Saturday 15 October 2016

Volume Baking

 I've spent most of the day in the kitchen making stuff to sell to hungry, wet cyclists tomorrow (I'm not doing the selling, I'm the first-aider, which is probably more worrying). I've made a lot of stuff...well over 100 portions!

Hopefully it will all survive transportation (the cake monolith has been deployed, and they are being picked up by car tomorrow)

1) Beef, Bacon, Beer and Bean Pastry Slices (and 2 plate pies)

This was a combination effort, using the filling from this massive hot-water crust pie (without the chocolate, as I don't think it added anything), combined with the rough puff pastry that I always use from here, as it's really reliable. I did 2 matches of the pastry, and made a load of small parcels with the first batch, before deciding they were a faff, and with the second batch I made a couple of plate pies and baked them instead.

2) Savoury Muffins

These are nice and easy to do, pack a lot of flavour, and are easy to sell as they are neat, standalone portions. I did 2 batches;
a) Classic Cheese, Onion and Chorizo
b) Veggie Carrot, Courgette and Cumin
I use both ground cumin, and cumin seed in the veggie ones, as you do need to get flavour in there when the chorizo is missing

3) Classic Cupcakes

I don't think I have ever done a recipe for these, as I can basically do them blindfold. It's a simple 3-egg butter sponge mix, baked at 150'C for 20 minutes, and then I use my trusty cupcake corer to whip out the middle, pop a teaspoon of jam in and put the core back, then pipe on a classic buttercream (150g butter, 300g icing sugar, splash of milk and vanilla essence to soften, and beat it hard to get it light). I then raided the cupboard for a simple decoration...in this case silver balls.

4) Experimental Banoffee Cupcakes

I've had these in mind for a while, and a bunch of cyclists and spectators seem the perfect target audience. I slightly rushed the meringue, so it's not quite as smooth as I'd like, however the toffee sauce was lovely (I "accidentally" made too much of it, so was forced to dispose of it)


5) Cycling Flapjack

It would be rude not to really. I decided not to do the caffeine version, just in case it got into the hands of a small child. Chopped it into 20 pieces, held a couple back as fuel for me as it's very transportable.



6) Double-Chocolate Cookies

Again, this is a nice, reliable recipe that looks better than it has any right to. I really like how these crack dramatically, and keep a nice chewy core. The only difference between double-chocolate and triple chocolate is that I added 100g of white chocolate drops, rather than 50g of 2 types.