Gingerbread Men

Bake #3: Gingerbread Men

Hi everyone! So it has finally been starting to feel very Christmassy outside... there is hoar frost on the trees and there is swirling snow. And just so, I have been having a craving to start some holiday baking... just in time for my usual blog entry! (More or less on time) :)

So this week's bake is a fun one! I decided I would switch from baked bread goodies and have a go at some Christmas cookies... Mary Berry's Gingerbread Men recipe from the Baking Bible pages 258-259. As usual, I won't be including the recipe, but will describe the process and any substitutions that I had to make. 

Starting off, oven first, always important! And I promise I am remembering to do that much more easily, Mary Berry! So on the oven goes... her recipe did call for 190 degree C, which converted to 375 degree F. This time, I did not use the fan in the oven - I just put it on at a normal bake. Which still ended up being very much on the hot side, and I ended up reducing my baking time... but I will talk about that later. :) 

I felt very at ease with this recipe, it was pretty straightforward for the most part. The smell of ginger was wonderful! I took my time just smelling the ingredients and creating the dough. The one substitution I made in this recipe was in exchange of muscovado sugar, I used light golden brown sugar. Sometimes I google! I had never heard of muscovado sugar, which was what was really called for in the recipe. So I looked up substitutions, and most people had said that a light brown sugar works just as well. I mixed the dry ingredients before adding the wet, in order to make the dough. The recipe calls for golden syrup, so I wanted to include a photo of the type of golden syrup I used. I believe it is British, it is called "Lyle's Golden Syrup." I found it in The Bulk Barn. I think you would be able to use corn syrup as a substitution. Golden Syrup has a milder flavour, but is still sweet, and blends in nicely into your baked goods. Afterwards, I was starting to wonder if I actually could have added maple syrup! Next time, perhaps?!

The dough took a little while to form, and was quite crumbly. I was actually starting to lose faith that it would come together. So if you try this recipe, stick at it! It will form into a ball. It just seemed to take a little while for the syrup to work in and become oily enough to form the cookie dough. Make sure to flour the counter, so the dough doesn't stick! I lost a few heads off my gingerbread men, and then had to rework and roll out the dough again. Mary called for 1/4" thickness, but I think they could have been a little thicker maybe? It wouldn't hurt anyways. I cut out approximately 22 gingerbread men, very close to what Mary called for. She said I should end up with 20 gingerbread men. 

I placed the gingerbread men on greased cookie sheets, and decorated them. You can do this however you'd like! Mary recommended currants to decorate the eyes, and buttons. They tasted nice with the gingerbread, but some of the currants fell out, leaving the poor things eyeless! Unless I hadn't pressed them in hard enough into the dough. I later found that mini chocolate chips worked great, they didn't melt too much, but melted just enough to stay on the cookies. I used sprinkles I found in The Bulk Barn. They have a great selection of snowflakes, gingerbread men sprinkles, and a variety of red and green ones too. You could even ice them after they have cooled if you would like, or lightly dust them with icing sugar. Completely up to you!

You can see with how the ones in the tin turned out! Some were almost burned, 10 - 12 minutes was too long for them. After a few tries, I found that at 375 degrees F,  8 minutes was a perfect time. Because they were so thin, the baking time didn't take very long at all. However, my slightly burned ones weren't lost, they were great dunked in our coffees! So don't throw them away! :) (That is if this happens to you!)

So all in all, another enjoyable bake. So far, all my bakes have been, which is boosting me on to keep going! I am loving this challenge, and learning a lot week by week. Still, my cleanup needs work! And I haven't been brave enough to post any photos from near the kitchen sink... so if you'll stick with me I will show you next week. Then hopefully I can improve on that too! :) This recipe was easy to follow, just make sure you keep an eye on your ovens... maybe could even bake them at 350 degrees F, with the fan on, with 10 - 12 minutes or slightly longer. Always a trial and error it seems. But, nice and gingery flavour, but not too strong. If I was making them again, I would definitely use the mini chocolate chips instead of currants. They just seemed to stick better, for me anyways. 

I hope you are all getting into Christmas baking too! I will have a look for another Christmassy recipe from Mary Berry for next time. Fun bake this time, Mary! Thank you.

See you all in 2 weeks or so, I will end with "Ready, Set, BAKE!"

~*Next bake coming soon*~

p.s. After having another few goes at this recipe, I decided to try out some more cookie cutter shapes. I used baking M & M's this time around for the butterfly wings and flower centers.

Cheese and Celery Crown Loaf

Bake #2: Cheese and Celery Crown Loaf

Hi! Wow, the 2 weeks since my last bake have just flown by! I am, once again, a few days late with my scheduled baking challenge. But, it's early days, and I'm sure I will improve as I journey along... probably... hopefully.

I hope you all had a lovely and spooky Halloween! A good friend of mine gave me the cutest pumpkin and I simply had to share a picture with you! At the moment it is sitting next to one of my Christmas house ornaments. That is the feeling at home right now... the transition from Halloween to Christmas. I also roasted some pumpkin seeds as well... however I unfortunately ended up burning most of them! Perhaps I will have another go this week and scoop out the seeds from my tiny pumpkin. They are great tossed in some melted butter, seasoning salt and some pepper too 

for roasting.

So, for this week's challenge, I thought I would try making some bread buns to accompany my homemade vegetable soup. The weather has been beautiful, but the days are turning colder now that November has come to her senses and we are entering into the winter season. So I decided soup and bread buns were just what was needed for today. I was also tempted to try these, since Mary says "This recipe is quick to make..." She had me there! But she finishes with "because it has no yeast in it, so the bread does not have to rise before baking." There you have it, a great quick bake for lunch! :)

Shall we begin? This recipe is featured in Mary Berry's Baking Bible, page 288. So, first thing was first, I made sure I read the ingredient list to begin with. Last week, I forgot that rule and learned I needed to think on the spot for a substitution. So, I have to admit I felt I was off to a good start! :) Oh, and then I put the oven on next. Mary's conversion chart for this recipe called for a 375 degree Fahrenheit Canadian oven. I started mixing all ingredients in a bowl, dry first, then wet. I made sure I chopped the celery very fine for this recipe. She does say to finely chop the celery, but I wasn't sure just how fine as I wasn't sure how fine it needed to be to bake quickly in the loaf. So I sliced it quite thinly and in tiny pieces just to be sure. 

The recipe calls for some garlic, which added a wonderful, savoury smell to the dough mixture. The celery and cheese in the dough reminded me of cheese and onion scones that we used to have in the bakery I used to work at. It smelled so good and was making me hungry already...good thing they whip up fast! I kneaded the dough mix gently in the bowl, then separated and loosely rolled into 12 equal pieces to make a circle on my baking sheet. (You can also bake the loaf as it is, once kneaded into a round, and then cut into servings after it has baked.) I popped them into the oven for around 40 mins. The recipe calls for 45 mins, however they were starting to brown quite quickly on top. I also had the fan going in the oven, so perhaps next time I make these I would bake without the fan to lower the heat. I figured the fan would help in rising, however I am learning it becomes much too hot 

too quickly. 

While they were baking in the oven, I made some homemade ham and vegetable soup. I was enjoying being in the kitchen today with smelling all these vegetable and spice aromas! Ahhh... heavenly! :) So, as you can see, they do look very brown on top. They aren't burned, but they definitely didn't need any longer in the oven! 40 mins was enough time. I tapped the bottom, like Mary told me to, and they sounded hollow. I cut into one right away... there is nothing like fresh bread hot from the oven with real butter! I could hardly wait and almost forgot to take a photo!

They certainly had a nice crunch, Mary Berry! The top was indeed crumbly and crunchy, but the middle was very light and fluffy. I enjoyed them very much! I did dunk them in my soup occasionally. I can tell this recipe is best the day of for eating. I have some leftovers, so I will see what they are like tomorrow...but they are very good straight from the oven. If any of you have been to Red Lobster before and had their cheddar biscuits, these seemed to remind me of them. They are similar, but the celery is very unique, and also...refreshing? Yes, I think so...among the cheese it is so different and I think this is what makes it very much like a lunch loaf. Very tasty. I think my only critique is that in the future I would need to closely watch how high the heat is in the oven. They could have been a slight bit softer maybe, but it did have a pleasant, lumpy and crunchy texture on top. They were very savoury and slightly salty tasting with the garlic, so if you are pairing it with homemade soup like I did, you really don't need many herbs or seasonings in your soup.

It was a good day for these biscuits...bread buns...crown loaf! :) I will see you again in 2 weeks or so. I will end with "Ready, Set, BAKE!"

~*Next Bake Coming Soon*~