Baking For Birds

OK, so this blog is meant to be dedicated to the fine art of baking for humans, but I thought that today it would be interesting to look at some other craft-like stuff I have been getting up to.

Since moving back home, one of the joys of the day has been watching the wonderful array of wild birds that visit my parents' garden.  The visitors include Sparrows, Blackbirds, Robins (my favourite!) Blue Tits, Coal Tits, Great Tits, Chaffinches, Bullfinches, Greenfinches, Linnets, and even a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. Plus, there are a seemingly never-ending number of Starlings.

My parents' both love these garden-visitors, and for years have spoilt these birds rotten, buying a huge number of bird treats every single time they go to a garden centre.  The last two weeks, my parents have been in Norway and Iceland (they have such a hard life sometimes...), so I decided that this would be the perfect time to experiment with the bird treats. I thought that they would be fairly simple to make, and I was right. However, I still thought it best to have a look around online to see if I could find some guidance.

I found this blog post by movita beaucoup, and thought that it would be perfect, making a few small changes.

This is the sort of thing that I was aiming for:

Nice and tasty suet treat for all the little birdies...

Now obviously I was never going to get something that looked as perfect as this, but I was willing to take a shot at it.  First, I gathered together the items that were going to make up the bulk of the treat. I picked up a pack of mixed dried berries from good old Sainsburys, and chopped them up into smaller pieces. I mixed these in a bowl with some chopped (unsalted and un-roasted) peanuts, and some sunflower seed hearts.

Mmmm, delicious?

So I had my main filling sorted. Next was creating the fat that was going to hold the whole thing together. I decided to use some simple lard (all of 49p per block), and melt it down before adding it to the berry/nut mixture.

Oh good, lard.

I went right ahead and melted an entire block of lard in a medium-sized saucepan, on a low heat.

That's a lot of lard...

One thing I will say about this: melted lard absolutely STINKS. It smells truly awful, and I had to have the extractor fan on and all  the kitchen windows open in order to clear the smell. Thank goodness it melts quickly. The post by movita beaucoup calls for the addition of peanut butter at this stage, but the only peanut butter I had was a cheap basic one that is chock-full of salt. Excess salt is extremely bad for birds, so I decided to leave out the peanut butter until I can get hold of/make my own unsalted version.

Nicely melted. Still smelly.

The melted lard was then poured into the bowl with the berry and nut mixture, and stirred together to create a cohesive mixture. Before pouring this all out again, I made sure that the 'molds' were prepped. This molds consisted of a Tupperware container, and a small butter-dish lid. These were lined with clingfilm, to make it easier to remove the mixture once it had set.

Totally legitimate molds there.

The mixture was then poured out into the molds, and placed in the fridge to set.

Looks promising so far.

Once set, the clingfilm ensured that the treats were very easy to remove from the molds, and also to store in the fridge until they are needed.

Ta-dah! Completed bird treats.

I also created a second batch that had the addition of half a jar of honey, which I had read would be enjoyed by the birds.

Honey and lard - such a delicious combination.

I also added a great deal more berried to this mixture in the hope of creating a really sweet treat for the birds.

More berried, peanuts and sunflower seeds.

I also made the batch slightly bigger, so it produced double the number of treats.

Four bird-friendly treats.

Once the treats had set, I put one into one of our many, many bird treat holders, and hung it out on the bird table.

A square bird treat holder.

Our garden is an absolute paradise for wild birds, and they are thoroughly spoilt by my parents. I waited anxiously to see if the home-made treats were as successful and/or popular as the shop-bought ones.

So many bird-feeders and treats!

Well, I am very pleased to be able to tell you that the first treat was completely demolished within 24 hours, and that all the other home-made ones I have put out have followed suit. The treats that incorporated honey have proved to be very popular indeed. These treats are most popular with the Blackbirds, the Starlings, and the Robins, which makes me very happy indeed. I can definitely recommend having a go at making your own bird treats, as it's really very rewarding indeed when they are obviously enjoyed by so many of the birds.

Beckie.

Rainbow Cheesecake

There was another epic baking session at Miss Sarah's house again.  This time we addressed our most ambitious project yet: a Rainbow Cheesecake.  I had found this recipe on Buzzfeed, of all places, and thought that it looked incredible.  So we had no choice but to make an attempt.  There was a wide array of ingredients to juggle.

For the crust:

• 200g finely crushed Oreo biscuits (filling removed)
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch salt
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

 Filling:

• 910g cream cheese, room temperature
• 300g caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 pinch salt
• 240ml sour cream
• 240ml double cream
• 4 large eggs
• 1 each of liquid food colours (blue, yellow, green, red)

Also needed: 9 inch spring-form cake tin.

We began by making the biscuit base.  After separating the Oreos from the filling, they were crushed, and the crumbs were mixed with the salt, the caster sugar and the cinnamon.  The crumbs were then mixed with the butter.

Mmmm, Oreos.

Miss Sarah gets to work.

The base was then pressed into the cake tin, and was then baked in the oven at 180°Cfor 10 minutes.

Looking good so far.

A perfectly-baked biscuit base.

It was then time to make the filling.  First the cream cheese was whisked until it was very smooth, and then caster sugar was added, and the mixture beaten again.  This was followed by the addition of the vanilla essence, the double cream, the sour cream and the salt.  The mixture was beaten once more until smooth.  The eggs were added one at a time, and the mixture was beaten briefly in between each egg.

That is a lot of cheese, cream and sugar!

Then it was time to attempt the most spectacular part of the recipe.  The filling was separated into six bowls, and each bowl was coloured with a different food colouring.  The recipe I found states that: "Red = 25 drops of red, Orange = 18 drops yellow + 6 drops red, Yellow = 18 drops yellow, Green = 18 drops green, Blue = 18 drops blue, Violet = 18 drops red + 12 drops blue".  Miss Sarah and I found, however, that more drops were needed in order to get the depth of colour that we were after.

Meant to be red.  Kind of mostly pink.

Beautiful colours.

The individual bowls of filling were then added to the cake tin, one at a time, starting with the pink/red.  The mixture was poured directly into the centre of the tin, and spread out to fill the tin.  the next five colours were poured one at a time directly into the centre too.  the mixture we had seemed a little slow to spread out, but the results turned out OK in the end.

OK, so not that impressive right now, but it will look better soon.

The cake tin was covered in tin foil (to prevent leaks) and placed in a roasting.  The tray was then filled with boiling water, up to about 1 inch height on the side of the cake tin.  Then it was into the oven, at 170°C for 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Ready for baking.

After the 1 hour and 40 minutes was up, the oven was turned off, but the the door was opened a crack, and the cake left to cool down in the oven for an hour.  Unfortunately for the cake, I had put foil over the top for the last ten minutes of the bake in an attempt to stop the top of the cake from browning-up too much.  The foil, alas, took some of the top of the cake off when it was removed.  Still, it could have been worse.

Could have been worse - most of it is intact.

We then left the cake in the fridge for four hours, before making the perilous attempt to successfully remove it from the cake tin.  There was a small leak in the foil (sob!), which meant that some water had got in, but luckily for us, it only affected the very edge of the biscuit base, which seemed to be a little soggy when we first got it out of the tin.  However, by the next day it was dried out enough to not be noticeable.

Looking good!

Perfect cross-section of colours.

I love how distinct these colours are.

Made it home safely, mostly in one piece.

The cake was absolutely beautiful.  It was very sweet, of course, but it had a fantastic flavour.  What amazed me the most about it was the texture - it was so incredibly light, it had an almost mousse-like texture.  Lovely!  Fairly successful for the first cheesecake I'd ever made.

I can certainly recommend trying this recipe.  It is quite time-consuming, but definitely worth the effort.

Beckie.

Baking With Miss Sarah

I had a really lovely day yesterday, as I spent much of the day with one of my dearest friends, Sarah. We'd decided that we must simply have a baking day, so I hauled a giant bag full of ingredients and various baking implements to Sarah's house, and we set up camp in her kitchen for the day.

We had a very specific plan for the baking session; we wanted to make something called 'jap' cakes, or japonaise cake. I love these little cakes. I remember having them as a child, and was delighted to discover that the amazing Wienholt's bakery in the village where I live sold these little treasures. Wienholt's sells two different versions, a praline one and a chocolate and coffee one. The cakes are amazing, but they are a little pricey to be buying them every single week, so Sarah and I decided to have a go at making our own.

Searching for a recipe online, there was very little out there. There seemed to be a lot of people asking where they could find a recipe, but only a few people providing a recipe. Luckily for us, 'Caroline Makes...' has a wonderful recipe that we decided to use, adding our own little alterations:

2 egg whites
113g caster sugar
113g ground almonds
Three drops of almond essence
Chocolate buttercream (with two teapoons of chocolate-hazelnut spread)

Chocolate sprinkles

First we whisked the egg whites until they were stiff, and then we whisked in half the sugar, which created a meringue mix. Then we stirred in the rest of the sugar, the ground almonds, and the almond essence. The resulting mixture was spread out to a thickness of about 1cm on a baking sheet, and was then put in the oven at 180°C. We had our mixture in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, which in the end may have been about five minutes too long, but we'll adjust that for next time.

When we brought the mixture out of the oven, it looked and smelled amazing, and we set to work cutting out the little discs using a round biscuit-cutter. The leftovers were very moreish, and were soon eaten by Sarah, myself, and Sarah's parents.

Tasty tasty off-cuts.

We managed to get ten discs in total out of the mixture, which would make five cakes in total.

Ten perfect little discs.

Then it was onto making the buttercream. We used this simple recipe from the BBC Food website, but we halved the quantities and used some this rather nice chocolate icing sugar from Silver Spoon instead of normal icing sugar. We didn't use the milk that the recipe asked for, adding two teaspoons of chocolate-hazelnut spread instead. This produced a really scrummy buttercream that we had trouble not eating straight out of the bowl.

Delicious chocolatey hazelnutty buttercream.

Then we set up the assembly line:

Miss Sarah on the assembly line, with the all-important chocolate sprinkles.

Here, we sandwiched some of the buttercream between two of the almond meringue discs, and then used a palette knife to cover the sides smoothly in buttercream as well. These were then rolled and covered in chocolate sprinkles.

Very nice little delights.

The result was five lovely-looking little cakes, that tasted absolutely amazing. Even the cross-section looked good!

That's a beautiful cross-section right there.

After we'd finished the 'jap' cakes, we took a lunch break, and then came back refreshed to start out next project. We decided to do one of my favourites, the custard tart, but with a slight twist. For the pastry, I yet again made use of the Crazy Kitchen's shortcrust pastry recipe, as it has never failed me. What we did this time was halve the quantities, and again used the chocolate icing sugar instead of normal icing sugar. The un-baked pastry definitely looked very different in colour to the shortcrust pastry I normally make.

Chocolate pastry.

The pastry rolled out as nicely as ever, and was pressed into the tart tin.

Pressing the dough into the tin.

We then pricked the base with a fork, covered it with baking paper and filled it with baking beans, and put it into the oven to blind-bake for twenty minutes at 180°C.

Ready for the blind-baking.

After twenty minutes, it came out, and had an egg-yolk-wash. It then went back into the oven for five minutes.

Complete with egg-yolk-wash.

Then it was time to make the filling. Again, I made use of James Martin's Honey and Date Custard Tart recipe. As usual, I left out the dates, and substitued the honey with 50g caster sugar. I also added a teaspoon of nutmeg to the custard mix, poured it into the pastry case, and then sprinkled nutmeg lightly over the top.

The filling ready for the oven.

The tart was then baked initially for fifteen minutes, after which it was checked, and found to not be quite ready yet. So we put it back in, and kept checking on every two minutes until it was baked perfectly, with just enough of a wobble in the centre.

Just baked!

Once it had cooled a little, we popped it out of the tin and put it on the cooling rack. What is noticeable here is that the pastry, once cooked, actually was not that different in colour to the usual shortcrust pastry.

Ready for testing.

The custard tasted as nice as ever (I do so love nutmeg), but the pastry was a revelation. It had a slight hint of chocolate that was not overwhelming, and didn't interfere with the flavour of the custard. In short, it was beautiful. I do believe I shall be making this chocolate-y pastry again.

Beckie.

Expectation vs Reality

As I continue on my baking quest, I'm beginning to notice how cross I get with myself at times when something doesn't quite go according to plan.  Just the other week I made the Hummingbird Bakery Chocolate and Guinness cake for a lovely friend of mine who had invited me over for dinner.  I saw an opportunity to practise my baking skills, which have been neglected a little since I moved back home.  The two photos below show the finished product.  It looks OK, I like to think.  However, there had been no end of stress before the final product.

Chocolate and Guinness Cake Mark II.

Quite nice palette knife work.

Well, the recipe calls for the cake to be in oven for 45 minutes at 170°C.  So after 45 minutes I opened the oven door and started to pull the cake out of the oven.  It was at this stage that I realised the cake was nowhere near done.  So I put it back in the oven and played the waiting game.  Unfortunately, I had just caused some damage to my cake.  Because the cake tin had been moved, it meant that the mixture had basically been knocked around a wee bit, and this resulted in the inevitable collapse of the centre of the cake.  Cue wailing and general remonstrations about my incredible stupidity.  However, I overcame this minor disaster by simply flipping the cake over once it had cooled.  As the base was perfectly flat and even, I had a perfect new top to my cake.  Luckily the lovely thick cream cheese frosting covered up the fact that the top of the cake was in fact the base.  I think I would have gotten away with the whole thing if my 'Anglican Guilt' (the guilt that stems from making a sub-par cake that would certainly not be good enough for the church fête) hadn't got to me, forcing me to confess to my friend the disaster that had befallen my cake.  Still, my friend and her family seemed to enjoy it nevertheless.

This plays perfectly into my next baking attempt.  My parent both absolutely love the Lemon Drizzle Cake that is made at the fantastic Seedhouse Restaurant at Ned Yates Garden Centre in Wilmslow, Cheshire.  Therefore, one afternoon whilst they were at work, I decided to have a go at making a version of Lemon Drizzle Cake for my parents as a nice surprise.  The recipe I went for was one that I adapted slightly from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book - the Lemon and Thyme Loaf.  

Now, my parents are not the most adventurous people when it comes to cake, so I decided to leave out the thyme, and instead add an extra teaspoon of lemon zest.  I also, on top of the beautiful lemon soaking syrup, decided to make a traditional Lemon Drizzle icing, which was made by simply mixing icing sugar with lemon juice.  This baking attempt brought out more of my usual baking anguish.  The next two photos below demonstrate how I pictured the cake in my mind.  They are two beautiful examples of Lemon Drizzle cakes.  These are the 'expectation'.

Gorgeous Lemon Drizzle Cake from 'bake with me!'

Another beautiful example, this time from Baking By Numbers.

The next two photos below display the 'reality'.

My attempt. Sigh.

Not great from this angle either...

By now, I have accepted that this isn't that bad, but at the time I was really very disappointed in the finished product.  It looked untidy, the lemon icing looked a bit too thin and it didn't 'drizzle' as nicely as I had wanted it to.  Obviously the main job of the cake is to taste nice (which it did indeed!), but I am beginning to get frustrated at my severe lack of presentation skills.  So my aim is to now attempt to develop said lacking presentation skills.  Wish me luck!

Beckie.

Chocolate Fondant Cupcakes

A couple of months ago I was invited to a leaving party for a member of staff from the York Plasma Institute.  I knew that I had to bring something delicious with me, so yet again there was another attempt at a Hummingbird Bakery recipe from the Cake Days book.

This time I thought I'd try individual cupcakes, and luckily for me I had all the ingredients in for the Chocolate Fondant Cupcakes.

Lovely, chocolatey ingredients.

For what can seem like a daunting recipe, this was actually relatively simple.  The trickiest bit for me was not the bake itself (although I did yet again overfill a couple of the cake cases a little, which meant one or two cupcakes overflowed during the baking process; these ones I just ate there and then), but the fear over cutting out the sections of cake to fill with the fondant.

Ready for the fondant filling.

However, this seemed to go off without a hitch, and I was then onto making the fondant whilst the cakes cooled further.  This wonderful combination of double cream and chocolate tasted absolutely divine, and you have no idea how happy I was when there was some fondant left over after filling all the cakes.  I grabbed a spoon and happily dug in.

 

Mmmmmm, fondant.

Once the fondant was in the little scooped-out holes, it was time to replace the cake that had been cut out.  This was like fitting the cupcakes with little cakey hats.

Cake hats!

After putting the 'cake hats' on, it was time to smother the tops of the cupcakes with yet more fondant, which made them look absolutely mouth-watering.  The beautiful, shiny tops were very enticing indeed.

 

Finished!

Just a few hours later, it was time to take the cupcakes to the party.  They were all set out on a table, and soon enough several physicists (including one slightly shifty Professor) were circling around.  The cupcakes disappeared fairly quickly, which was very gratifying for me, and I did get many compliments on them, even from the shifty Professor.  The main point made was that they were very rich and choclately, but without being overly sweet, which meant that they were pretty much the perfect chocolate cupcake recipe.

I would definitely recommend making these, as it really is yet another lovely recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery. 

Beckie.