Hannah's Chocolate Macarons

Before embarking on this month's challenge, I had heard from numerous people that macaron making was not an easy thing to do and often if you succeeded this was down to luck rather than anything else. Suitably worried I decided to do some research and see if i could find a recipe that seemed to be more hit, than miss. Firstly there was the discussion on whether to make french or italian meringue and some people say you should leave the macarons for an hour before cooking, others 15 minutes, also some say to use 4 day old egg whites and others suggest fresh. So after all this conflicting information I thought i'd just try the simplest recipe and keep my fingers crossed.

I used the recipe from Delicious Magazine

The first part is to mix the egg whites in to stiff peaks and add the sugar. In another bowl I sieved ground almonds, icing sugar and cocoa powder, as I was making chocolate macarons. The almonds took quite a while to sieve and I sieved the mixture twice to make sure that it didn't have any lumps.

The plan is then to fold all of the ingredients together. I then added all of my ingredients to a piping bag; I find it easier to put the piping bag inside a vase and turn the outside of the bag around the top of the vase so that I can scoop the mixture in without getting a lot stuck to the side. I found the mixture to be really thick (slightly worrying as most of the recipes i'd seen had said the mixture was really runny). I soon discovered my first mistake of attached a star nozzle, rather than a circular nozzle. When piping the mixture the star nozzle made the mixture come out in swirls, which aren't ideal when wanting a smooth macaron shell. I then dropped the trays down on the surface to get rid of any air bubbles and allow the mixture to spread out.

After 30 minutes (supposedly to allow the macarons to get feet?!) I popped them in the oven. After 15 minutes or so I took them out the oven. They did smell amazing, but looked quite thick and a bit more substantial that macarons normally look.

I used a recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book for the filling. The filling is normally used for Whoopie Pies and is made up from unsalted butter, cocoa butter, icing sugar and vanilla marshmallow fluff. The marshmallow fluff is literally a tub of marshmallow, like you get inside of chocolate teacakes.

Once the macaron pieces had cooled, I tried to find equal (ish) sized pieces and pair them together, whilst battling to scrape them off the supposed grease proof baking paper. I then spooned some of the mixture on one side of the macaron and pieced together.

So, the final result tasted really good, however was of thicker texture than a standard macaron and was by no stretch of the imagination a smooth finish. They went down really well with the family and my boyfriend said they tasted like the ones in the shop (however I feel he might be slightly bias).

I'm not sure I would try to make them again, as although they tasted okay they didn't look macaron like and will stick to buying them in future, unless one of my fellow Queen's of Tarts has managed to perfect the art of macaron making ...

Sarah's attempt at macaroons!

Well - these were a bit of a disaster!

For this month's challenge bake, I decided to use Lorraine Pascale's recipe for macaroons which I found on the BBC food website - see link here http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/macaroons_04669.

I used raspberries to flavour them, but I added a bit of red food colouring to make the colour more intense without making the mixture too sloppy. Overall the recipe was easy to follow and quite simple, but I was struggling without the use of an electric whisk for the egg whites. As a result, I don't think the mixture was stiff enough, and piping these babies out on greaseproof paper was a nightmare. I rested them before baking but after an hour I still didn't have a skin on the top - perhaps this is why they aren't nice and shiny. 

Although you wouldn't think it from the photos I did attempt to use a template to keep my macaroons the same size! For the filling I used fresh cream flavoured with rose water. 

Not sure that I'd get many points from Paul Hollywood for consistency...! They were nice though and I would have another go once I get an electric whisk (don't worry, it's on my Christmas present list!)

Guest Bake - Melissa's Coconut Ice!

Prep-time15 mins and over night to set.

Ingredients
Butter, for greasing397g
can condensed milk
350g desiccated coconut
350g icing sugar
Pink or red food colouring

Method
You will need a 23cm x 20cm x 4cm deep cake tin. Rub a little butter over the inside of the tin with baking paper. Pour the condensed milk into a big bowl. Add the coconut, icing sugar and mix really well. Spoon half of the mixture into the square cake tin, then flatten it by pressing with damp fingers. Add a few drops of pink or red food colouring to the mixture left in the bowl and mix evenly. Spoon the coloured mixture over the top of the white layer and use damp fingers to smooth the top. Loosely cover and put in a cool place overnight to set and dry out. Use the baking paper to lift the coconut ice from the tin, then cut into about 40 pieces. Store in an airtight tin in a cool place for up to 3 weeks.

Baker's tip This coconut ice needs a day to set, so don’t be tempted to eat it beforehand. 

The month of November is well and truly underway which means a new baking challenge! This month we will be attempting the French macaroon or macaron. Not to be confused with the coconut biscuit of the same name! The macaron as we know it today was created by Pierre Desfontaines. Desfontaines worked for the famous tea salon Ladurée and first attempted to sandwich 2 pieces of macaron together with a filling. 

Macarons come in all different flavours from chocolate, pistachio and raspberry with fillings varying from jam and butter cream. These gorgeous sweet treats are very much the biscuit du jour! Fun and colourful they make the perfect gift. As we are heading towards the festive season (all going well!) perhaps our friends and family will benefit from our bake this month…!

Malteaser Cake

Cakes are great at any time of the year, but no more so than on a birthday. I wanted to make a bit of a showstopper cake for one of my best friends and fellow Queen of Tarts blogger, Katherine. We are both keen watchers of Lorraine Pascale's cookery programmes and we were both drooling at the thought of this cake as soon as we saw it. Not only is it a chocolate cake, but it is covered in Malteasers, what is there not to like? After buying what felt like hundreds of Malteasers I was ready to give it a go ...

The recipe for the cake is pretty easy to follow and I was excited to use my newly returned KMix electric whisk (a Christmas present from last year that I have only just had fixed and returned to me). The mixer made quick work of the ingredients and I poured the mixture in to 2 round sandwich tins and put them in the oven.

Once the cakes had cooked, I left them to cool completely and put them to one side whilst I made the chocolate buttercream frosting. The frosting was basically softened butter, melted chocolate and icing sugar. The most difficult thing about making the frosting was that it only needed 100g of melted chocolate and that the Bourneville bar i had bought was 200g, but it is encouraged that you should try your recipe along the way ...

I used about 1/3 of the frosting to sandwich the 2 cakes together and then used the remaining frosting to cover the cake completely, with the assistance of a palette knife to try and keep it neat. It was important to keep a reasonably thick layer of frosting around the cake to allow the malteasers to stick.

      

Next came the most tricky part of the cake, placing all of the malteasers on. Lorraine suggests going up the side of the cake, over the top and then back down the other side, so this was how I started off. I was tempted at one point to throw the whole cake on the floor in frustration, but I had to admit defeat on getting perfectly straight lines. It does take a lot of patience and time to cover the cake, but I think the end result is worth the effort.

Katherine had organised an afternoon tea for her birthday and so I took the cake along as a surprise bake. Although slightly bashed in the 2 hour car journey, the cake had stayed pretty much in one piece and it had the desired effect of being a slightly over the top, but 'show off' cake!

I would definitely recommend for people to make this and it really does look impressive when finished and tastes just as good.

Katherine's Victoria Sponge

The classic victoria sponge - so recognisable in taste, the pressure was on to ensure the perfect bake - so here goes...

I've obviously baked this before, and having always used Delia Smith's recipe from 'Delia's Complete Illustrated Cookery Course - Classic Edition' (a firm favourite of the Mother!), and found no issues with the recipe, I don't usually deem it necessary to deviate. However, I thought I'd use my new cookery book - 'Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook' and give this a test drive (I did have Delia on hand to compare and contrast).

Firstly I measured everything out into one bowl - something I don't usually do, as I usually do it a step at a time, but it seemed to work just fine. The tweak I did make though was cutting the butter up into small cubes before adding to the mixture - a tip I picked up for a celebrity chef programme (I think it may have been Lorraine Pascale), as it helps combine the mixture quicker than one large lump.

I poured the mixture as evenly as possibe into the tins - and tapped them on the work surface (a Gordon Ramsey tip to release any air bubbles) and popped them in for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.
With a prod and a glance, I removed the cakes, and left them to cool in their tins, before removing and putting on a cooling tray.

Whilst they were cooling I got to work on the butter cream - a recipe handed down from the mother - so probably from a cookery magazine from yester year! I started off by creaming the butter and icing sugar together with a electric handwhisk (mod con that I thought I'd give a whirl) - I used Lorraine Pascale's tip of putting a clean tea towel over the top of the whisk and bowl to ensure the cloud of icing sugar didn't fill my kitchen - which worked a treat (thanks LP!). After getting the mixture going, I decided to get the trusty wooden spoon, and get creaming by hand - very strenuous work, but a light fluffy mixture was a happy result!

Once the sponges were cooled out of their tins, I spread the buttercream onto the bottom layer, and the Strawberry Jam on the other sponge, and quickly (whilst crossing everything and holding my breath) sandwiched the two sponges together! Added a strawberry 'garnish' and a dusting of icing sugar, and the taste test could commence!

My tasting panel was my housemate Jen - I served hers with a piping hot cup of tea, and she commented on the moistness of the sponge, and the nice flavours coming through. The others on my panel were colleagues at work, they commented on the flavours and thickness of the sponge, getting a varying of results - 8.5, and a 9.5 out of 10.

As I hadn't made this for a while, and had a bad experience with a Victoria Sponge at Jubilee (I don't like to talk about it!), I was pretty pleased with the result, although my even distribution of cake mix wasn't quite a success with one sponge slightly larger on one side.

(For my birthday soiree, I had an afternoon tea theme in the day and baked the sponge again, using the same recipe, and methods, and I am pleased to report, we had no wonky sponges! This time however, I whipped up some cream, and layered that with some strawberry jam for the filling, and topped the cake with more whipped cream and an array of fruit on top. It definitely was aesthetically pleasing! I also made some Mini Victoria Sponges and used the same recipe, but splitting them into 12 victoria sponge holes - a tin designed especially for this purpose (I was on a waiting list for this tin at Lakeland!!!) 6 Lemon Curd and Buttercream, and 6 Classic Victoria Sponge with Strawberry Jam and Buttercream - both a resounding success!)

Anna's Victoria Sponge.

I chose my recipe from the tried and tested Be-Ro baking book. My mum gave me a copy of this book which she has used to make so many of her delicious cakes, so I thought it would be a failsafe option! The recipe is really simple and easy to remember. It’s basically 100g of everything, plus 2 eggs. I have attempted to make a Victoria sponge a couple of times before and although the lightness of the cake has improved I have not been very successful in getting the cake to rise.

My top tip for cake making, which I learned from a day spent on a baking course, is to cream the eggs and sugar so that the mixture turns from a yellow colour to white with an extremely soft texture. This is meant to create a much lighter texture and it really makes a difference!

So, was I successful in my bid to get my cake to rise? Well, sort of!! This time I actually managed to make a cake that I could cut into two halves – so maybe it was successful!? I think I would have liked it to have been a little bigger – I will work on that for next time! I finished my cake off with butter cream, strawberry jam and icing sugar dusted on top.

I was pleased with my cake, but next time I will get it to raise more! It tasted really good and it was nice and light inside. My tasting team (aka my boyfriend) gave it thumbs up, although I think this might have been slightly biased. I will definitely make this cake again and I will keep you posted on my progress!  

Jess's Blueberry Victoria Sponge

This cake was made as a joint birthday cake for mum and boyfriend.. no pressure. I wanted it to be blueberry themed, to give it a bit of extra flavour and colour. It ended up being rather jam packed!!

I used a basic Victoria Sponge recipe from the BBC Food website which was very straight forward. I then made a buttercream icing, coloured it blue (which turned out to be slightly more like green). Once both cakes had cooled, I added blueberry jam to the lower tier, and spread the buttercream on top of both parts.

On the underneath cake, i added chopped strawberries and whole blueberries, and positioned the top later on top. i then covered the top layer of icing with blueberries, and to add a bit of extra colour, added some Cadburys "Snowball" chocolates.

I would definately make this cake again. It was so simple, and the end result was exactly what i wanted,  it looked good and tasted great. It wasnt exactly the neatest cake of all time (!!), but it was colourful and  looked fun!

Felicity's Victoria Sponge...with a twist

Being a bit of a baking novice I reached straight for the Good Housekeeping recipe book and used their tried and tested recipe for the 'perfect Victoria sponge'. Nothing unusual there.

In the beginning there was flour...

Usually I lump all the ingredients in together but this time I followed the recipe by the book; creaming the butter and sugar together, followed by beating in the eggs and finally folding in the flour. And all by hand! Harder work than I first thought. Good job I'd been to the gym this week in preparation. Jokes.

Ye olde fashioned scales

All was looking good and they went into the oven. Now the tricky part - waiting. I've never been one for patience so I peeked and prodded for 20 minutes until they finally came out looking golden brown and cooked through (the knife test - thanks Mrs Stringer!).

I went for a traditional butter icing - couldn't resist a bit of pink food dye - and Mum Pointer's homemade blackcurrant jam for the filling. And to top it off a few dusted hearts.

And the 'twist'? A sprinkling of lemon zest and juice in the mixture and icing to give it a bit of a kick.

And voila:

My tasting panel (the Pointer family) gave it the thumbs up. And a tip from mum - maybe a few degrees cooler for the oven next time.

Hannah's Victoria Sandwich ... in all her glory

The Victoria Sandwich .... a British classic and a great first bake to get us off the starting block. When searching for my recipe of choice, I came across a lot of variations but decided to stick to the traditional recipe but with the addition of buttercream icing.

I used the recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible and then found the buttercream recipe from the BBC Good Food website.

The recipe was easy to follow and involved just putting all of the ingredients in to one bowl, so was definitely a fool-proof recipe.

When it came to pouring the mixture in to the cake tins, I was trying out a new product I'd bought a while ago called Cake Release from Lakeland and it's meant to act as a substitute for greaseproof paper/butter. The cakes came out of the oven looking golden brown and smelling amazing!

However, the real test would be how easy it was for the cakes to come out, the first one popped out really easily, but the second one stuck to the bottom of the pan a bit and I had to call for re-inforcements to come and assist so that it didn't crack. The Cake Release didn't leave any grease on the cake and it could have been that I didn't use enough of it for it to work properly, so i'll use it again before writing it off! Once cooled I took the cakes out of the tins on to a clean tea towel, before turning them on to the wire racks (a tip from Mary Berry herself to stop the cakes being dented by the wire rack).

I let the cakes cool down completely, so that the buttercream wouldn't melt once applied. The buttercream was easy to work with and after putting 3 spoonfulls on to one side of the cake (the side with the slight hole in it), I used a palette knife to smooth it down. This was then followed by raspberry jam and applied in the same way.

The other half was then lifted on top and finished with a spinkling of caster sugar and a few raspberrys for decoration, resulting in my Victoria Sponge displayed on an Emma Bridgewater cake stand.

The tasting committee (my slightly bias boyfriend) rated it 10 out of 10 appearance wise and 10 out of 10 for taste, so a big thumbs up, but realistically how wrong can a Victoria Sandwich go? (...luckily for me you couldn't notice the hole that the cake tin left!)

Overall I would recommend the recipe and will definitely be using it again

Sarah's Victoria Sponge

This recipe is from Waitrose and always works well (so far at least!). This time I used the zest, and juice from a lemon in the butter cream. 

So, what do we know about the Victoria Sponge?

So, what do we know about the Victoria Sponge?

Well, we are all aware that the Victoria Sponge is a Quintessential British Baking Classic – a tasty tea time treat steeped in tradition, with recipes passed through the generations.

But why is it called the ‘Victoria’ Sponge we hear you cry....

Quite simply, the name Victoria Sponge was given to this cake because it was Queen Victoria’s favourite Afternoon Tea accompaniment!

Over the years, the Victoria Sponge may have seen tweaks and innovative twists to its traditional recipe – double cream as opposed to buttercream, and varying jam fillings such as; lemon curd and raspberry. Despite these twists and tweaks the Classic Victoria Sponge is still a firm favourite on today’s Afternoon Tea Menus.

The Classic Victoria Sponge is two sponges sandwiched together with buttercream and strawberry jam, and a light dusting of icing sugar. However, the WI do not recognise this as the traditional recipe, instead, the recipe that they recognise is simple raspberry jam filling with a dusting of caster sugar.

So, let's see what baking delights we have...

Guest Bakes

This page is specifically for friends and family or interested followers to showcase their own bakes.

Please send in your baking post and/or photos to queensbaking@gmail.com and we will upload the best bakes on here.
When sending your bake please can you include the following:

• Your Name (this is optional)
• Name of Bake
• Recipe Source (Which book etc)
• A photo of the bake
• Any other details you want to include

We look forward to hearing from you!

Ready Steady .... Bake!

As of Monday 1st October 2012, Queens of Tarts will be up and running and in full baking motion.

Every month (for the time being) we will be choosing a catagory/topic of baking, baking our chosen receipe and then letting the world know about our successes (and possible failures). Whether it be that our buns have stuck or our flans are dry, you'll be hearing about it!

To ease us in gently to the baking blog world, our first baking topic will be the British classic, a Victoria Sponge; a cake traditionally filled with jam and whipped cream.

So ladies, get out your mixing bowls, dust off your wooden spoons and let the baking commence ...