topped with After Eight mints.... I think I might need to host a dedicated brownie party in order to choose between them :o)

And after all that, the recipe that sprung out at me wasn't for a brownie at all, but a blondie.  Like a brownie, but flavoured with brown sugar and vanilla instead of chocolate.  Despite being a brunette myself I don't discriminate, and the need for me to try Rachel Allen's recipe for Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies from her lovely Bake book was just too hard to ignore.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and put together, although I didn't have the right size cake tin.  Undeterred, I used my  trusty swiss roll tin and fashioned a "wall" out of tin foil that worked a treat and 40 minutes later delicious aromas were wafting from the oven as I pulled out the first batch.  I'm ashamed to admit that I couldn't wait for them to cool down and burnt my finger breaking off a sneaky corner to taste - mmmmmmmmm.  Yep they were goooood.  Buttery, laced with vanilla but balanced by the salty peanuts, fudgey in the middle and perfect with a cuppa in my favourite mug:

The only thing that I would do differently is to chop the white chocolate bigger so that it adds more texture - it seemed to melt away into the blondie.  Oh well, I'll just have to bake another batch....