A Taste of Britain: Cherry Bakewells for a British Bride-to-Be ♥

What a fun day!  I had the pleasure of being invited to a friend's bridal shower out in Hamilton today - somewhere I had never been although I have lived in Toronto for over 4 years now!  So off I went on a little mini adventure of my own, taking the bus and the train (with some quality book reading time to myself!!) and getting to spend the day with an old friend from England who also now lives in Canada - yey!

I'm super excited that I will get to share in their wedding day in November, and was so happy to be able to join her today at her English tea party themed shower!  What great friends she has :)  Everything was decorated with red, white and blue, with streamers, bunting and Union Jack patterned plates her sister even shipped from England for the party!  There were afternoon tea style sandwiches, scones and teacup cupcakes as well as lots of amazing tea cups and saucers for the tea of course.  Everything was delicious - I'm stuffed!!

For the party I asked if I could take something along, perhaps something English inspired.  And they said yes!  Yey!  An excuse to bake wahoo :-D

I knew the perfect item for the day - something I had baked just once before and included on my blog when I first started to write up posts before I made the blog live, and to be honest...it's a terrible post with terrible photos... so here goes take 2!  Hope you don't mind the repeat - but honestly, check it out and make the comparison - I hope you think this one is better hehe!

This Cherry Bakewell traybake definitely was the front runner while thinking about the best thing to bake.  I knew my friend had mentioned Bakewell Tarts whilst once talking about English treats we miss!  And I thought a traybake style would be a good one to cook, and then slice up each to eat in little pieces for party food.  I also love how these little squares look, the pure white icing flooded over the top, and then of course a cherry on top - literally!!

I got some really nice feedback from everyone - it was great to hear that they all liked the cakes - especially as they were something they hadn't tried before :)  I know I also got a big thumbs up from Jonathan too - he got a few of the extras before I left for the shower ~ Breakfast Bakewells!!  ... But it was nice to get the positive comments too from not my biased husband!!!

So, if you're also unfamiliar with Cherry Bakewells here's the breakdown of what makes it SO SUPER delicious!

First off, the bottom layer is a deliciously unhealthy sweet shortcrust pastry.  The original recipe stated to use the ready-made ready-to-roll kind... However not only is this sweet shortcrust not really available like that anywhere I have seen in Toronto, but also, where's the fun in that?!  I rarely get the chance to do much pastry cooking so it's fine by me to have the opportunity to do this.  But if you're in a country - like England where you can buy this ready-made pastry easily, it certainly would cut the cooking time down.

So bottom layer pastry, with a juicy layer of strawberry jam on top.  Next up is the almond spongey cake - a frangipane topped with a thick layer of icing, and sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds and of course, that cherry on top!

So it's a little of a Bakewell Tart (pastry, jam and frangipane topped with sliced almonds) and a little more of a Cherry Bakewell (my favourite is the Mr. Kipling brand!) which are baked in small tart shells and topped with the thick icing layer and a cherry on top.  These are some we ate recently brought back from my July trip to England :)

Mix those two delicious treats together and bake in a traybake and you have this Cherry Bakewell traybake that makes for a perfect sweet addition to any English tea party!

Recipe time!  I'll include the recipe for the pastry too if you want to try this out as well, let me know if you have any questions about any part of it :)  Would be happy to spread the cherry bakewell love ♥

For the pastry... This made 565g of pastry dough which covered the traybake pan (33x23cm) and had some left over.

Ingredients:

300g plain flour
150g unsalted butter, chilled and chopped.
90g caster sugar (for the first time I actually tried using the Lantic dissolving sugar as I often cannot find caster sugar here... it worked!  I'll use it again for sure)
1 egg yolk
1.5 tablespoon chilled water

Method:

1.  Combine flour, butter and sugar in a bowl (or food processor) and rub between fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.  I use my fingertips for the majority of this process, until the butter is soft and combined with the flour in the breadcrumbs, but then also use the pastry cutter just to make sure no lumps are left!

2.  Add the yolk and chilled water and combine until the dough just comes together.

3.  Turn the pastry onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth.  Shape into a disc and wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

So 30 minutes to kill?!... Nope!  Time to get to work on the cake part of the traybake....(and also to kindly ask your VERY KIND husband to run to the shop to get some seedless strawberry jam, because the one in your fridge you thought was correct ACTUALLY was raspberry ... booo!!)

For the frangipane:

Ingredients:

500g sweet shortcrust pastry
6 tbsp strawberry jam (I chose seedless as a personal preference for a smoother taste!)
200g unsalted butter
200g granulated sugar (I didn't want to risk the dissolving extra fine sugar here for this but if you have the real deal caster sugar go with that!)
4 eggs
100g ground almonds
100g self-raising flour
1 tsp pure almond extract
300g icing sugar (powdered sugar)
3 tbsp water
24 glacé cherries
25g toasted flaked almonds (2 minutes carefully watched in the toaster oven did it for me)

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 200°C/390°F.
2.  On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to fit the base of the traybake pan.  (Mine is a Wilton 33 x 23cm)

3.  Spread the jam over the pastry base.

4.  Place the butter and caster sugar in a large bowl and beat in mixer (or with a hand whisk) until smooth and creamy.

5.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding 1 tbsp ground almonds after each addition.

6.  Add the flour, remaining ground almonds and almond extract and stir well.

7.  Spoon the mixture over the jam, spreading to make an even layer.

8.  Bake for 35 - 40 minutes until well risen, firm and golden.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.

At this point, once the cake was cooled, I actually very carefully (and maybe too riskily) turned out the cake/pastry onto a chopping board as I didn't really want to be slicing the cake in the non-stick pan.  If you're not as weird about that as I am do just leave it in there and pour the icing over and cut into it no problem!

9.  When the cake is cooled make a start on the icing.  Sieve the icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and add 3 tbsp water to make a fairly thick icing.

10.  Spoon the icing on top, spreading evenly.

11.  Decorate with glacé cherries and flaked almonds and leave to set.

12.  Cut the tart into squares or rectangles, serve and enjoy :)

Like seriously enjoy... the crunchy flaky bite through the pastry, the juicy fruity jam layer and the spongey almond flavour with the added sweetness on top.  I'm about to enjoy one of the extras right now actually... YUM!

Happy Bakewell-ing!  

And HUGE congratulations to the bride-to-be ♥ 

I'm a big fan of British girl marrying Canadian boy and can't wait to share your special day :)

Creating and Cake-ing for Choir ♫

Firstly, here's a big oops for only just writing this blog post!  It is Monday afternoon, which means this post definitely didn't go live on either Saturday or Sunday this weekend.  My bad!  Everything went a little crazy and busy and I'm finally getting a chance to write it before I dash out to teach this afternoon.

Today I'm going to tell you about a couple of musical things I have put together recently for my choir.  I'm a piano and music teacher primarily, but I sing with a really great chamber choir - the Cantabile Chamber Singers here in Toronto and we started back at rehearsals a few weeks ago.

I did a quick bake on a Tuesday morning so that we would have some sweet snacks for our first rehearsal break.  Why?... Because chats and catch ups are better over cake of course!  Anddd, well, with the morning off work I could think of nothing more fun than doing a spot of baking :)

I made some mini cupcakes and decorated them with some leftover cola buttercream from the Back to School cupcakes I made earlier in September - click here to see them and to find the recipe!  I used the same amounts as I did for the 12 regular sized cupcakes, and then following the same recipe it also made the 24 mini cupcakes.

To decorate I used this amazing design of rice paper cupcake toppers my little sister bought for me last year for my birthday!  I'm a weirdo and hate using up things, so I save them and save them until I can bear to be apart from them once they're all used up!  Funny story.. I only used 1 package of these, using a second pack of small blue ♫s for the rest (with a little water icing once the buttercream had run out!)... so GOOD NEWS I still have one pack left!

Thanks Livi and Simply Topps for these.  They were the perfect size for these mini cupcakes sat on a buttercream swirl (Wilton piping tip #12).  And the designs were fabulous, especially for this musical occasion.  Check out their website, they have some great cupcake toppers that make those quick baking projects nice and easy :)

Batter made and prepped, scooped out and ready to go in the oven!...

Slightly less time than in this recipe as they're smaller, 10 - 12 minutes will probably do it but do keep an eye on them.

I chose these black and white polka dots to go along with the colour scheme of the music notes toppers.  And here they are, piped and decorated, ready to be eaten at rehearsal :-)

And the second part of this post starts now!  Just a little crafty make I put together this weekend for our annual choir meeting which this year involved the usual business meeting and pot luck but also some super fun lawn bowling, and board games evening!  A lot of fun, and great to spend time with the choir away from rehearsal.

I made a bundt cake for the occasion, but well you'll have to wait another week or so for that post!  But you do get a little sneak preview of what it looks like when I show you the music cake bunting I made for it!  It was a kind of party and get-together after all so why not celebrate :-)

To make this cute little music bunting you need some really basic supplies you might even already have at home!  

Sadly I was on a time crunch and didn't get a chance to take photos as I created this bunting, but here's a run down of the steps and hopefully you can picture it!

To create the pennants I used black cardstock and a sheet of music scrapbook paper (thank you Michaels of course!)... They were 3cm across the top and 4 cm long.  I find it nice and easy to cut these out by marking the 3cm marks along the card, and then the 1.5cm points alternately which means using a paper cutter (or scissors) you can just angle the cutter from a 3cm mark to the opposite 1.5cm mark and then back creating the triangles as you cut!

As I had made a bundt cake I wanted the poles holding up the bunting to stand up quite a bit from the cake.  I used white lollipop sticks I already had from this project for my piano students!

But how to connect the flags to the poles!?  I was thinking about baker's twine, but the colours I had weren't matching enough for me... and then I had some music tape to fold over and attach that way, but I didn't like that either.

So, needle and thread to the rescue I used some black and white embroidery thread and threaded both pieces through a wide needle.  I tied one end to one stick and then threaded through each of the two top corners of the pennants, choosing to thread from the back and across the front so you could see the two-coloured thread against the card flags.  Finishing the 7 flags I tied it off at the other end, loose enough to have a little dip but not so much so it would drag on the cake!  

It really added just a little something to the cake, and everybody knew what contribution to the potluck mine was.  After all, I'm the strange one wanting to add decorations to a bundt cake just because! Hehe ♫

This little bunting was easy to put together, and you can chang up the flag designs SO easily with different patterns of scrapbook paper - and there are endless possibilities.  And, so long as the cake wasn't too messy or sticky inside these are reusable too!  Added bonus :)

I'll for sure be making many more of these now I have tried it so watch this space!  Have a great week everyone!

Fall into Autumn

It is officially the best season of the year!!!!  I'm so excited for Autumn right now.   The best part of nature happens, colours, Autumn foods and flavours, the best clothes to wear - layers, oh layers I missed you over Summer!

Last week I got into the spirit of the new season and made Maple Leaf Cookies by request for our choir rehearsal on Tuesday.  It was in fact to the day last year that I first made these cookies, so what better time to try them a second time.  They went down a treat last year - for choir, and for friends visiting Toronto from England so for sure I was happy to try this recipe again, thank you Martha Stewart for the original!

This year I got more adventurous and wanted to create a pile of leaves look to my cookies and thought that the maple glaze painted on the biscuits after they came out of the oven could do with some sprucing up - some red food colouring, and some brown so along with the plain coloured ones they created that amazing multi coloured leaf effect the maple leaves here in Canada create.

So on Tuesday I woke up bright and early and got to work on these cookies.  It had to be early to get done before work, giving it enough time to chill in the fridge, and then also freeze for a little while before putting them in the oven.  So I was on a mission, and I didn't stop moving until I had to leave.

Here's the recipes and some pictures along with it... I HIGHLY recommend this cookie, they are so delicious and well worth the bake!

I halved Martha's original recipe as I didn't need 8 dozen cookies that's for sure (although Jonathan may disagree!) and also had a minor freakout at 8am when I didn't even have 1 egg in the house!  I risked it and substituted it with nothing bad happening phew!

Ingredients (This made 36 cookies using my 2inch maple leaf cookie cutter)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (plain)
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 oz unsalted butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 large egg yolk  (Here is where I had a mild panic.  No eggs so instead I just tried 1 tbsp milk and all was fine!... Maybe better than measuring out half a yolk anyway!)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup for the cookie batter
2 tbsp pure maple syrup for the glaze
Optional food colouring for the glaze (I used red and brown following the mixing instructions on the box)

Method

1.  Sift flour and salt into a bowl.

2.  Beat butter and both sugars with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and creamy (around 3 minutes).

3.  Reduce speed to medium-low and then add yolk (or milk!), and maple syrup - beating well as you go.

4.  Add the flour mixture and beat until just incorporated.

5.  Shape into 2 disks, wrap each in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (or up to 2 days).

6.  Preheat oven to 325°F/ 160°C.

7.  Prepared baking sheets - coat them with cooking spray, line with parchment and then spray again.

8.  Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness onto a slightly floured surface.  Cut out with cookie cutter.  Place cut shapes onto prepared baking sheets, 1 inch apart, and place in the freezer for 15 minutes until they are firm.

9.  Bake cookies until the edges begin to turn golden brown - between 15- 18 minutes - but watch closely.

10.  Leave to cool for a couple of minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.

11.  After 5 minutes brush cookies with maple syrup and food colouring using a brush only used for food or cake decorating!

12.  Leave to dry, and then dig in!  Be prepared to be addicted!

I actually chose to only glaze 2/3 of the cookie batch.  The plain coloured cookies were un-glazed, not only to keep the original colour of the cookie, but just in case anybody (like me) didn't want their cookies too TOO sweet!  The maple syrup although delicious, does make for a chewy sweet flavour that I know not everyone wants :-)

Happy Autumn everybody!  

For more Fall inspired makes and bakes, check out my Pinterest 'Fall into Autumn' board, and also a NEW part to this blog... look below and add your email address to follow me :-)