HokeyPokey's blog

This is a bit of a cowboy post, a cake blog rather than a bread blog. I took a holiday, flew to Moscow for a few days, meaning I had to put my bubbly starter to sleep for a few days. I am eagerly waiting for it to wake up now, but I wouldn’t wait another day without baking something.

I decided to make a version of Lemon Pound cake from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. I got this book about a year ago and have been steadily testing out all the different recipes. The lemon cake is definitely a favourite – the cake comes out nice and light, with a great lemon flavour, and makes a nice treat for breakfast or tea time.

Full recipe and more photos on my blog here

Apologies for the photos, they are a bit blurry and out of focus, using my iPod instead of a proper camera, and there isn’t much of the cake left to justify getting a big camera out

Another very productive weekend, with two beautiful brioche loaves. Can’t tell you how pleased I am with them, the loaves came out beautiful and light, with a wonderful texture and taste.

I gave one loaf away and already finished another one, well, I did freeze a couple of slices to have later on as a treat, plus I want to see how well the brioche freezes.

Wonderful photos courtesy of my husband –a real improvement to my own ones, taken with an iPod :)

Full story and more photos on my blog here

Okay, its not a good old fashioned American Cherry Pie, but its my version of it.

I just love cherries, swwet and juicy - no matter how hard you try, it always ends up all over the counter and your clothes.

Its a really easy recipe - I started in the morning, and it was ready by afternoon, quite pleased with the result too.

More photos and full recipe on my blog here

I've managed to fit in a mid-week bake, its actually much easier than you might think.

Decided make up a Pear Cider Bread, figuring that the extra sugars make the fermentation a bit easier. Mixed everything up as soon as I got home from work, stetch and fold a few times and leave to bulk ferment for a few hours. Shape before going to bed and bake first thing in the morning. It takes me an hour to get ready for work, and only 40 minutes to bake a loaf of bread - perfect!!

The photo below is a bit rubbish and my shaping and slashing is quite bad, but the taste of the end product is very good, nice and chewy, and I think it will develop really well over the next couple of days

Full recipe and more picture on my blog here

No crazy marathon baking for me this weekend - just one loaf of bread and one apricot frangipane tart.

I love English apricots - a massive box for £2.50, can't complain, can I? I wonder if I can make a recipe for Apricot bread? Hmmm....

Meanwhile, I did a take on Western Wheat Bread from "Discovering Sourdough" e-book. I have a comment "very good" written next to the recipe in a print out - I do remember it being good when I made it last time, following the recipe exactly. Now I've decided to play around with the recipe a little bit - it came out looking quite nice, can't wait to cut it open and have a taste of it tomorrow.

Full recipe and pictures here

This has been a very baking intensive weekend and I love it!!

Looks like summer has decided to pay London a visit, we had a nice and sunny day yesterday, a perfect day to make a fruit sourdough. If I start early enough, it will give me a whole day to proof the dough, warm room temperatures to speed up the fermentation, some sugar and fruit in the dough to get things going and to be ready to bake at the end of the night.
And it worked really well – mix everything up at 9 in the morning, stretch and fold until 11, first proof until 3 pm, shape and cold fermentation in the fridge until 9 pm, out of the fridge and warm up for an hour and a half, in the oven just before 11 pm.

Full recipe and more photos on my blog here.

My starter was calling out to me and I couldn’t decided what type of bread I should make when I got home after work. I’ve noticed red chillies sitting on my kitchen shelf and remembered that I had some fine corn meal somewhere in the cupboard – corn and chilli bread it is!!

Mixed it up last night after work, shaped it around midnight before going to bed and baked it this morning. Didn’t get a very strong corn smell while it was baking – the corn flavour is quite mild, crumb is very soft and it is very very tasty.

The dough was incredibly soft and I was tempted to all more flour to it last night – glad I didn’t, great texture and you can really tell the impact milk and butter had on the dough. Will definitely make this one again.

Full recipe and instructions in my blog here