APRIL BAKING CLUB

Earlier in April our ladies were tarting it up, with Liz Herbert’s’ Best-kept Secrets of the Women’s Institute – Tarts! I could just leave it there and let your imagination run wild, maybe these ladies are not so gentile as they make themselves out to be - I’ve said it before.. what happens in baking club, stays in baking club. 

Alas nothing that scandalous, the baking club were hard at work making prawn, tomato, and mozzarella tartlets. The sumptuous smells of the tartlet fillings filled up the kitchen and the ladies could not contain themselves and they decided as per the recipe, that life was too short to skin a tomato! Well I would have to agree, you’ll never get that time again, plus most of the nutrition is in the skin!

Now that the savoury feast has been loving executed, pudding time! The baking club had settled on lemon and lime ginger crunch pie, fearlessly they cracked on with making the filling, then they stumbled upon a school girl error, they did not read through the recipe before choosing for the evenings bake … the filling had to be left over night in the fridge! Oops! 

It was time for them to put their thinking caps on, the filling was put into individual cases in the fridge to be assembled individually! A bit like if Ikea were to sell tarts, expect with a higher expectation of being able construct the thing within one’s lifetime without having a nervous breakdown. They were very proud of their dynamic problem solving and even more chuffed when all the filo cases came out of the tins intact!  

Well we will have to make them ourselves if we want to know what they tasted like! 

FEBRUARY BAKING CLUB

Back in action the baking club were making pasties and raspberry friands in February. So, let’s start with the pasties, this was a real team effort in the kitchen and the ladies worked hard to get the beef and swede pasties looking the part. There did seem to be a lot of time waiting around for the magic to happen inside the oven, during this time there were copious amounts of tea drinking going on and I suspect a great deal of nattering. As they were very filling and the baking session finished late in the evening, they lined these lovelies up for the mid-week lunches – the drive home apparently filled the car with a “must be eaten” aroma … apparently the restraint was worth the wait when reheated. But what about pudding? I hear you ask … well fear not, the sweet tooth of the baking club produced some lovely raspberry friands … what’s friand? I also hear you ask, well let me put my Mary Berry hat on and explain … it’s a spongy cake thing with fruit on top. What? Is that the BBC food department wanting my baking expertise, you’re too kind!

JANUARY BAKING CLUB

The baking club has been back in full swing and over January they have been baked up a storm. The first item out of the oven in 2019 were some glorious Viennese whirls, which were by all accounts a melt in the mouth experience and apparently could take Mr Kipling on a run for his money. Well I’m not surprised, we are not dealing with just any bakers, these are ladies of the Women’s Institute and standards are to be met! 

Next in line were the apricot and white chocolate blondies, so good that they could not stop at one and the bakers had to go in for a second helping. I think you can all agree that the ladies do not lack ambition and have started the year off with success.