CHURROS

Week 4=batter week.

I've made pancakes countless times before, and as it wasn't a Sunday I didn't see the point in making Yorkshire Puds, so I decided to try the signature bake of the week, Churros.

I have never attempted anything like this before so this was an exciting time to be alive.
I was babysitting and thought it would be a fun activity for me and Hannah to do that evening. We ended up making churros for hourssss and didn't go to bed until so late!
This was such a fun bake and we are definitely going to make this again and again. It was so easy, even if it did take a ridiculous amount of time.

First step was to make the batter. This is done in a saucepan and it is the first time I've made a choux pastry. All you do is put the sugar, butter, salt and water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Then tip in the flour and mix until combined. It needs to cool down before you add the eggs so they don't cook in the mixture.
Not as difficult as I thought it would be!

We used this recipe from the Bake Off, but the churros really don't need a filling or a sauce. They are sweet enough just rolled in sugar and don't need the added extras. 

We set up the fryer and piped the churros mix straight into the oil.

We fried them for two minutes on each side, although they could have done with maybe 30 seconds longer. The more batter you add to the oil, the more the temperature decreases, so that has to be taken into consideration when thinking about the cooking times.

Once they had cooked, they were taken out of the oil and put onto a piece of kitchen roll to soak up the excess oil. Then we rolled them in sugar and ate them pretty much straight away.

We took over the entire work surface, we had quite the production line going on.

We ended up making so many and it took such a long time because you could only fry a maximum of three at a time.

This was the amount left over at the end of frying them, even with four of us eating them as we went!

They weren't exactly the neatest things in the world and I understand why the bakers on GBBO piped the churros onto baking paper before frying them, but we went for the authentic method of piping them straight into the oil and having a bit of fun with it.

We sustained two burns during the process so please be careful if you try this! Worth it though, look at those churros.

They are 100% better when they are freshly made, the next day they weren't quite the same as the sugar had gone a but funny and they were warm. Still good, but better fresh.

Definitely one to make when there is a large group of you, otherwise there are just too many to eat!

I was worried about this bake to begin with but it was so much fun and so delicious. Just don't think about how bad for you all the oil is and it's great!

Becca xo

Do I Bakewell?

Damn it, yes I do!

The Bakewell Tart was the technical challenge of pastry week and I don't know what all the fuss was about. I aced it.

It was a bake of firsts for me; the first time I've made jam, the first time I've made pastry, the first time I've really baked for a group of people who aren't my family.

Mum had a group of her friends round and they were my guinea pigs for the evening. They can come again because they said lovely things about my Bakewell Tart.

I say that I don't know why they got so stressed on GBBO, but I didn't do it on a time limit. I took 4 days.

I decided to do it all in stages after work every night.

Night 1: Jam

I've never made jam before, so I was quite excited about the whole thing. I bought a thermometer and everything, I felt very professional. However, I must have kept the first batch on the heat for too long because it ended up being really solid once it had cooled and was not spreadable in the slightest. It was really tasty, but not really okay for this bake. So I tried again and this time was much more successful.

Night 2: Jam attempt 2

I am a jam expert now.

Although next time I will sieve the jam to get rid of seeds and lumps etc.

Night 3: Pastry

I have never made pastry before. Like jam, it's something people don't need to make as it's so much easier to get the pre-made stuff from the shops. But I'm dedicated to this blog and made it from scratch. It wasn't as daunting as I thought and it gave me an opportunity to use my personalised rolling pin (don't ask...).

I had a few issues trying to get the rolled out pastry off of the worktop and into the tin, but I did it and patched up any holes with the excess pastry. 

I had to buy baking beans and everything for this bake. They worked a treat and I think my pastry case was good enough to rival any shop bought case.

Night 4: Filling

The filling was made of butter, sugar, ground almonds, an egg and almond extract. Mixed it all together and popped it in the pastry case I made the night before. Cooked on gas mark 4 until golden then I had to wait for it to cool! 

It seemed to take F O R E V E R to cool down. I ended up putting it in the fridge because I was getting so impatient.

The only thing left to do now was to ice the tart.

I made standard icing using icing sugar and water and a teaspoon of almond extract, but separated three tablespoons of the icing and used the red food colouring I had left over from my rainbow cake to make it pink. 

I put a layer of white icing all over the top, then piped the pink icing in straight lines. Then I used a cocktail stick to drag a line through the icing to create a feathered effect.

I hadn't let the tart cool completely and it was still a bit warm when I iced it, so the icing started to set before I had created the feathered effect. As you can see on the left side of the tart, the icing cracked as I dragged the cocktail stick through and it was a bit unsightly.

BUT OH WELL!

I was very proud of this bake, even if it didn't look very professional.

I'd made jam AND pastry, and they both turned out very well indeed.

LOOK AT THOSE LAYERS!!!

And no soggy bottom!

Looks just like the picture, right?!

Now I've bought baking beans and a new cake tin I reckon I need to make more tarts!

Becca xo

Recipe can be found here if you fancy a go