Bake Off - Tart week

This week Paul and Mary were on pastry patrol. As luck would have it I am drilled in the ways of pastry. When my ice cold hands have my Nanny Barbara's wooden pin in them, I am armed. My mum's voice is there..turn the pastry not the pin, turn the pastry not the pin. These ladies knew their stuff.

For what it's worth this is what I have learned. Cold hands, cold butter, very cold water, cold kitchen. Handle everything as little as possible. Use a food processor if you have one (I don't). Rest the pastry before rolling, rest it after rolling. I know a secret butter substitute too, but that isn't my secret to share.

I had to tackle Mary's Treacle tart with woven lattice top. I can't imagine I will ever bother weaving pastry into a lattice top ever again, but having witnessed the tearful shame of vicar's wife Sarah Jane and her shortcut twists, I didn't dare cut corners.

I took my time over the pastry and had some chilled water in the fridge, so it went well. The filling couldn't be more straightforward - almost an entire bottle of golden syrup, breadcrumbs and the zest and juice of two lemons. I was dubious about the amount of lemon, the recipe suggests you reduce it if you want less citrus flavour, but, intrigued I decided to put it all in.

At this point I realised my usual tart tin was two inches larger than it should have been and shallow, not deep. I toyed with the idea of taking the pastry out but I don't have a 7 inch tart tin so it would have been a cake tin. Not ideal. I ploughed on.

The lattice was a total faff. According to the recipe I had to roll out the trimmings, eggwash the whole piece and chill it before cutting. I decided to pre-assemble it on baking paper, as Dr. Knitwear did. What I didn't remember was that I would have to flip it twice so the eggwashed side was on the top of the tart. Also as my lattice strips had to be at least nine inches in length due to my oversized tin, it all got a bit wobbly.

The broken edge is due to mishandling by my official GBBO photographer. Him and his big hands. I wove the last piece of lattice in just before baking, so it got the eggwash that the rest didn't. My tasting panel are every bit as brutal and honest as Paul and Mary. They all declared it a success and everyone had seconds. We unanimously felt the lemon overpowered the syrup flavour.

Oh and James is our favourite. And not just for his highland jumpers.

Mulberry crush

This week there has been an overwhelming feeling that summer is coming to an end. Not just the pile of new coats, shoes and lunchboxes awaiting name labels but also longer shadows and perceptively shorter days. The pungent whiff of autumn; the sweet rot of the leaves and first puffs of woodsmoke still absent, but near.

This impending gloom makes a trip across the lane to our village orchard irresistible. The orchard offers numerous ancient fruit trees; quince, apple, plum, medlar and mulberry. Last year we tasted quince for the first time, but managed to miss the mulberries, so I was determined to look out for them this year.

The sharp, winey flavour of the fruit was a surprise, quite unlike anything else I can think of but closest to blackberries. A mulberry yields it's juice so lavishly it's unsuitable to be sold in shops. It's bloody, violent seep is remarkable, irrevocably staining your nail beds just as Pyramus' blood stained the white mulberries in Ovid's tale of forbidden love. It's worth seeking out, as Jane Grigson advises the likeliest spot for these grand trees are castle, manors and old vicarages.

I am sure mulberries would jam beautifully, but I only gathered a few hundred grams so I am going to pair them with some of the little sharp orchard apples in a crisp strudel and serve it warm with very cold, dollopy thick cream.

The Great Big British Bake Off Challenge!

As confirmed fans of the Great British Bake Off, Indigo and I have decided that this year we will watch in a more interactive way. We will bake alongside the contestants, at least one item per week and blog our results. Inspiration struck rather late in the day so we will revisit episode one (Rum Baba or Upside Down Cake) at a later date. We are unable to confirm at this stage whether any Kingston squirrels will feature in the blog.

This week we couldn't resist the technical bake, Paul's eight-strand plaited loaf. Who could? Auntie Beeb has obliged with a good selection of recipes from each episode on the GBBO microsite and the ingredients couldn't be simpler so...we immediately made the dough and left it to rise. Which it did very quickly. I wasn't surprised, the kitchen was really warm and there was 14g of yeast to half a kilo of flour. The rising period was considerably longer than the recommended 60 minutes as we had to squeeze in a trampolining lesson post-kneading! I bet Hollywood can't do a seat drop with half turn.

On return, I divided the dough into eight and weighed each dollop to check they were roughly even. Then we had to make the eight octopus legs that form the plait. Tricky stuff. Each tentacle was supposed to be 40cm long but it was hard stretching the dough and keeping an consistent width.

Indie overworked her tentacle. It was short and a bit dry. Our official GBBO photographer had to get involved, luckily he happens to be a bit of an artisan baker and the go to guy for anything involving large hands. Does this count as cheating? I am sure Mel Giedroyc (ha! didn't even Google it) helps out with a fishslice now and then.

Then we had to lay out the legs and start the plait. Indigo was convinced I was getting it wrong and kept up a chorus of unhelpful disapproving noises throughout. I think it went quite well, reasonably neat if a touch intestinal looking. As there was to be another hour of proving, Indigo retired for the night leaving me to eggwash and bake. And wash-up. 

   

Look at that crust! Bread baked beautifully and was delicious, but perhaps not perfect. There was the odd tiny fold inside the loaf where the tentacles hadn't fully merged. So what we want to know is where did we come? Did we threaten John's Star Baker of the Week status?