The Bank Holiday weekend has been a fab chance to catch up with all of my wonderful family - it was my mum's, cousin's and uncle's birthday (all on the same day) on Friday 23rd - so we arranged a big family BBQ to celebrate on Sunday held at my Uncle's farm house in Surrey (the same farm we held our wedding on).
It's not often we manage to get all of my extended family together, so it wash really lovely to see everyone and show my lovely Bert off to them all. We were very lucky to get lovely weather all day (hard to believe looking out the window today - urgh!)
Me and The Bertster at Sunday's BBQ
Me and My Cousin Vicky (sister from another mister) :-)
Me and my lovely hubby! :-)
Pony rides for the kids at my Uncle's house on Sunday in Surrey - big family get togethers are the best!
My boy! :-)
The Oldies ;-) Celebrating lots of birthdays!
Everyone bought food along to the BBQ and I got my bake on just in time for my May Baking Challenge. This month I picked my Uncle Ken's favourite - a Bakewell Tart. As per the other challenges I've never made it before, and was desperate to tick this off my list.
My husband and I absolutely love a cheeky Mr Kipling Bakewell (with the thick layer of icing & cherry on the top)… it is quite honestly one of the only shop bought cakes I would consider eating as I usually much prefer homemade, so in Mr Kipling style I set about replicating his Cherry Bakewell…and couldn't wait to see how it stacked up against my shop bought guilty pleasure.
Mr Kipling: Who doesn't love his Cherry Bakewell??
I used Mary Berry's recipe on the BBC website here for the bulk of the Bakewell (pastry & frangipane). I found the recipe to be really reliable, and the only things I changed were the topping and jam: instead of sprinkling flaked almonds on the top of the frangipane (which is the traditional way of making a Bakewell), I made a lovely glossy lemony icing, and added glace cherries to decorate, and instead of raspberry jam, I used cherry jam.
If you'd like to emulate my Bakewell topping just take off the step where you add the flaked almonds, and instead add the icing once cooled completely and top with cherries.
For the icing:
200g icing sugar
juice of half a lemon
(a little warm water to thin if needed)
glace cherries to decorate
Bakewell in the tin, waiting for the icing to set
Out the tin and ready to devour!
This was so scrummy :-) We all devoured it so quickly I didn't even get a chance to get a photo of it sliced up.
Oooooh cherries….!
I would totally recommend giving this recipe a go if you get the chance. It wasn't half as hard as I was expecting it to be, and it was far superior in taste to any shop bought version I've tried.
If you like a very sweet Bakewell you could use strawberry or raspberry jam instead of cherry (as they are sweeter than the cherry I used), but I loved getting the sweet kick from the icing, but the warmth and depth of flavour from the cherry jam.
Happy Baking Everyone!
I wonder what my Baking Challenge will be next month??
Mrs B
xxx