However, this year we also wanted to do something more inclusive, affordable and easy, for anyone who has even the slightest yearning to bake without going overboard on techniques and complexity. So when the Oundle International Festival organisers wanted to make bread baking a big part of their summer event it looked like the right opportunity.

Tickets for each workshop are £12.50, children under 12 free. Book for both events and receive a £5.00 discount.

On Saturday 17th July I am doing two demonstrations:

10.30am: The easiest fastest bread making class in the world:

If you’ve never even made bread then this demonstration class will get you riding on a bread roll. We’ll use a very easy recipe, made with affordable ingredients, and produce a light textured, moist and well-flavoured bread with barely any kneading or shaping. You’ll leave thinking “that’s a bread I can make at home”. Demonstration lasts 90 minutes.

2.00pm: Sourdough: how to bake a better loaf:

Learn the three-stage sourdough method that will transform your bread and make it light, full of aeration, and produce a rounded loaf no matter what recipe you use. Whether you’re a sourdough novice or an experienced baker, the demonstration will give you the important techniques that will improve your baking quickly. Demonstration lasts 120 minutes.

The classes will take place in the Victoria Hall, West Street with tickets available from the Oundle International Festival Box Office, 4 New Street, Oundle PE8 4ED 01832 274734 or online at www.oundlefestival.org.uk

See www.oundlefoodfestival.co.uk/breadmaking.html

A whoopie pie is made of two soft tender “biscuits” made by spooning a simple cake mixture onto a baking tray so that it spreads very slightly. Then these are sandwiched together with a marshmallow butter cream. I wanted to make them without resorting to food colourings and give them just a little simplicity and natural vigour. So I’ve chucked out the food dye and used bold fresh flavours: raspberry preserve, vanilla beans, fresh lemon and orange zest, dried apricots, sour cherries, passionfruit, toasted almonds. And chocolate, a very rich chocolate. There are recipes for making vanilla and chocolate whoopies, raspberry ruffle, lemon or orange cream, apricot and almond (my favourite), hazelnut and black cherry, and passionfruit.

The meringue feature is good too, I don’t think I’ve ever baked so many meringues over a week. There’s a simple meringue recipe, with flavours like double chocolate, lemon sherbert and pistachio sundae. Miniature rose meringues with strawberries, an almond maple pavlova filled with fresh cherries, poached lemon meringues with roasted nectarines, and a blueberry cocoa meringue pie with a dark chocolate shortcrust.

Almost all of the recipes written went into the issue, except for one that was a little bit trickier and took too much space. In the magazine I used melted marshmallows to make the buttercream, but it is possible to get creative and make your own with sheets of gelatine and a few other ingredients.

Marshmallow buttercream

This will keep quite well in the refrigerator for week or so, and cake be returned to a creamy state by warming it very gently until it begins to soften. If you melt it too much just let it cool slightly then, just when it’s half-set, whisk it again until creamy.

2 small sheets gelatine (or one large sheet)
1 egg white
50g caster sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
75g unsalted butter, very soft
25g icing sugar

1. Cut the gelatine into squares and leave to soften in 50ml warm water.

2. Place the egg white and caster sugar in a saucepan and heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is very hot. Remove from the heat, pour into a bowl and add the gelatine and golden syrup then stir until smooth.

3. Chill until it’s just set at the edges. Beat with an electric whisk for 4 – 5 minutes until thick, white and creamy. Leave covered at room temperature till you need it.

4. Warm it very slightly then beat it well until creamy again, adding a few teaspoons boiling water to help soften it.

5. Finally, beat in the butter and icing sugar until creamy then use immediately. If it firms just warm it slightly and beat again.

For vanilla marshmallow: whisk in the seeds from a vanilla pod at the end with the butter.

For chocolate marshmallow: add 25g cocoa and an extra tablespoon of caster sugar in with the golden syrup.

Unrefined sugar gives this cookie recipe a rich dark flavour, but it can taste slightly bitter with a strong mineral kick. That’s where the lemon and cocoa come in, as lemon brightens the flavour on the first bite, while the cocoa help to push the aftertaste towards chocolate. Adding a high c and a low b to this peanut cookie number.

75g unsalted butter, softened
50g crunchy peanut butter
225g Muscovado or dark molasses sugar
1 good tbsp black treacle or molasses
finely grated zest of one lemon
1 large egg
175g salted peanuts
200g plain flour
1 tbsp cocoa
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Beat the butter, peanut butter, sugar, treacle and lemon until smooth. Add the egg and beat it in really well. Add the flour, cocoa and soda and mix until the soft dough is smooth then stir in the peanuts. Heat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/350°F/gas 4 and line a baking tray with foil or non-stick paper. Round teaspoon sized balls of the dough onto the tray, spaced 5cm apart, and bake for about 12 – 14 minutes until puffed. Remove the tray from the oven and leave for 5 minutes to set slightly then use a spatula to move the cookies to a wire rack or cold plate to cool.

If you have any questions about the recipe just ask over on our forum

Makes 9

125g unsalted butter, softened
125g light soft brown sugar
1 tbsp ground coffee
1 tbsp tamarind paste
2 large eggs
200g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp cream of tartar

for the frosting
75g dark chocolate
25g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
espresso-strength coffee
shavings of dark chocolate

Line a muffin tray with about 9 muffin papers and heat the oven to 190°C/fan 170°C/375°F/gas 5. Beat the butter and brown sugar until light and whipped. If you have an electric mixer, use it as you’ll get a much lighter cupcake. Add the coffee and tamarind, beat well then beat in the eggs one at a time until light and smooth. In a small bowl stir the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar together then sift this into the butter mixture and fold in gently but evenly. Fill the muffin papers to three quarters with the mixture then bake for 20 – 25 minutes.

Leave to cool then make the frosting. Melt the butter and chocolate together then pour into a bowl and leave until barely warm and almost setting. Add the icing sugar and just enough coffee (start with 2 – 3 tbsp) until it forms a thick creamy icing beat well until smooth. Spoon a blob onto each cupcake and swirl it to finish, then sprinkle with some of the chocolate shavings.

New tricks with old apples: a little fruit conserve brightens last season’s fruit. Here the rich blackcurrant icing adds a little sharpness to the flavour and a beautiful twist of colour to the top of each cupcake. Make the cupcakes the day before, store in an airtight container. The un-iced cupcakes can also be frozen.

Makes 20 cupcakes

3 dessert apples, peeled and cored
2 tsp mixed spice
50g unsalted butter, softened
1 x 113g tub clotted cream
150g caster sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 large eggs
75g ground almonds
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
100g good blackcurrant conserve

For the icing
150g icing sugar, sifted
75g good blackcurrant conserve

plus:
2 cupcake trays lined with 20 cupcake cases

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C, fan 170°C, gas 5. Chop the apples into rough small dice. Toss the mixed spice through.

2. In a bowl beat the butter, clotted cream, sugar and almond extract until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth, then fold in the ground almonds. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and fold this through, too. Scrape the apples from the plate into the bowl and fold very gently until just combined.

3. Half fill the cupcake cases with the mixture. Dilute the jam with 25ml of boiling water, beat well, then spoon a little into each cupcake. Then top each one with a teaspoonful of cake mixture.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden; leave for 5 minutes then loosen each cake with a knife and move to a wire rack to cool.

5. Beat the icing sugar with the conserve and a little water, until creamy. Spiral the icing onto each cupcake and leave to set.

First published in Sainsbury’s Magazine

A chocolate rum truffle

I would never suggest that the amazingly talented and experienced bakers who follow this site ever put a foot wrong. But when I had my teashop & patisserie, and was baking cakes every day, there were times when things didn’t turn out quite perfectly. Perhaps it was a new assistant in the kitchen, or a recipe that needed several attempts to get just right. But whatever the cause, if I found myself left with something I couldn’t proudly put on sale, I was faced with that glum feeling that all those good ingredients were going to waste. Until one day, my ever-resourceful mother asked me why I wasn’t making rum truffles. Not those dainty little confections of chocolate ganache dusted with cocoa powder or in an almost non-existent crisp chocolate coat, but the big, stick-to-your-ribs balls of cake crumbs, glued together with jam and dark rum, and rolled in chocolate vermicelli. The sort of thing your English grandma might have tucked into, when the Vicar came to afternoon tea.

So when, a couple of weeks later, a new chocolate cake recipe resulted in four cakes which had all sadly sunk in the middle, I decided that all that flour, butter, eggs and good Belgian chocolate and cocoa would make the perfect starting point for an experiment: or, what to do, when good cakes go bad.

Chocolate Rum Truffles

Makes 18-20; all quantities in this recipe are approximate and can be adjusted to taste, as long as the mixture is firm enough to retain its shape.

800-825g chocolate cake crumbs
170g caster sugar
70g cocoa
270g smooth apricot jam
125ml dark rum (or more to taste)
150-180g dark chocolate vermicelli

1. Chocolate cake, cut into pieces

Cut the chocolate cake into pieces and then run them through a food processor, to create a fine crumb. This way, even the harder bits of crust get reused and you don’t need to waste anything. But if you don’t have a food processor, you can crumble the cake finely between your fingers and discard any recalcitrant lumps.

Combine the cake crumbs, sugar and cocoa in a large mixing bowl. Add the jam (sieving it if necessary, to remove any large pieces of fruit) and then the rum.

2. Crumble finely

3. Add the dry ingredients

4. And then add the jam and rum

Knead to a sticky but firm paste, and then form into balls of around 75g by rolling between your hands. Then, while still warm and soft from your touch, roll in the chocolate vermicelli, in a small bowl. Place into paper cases and chill until required. If possible, leave out of the fridge for 20 minutes to warm up slightly before serving.

5. Knead to a sticky paste and form into 75g balls

6. Roll the balls in chocolate vermicelli and place in paper cases

7. The finished chocolate rum truffles

8. Perfect with afternoon tea

Oh, and the result ? Well, they all sold; one regular customer ate two; and the next week, I was making extra chocolate cakes, just to have some spare for making more chocolate rum truffles.

A slightly dense and moist chocolate Guinness cake, about 4-5cm high, with a thick rich chocolate icing swirled on the top.

1 x 330ml tin stout or Guinness
50g rolled oats
25g cocoa powder
75g unsalted butter, diced
100g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), broken into
squares
225g light soft brown sugar
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g dark raisins or dried sour cherries
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

for the icing
75g unsalted butter, diced
50g golden syrup
100g dark chocolate, broken into small pieces
325g icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas 4. Pour the stout into a pan, stir in the oats and cocoa, bring to the boil and simmer for a minute.

2. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and chocolate until melted. Add the sugar, stir well, then beat in the egg and vanilla. Mix in the dried cherries, then beat in the flour with the baking powder.

3. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for 30 minutes. Leave to cool then remove from the tin before icing.

4. For the thick chocolate icing heat the butter, golden syrup and dark chocolate in a pan until the chocolate is half melted then remove from the heat and leave until fully melted. Spoon into a bowl and sift in the icing sugar. Beat with 25ml boiling water from the kettle. When smooth add another 25ml boiling water and beat until creamy. Cool slightly and spread over the cake when it barely holds its shape. If it goes too firm or grainy heat it gently in the microwave or over a saucepan of boiling water to
get it soft again. Cut into slices before serving.

First published in Sainsbury’s Magazine

cheese scones should be light and meltingly soft inside

You know that feeling, when it’s not quite warm enough for a salad but past the point where full-on winter baking seems right. These cheese scones, very light and rich with cheddar and cream, had my hand creeping back to the tray for another one, then another, as soon as they were warm enough to eat. Make them small, as the ratio of crust to crumb is better that way.

200g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp English mustard powder
25g soft butter, plus extra for spreading
a small bunch of parsley, leaves only, finely chopped
175g mature cheddar, coarsely grated
1 large egg, separated
100ml cold milk
50ml cold double cream
25g golden linseed or sunflower seeds

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C, fan 200°C, gas 7. Sieve the flour, baking powder, half a teaspoon of salt and the mustard powderinto a large bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips then toss in the parsley and the grated cheddar with a fork.

2. In a bowl whisk the egg white, milk and cream, add this to the dry ingredients, saving the yolk. Using a fork mix to a sticky dough.

3. Flour the worktop, scrape the dough onto it, then knead it gently. Pat the dough out to about 3-4cm thick and lightly flour the top. Scones can rise by as little as a quarter when baked but spread considerably and still taste great, so try to keep the dough quite thick if you want them tall.

4. Cut out the scones using the cutter, press down smoothly in one go. Lift the cutter out then run around the inside with a knife to loosen the dough. The cheese and cream make the dough extra sticky, so cutting is tricky. If you’re in a rush just cut into squares with a knife. Place on the baking tray, spaced 3-4 cm apart, brush with a little beaten yolk, thinned slightly with water, then sprinkle the tops with the seeds. Re-roll any dough so you use all of it.

5. Bake the scones for 15 -20 minutes until golden. Fan ovens can cause the scones to twist as they rise, but I like the charm of that. Serve warm with butter.

first published in Sainsbury’s Magazine

Baked, sliced and ready for the table

My starting point for this recipe came from helping Dan at the Easter 2010 hot cross buns bakeday he ran for the Mumsnet website though it may surprise you to read that the recipe used there contained wheat flour, milk, butter and egg!

However, one of the enthusiastic and friendly posters who joined us on the day, known to us simply as MayOnnaise and based in Basel, Switzerland, gave a link to her recipe for a gluten free hot cross loaf, which she posted here and here

GF baking is often seen as a rather specialised niche, but our friend Alex is a coeliac and Dan and I both enjoy making things she can share. However, I also have a definite tendency towards tweaking and adapting recipes, and with Easter almost over for this year, my first thought was to make this into an “all year round” GF fruited bread. I also wanted to incorporate some of the baking ideas other Mumsnetters had suggested, firstly with chopped dried apricots and ground ginger, and then to increase the fragrance by soaking the fruit overnight in Earl Grey tea to introduce that citrus-bergamot aroma.

I also wanted to give the dough more structure by including psyllium husk, which Dan used so successfully in his GF white bread recipe so that you could, if you wanted, shape it into individual buns, rather than a single loaf; and finally, I thought that as I’d gone this far in making a “sharing” loaf suited to special diets, maybe I could also make it Dairy Free and even easily adapted for Vegan bakers. So MayOnnaise, if you’re reading this, my thanks for the inspiration and I trust you won’t be too disturbed by the liberties I’ve taken with your original recipe!

Gluten free, dairy free, vegan-ready fruited bread

150g dried fruit (I used 75g whole currants and 75g chopped dried apricots)
a pot of freshly-made Earl Grey tea
1 7g packet dried yeast
1 tsp soft brown sugar
75ml hand-hot water
500g GF flour mix (see below)
¾ tsp salt
zest of ½ an orange
2 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp ground ginger
50g soft brown sugar
1 egg (or for vegan baking, use a vegan egg replacer)
25ml sunflower oil (and a little more for brushing)
15ml lemon juice
100ml soya milk (and a little more for brushing)
175ml hand-hot water

1. Mixing the dough

Place the dried fruit in a bowl, pour the hot Earl Grey tea over the fruit and leave overnight, then drain thoroughly. Line a 26cm long loaf tin with baking parchment.

Mix the yeast, tsp sugar and 75ml water in a bowl, leave for 10-15 minutes to start working. In a larger bowl, mix the flour, salt, orange zest, spices and sugar; whisk the egg, 25ml oil and lemon juice together, and add to the flour along with the drained fruit, yeast mixture and 100ml soya milk and combine, gradually adding the 175ml water in stages, so that the starch has time to soak it up. Form the smooth sticky dough into a neat ball shape and leave for 30 minutes.

Then place the dough on the worktop, pat out into an 20cm square, and roll up tightly towards you, keeping the ends neatly tucked in.

2. Pat the dough out into a 20cm square

3. Roll the dough up tightly

4. Ready to go in the tin, seam-side down

Place the dough into the loaf tin, patting it down gently with the flat of your hand; carefully balance the tin across a bowl filled with boiling water, cover with a clean tea-towel, and leave to rise for an hour or until increased in size by 50%.

5. Pouring boiling water into the bowl

6. Cover with a cloth

7. Risen by 50%

Preheat oven to 210ºC. With a very sharp blade, slash the dough lengthways then brush the surface sparingly with a little soya milk, put straight into the oven, and bake for 45-50 minutes. When the loaf is removed from the oven, brush the top with a little sunflower oil, cover with a tea-towel and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

Home made Gluten free flour mix:

Gluten free flours suitable for baking are quite widely available, but if you don’t have access to them, or would prefer to make your own from separate ingredients, this is the recipe I have been using:

an even swirl through the batter gives the best result

Marble cake recipes involve what appear at first to be a simple technique swirling two mixtures together in the tin. But getting those curves perfectly placed involves a little delicate intervention in the kitchen (if you want to try the technique, there’s a recipe here).

Surely a marble cake is a strike against good taste?

The term ‘marble’ is a bad fit. Don’t think of it as one those decorative styles that turned honest concrete into a bad imitation of Carrara’s finest. We’re talking gusty swirls and twisting layers that combine flavours and textures in harmonious or shocking rhythm, depending on you mood.

Ok, we might usually want our food sombre and monastically calm. But for those anarchic moments, when you want to hijack your Madeira cake and give it striking Kuniyoshi style waves of colour and flavour then marbling is the way to go. Remember, it’s never wise to be too natural or too plain.

So I just stir everything together roughly and spoon it into the tin?

Ahhh, you wish. The beautiful curves you see in the best cakes combine planning and chance. Left to chance you might get a brilliant swirl in the middle and bleak slices at the end. Or a vague stain of a swirl where you’ve stirred too vigorously.

No, the best plan is to spoon each flavoured mixture roughly where it needs to be in the tin, alternating with the other mixture, then tap the tin firmly on the table to remove air bubbles. Last of all use a chopstick or a skewer to drag a few slow curvy lines through the batter to gently swirl everything together to create a delicate swirl in the crumb.

Can I marble any two mixtures together then bake them?

It depends on the consistency of each and how thick you want the bands to be. Take the utterly beautiful Ottolenghi raspberry meringues. The raspberry mixture is (I think) a fresh sieved puree of berries that would be liquid too hold in anything other than a thin drizzle. So if you drizzle a little puree on each plain meringue then lightly twirl it with a skewer it will appear mixed through the meringue without disturbing the volume. If you try to fold the puree through the meringue while it’s in the mixing bowl you risk the mixture deflating.

For chocolate brownies, like these beauties from Bon Appétit, you can just spoon the mixture into the tin and swirl with a skewer. Or if you want a little more control you can put the cheesecake mixture into a piping bag and squirt this in swirls directly into the brownie mixture in the tin before lightly tweaking the result with a toothpick. Sometimes this is easier and gives more definition as the mixture wont be pulled around so much. If you want to produce a tray of these brownies for an event and they need to look the business then this technique is handy.

What about biscuits and bread dough, spoons and piping bags wont work will they?

Dough can be marbled but relies on kneading to create the swirls. Say you want an all butter shortbread like this delectable one from Nigel Slater, but combining pistachios with both chocolate and vanilla dough. Use the basic shortbread recipe, divide it in two, flavour and colour one half with a few tablespoons of cocoa and half the pistachios then just mix the remaining pistachios into the vanilla dough.

Divide each flavour up into 6 or 7 pieces then combine them randomly back into a ball of dough. Thwack the dough ball onto the worksurface to remove any air bubbles then very gently knead the dough just until the colours begin to swirl. From there you can roll the dough out into a sheet or cylinder to cut biscuits from. The same method works with bread dough.