Cheesy Bakes.

These are cheese, bacon and apple muffins that I made for this month's Random Recipes.  When I first saw the recipe I had to do, I thought I would manage to kill two birds with one stone as our baking club Pinnies and Petticoats was having a cheese themed evening this month.  I soon realised, however, that I would have to make my bake for P&P the night before and transport it to work and I really felt these muffins wouldn't be very tasty a day and a half later. The recipe is from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries II and he says in the recipe that you must eat the muffins the same day as they are cooked so that made my mind up for me.

So, for Pinnies and Petticoats, I decided to do a recipe I have made before - Chilli and almond biscuits from Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet.  These are fairly cheesy and with a bit of a kick.  I forgot to take any photos of them but have found some old photos on the computer of a previous batch I made - not sure if I have mentioned them on the blog before.  They really are very tasty nibbles to have with drinks so I have made them a few times and Steve has made them a couple of times as well.  The recipe is on the Guardian here.

The Fromage Fest was just brilliant. I didn't have any tea beforehand and stuffed myself on cheesy treats.  We had a lovely mixture of savoury and sweet things.  I'll try and list what I can remember - 

Savoury:

• lamb and stilton pasties (amazing!!!)
• pear and goat's cheese tartlets
• feta and olive samosas
• cheesy monkey bread with homemade mozzarella and apple & chilli jelly
• parmesan shortbread
• parmesan and chilli stars
• cheesy feet 
• blacksticks blue and poppyseed sables
• bacon and cheese twists
• goat's cheese puffs with a chutney surprise
• stilton puffs
• homemade oatcakes and celery seed hearts served with cheese
• a cheese and pickle hedgehog
• basil and feta cupcakes
• cheese and bacon cupcakes

Sweet:

• basil and mascarpone tart with a walnut base (also amazing!)
• summer fruits cheesecake
• rhubarb crumble cheesecake
• lemon and poppyseed cake with cream cheese frosting
• chocolate cheesecake
• dark chocolate and mint mini-cheesecakes

If anyone fancies joining in with Random Recipes each month, go along to Dom's blog and have a look - he gives us a new challenge on the first day of each month.

If anyone in the Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire area fancies coming along to Pinnies and Petticoats, we are a very friendly, non-competitive baking group and wee meet once a month on a Wednesday evening at Tiger Tiger.  You can get full details on the facebook page.  Next month we are doing a Eurovision theme.  Everyone picks a Eurovision country and makes a bake from there.  I will be doing a Slovenian bake and will post here when I do. 

Pinnies And Petticoats Valentine's Showstopper.

Double chocolate shortbread hearts.

The Valentine's Showstopper Pinnies and Petticoats was our least attended baking club since the first one back in September but we can easily blame blizzards.  I passed three accidents on the way into town and was lucky to get there at all. It took me about two hours to get from work but I was actually very lucky as I had thought I might get home first and so had taken the road towards home rather than the most direct route to town which I heard on my radio had two fairly big accidents on it and was virtually closed for hours. Victoria from STV Online had chosen to cover the evening for a piece - see here - but the poor thing only managed to get there once we had given up waiting for her and so had cut into, and started devouring, everything.

I made the stripy heart double chocolate shortbreads (top pic) by adapting a recipe from The Great British Bake Off, How To Bake book. They were a last minute attempt after I tried the marbled-red-velvet-cream-cheese-brownies (look at the amazing photo of these!) from The Novice Chef Blog  but found my heart cutter wasn't deep enough.

My marbled brownies before I ruined them by trying to cut out hearts.

Photos of some of our other lovely bakes -

My favourite of the evening - Karen's gougeres.

Colene's showstopping banana and chocolate cake box filled with salted caramel macarons.

My perfect dessert - Tom's and Martin's Nutty Delight Cheesecake with a decent amount of amaretto.

Foodie Quine's Cherry Tomato Hearts and Cheese Oatcakes.

Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?

If anyone would like to join our friendly, informal baking club, please see our facebook page or come along to our next event.  You can bake anything you like for our Comic Relief Bake on Wednesday the 13th of March at 7pm at Tiger Tiger on Shiprow, Aberdeen. Bring a bake,  £5 for Comic Relief, and a Tupperware box to take home some samples of the baking. Friends are also welcome to help us finish all the yummy bakes!

Pinnies And Petticoats.

At the Scottish Food Bloggers' Conference, I was chatting to people who are members of baking clubs such as Jac who is in the Dundee Clandestine Cake Club and I decided it was time to start some kind of baking club in Aberdeen.  On the way home on the train, I tweeted to see if there would be much interest in starting something.  I got a good few responses from people in Aberdeen and then someone tweeted that @MissKazzieB and @colene1985 had already started to organise one and had a venue sorted out.

Brilliant!  It turned out that they were planning a fairly informal club which suited me perfectly.  Our first night was at Tiger Tiger in Aberdeen and there were no rules or regulations. 

I decided to bake Dan Lepard's Rye Apple Cake just because I love it.  You can get the recipe from the Guardian website here or from Dan's brilliant baking book, Short and Sweet.  I know I have blogged about this cake before but it is a good bake.

We had a successful night. Eight bakers managed the first night and there are a few more due to come to the next one.  Because it was fairly small, we started by sitting down and having a chat and getting to know each other.   We then got stuck into some serious eating. I'm sorry the photos aren't great - we will maybe have to make more effort with our presentation and lighting next time but, having said that, I think there were only two of us who were bloggers - the other blogger is Foodie Quine - great to meet another local blogger.  The bakes were brilliant and what a varied selection.  We had black velvet cake, passion cake, chocolate cakepops and cute cupcake cake balls, peanut butter biscuits, traditional Scottish tablet, sherbet lemon meringues, pale ale parkin (missed yourself with that one, Mince and Skirlie!), peanut butter balls and everything was very tasty and indulgent. 

We were then invited downstairs to Kanaloa for free cocktails to round off a very successful night.

I can't wait for the next one which is Wednesday 17th October at 7pm at Tiger Tiger on Ship Row.  

It is Halloween theme so looking forward to some fun bakes.  You are welcome to come along if you bring something baked and please bring along friends who are welcome just to eat.  You can find us on twitter by searching #pinniesandpetticoats or on the facebook page.

I'm away to start thinking about what I'm going to bake.  Here are some of the Halloween things I have made in the last few years - 

Cobweb and bat cupcakes.

  

My pumpkin cakepops.  These were the first ever cakepops I had made and I was so proud of them at the time!

My mummy cupcakes.  I still love these.

Last year, I made meringue ghosts.

Has anyone got any fun suggestions for this year?