Weekend baking

After much faffing around, I finally got my ass in gear and did a spot of baking at the weekend (its taken a while due to the fact that when I get home from work these days, the last thing I want to do is bake some more!!) I had picked up a copy of Claire Clarke's book at Harvey Nics when we were there for afternoon tea a few weeks back and after a quick flick through it, had wanted to try out some of the recipes for some time now. First up were the scones which were one of my favourite things at the afternoon tea - I was a bit worried that the recipe called for 50g baking powder (!!!!! thats 10 teaspoons!!) so tweeked that amount a bit and went for the 1 teaspoon instead. The resulting scones tasted OK but I think they might have been undercooked slightly - they rose despite the citback in baking powder, woohoo! However, after a bit of internet surfing, another baker out there was also worried about the baking powder but said that the end result was OK when she used the full quantity so must try that the next time.

The next recipe on my "to-try" list was Claire's famed shortbread which even gets Thomas Keller's seal of approval. Again, pretty easy to make and tasty too - however, I think I might make my oblongs a little less chunky next time (I was expecting my shortbread to "spread" a little while baking but alas, no). Ma Chan thought they were OK but she is not a huge fan of shortbread. The nicest surprise was to hear that my 4-year old niece did and despite her stick-like physique, managed to munch through a whole biscuit one afternoon!! :)