Lucy might be one of the people in this world who likes to bake more than I do. We were discussing butter, and which types are the best (why ever bother with unsalted??), and she buys enough butter that it makes an appreciable dent in her overall food spending. That, my friends, is commitment to baking. When she came to visit me in Henley, we planned an extravagant weekend of baking the most delicious things. I think the only savoury things I ate for the entire time were the cheese twists we made.
So. What did we make? Well…deep breath…coconut and white chocolate cookies sandwiched with swiss meringue buttercream and strawberry and raspberry coulis, vanilla ice cream, cheese twists and chocolate and cinnamon babka. We also made homemade lemonade to drink while baking, but drew the line at macarons too as that would be a little excessive. Heh.
It was a boiling hot weekend, so first on the list was the lemonade. We made a bit of sugar syrup (eyeballed sugar and water in a pan) which we cooled then added to a glass along with the juice of half a lemon, a bunch of frozen raspberries, and ice cubes, then filled up to the top with fizzy water. To top it off, I had some stainless steel straws to drink it through. Deeeelicious!
Then, we had to turn the oven on and the temperature rose, and didn’t really go down again. This is important later on…
We used a coconut cookie recipe which we modified to include white chocolate chips. It had a lot of rehydrated dessicated coconut in the dough which gave them a great texture. They weren’t smack-you-in-the-face coconutty, but had a lovely taste of coconut that lingered in the mouth after you ate them. We made lots and lots of small cookies, ready to pair them up for sandwiches later.
While they were baking we began the dough for the cheese twists. This was a simple rough puff, which I had never done before! Though made slightly more difficult by the hot weather, it just involved coarsely combining butter and flour, then rolling and folding three times interspersed with some quality fridge time. As we had to leave it in the fridge to solidify each time, we also made the swiss meringue buttercream and the coulis while waiting. Swiss meringue buttercream is one of my favourite things. Lucy introduced me to it, and it is just superior to American buttercream in every way. It’s sweet, but not cloyingly so, and the addition of the egg white means that it’s light and fluffy even though it is so sweet. It cools to be firm and structurally sound, and looks so glossy and attractive on whatever you use it with. Plus, it’s so easy! We just google any recipe for the correct ratios of egg white, sugar, and butter (and maybe decrease the butter), then whisk the whites and sugar over a bain marie, transfer to a stand mixer and slowly add the butter. If things don’t look right, the answer is always keep mixing. Or put it in the fridge for a bit.
As soon as the cookies and buttercream and coulis were ready, we got excited and tried to assemble the cookie sandwiches. They were delicious, but remember that it was boiling…they weren’t very structurally sound, so we had to put them in the fridge as soon as possible to stop the top cookie sliding off!
Next up was the ice cream. When you make ice cream yourself it really emphasises how bad it is for you. All the best things are the most unhealthy, and this ice cream was amaaaazing. The ingredients were 600ml double cream, a tin of condensed milk, and vanilla paste. That was it. We whisked it and whisked it in the stand mixer, then put it in the freezer for a few hours. It was so simple, and I was amazed at how smooth it ended up as we didn’t have to whisk it again during the freezing process. It was of course very important to test it regularly to see it if had frozen (it had not).
Final two things for the first day were to bake the cheese twists, and to mix the babka dough that needed to prove overnight. The cheese twist filling had parmesan, paprika, pepper and cayenne pepper in it, and we stuck it to the dough as best we could with egg white. We had made this recipe up, so winged it with the twisting. The outcome was pretty great if I may say so myself. The first batch we probably baked at too high a heat as the cheese darkened before the pastry cooked, but the second batch were perfect. We took them out as they were just underdone so they were crispy on the outside but slightly soft in the centre. We made many many of them, but they didn’t last the weekend!
The babka dough was a recipe I have made in the past, but wasn’t happy with how I had baked it. I had been taken in by the darkness of the chocolate and underbaked it so it was delicious but not really a cake or bread. After a lovely morning jog along the river, we cracked on with shaping, rolling, cutting, proving, and baking this babka. It was still a warm day so the dough was very sticky, but we successfully cut and twisted three different babka breads. We did one in a loaf tin (which is traditional), then one as a ring, and one in a small round cake tin. We managed to take them out at just the right time, so they were baked but not dry, and it was oh so yummy as a late breakfast!
It was sad when Lucy had to leave, but I made sure to send lots of the baking with her. When we were clearing up it was astounding how much butter we had used over the course of 24 hours, but it was totally worth it. I would definitely make the babka again, though halve the recipe and up the filling – maybe add some chunks, or some raisins. In fact, we were really pleased with everything we made, and I hope we get to do it again soon.
Recipes used:
ice cream https://www.loavesanddishes.net/easy-3-ingredient-freezer-ice-cream/
chocolate babka (we added cinnamon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8VFsAGDleo&t=24s
cheese twists https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cheats_rough_puff_pastry_91549 used rough puff similar to this, then added 1 block of grated parmesan mixed with cayenne pepper, pepper, and paprika for the cheesy filling
I can’t for the life of me find the coconut cookie recipe, the swiss meringue recipe is any one you can google, and the raspberry coulis is from these puits d’amour https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/prues-puits-damour/
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