Friday 22 June 2012

School fete tomorrow = Baking fest


School fete tomorrow, so fingers crossed for the weather. It can’t be any wetter than it was last year, but please don’t take that as a challenge.

Anyway, I decided to prove to Cherie Blair just how much value I can add, even though I ‘m no longer a super high flying career girl, by having a baking fest this evening.

Fortunately, Good Food June 2012 (they really aren’t paying me, I promise) had a whole section entitled ‘Baking for the school fete’ and reader, I embraced it.

We now have







and




all courtesy of this vintage issue. The citrus bars were slightly more complicated in that they involved a 2 step approach (first make shortbread, then make curd topping) and I only had lemons, so I went off-recipe and made the curd with 3 lemons rather than 2 lemons and an orange, but otherwise, all recipes followed and the results are most pleasing.

I also made this onion tart. My mum had sent me the recipe, basically because it uses a lower fat, scone base rather than pastry. She was worried about my cholesterol – hers is bad, despite her being the healthiest nearly 70 yr old I know. Mum, you’ll be pleased to hear that at my 40+ health check, I scored excellent on cholesterol, but I made the tart anyway. I think I made the scone base too wet, so there was no rolling out, more squodging in to the tin, (with cursing) but it all worked out OK. As you can see, there’s not much left.


Finally, 2 rather odd shaped loaves of bread



and a rather delicious  looking banoffee pie, which I was inspired to make after reading this post about it by The View from the Table, which is a lovely blog that I always enjoy reading. The first time I had banoffee pie was at a big family party when I was about 10. I was totally and utterly hooked. For reasons that are too complicated to go into now, that weekend and the pie are one of my strongest ‘early’ memories. It’s not something that crosses my path that often, but when I saw it on her blog, I knew I had to make it. We are hosting the post fete BBQ tomorrow afternoon, so I have made double quantities in a lined tray bake tin. Oh, and I used Carnation caramel, rather than boiling the condensed milk, because I just wasn’t sure I could live that dangerously. ...


6 comments:

  1. I bow down to you Recipe Junkie, I consider this level of baking to be professional! I doff my cap to you. Thank you so much for the nod too, much appreciated. It's nice to know that people are reading your musings isn't it? I'm disappointed that you didn't live life on the edge though and flirt with the possibility of blowing your kitchen up with an over enthusiastic tin of boiled condensed milk!
    I would very much like to be going to your school fete tomorrow! I hope that the weather is kind to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know, I know, I wimped out, but by then it was getting late... next time, I promise, I will boil tins!

      Delete
    2. btw - it's not professional at all - the recipes are genuinely all very easy and pretty quick too.

      Delete
  2. Cwoaarrr!!! I will be going to the fete hungry and coming back stuffed and skint by the look of all these. Please can you make a map of exactly which cake will be on which stand?! x x Well done R J x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh wow, I wish Id bought that edition! I really want to make the first two cakes :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You should be able to use the links to get to the recipes on the GF site - if not, they are easy to search for on the GF site.

      Delete

I LOVE comments - please leave one. Unfortunately, I have been getting hideous amounts of SPAM so please can you do the word verification thingy?

UA-44695690-1