Stacey's Cheese Scones

I'm following the example set by other members, and posting my recipes from previous meetings... starting with these cheese scones from our Fairytale Tea Party in July! I had used the "Sword in the Scone" pun previously for my other blog, but it went down well so I figured it would be a good way to get some savoury bakes into our fairytale offering. I accidentally made these vegan, since I try to avoid dairy and used sunflower spread, soy milk and soy cheese. I don't particularly like the taste of soy cheese normally, but it tasted fine in these scones. The scones can be served warm or allowed to cool before serving, and are best eaten on the day of baking.

Prep time: 5-10 mins        

Cook time: 10-12 mins       

Makes 6 large scones

Ingredients:

135ml milk
1 tsp lemon juice

275g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
tsp baking powder
65g margarine
1tbsp caster sugar

100g grated cheese

To glaze:

2tbsp milk
Salt and cracked black pepper

1. Heat the oven to gas mark 7 and place the baking tray you plan to use into the oven to heat up.
2. Heat the milk in the microwave for around 30 seconds until warm, but not hot. Add the lemon juice to the milk and set this to one side for a few minutes whilst you prepare the dry ingredients.
3. Tip the flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl, and then tip in the margarine. Rub the ingredients together with your fingers until they resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and grated cheese to the crumb-like mixture, and mix in with your hands.
4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the cooled milk. Mix these together using a cutlery knife until they combine to make a wet dough, being careful not to overwork.
5. Scatter flour over the work surface and tip the dough out onto it. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough. Fold the dough over itself 2-3 times until it becomes smooth, again being careful not to overwork. Pat the dough out (it's better to pat than to use a rolling pin) to around 3cm thick.
6. Using a cutter of your choice, cut scones out of the dough. Tip - do not twist your cutter as this seals the sides of the dough and may prevent your scones from rising.
7. Brush the scones with a little milk, and then sprinkle on some salt and black pepper before popping them in the oven for 10-12 minutes, until golden brown.
8. Enjoy!

Happy Baking!

Joy's Vegan Sausage Rolls

These "sausage" rolls kept me sane for a few months of semi-inforced veganism as my boyfriend at the time suddenly went dairy free! They're ridiculous easy to make but I didn't have much time or money last week to be more creative.

1 pack of Jus Roll puff pastry (This is the only which is actually vegan. Do NOT get the low fat one, the Tesco one, the all butter one etc)
1 pack of stuffing mix, I used Co-op sage and onion. In my experience, most stuffing mixs are vegan
Soya milk/rice milk etc

Cut pastry lengthways. Mix up stuffing mix and place down middle of pastry strips. Lightly roll one of the edges of the pastry, brush with a little soya milk/water and roll the pastry around the stuffing mix. Cut into bite size chunks, add a few slashes with a sharp knife and brush with a little soya milk.
Bake at 200°C for about 30mins or until golden brown. Looking at the photo I don't think I did mine quite long enough!

And THAT is me up to date - phew! What a productive Sunday evening.

Joy's Unicorn Poop - Birthday NUMBER TWO

As I spent most of the previous month's meeting making bad jokes about number 2, I was absolutely thrilled when I stumbled across this whilst googling kid's birthday party baking ideas:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Unicorn-Poop/

I used my standard shortbread biscuit recipe though (see previous post), but added cola flavouring, vanilla extract and a good slosh of caramel flavouring as this is clearly what unicorn poops would taste like. I divided it into 6, and spent far too long blending red/orange/yellow/green/blue/purple colour pastes into the cookie dough. As a side note, for those who are still using liquid food colourings, I cannot recommend these highly enough:

Get them from eBay/Amazon etc. They're a little more expensive, but they last for ages, a little goes a long way and you really do get a much bolder colour without altering the texture of the cake/biscuit/icing. Anyway...

I rolled each of the 6 colours into long strands, then piled them up and kept rolling to make one really long multicoloured sausage. I chopped this up and had fun rolling each poop into a unique swirl shape. This is definitely the weirdest thing I've ever baked, and I've baked a cookie with ketchup in...

I baked them (probably at 200°C for about 15mins), and when cool, I used icing to stick multicoloured shimmer balls, white chocolate stars and sprinkles. I then sprayed with Dr Oetker gold shimmer spray and added a further sprinkling of cake glitter, for good measure. Voila! (Unfortunately I don't think the picture does the colour justice):

Joy's Cosmopolitan Rolls

August:
August was No Bake month, and I was one of 2 or 3 who made Rocky Road so I won't bother posting the recipe for that as everyone knows how to make it!

September:
I didn't go - sorry!

October:
October was cocktail month, and as I was beginning to get into the Christmas spirit, I fancied making some cranberry sauce, but I added orange and vodka as a nod to the Cosmopolitan! However nowhere was selling fresh cranberries yet and so I settled for dried and used this recipe, but used vodka instead of Grand Marnier:

http://frenchfood.about.com/od/dressingpreservessauces/r/Cranberry-Orange-Relish-Recipe.htm

I spread this over bought puff pastry (I know, I know, I'm a terrible lazy person, especially as it's about the 3rd time I've used it!), then added some turkey slices to keep with the Christmas theme! I rolled this up, chopped it into bite-size chunks and baked. Probably at 200°C for about 20mins but I can't really remember, sorry. I vaguely recall that the pastry didn't rise particularly well, so not my best idea yet!

Joy's Cheese Scones and Lemon Rose Shortbread

We held a fairy tale themed picnic to raise money for Marie Curie. I picked two of my tried and tested favourite recipes: cheese scones and lemon rose shortbread.

Cheese Scones:

This is my Mum's recipe and it's the one I've always used; it's super easy and they always taste great!

8oz SR flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1oz butter/marg
4oz cheese (I usually use mature or smoked cheddar)
1/4 pint milk

Chuck it all in a food processor and blend until it forms a ball.
Roll out to 2cm thick and cut into desired shapes - don't twist the cutters in the dough as they won't rise as well.
Brush with a little milk, and sprinkle a bit of exra cheese/herbs/ground black pepper if desired.
Bake at 200°C for 15mins.

Lemon Rose Shortbread:

Again, the shortbread recipe is my Mum's (I learnt from the best!) I've probably listed the exact same recipe previously on the blog but here it is again for good measure!

4oz butter/marg
3oz caster sugar
6oz plain flour
2-3 drops lemon essence

Once again, I've afraid this is a lazy food processor recipe! Chuck it all in and blend until it comes together.
Tip onto a floured surface and roll out to about 0.5cm thick. I used a round cutter, and then cut a mini star out of half of the biscuits.
Bake at 190°C for 7-8 mins, then allow to cool.

I never use a recipe for buttercream and just keep mixing and adding until it seems the right consistency, but I also added a couple of drops of rose essence and pink food colouring to this batch.

Use a Wilton 2D rose nozzle to pipe onto the biscuits without holes, then press one with a hole on top - voila! Simple but rather effective, I like to think.

Cake'n'Bake Update

Hello!

It's been a while *coughsixmonthscough* since I've done one of these, and for that I hang my head in shame... Sorry!

But, Cake'n'Bake is still going strong, so here's a brief run-down of what we've been up to in the last six months!

In July we held a fairytale Picnic and raised £86.35 for Marie Curie Cancer Care:

In the August heat we decided to give our ovens a rest and go for a "No Bake" theme:

September's challenge was to bake something that shared your initials...

In October we decided to use cocktails as the inspirations for our bakes:

November was our 2nd Birthday, so we had our 2nd Birthday Party!

In December we helped Santa on his trip by baking Christmas recipes from around the world:

And for January's meeting last week we set ourselves the challenge of baking something "free-from" - here's what we came up with:

The recipes for these bakes will be making their way onto the blog soon - so watch this space!!

Mary-Anne's Portuguese Custard Tarts

• butter, for greasing
• 3 free-range egg yolks
• 125g/4½ oz caster sugar
• 30g/1oz cornflour
• 1 vanilla pod, split, seeds scraped out
• 175ml/6fl oz full-fat milk
• 225ml/8fl oz double cream
• 300g/10½ oz ready-rolled puff pastry
• plain flour, for dusting
• icing sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Grease the wells of a 12-hole muffin tray with butter.
2. In a pan, heat the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour over a low to medium heat, whisking continuously until thickened and well combined.
3. Add the vanilla seeds, then add the milk and cream in a thin stream, whisking continuously, until the mixture is thick, smooth and well combined.
4. Continue to stir the custard mixture until it comes to the boil, then remove from the heat.
5. Roll out the puff pastry onto a clean work surface lightly dusted with flour and icing sugar. Cut the pastry in half and place one sheet on top of the other. Roll the pastry sheets up like a Swiss roll and cut the roll into twelve slices.
6. Lay each of the rolled pastry slices flat onto the work surface and roll out into 10cm/4in discs using a rolling pin.
7. Press a pastry disc into each of the wells of the prepared muffin tray. Divide the cooled custard equally among the pastry cases.
8. Transfer the muffin tray to the oven and bake the tarts for 18-20 minutes, or until the custard has set and is pale golden-brown and the pastry is crisp and golden-brown. Allow to cool in the tin.