How has your week been? Have you been busy? Things have been the usual whirlwind of activity here, with workshops, baking, networking, and some other stuff that was very important at the time, but I have no recollection of what right now!
Today, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a few of the tips that Emma and I have picked up along the way to creating our often-complemented Larkswold cakes. We are passionate about baking, and we hope that these tips will add a touch of Larkswold joy to your baking experiences at home.
Tip 1: Scrumple the baking paper before lining your tin. This is a little trick I learnt from Emma. Scrumple the baking paper into a ball before flatening it back out to line any tin - it will then fit the corners or sides more easily. Total game changer in my view.
Tip 2: Cadburys chocolate and more: Our Larkswold chocolate brownies are pretty much always a winner. They are taken from the BBC Goodfood recipe. As a girl from Birmingham, I think that using a combination of Cadbury milk chocolate and Bournville dark chocolate is why they taste so good. It could be that I double the quantity of chopped-up chocolate that I add into the mix just before I bake as well. Brownies in our view are best when they are goey or as close to goey as feasibly possible. I turn the oven down to 160 and remove after 30 minutes from the oven to achieve my preferred goo level.
Tip 3: Get all of your ingredients out at the start thereby reducing the chances of forgetting to put one of them in your recipe - this tip is one that Emma and I try really hard to achieve but quite regularly forget key elements like the cherries and coconut in a cherry and coconut flapjack!
Tip 4: Get your butter/margarine/eggs out so they are at room temperature ready for when you want to use them.
Tip 5: Wear an apron: It really wasn't until we started Larkswold that I got into aprons, but now I wouldn't bake without one. It probably doesn't improve the flavour as such, but it does improve the state of you, after you have finished baking.
Tip 6: Dont over mix. I have been known to be quite an aggressive angry baker. I didn’t realise I was these things, but having watched Emma daintily mixing cake mix I realised that I might need to put a little less effort in. Over mixing acts on the gluten in flour and makes cakes hard instead of the lovely soft spongy texture we associate with a good cake.
Tip 7: Always use BBC goodfood. They are just amazing. We have so many great recipes for both cakes and yummy lunches from the Goodfood website. Emma does have a pretty comprehensive recipe file with old photocopies and pages out of magazines as well and every so often, I like to feel all hi-brow and actually open one of the billions of hardback cookery books I keep in the kitchen, but when you're hunting for a new recipe, the BBC website always comes up trumps.
Whilst thinking about this blog yesterday I did start to canvas guests and friends for any ideas. Our Thursday Macarame guests and my good friend Sandra helpfully provided the following.
Guest Tip
Always use Bertolli in sponge baking. Apprently Sue who is known for her very good wedding cake baking says she swears by using Bertolli spread. I am a convert to using spread in sponges to gain the lightness but apparently Sue gets even more compliments when she uses Bertolli. Now that I have written Bertolli four times, I realise it would be a great idea to be one of those bloggers promoting things and making money - I shall add "Contact Bertolli for paid recommendation fees" to my To-do list!
International Tip
Sandra's Viennese baking tips: Always separate egg yolk and whites. Whisk the egg yolk and butter together first. Whisk the egg white and fold into your mix at the very end. I know - those peeps from Vienna are just weird! The other tip handed down from her mother is to always grease tins with butter and a light dusting of sugar. I shall be trying both of these tips next week and shall provide feedback. This also seems the perfect time to mention that she shared these tips whilst we were out running this morning at 7am (I know, get us being super athletic). She also made me laugh when I mentioned one of our friends had COVID-19 - Sandra responded by saying that this was one of the reasons that she ran behind me to keep her social distancing and had nothing to do with being knackered!
Macmillan
Macmillan: We raised a wapping £431.40 which is really really flipping impressive people - so thanks to all of you who came to our coffee morning and those that bought raffle tickets from us as well.
Stained Glass Workshop
Last weekend saw our first two-day stained glass workshop. OMG—our guests seriously excelled and all came away making incredible pieces. Hopefully, we will get some more dates in the diary for next year, but if you can't wait that long, we do have a short 3-hour Christmas decoration session you can try your hand at.
Small Business Promotion
Emma continues to follow the hottest Instagram trends with her reel making and had us all confessing to our mistakes this week. Watch the video to see that although we have many clever female business friends, there is plenty of swan-like posture with crazy paddling legs under the table.
I think that's all for this week. We look forward to seeing you if you are coming to the studio this weekend to do silversmithing; otherwise, look forward to seeing you soon.
All the best
Melinda
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