gbbo Archives - Munchies and Munchkins

Individual Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding

August 27, 2014 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 4 Comments

I warn you that if you like chocolate and you like cake..you will LOVE these. Easy to make.. Far too easy to devour.

Every week I try to make something that will appear on that weeks episode of Great British Bake Off – this week the theme is desserts and their first challenge is to make a pudding.

Well my little family haven’t been very well this week and the lingering after effects of a stomach and cold bug are still present in everyone apart from me. So I thought as nobody else would be keen to eat chocolate pud I would try to make an individual serving – but none of this cake in a mug malarkey ( which is good but not what I fancied) I wanted a proper pudding with sauce.

It turned out pretty perfect. In fact I would make no changes to the recipe at all if I made it again. Its more than enough for one hungry person..in fact considering they were unwell two other hungry people shared mine with me.

You should bake this in a ramekin or pudding dish which will comfortably contain 250ml of liquid.

Individual Chocolate Self Saucing Pud

You will need:

For the pud:

35g of SR flour
35g of Caster Sugar
35g of whole milk
15g of melted butter ( * tip – melt it in your ramekin in the microwave for 20secs – saves you greasing it )
5g of cocoa powder
15g of beaten egg ( about a tablespoon & a half )
1/4 tsp of vanilla extract

For the sauce:

5g of cocoa powder
25g of soft brown sugar
40ml of boiling water

Preheat oven to gas mark 4.

Mix all of your pud ingredients together until smooth in a mixing bowl then put into your greased ramekin to join your melted butter.

Now for your sauce..combine your brown sugar and cocoa powder together in another bowl and cover the surface of the pudding with the dry mix. Slowly cover with hot water, should be approx 40ml you want it to cover all of the sauce mix but obviously don’t overfill.

Bake for 18-20 minutes until fully set on top and firm. Then dig in, the top should be fluffy and moist with an awesome underlay of chocolate gooeyness.

These were totally and utterly delectable. You need to try them!

Oregano & Sundried Tomato Foccacia

August 21, 2014 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 9 Comments

As it’s bread week on The Great British Bake Off I couldn’t let it pass without trying my hand at a new bake.

The last few weeks I’ve been going through one of my flatbread addiction phases and they have accompanied a lot of our meals but last night I fancied a change so made a foccacia.

The basic recipe is one I’ve used on numerous occasions to make a rosemary and seasalt foccacia but the beauty of this bread is that you can change it so much just by adding a few herbs or ingredients.

This is a sort of pizza flavoured foccacia with oregano and Sundried tomatoes giving a really summery vibe. I used dried herbs as I was actually feeling too lazy to go out and snip some – and it was cold last night! Fresh would take the flavour up a notch I imagine. It also has a hint of heat because I used chilli and garlic rapeseed oil:

Oregano and Sundried Tomato Foccacia

You will need:

500g of strong white bread flour
1.5 tbsp of oregano
5g of easy bake yeast
350ml of warm water
30ml of chilli & garlic rapeseed oil ( The preservation society )
5g of seasalt
1.5 tbsp of Sundried tomatoes
* some additional oil, salt and herbs for the topping

Mix your oregano, flour and salt in a large bowl. Add your yeast and warm water and make a rough dough before adding your oil and bringing it together into a very sticky dough. Turn onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes. You need to work through the sticky stage, using floured hands and adding more flour to hands as needed. It will become less sticky and more smooth. Then add your Sundried tomatoes and knead for a few more minutes.

Place in an oiled bowl and cover with a teatowel. Leave until doubled in size ( about an hour to an hour and a half).
Preheat your oven to the highest heat setting.
Now knock back and shape into a rectangle on a floured work surface and place into an oiled rectangular baking tray. Cover again and leave for about 45 minutes. Now using your fingers, press deep dimples into the dough and sprinkle with herbs and salt and drizzle with oil.

Place into your oven and cook for approximately 18-20 minutes. If it’s browning too quickly you may want to reduce the heat for the last 10 minutes.

Leave to cool slightly and serve cut into strips with oil for dipping.

I’m joining in with The Great Bloggers Bake Off 2014

And Tasty Tuesdays with Honest Mum

Simply Sweet Cookies

August 13, 2014 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 7 Comments

Tonight knowing that it was biscuit week on The Great British Bake Off I made sure I had some cookies in the oven before I even thought about sitting down to watch. I had massive cake envy all through last weeks episode and I had NO cake to eat. Not making that mistake again.

I made a very simple cookie recipe which had just a few adaptations to my standard fail safe make in my sleep basic cookie recipe.

It turned out SO well that I wanted to share it with you tonight.
It’s simple. Takes less than 5 mins to prep and about 12 minutes to cook.
Not many photos I’m afraid as I didn’t think I wasn’t going to share it but it’s easy and tastes delicious.

Oat & Chocolate cookies

You will need:

100g softened butter
75g of soft brown sugar
175g of self raising flour
50 grams of porridge oats
45ml of golden syrup
75g of milk chocolate chunks
3tbsp of whole milk

Preheat oven to gas mark 3.

Cream your butter and sugar together before adding your remaining ingredients and stirring to combine. Dollop spoonfuls onto a greased baking tray. Bake until lightly golden ( about 12-14 minutes) Makes approximately 12 large (ish) cookies.

They taste to me exactly as cookies should. A combination of soft, chewy and chocolate with the added texture of oats.

I’m joining in with The Great Bloggers Bake Off 2014

And Tasty Tuesdays with Honest Mum

The Baking Boom

September 29, 2013 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 1 Comment

Five years ago would anyone have predicted that baking would be so cool in 2013?

Shows like the Great British Bake Off have rekindled the nations love for cake, bread and all things biscuity. I love it. I’ve always loved baking ..ever since I baked my first rock buns with my mum when I was ..well pretty small.

I love the fact that at most times of days you can flick through the TV channels and find a cake related programme. It makes lazy afternoons on the sofa so much more appealing although I always end up with the urge to make cake and an increasing jealousy for all of the beautiful cake tins, display stands and the very many cool retro bits to pretty up your kitchen. I mean obviously I NEED these Tala pastry cutters or this cocoa shaker ..Christmas is coming after all. HINT HINT.

I think I’ve probably made more cake in the past year than I have in my entire life. Here are a few of them:

Chocolate Mint Cake:

I made the Chocolate mint cake for the Great Bloggers Bake Off.

Rock cakes:

I make rock cakes quite regularly now, they are fairly simple and give me a little taste of my childhood.

Pineapple upside down cake:

I love Pineapple upside down cake. It’s one of my very favourite cakes.

Have you always love baking or are you a new convert after the contagious excitement of The Bake Off etc?

Great Bloggers Bake off – Brownies

September 22, 2013 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 4 Comments

I’ve been meaning to post this recipe for a while.. It really does make the very best gooey brownies every single time.

This is the second entry into the GBBO ..my first is HERE.

I am disappointed that for one reason or another I have missed out on several weeks but never mind. Once again I hope to be able to join in the remaining weeks.

My recipe is based on one that I fiddled with from Mary Berry – queen of cakes herself.

Beckys Brownies

You will need:

275g softened salted butter
375g golden vanilla caster sugar
4 large eggs
1 tsp Nielsen Massey vanilla paste/or extract
75g cocoa powder
100g self raising flour
35g white chocolate chunks/chips
35g dark chocolate chunks/chips
35g milk chocolate chips
50g icing sugar (for decoration)

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4 and grease/line a 12×9 traybake tin.

It’s the simplest method. Put all ingredients apart from your icing sugar in a large mixing bowl and mix either by hand or with an electric whisk/beater for a few minutes until combined.

Tip into your prepared tin and level out. Bake for approximately 40 mins until your top is set and it still has a slight wobble but is cooked. Remove from oven and leave to cool in tin for a few minutes before placing on a wire rack, when more or less lukewarm dredge with sieved icing sugar. Cut into squares and serve.

These are delicious served with vanilla ice cream when slightly warm.

They keep really well for days in a sealed container although good luck with trying not to eat them. They are seriously good -this is the 4th time I’ve made these in 6 weeks! Oops. I have shared though. Honestly.

The Great Bloggers Bake Off is a weekly linky organised by Helen from The Crazy Kitchen and Jenny from Mummy Mishaps

The Great British Bake Off inspired bakes – Week 1 Chocolate Mint Cake

August 22, 2013 · by munchiesandmunchkins · 15 Comments

If you know me at all you will know I love baking. I love cakes. I love bread. Anything baking related.

I really LOVE The Great British Bake Off. I’ve watched it since the first series and become just a little more hooked each year.

The very lovely Helen from The Crazy Kitchen and Jenny from Mummy Mishaps have set up a new weekly linky called The Great Bloggers Bake Off and I am thrilled to be joining in. I may not join in every week depending on how my bump is behaving but I’m aiming to.

This week I decided to make a Chocolate show stopper cake after some serious inspiration from Tuesdays show.. Typically it ended up being less show stopping than I intended when my toddler took a BIG tumble and bashed her mouth but I was still happy with the end result. More than happy, in fact I will go as far as to say its the tastiest cake I’ve ever made.

I based the sponge recipe on my Ultimate Chocolate Cake and simply added 1/2 tsp of Peppermint extract and 1tsp of dried ground chocolate mint (you could use normal garden mint but I had an abundance of choc mint in my herb garden). For the mint buttercream filling I made a standard buttercream with 100g of icing sugar, 1 tsp of mint extract, 50g of butter and 1tbsp of choc mint infused warm milk – I also added a dot of green colouring from Hobbycraft to make it look minty! The cake was covered in milk chocolate icing which is an old favourite recipe from my trusty Bero book and is just 60g of melted butter blended with 1tbsp of cocoa powder and mixed with 250g of icing sugar and 3 tbsp of milk ( I used the mint infused milk for a subtle choc mint flavour ). The decorations were made by coating fresh Chocolate Mint leaves in white and dark choc and chilling in the fridge until set. Et voila.

The sponge is a really easy all in one method:

Making decorations:

Mint leaves:

My emergency cake stand:

There isn’t a lot left:

I highly recommend making this cake – it’s fairly straightforward and with a teeny bit of extra effort would make a spectacular occasion cake.

Cakes and bakes 2012 part 1

April 12, 2012 · by munchiesandmunchkins · Leave a Comment

This year I have started to enjoy baking a lot more than I used to, perhaps it’s because I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it or maybe its just the excitement I get when I pull a cake out of the oven and it’s turned out just how I wanted it to ( it’s possible I need to get out more) At the moment it seems as though nothing is guaranteed to be perfect ..work, going to sleep at night, eating an uninterrupted meal to name but a few and to make a perfect cake makes me feel good.

Here are some of the cakes I’ve made so far this year:

There is : Divine chocolate birthday cake, farmhouse orange Victoria sandwich and apple and almond cake which are all from Mary Berrys 100 cakes&bakes book which I made as part of the @weeklybakeoff on twitter

Also a basic Victoria sponge made from a family recipe which I will try to add later today and peanut & banana muffins from a new recipe by Rachel Allen which I found online:
http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/573813

And finally a lemon cake with fondant icing which should look like a surfboard (slightly more like a rugby ball in my opinion but it tasted good) which I made for my OH’s birthday.

Hope you enjoy reading, let me know what you think.

Individual Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding

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Oregano & Sundried Tomato Foccacia

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Simply Sweet Cookies

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The Baking Boom

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Great Bloggers Bake off – Brownies

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The Great British Bake Off inspired bakes – Week 1 Chocolate Mint Cake

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Cakes and bakes 2012 part 1

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