Redcurrant Meringue Pie

So we know how to make our sweet shortcrust pastry and our French meringue, and I’ve got a freezer full of redcurrants.  Sounds like Redcurrant Meringue Pie… OK, I know lemon is more traditional, but see this as a contemporary spin or if you like, I just wanted to cook something pink. Ingredients 1 batch…

French Meringue

The first of my 3 meringue recipes is the easiest to make.  It’s also very versatile and can be used for ‘hard’ meringues such as meringue nests or Eton Mess, ‘chewy’ meringue dishes such as pavlova or as a soft pie topping for the likes of a lemon meringue pie – there are some tweaks…

Pate Sucree

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry or Pate Sucree is an enriched dough and the pasty of choice for sweet flans and tarts. How enriched, how sweet and how short all seem to be a matter for debate.  At the end of the day, much of this is down to personal choice. I’ve stuck to some basic principles…

Blind Baking

Blind Baking is a technique commonly used with both ‘normal’ and sweet shortcrust pastry.  It ensures a perfectly cooked pastry every time without the infamous ‘soggy bottom’ There are 2 circumstances when you’ll need to ‘blind bake’ your tart of flan case – either when your filling needs much less cooking time than the pastry (or no…

Glace Icing

The ubiquitous ‘fairy cake’ icing is the simplest of icings to make, perfect of a quick basic biscuit or cake topping but with a bit of effort can be made equally elegant or dramatic to pour over and run down show cakes. Easy to flavour and colour as required, this can be made in minutes….

Lemon Curd Eclairs

So I find myself with some double cream and a batch of lemon curd to use up – what better way than to make up a batch of decadent eclairs? Mixing the lemon curd into the cream filling cuts through the richness, making these seem light and refreshing by comparison to some chocolate equivalents.  The…

Choux Pastry

One of the easiest to make, Choux, or Pâte à Choux, provides a light, crisp, fluffy pastry for both sweet and savoury indulgent bakes.  Use for eclairs, profiteroles, choux buns, savoury gougeres and controversially, alternative non-yeasted beignets The wonderful rise you expect in choux comes from the steam as the leavening agent, consequently you need…

Covering the basics

I realised a few months ago that I’ve not really captured any of my basic ‘building block’ recipes here, so over the next few weeks I need to rectify this.  If you trawl through the backlog of posts you’ll find most of the elements covered, but hopefully this will provide an easy reference.  I plan…

Special Lemon Curd

It’s all very well making meringues and macarons – but you do end up with lots of egg yolks.  Of course these can make a great rich custard or ice cream, but if you want to try something different how about making a fruit curd? I’ve made a great lemon curd before, but by using…

Lemon Macarons

A terrific zesty macaroon with a creamy lemon buttercream and surprise lemon curd centre. This recipe uses a French Meringue technique rather than creating an Italian meringue, which is much simpler. Use the spare egg yolks to make your own lemon curd – it’s really easy! Makes 15-20 Ingredients 150g Icing Sugar 75g Ground Almonds…

Sweet Thai Chilli Macarons – Flora’s Revenge!

And so another series of Great British Bake Off has finished, the nation has finally finished mopping up those tears after Nadiya’s closing speech. A worthy winner from 3 impressive finalists, but part of me wishes Flora had made it through the semis. Also, her desire to plaster everything in sight with macarons was her…