Cherry Bakewell Bites

It's our annual Macmillan coffee morning at work this week and I wanted to try the cherry Bakewell I made for Grant's birthday (photos at the end of Eliza's Princess and the Wizard party).  I would never have normally picked a Cherry Bakewell to eat but really enjoyed it.  I am not an almond flavour fan so I missed out the extract last time but my sister did say "I didn't think you would like that it's very almondy" so I must be getting better  (this year I have changed my tastes a lot - must be getting old!  I now like red peppers and coffee.  So weird.  Next I will be telling you I enjoyed a tin of tuna 😷)

Instead of a tray bake type of Bakewell this time I thought it would be easier to use my Pampered Chef individual square tin.   I didn't even realise pampered chef had ceased to exist I love all of my PC stuff I have tons!  I am sure Lakeland will do similar tins though they have some amazing things.

I made up the pastry using my beloved KitchenAid  in my A M A Z I N G new pantry.  I love it so so much the kids think I'm off my head I keep swooning when I go in (see pantry makeover here)

I took tons of photos of this recipe so it took forever to make!

 Ingredients are butter and plain flour, sugar and one egg

 Mix up cubed butter and flour until breadcrumbs

Add sugar and mix

Add egg

Mix lightly until combined

Remove from mixer and bring to a ball on lightly floured surface

Pat down to flatten a little

Cover in cling film

Place in fridge for half an hour

Move on to making the filling

 Ingredients are butter (I used Stork) and caster sugar, 3 eggs, self raising flour and ground almonds

 Mix butter and sugar

 When light and fluffy add three eggs one at a time with a spoonful of self raising flour

 Add the remaining flour and ground almonds

At this stage I remove from the mixer and use my big spoon to combine the flour/almonds with the other ingredients so they are not over mixed.

Moving back to the pastry I took it from the fridge after 30 minutes.  I tore off small pieces and rolled them into balls

 Then pressed them in gently to the squares

 Next a dollop of strawberry jam.. mine was from M&S but usually I would have Hartley's and sometimes Bonne Maman ❤

 Spread the jam around just using a spoon

 Back to the filling:  I used my pampered chef mini ice cream scoop but should have just used my normal sized one as mini was not enough filling and ended up needing two scoops

 Just scooped the filling on top of the jam

 Then spread it out as best as I could

 Into the oven at 180°C

 I watched them most of the time and set a timer at 8 mins

 Added another 3 mins but they needed 13 mins in total

 Let them cool slightly then used a silicone baby spoon to release the cake away from the sides.  Baby spoons with the flexible tip are my favourite for this part of baking they are just the right size and nice and bendy.

 Once released from the sides I was able to just turn the tin upside down and they slid out.  I didn't line or grease the tins beforehand they are just so well made they don't stick

 They look so beautiful and I was lucky enough that unfortunatelyI hadn't released one and it fell to bits so I had to eat it myself (oh shame!)

The back of it has fallen off but I wanted a photo of it iced and ready for my afternoon cuppy! It was still warm when I iced it and the icing still runny when I ate it 😁 I will wait until the others are fully cooled before I ice them and I really hope there are hopefully there are no more fatalities

While I was looking for my square baking tray I saw my mini muffin pan also from pampered chef but I know you get them in Lakeland as I have one from there too

 I wanted to try some of the recipe in here too.  I've made mini quiches before and they are so tasty when they are bitesized (see our Easter picnic)

 Same again I tore off small pieces and shaped them into balls

 The mini muffin pan comes with this handy little dabber to push the pastry into the bottom and up the sides

 So easy to use!

 Added a dab of strawberry jam

 Spread it out using the dabber

This time one scoop of the mini ice cream scoop was enough and I didn't flatten it out 

 These needed slightly less time and were out in11 mins  (180°C on bottom shelf below the square ones)

 Used the silicone tipped baby spoon again to release the pastry this time as it was quite far up the sides

 Then they popped out.  Totally different because they are sealed with pastry and really are an individual bite

 One's lid fell off so I iced it and ate it too (poor me 😝)

 I don't know which one I prefer they are so cute but I love miniature everything

If you were generous the square one could feed two...but there is no way I could have shared that today it was delightful.

Recipe if you want to indulge:

Ingredients
Pastry = 110g cold unsalted butter cubed
                225g plain flour
                  80g caster sugar
                      1 egg

Using mixer mix butter and flour until breadcrumbs, add sugar and mix well, add egg and mix gently until just combined.  Remove from mixer and roll on lightly floured surface into a ball, press to flatten and wrap in cling film in fridge for 30 mins.

Once ready remove from fridge and press into tin

Filling

Strawberry jam (I have no idea how much maybe less than a quarter of a jar? Not that much.     anyway I'm sorry!)
               175g butter (I used stork)
               175g caster sugar
                     3 eggs
               100g self raising flour
                 75g ground almonds (i dont like almonds so I used 75g but as long as the flour and almonds adds up to 175g you can choose which combination if you want it to be more almondy 😂)

Using mixer cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy (not gritty at all).  Add eggs one at a time with a spoonful of flour.  Once mixed remove from mixer and using a large metal spoon fold in the remaining flour and ground almonds.

Spread pastry with strawberry jam and add cake mixture on top.

Bake in oven at 180°C (time depends on which tray you are using.  If one large tray bake up to 40 mins but small individual tartlet tin took only 11 minutes or individual square tin 13 mins)

Allow to cool slightly and remove from tray using silicone baby spoon for individual tins.  Once completely cooled mix up water icing (I never weigh this out - lots of icing sugar and add a tiny amount of water at a time until the correct consistency.) Add a glace cherry and revel in their beauty.

I hope you are as fortunate as me and have one failure so you can eat it before anyone has to see it.  You really do need to taste test anything that you make though (just in case it is too good to share 😜)

Hope you enjoyed the recipe and let me know if you try it and which type of tins you used.

Follow along on Instagram

Princess and the Wizard 7th birthday party

I have been so busy since my last post!  The baby was a boy and he is called Sturrock. He is now 15 months old.  Eliza is a great big sister to him  (and Finlay a great big brother)  For Eliza's birthday this year's theme was The Princess and the Wizard - a fantastic book by Julia Donaldson,  I have been planning this party for almost 7 years since I named my baby girl Eliza.  The book is about a Princess called Eliza celebrating her 7th birthday and I cannot believe my own little Princess is 7 now! 

The little wizard

Reading The Princess and the Wizard

Eliza's party table

The party table in the book

I tried to match everything to the party table in the book but as usual I left everything to the last minute and we have just moved into an old house that is undergoing lots of change right now so I was stressed out looking for missing bunting, cake stands and ribbon. 

Cupcakes

Cutting the cake

The birthday cake

Roly poly biscuits

Cake!

In the midst of a new kitchen being put in - the plugs aren't even attached to the wall! 

Strawberry meringues

Cupcakes

Jam roly poly biscuits

Party games


We had a lot of fun on the party games this year.  For every animal Princess Eliza turns into in the book I had a party game to play.  The first animal she turns into is a fish so we played a game called Floundering  It was my favourite game as a child (mine was called Flounders) and you need to roll the dice to build up a puzzle of a fish.  The winner was given an inflatable fish.  

The next animal she turns into is a chick


I bought plastic chicks from Baker Ross but they had small holes in the bottom so my handy husband filled them with silicone we had lying around the house for the renovations.  We filled the bottoms with a little bit of water, added an Alka-Seltzer and put the lids on before giving them a little shake.  They worked really well!  Nice little explosions with not too much mess.


She also has to darn socks in the book so we made sock bubbles with bottles following the instructions here.  We were really lucky and it was a roasting hot day.  The bubbles were great we were able to make some really long snakes.

Sock bubbles

Next we had a game of tiddly winks as she turns herself into a grasshopper so we pretended the tiddly winks were grasshoppers jumping around

Next animal is a fox so we moved inside again and played pin the tail on the fox

Butterfly is next so we decorated butterfly crowns with colouring pens and stickers.  

Eliza's beautiful dress with the butterflies to match the party was from Monsoon 

Next in the book Princess Eliza turns into a black cat so the girls were given cat shaped scratch art

Finally on her 7th try after turning herself into a bird she turns herself into a piece of paper so we went outside again and had a game flying paper birds around the garden 

We had a fantastic day and Eliza was given lots of lovely gifts.  

For the party bags I made 7 felt animals for everyone: a bird, a chick, a grasshopper, a fox, a butterfly, a cat and a bird.

The Princess may try 7 times to hide by changing her colour and changing her shape 

 I was up at 6am on the day of the party finishing these! 

Inside the party bags were a fish book, a packet of bird wipes, a bunny pencil, insect tattoos, butterfly sweets I made like Eliza's 2nd birthday party bags and a cupcake in a box 

 

The next day was Grant's birthday! 

Not enough Ds :) 

He had a hard week so we didn't **forget** his birthday cake this year! 

There is something about water icing that makes me want to eat this so badly right now

Couple of candles and good to go

An iced cherry bakewell slice.  First time making it but won't be the last it tasted great.  Not sure what it is meant to taste like but it went with my taste buds :D 

There were plenty of cakes and biscuits to keep us going all week.  I love a birthday week!  Hard work and stressful at the time but then you get to sit and have cuppies and cakes all week.  What's not to love?! 

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Recipe for roly poly biscuits here


See the Princess Eliza's other birthday themes here: Woodland , Mr Men and Little Miss, Ladybird, Under the Sea
Her big brother's themes here: Nerf party, Superhero, Mario
Baby brother's themes: Aeroplanes