I carved a pumpkin!

I'm not really one for Halloween, but last week my son requested that we carve a pumpkin, so I thought we'd give it a go. Last Monday we picked up our pumpkin, purchased from a house round the corner from us that always has a stack of pumpkins at Halloween, and finally got round to carving it on Saturday.

As this was my first go at carving a pumpkin, I decided it would be wise to watch a couple of videos on how to clean out a pumpkin, and quickly realised it wasn't going to be as hard as I thought it might be - just cut the top off, scoop out the gunky bits and give the inside a bit of a skim with a spoon or ice cream scoop. My son was fascinated by the insides, but didn't want to touch them, so I did most of it myself while the kids pulled faces.

Fortunately my son's decoration requests were simple: a spiky mouth and some triangle eyes. We managed both with a small sharp kitchen knife, then stepped back to admire our handy work. 'Now it needs a candle Mum.' Yes it did, but I hadn't made the hole in the top big enough to get a candle in and light it without injuring myself, so we quickly whizzed to the shops to pick up some battery powered LED tealights, much easier!

And here is our pumpkin, and it's not bad for a first attempt.

We also roasted the seeds with sunflower oil, paprika and a bit of salt. They taste a little like popcorn, and it felt good not to waste them, although if I do them again I might use cinnamon and sugar to flavour them, I much prefer sweet snacks.

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 10: Final week

This evening is the final of Bake Off, and I'm looking forward to it! I've been feeling a bit off colour today, so any plans of baking have been put aside and instead I'm going to review what I've baked over the course of Bake Off this year.

This year's Bake Day Wednesday bakes

My favourite bake was the Chocolate Mousse Cake I baked for Dessert Week. It turns out that desserts aren't as faffy as I remembered, so long as you remember to make them the day before you want to eat them, or first thing in the morning.

My sausage rolls for Pastry Week told me that I need a lot more pastry practise (or to buy puff pastry from the supermarket). I usually make sausage rolls for Christmas Eve, so they recipe may get revisited then.

The choux buns I made for Patisserie Week were delicious and great fun to make. They're definitely going on the must-bake-for-a-special occasion list.

My least successful bake was the marble cake in Cake Week. The glaze was awful (I'd blocked it from my mind before looking up the photos for this post!), so maybe I need a little more practise at icing!

What were your favourite and least favourite bakes and episodes from this year?

P.S. Andrew to win!

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 9: Patisserie week

Phew, the past couple of weeks have been busy and I am a little behind on baking (yes, I know I skipped Week 8, this will be rectified over half term next week), but I managed to bake something for patisserie week (and on a Wednesday!): choux buns.

I don't tend to make patisserie as it requires several stages of chilling, which doesn't work in a house where the inhabitants think food should be eaten the second it leaves the oven, but I decided that I would give it a go this week. I browsed a couple of my favourite baking books (Gorgeous Cakes and Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking), before deciding that I would make eclairs. I have made choux pastry before, once, over 20 years ago (about the same time I made puff pastry at school), so had pretty much no idea what to do, apart from what I had picked up from watching various baking programmes. Choux pastry is apparently not all that hard, but does require constant attention - lots of carefully melting, vigorous beating (very vigorous - it looks awful when you first start to beat the eggs in!), two oven temperatures, and piercing the pastry near the end of the cooking time to release the steam - so I was pretty surprised that it turned out ok, and the buns didn't collapse when I took them out of the oven (they became buns rather the eclairs as it took longer than I'd planned to make the dough, so dolloping the mixture on the tray was the only option I had time for)!

The buns are pretty much hollow, so it didn't take too long for them to fully cool, ready to be filled with cream and coated with chocolate, both of which were easy compared to making the dough, and the buns were ready in time for pudding on Wednesday evening, just before Bake Off. The buns went down well with my family, with everyone enjoying them, but they did feel pretty decadent for an everyday bake, so if I make these again they'll be baked for a special occasion.

Next week is the final of Bake Off, and I'm really looking forward to it. I've enjoyed this series more than the past couple; the bakes have been simpler and I've managed to pick up the odd tip along the way. I really want Andrew to win, and I think it'll be either him or Candice. I'm less excited about the programme moving to Channel 4 next year, and this might be the final series that I watch as I think it's Mary, Mel and Sue that make the programme, and whatever happens it's not going to be the same. There might be some amazing combination of presenters that I haven't thought up that would work as well or better, but I can't think of any, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

My new website!

After several weeks of pondering the issue, this weekend I finally decided to move all my knitting content over to a new site: www.vikkibirddesigns.com There I'll be posting all the information about pattern launches as I have been here, but I'll also be adding lots of new content including reviews, tips and tricks, tutorials and interviews. I hope you all enjoy the new site.

And here, bakedaywednesday.blogspot.com might become a little quieter, but will be focused on baking, (which makes much more sense given its title!), and anything else I fancy posting about that is non-knitting related.

Bake Day Wednesday: Week 7: Dessert week

So last week on Bake Off it was Dessert Week, and I decided that I would postpone baking a dessert until I'd seen the show as I needed some inspiration. I don't often cook desserts (I make puddings, which are much less refined, far more frequently), so wasn't sure what I fancied. I really liked the look of the mousse cakes that the contestants made, and I don't think I've made mousse before, so that seemed like enough of a challenge. I searched through a couple of recipe books and decided to make the chocolate and raspberry cream pie from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell (my favourite cake book, all the recipes work really well; the lemon drizzle cake is the best I've tasted).

I went to the supermarket on Friday and picked up the ingredients, then life started getting in the way. By the time I had emptied and painted my daughter's bedroom and nursed my poorly son, it was Monday... Undeterred, I set about making my rather belated Bake Day Wednesday bake. The base was easy: chocolate digestives and melted butter, all left to set in the fridge for a bit. And the mousse was surprisingly simple - melt the chocolate, beat in egg yolks, then whisk up the egg whites to peaks and fold them in carefully. There's also a layer of dulce de leche in there for extra decadence. This is a recipe to prepare ahead (as with most desserts, another reason I rarely make them), so we finally got to eat it for pudding on Monday evening (after it had been decorated with raspberries) and it was good. Squidgy, chocolatey and delicious. I'll definitely make it again, although my husband has requested that I leave out the dulce de leche as neither of us felt that it added anything, and it needs more raspberries as a contrast to all the richness, but very much a success!

I'm not going to be baking today, Tudor Week definitely requires quite a lot of additional inspiration (and probably quite a lot of research), so I'll be back with more baking in a few days. Hope you're all having a good day.

Yarndale 2016

A couple of weekends ago my friend Amy and I had a lovely day out at Yarndale. Yarndale is, as the name suggests, a festival of yarn in the Yorkshire Dales (Skipton Auction Mart, to be precise) and is now in its fourth year. As Amy and I live at opposite ends of the country, we decided to make a weekend of it, and stayed in an AirBnB apartment in York. It was the first time either of us had found accommodation using AirBnB and, based on this experience, would recommend it.

On Saturday morning, we drove from York to Skipton, only getting lost a couple of times (for the satnav to be useful, you actually have to follow the instructions it gives you). We parked at the Park and Ride car park, which was already pretty busy when we got there a little after 10. As the queue for the bus was long, we decided to walk (via a supermarket to pick up some sandwiches for lunch; there is catering at Yarndale, but it's limited and we didn't fancy queuing). As previously established, I am not the best at navigating, so I let Amy find the way from the centre of Skipton to the Auction Mart, and we stumbled across the Yarn Walk, which used crocheted decorations to point us in the right direction. The walk through the park was lovely, and I really like some of the yarnbombing (it certainly helped us find our way!).

Yarndale yarn walk yarn bombing

Entry into the show was quick and easy - we'd pre-booked tickets, but they could be bought on the door, and were given our wrist bands and allowed to enter in a matter of minutes.

The exhbition hall is, in fact, a sheep market, with the stalls in pens. The gangways between the stalls were fairly wide, which was good as there were a lot of people! Amy and I happily wandered about the stalls stroking yarn and admiring many project bags. I had a very specific list of things I wanted to buy (you can't let me lose at a yarn event with no clear direction on what I want to purchase, or I will buy all the things), which did stop me spending too much time admiring things I definitely wasn't going to purchase. In the morning a lot of the stalls were rather crowded, which did make it a little hard to see things, but most people were polite, so the busy-ness wasn't unpleasant, and so long as you were patient you could see everything.

While I wandered round I took photos of a few things that caught my eye: I loved Sparkleduck's stall, where the mini skeins were called Ducklings, and there were many giant rubber ducks modelling scarves and shawls. Cuddlebums' stall was a riot of rainbows, all beautiful (her yarn was on my list, so I am now the proud owner of a skein of jade rainbow 4-ply yarn, which may become a scarf, it is too beautiful for socks). Sincerely Louise (and Amy, who has created several animal heads, and most of a tiger rug) almost convinced me to buy a unicorn head, but at this point I don't really have anywhere to display it, boo. I might still relent and buy a reindeer head via Etsy though as there is always more space for Christmas decorations!

A duck with a shawl! I loved everything about Sparkleduck's stall

Gorgeous rainbows from Cuddlebums

This one came home with me

Sincerely Louise's unicorn. Who doesn't want a mythical friend?

 
My purchases were pretty restrained: one skein from Cuddlenbums, a stripey grey and purple skein from Rosie's Moments, a printed fat quarter from the Knitting Goddess (which I will make into a project bag), a souvenir mini skein from Devon Sun Yarns (which will be added to my sock yarn blanket), a birthday card for my mum, some more 4 mm needle tips (I own a set already, but always have two projects on the go using them, and swapping the tips out is annoying), and that's it.

My lovely purchases

I haven't decided if I'll go to Yarndale again next year. It's great fun, but it's far too easy to spend lots of money, and I was really tired by the end of the day from all the walking (and driving!). If you get the chance, go!

One final Yarndale essential: a hot chocolate, some cake and a sit down!

Errata: Barley Twist cardigan

Barley Twist baby cardigan
There is an error in the version of this pattern that appears in Knit Now Issue 65.

At the end of the yoke instructions, Rows 1 and 2 should be worked 8 times in total, not 8 more times after the first repeat. This will give you 144 sts and the sleeve separation row will work correctly.

If you find errors in any of my patterns, please email me and I will do my best to rectify the error.

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 6: Botanical Bakes

It's week six of Bake Off, and apparently my baking mojo has run out. I just don't want to bake, which is terribly unusual for me. It might have something to do with the theme for the week, which is botanical bakes, and I'm not feeling at all inspired. Hopefully I'll feel more like baking after watching the show this evening as I have a bake sale at school on Friday that requires contributions of cake (followed by purchase of cake; it's a hard life). For the time being I have purchased supermarket bakewell tarts, and will have a think about what to bake for Friday.

While I'm here, the winner of the Barley Twist competition is Sara Roberts (there were six entrants, and the third person to comment was selected via random number generator). I shall be in touch very shortly to work out how to get your prize to you, and thank you to everyone else for entering.

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 5: Pastry week

This week it was pastry week on Bake Off. As I went to see Bridget Jones's Baby at the cinema instead of staying in and watching Bake Off (which I loved; it'd been ages since I last went to the cinema) this post is a little delayed. I did manage to do some pastry baking though.

It took me a while to decide what to bake this week. I tend to prefer sweet pastry, but I'd already baked a cake this week (with a lot of assistance from my children), so we didn't need pudding options. I didn't have time to bake a pie, which would have been my preference, so I settled for sausage rolls. I was going to make them with shortcrust pastry, but had a last minute change of plan and went for puff pastry instead. I have made rough puff pastry once before, and it was horrible. I made it as part of a school food technology project on different types of pastry, and mine can out grey and non-flaky, so I have since avoided it.

I went for the rough puff pastry recipe from the Bero cookbook that I mentioned last week. The recipe was straightforward: chop fat up, stir into flour, then add enough water that it becomes a dough. Then there was a lot of rolling: roll the pastry into a long strip, fold into thirds, roll out again; repeat several times, then leave the pastry to rest. So far so good. When I took the pastry out of the fridge, it was rather sticky (I think the butter was too warm when I started, and I might have added a little too much water), but I just about managed to fashion messy sausage rolls out of it. Once they came out of the oven they looked a lot better (even if I did forget to brush them with egg), and the pastry turned out much better than I remember my first attempt tasting. Not that it's all that flaky, just very buttery! I think this is one that needs revisiting.

Don't forget you have a few more days to enter the competition I am currently running. I'll drawer a winner once I'm back from Yarndale this weekend.

New pattern: Barley Twist baby cardigan (and a competition)

Alongside my Hedgehogs and Hoglets baby blanket, the latest issue of Knit Now magazine (issue 65) also features my Barley Twist baby cardigan. The cardigan is a top-down raglan, with simple four stitch cables running between the yoke increases. The pattern is written in one size (0-3 months), but with 5 cm negative ease, it should fit beyond 3 months (and is modelled on a slightly older baby), and can be knitted with just 100g of the beautiful Milla Mia Naturally Soft Aran (100% merino, and it's machine washable), which is wonderful to work with.


Barley Twist cardigan. Image copyright Practical Publishing

I'm giving readers of my blog the opportunity to win a copy of Knit Now issue 65, two balls of Milla Mia Naturally Soft Aran in Cherry Red, and 7 wooden apple shaped buttons (6 should be enough, but a spare button is always welcome!). If you'd like to enter, just leave a comment below, telling me what's currently on your needles; make sure you leave some way for me to contact you (e.g. Ravelry or Instagram username).*

Here's what you could win!

*Entries need to be in by 23.59 GMT on Sunday 25th September 2016 and the winner will be selected by random number generator from all entries submitted. By commenting you confirm that you are over 18. I will pay for the prize to be shipped to the winner (including internationally), but any customs fees and associated charges are the responsibility of the winner.

New pattern: Hedgehog and Hoglets baby blanket

Autumn is very definitely on its way, the mornings are starting to feel crisp (Tuesday was an exception, with the hottest weather of the year so far, but today it's cooled down again), the leaves are starting to turn brown round the edges and the nights are drawing in. My latest pattern has a very autumnal feel: a little hedgehog family on a beige background.

Hedgehog and Hoglets. Image copyright Practical Publishing

Hedgehog and Hoglets is knitted from the bottom up, with the hedgehogs knitted in to a stocking stitch background using the intarsia technique, and a moss stitch border knitted as you go. The blanket is knitted in aran weight yarn, and with the two large stocking stitch sections shouldn't take too long to knit.

Not only would the blanket be the perfect gift for an autumn baby, it would also work in a woodland themed nursery, and make a nice change from the ubiquitous owl!

The blanket is knitted in King Cole Fashion Aran, a wool/acrylic blend. As with all my blankets, you don't have to use the recommended yarn, and can use any wool, wool/acrylic, acrylic yarn that knits to the correct tension. Remember though that babies have delicate skin, so you'll want to go for something soft; I used a tweedy yarn to add extra texture to the hedgehogs prickles.

Hedgehogs and Hoglets appears in Issue 65 of Knit Now magazine, which is available in the UK now, or can be purchased digitally via the More Mags website. The issue also features another of my designs, which I will tell you about tomorrow (and there'll be a chance to win a copy of the magazine and a few other goodies, so you'll definitely want to come back for that!).

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 4: Batter week

We're into week 4 of Bake Off, and I'm really enjoying this series: the challenges feel a bit less complex than in the past couple of series, which means I am ocassionally looking at things for inspiration and thinking that I might be able to make whatever it is the contestants have been asked to make. Not that I will be making steamed bread any time in the near future. At this point I think Andrew in my favourite, not that I necessarily think he's the best baker, I just like his enthusiasm.
This week is batter week, which is a new round for the programme. The weather today has been damp and autumnal, so today seemed like the perfect day to make toad in the hole (which handily also answered the 'what's for tea mum?' question), using the trusty Bero baking book that officially belongs to my husband, but I suspect there is a copy in the vast majority of British kitchens (if you haven't come across one, they're published by a flour manufacturer, can be bought very cheaply, and contain foolproof recipes for basics). Toad in the hole is great for autumn as it consists of sausages cooked in batter, so is warm and filling. The sauages get steamed in the batter, just crisping up on the top surface and have a wonderful soft texture. Can you tell that I love toad in the hole?! I served it with brocolli and onion gravy. Delicious!

In other Bake Off news, this week we've found out that Bake Off is moving to Channel 4 next year, and that Mel and Sue are leaving. This news has made me rather sad. Bake Off is quintiscentially British, and seemed very much at home on the BBC. I'm hoping that Channel 4 won't tinker with the format, and that Mary and Paul will stay on as judges. I'll give it a go, but am not holding out much hope, not least because I can't really imagine it without Mel and Sue introducing it.

Happy baking everyone!

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 3: Bread week

Bake Off is now in its third week and the baking theme of last night's episode was bread.
 

Cheese and ham swirls

Yesterday was a busy day as my son went back to school, but I did manage to fit in bread making between other chores. I've made quite a lot of bread over the years, so I decided to invent my own recipe based on basic white bread: cheese and ham swirls. The swirls were made over several hours (mixing, kneading, proving, rolling, filling, proving, baking!), but were ready in time for my son to eat after school. He really liked them! They'd also be a great snack to eat whilst playing board games or watching Bake Off.

If you fancy having a go for yourself, here's the recipe.

Cheese and ham bread swirls

Ingredients 

500g strong white bread flour
7g sachet of dried yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
1 tsp salt
25g soft butter (if your butter is fresh from the fridge, microwave it for a few seconds to soften it)
300 ml lukewarm water (I used 250ml cold water from the tap and 50ml hot water from the kettle)

200g Gruyere cheese, grated
120g wafer thin honey roast ham

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Mix in the water using a blunt knife.
2. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (5-10 minutes).
3. Return the dough to the bowl. Cover the bowl (use cling film, a clean, damp tea towel or a lid) and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size (at least an hour).
4. Knock the dough back by kneading it gently a few times. Roll the dough out into a large rectangle shape. Make the dough as thin as you can, mine was 0.5-1cm thick.
5. Lay the ham evenly over the dough sheet, then sprinkle with the cheese. Roll the filled-dough up like a Swiss roll. Chop the roll into slices approximately 2.5cm thick, then transfer the slices to a flour dusted baking sheet, allowing plenty of space between the rolls for them to rise.
6. Cover the swirls (use a clean tea towel or a sheet of kitchen roll) and leave to prove until doubled in size.
7. Bake the swirls in an oven pre-heated to 200 C/180 C (fan)/gas mark 6 for 20 minutes or until golden. The base of a swirl should sound hollow when tapped.
8. Allow the swirls to cool a little, then remove them from the tray and place on a wire rack to cool fully (or eat them warm; warm bread is the best!).

Let me know how it goes! If you wish to share this recipe, please credit me and link to this post; do not copy without acknowledgement.

New pattern: Harvest's Bounty

Summer has sped by, and suddenly it's autumn again! While I've been busy looking after my children since the summer holidays started, I have managed to fit in a bit of knitting work, including *finally* writing up the pattern for the pumpkin hat I debuted on this blog a couple of years ago.

Harvest's Bounty is pretty simple, knitted in the round from the bottom up and features a leaf and tendril details that are knitted then stitched in place. The leaf is unique to this design and is knitted in the round to allow it to lie perfectly flat. The pattern is written in five sizes from baby to man and would make an excellent novelty hat for any age group.

The pattern is avaliable now in my Ravelry store and can be purchased for just £1.50 until September 10th 2016 (end of the day, BST), after which it will be £2.40.

Here are a few of the hats knitted by my lovely team of testers:

A toddler version by Sharon (coffeecrazycrocheter on Instagram)

A sophisticated version by Sarah (sarahsh123 on Ravelry)

A baby version by Elise (eliseandlife on Instagram and Ravelry)

Jenny's adorable version (Jennystitches on Ravelry and Instagram)

Ling's alternative colour version, worn as a slouchy hat (ftmhling on Ravelry)

 The copyright of the testers' images remains with the testers; all images were used with permission.

Have you created your own pumpkin hat from Harvest's Bounty? I'd love to see, comment below, or find me on Ravelry.

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 2: Biscuit week

So Bake Off started last week, and I joined in with cake week by baking a less an illustrious marble cake. Actually it was more in keeping with the show than I had planned: my white chocolate ganache was definitely more like a drizzle than icing, and as last week's signature challenge was drizzle cakes, I'm going to claim my cake as a chocolate drizzle cake!

This week is biscuit week, and I've tried out two new (to me) recipes: coffee kisses and jam thumbprint cookies, both from The Great British Bake Off: Big Book of Baking. Both recipes are pretty basic: mix flour and sugar, rub in butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then bind together with an egg and some flavouring (milk and vanilla for the thumbprint biscuits, coffee for the coffee kisses). I had fun rolling the biscuits into balls to go on the baking tray, and my son loved making thumbprints in the jammy ones (his thumbs, with their short nails, are much better suited to making thumbprints in dough than mine!).

Dough for the coffee kisses

Little thumbprints

The jam biscuit recipe specifically said not to use conserve, but that was all we had, so I was careful to only put the fruitier bits into the holes made by the thumbprints, rather than the syrup.

Sticky jam

I had a little difficulty making the filling for the coffee kisses; I needed 150g icing sugar, but only had 80g (and only realised after I had weighed the butter out), so I had to go with making less icing than was ideal.

Both sets of biscuits turned out well, and we had a lovely time making them. Turns out baking is much less stressful when everything goes to plan!

Left: jam thumbprint cookies; right: coffee kisses

Is anyone else baking along with Bake Off? If you are, I'd love you to share your bakes in the comments below.

Bake Day Wednesday 2016: Week 1: Bake Off is back!

I started this blog in 2014 to share my baking efforts, which generally coincided with The Great British Bake Off being aired in the UK on a Wednesday, hence the name. Since then the blog has evolved (read, gone off in a totally different direction), and very rarely features baking. The name still remains though, and Bake Off starts again tonight, so for the next twelve weeks this blog is heading back to its roots and will be featuring a bake every week on a Wednesday (partly so I have something delicious to eat while I'm watching Bake Off; for those of you who are here for the knitting, don't worry, that's not going to disappear).

Week one is Cake Week, and running with the theme of the show seems like a good plan, so first up, we have White and Dark Chocolate Marbled Loaf Cake. The recipe is a modification of the Mocha Marbled Loaf Cake recipe from The Great British Bake Off: How to Turn Everyday Bakes into Showstoppers, with 100g molten white chocolate added in place of the coffee, because my children are unlikely to eat anything that tastes of coffee (which is a good plan as far as my getting to eat all the cake is concerned, less good in terms of getting a quiet life). The book was a present for my 30th birthday a few years ago, and I'm not sure it's even been opened before; it definitely hasn't been used in the kitchen as it's pristine! The recipes are all a little showier than I would usually make, and I've chosen one of the simpler recipes to start with.

The cake will look like this. It will!

Making the cake was easy, and I'm sure the instructions were excellent, but I realised halfway through that I was winging it and not actually reading the recipe beyond the amounts of ingrediants required as I know how to make a basic sponge. I did make a bit of an error adding the cocoa powder - I tried creaming it with amount of milk specified, and when that didn't work I read the instructions and realised that I was meant to add the cocoa to the cake mixture, then add the milk. Oops. As a results there are a few lumps of cocoa in the chocolate portion, but not enough that anyone else will notice. The cake baked nicely enough; the crust was a little crisper than ideal, possibly because I didn't compensate for the extra sugar in the white chocolate (adding too much sugar to a cake can make the crust crispy), but we got round that by slicing the top of the cake off and eating the offcuts with custard. Yum.

Marbling: before and after cooking

The ganache was a different matter. This afternoon it was 30 degrees, and I have no idea whether this is the reason, but the ganache *would not set*. I followed the recipe exactly, and it ended up like a pouring sauce, even after full cooling. So we have marble cake with sauce. It's delicious, but not quite what I was aiming for, not terribly photogenic, and nothing like the picture. Does anyone have a better recipe for white chocolate ganache? One that sets.

Not quite what I had planned...

I'm off to enjoy Bake Off now. If anyone else is baking along with the Bake Off, say hello in the comments, I'd love to see your bakes. And Happy Baking!