In the Bakery:
May Baking Club Subscriptions
May brings a month of fun bakes! We took inspiration from Mexican celebration ‘Cinco de Mayo’, and seasonal flavours with a hint of sunshine.
We’ve had a few good days with glorious weather in the previous month, and we were feeling a little inspired to bring you some equally sunny feeling bakes.
This blog gives you a peek at what goes on here in the bakery, behind the scenes when developing the recipes which arrive on your doorstep each month – we’ve even included some of our own development fails too (hey, it happens to the best of us!).
This is also the first month we’ve tested out some more eco-friendly packaging for your ingredients – remember, you can fill out our survey monkey quiz on the link here to be in with a chance of winning a 12 month subscription!
Just be sure to include your contact details, postal address and email, and submit your answers before 15th May 2019.
*SPOILER ALERT*
If you haven’t received your box yet, and you would rather savour the surprise, read no further, or hop onto this link and read this instead 😉
www.honeywellbakes.com/mango-caramel-popcorn-blondies-recipes
Bread Club
Sunny & Share Bread
Incase you couldn’t tell from the title, we have a huge Cher fan in the bakery.
This is your pre-warning for various puns to follow.
Initially we had envisioned an Italian inspired tear & share bread here – we were thinking black olives, tomato and lashings of garlic! Gimme gimme gimme, right?!
However, after a few days of thinking about the ways in which to present the sharing bread, we settled on the idea of a sun – and sought a much warmer feel to the filling.
We opted to add turmeric to the dough for a yellow look (believe us, it looks lovely) and created a luscious filling using Moroccan inspired herbs and spices with some little sweet sultanas, jewelled throughout the twists!
If we could turn back time, we perhaps would have made a larger batch so we could have eaten more. It was very yummy!
Here are a few tips and tricks to help with this bake:
- Knead your dough on a board or a dark surface, as the turmeric can stain!!
- For symmetry, try to ensure all your twists are created in the same direction.
- You could use the same dough recipe, to try and create new flavour combinations, such as a basil pesto inspired sharing bread!
Bakers Club
Lemon & Poppy Seed Muffins with Lemon Curd and Swiss Meringue Buttercream
I tend to associate lemon with spring, and I was keen to try create something zesty and delicious!
I’ve never attempted to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream before – but it was on my ‘to-make’ list, so what better opportunity than with Lemon & Poppyseed Muffins, featuring a surprise lemon curd centre!
We had toyed with the idea of incorporating some blueberry into the flavour, but ultimately decided that we’d like to stick with lemon as a real stand-out, punchy flavour.
Our initial sponge bake was successful – tasty, fluffy and light!
The curd came together nicely, and finally, we approached the pièce de résistance – the Swiss meringue buttercream!
This can be a tricky buttercream – we went through a whirlwind of emotions during our Swiss Meringue Buttercream journey – but the end result was a glossy, silky smooth buttercream, finer than your wildest buttercream dreams.
We have a few tips to share to help ensure a successful bake:
- Make sure your lemons are unwaxed for the curd – if they are waxed, just rinse under hot water to remove before zesting.
- At some point after beating the butter into the Swiss meringue mixture, you will think it has split – do not panic – this is completely normal, and keep beating!
- We used the larger end of a piping nozzle to create unfair holes for our curd – if you don’t have one, a teaspoon or melon baller would be fine too!
Young Bakers Club
Piñata Surprise Cupcakes
Who doesn’t love a surprise? These cupcakes are colourful, fun and super easy, too!
We wanted to create something a little Mexican inspired, and what greater fun than a traditional piñata based bake – don’t worry though, there are no bats being violently swung involved in this recipe!
In the middle of these lovely vanilla clouds of spongey goodness, there is a secret treasure trove of tiny rainbow chocolate beans, just waiting to be discovered and devoured.
We have the following top tips to help with this months recipe:
- Use an ice-cream scoop, if you have one, to measure out even cupcakes each time
- If you had other sweets available, you could create a variety to hide inside your cupcakes
- If you put any discarded sponge when coring into a separate bowl, you can add any leftover buttercream and mix together at the end to create some delicious cake pop mixture.
