The Great British Bake Off

So the secret is finally out, I won The Great British Bake Off and it has been the most amazing past couple of days. I wanted to write a short post to say thank you for all the emails and support I have received over the last six weeks as the show has aired and especially over the last two days as the result was finally revealed. I have had to keep it a secret for so long that it was such a weight off my shoulders to finally be able to shout it from the rooftops. When I was watching the show even I felt nervous, actually I felt sick to my stomach. As I was watching I started noticing emails coming in and over the last 24 hours I have actually received so many it’s been so hard to keep up (most were just Twitter so didn’t need responding). Today my feet have barely touched the ground I started the day at 6.30am and was on way to the BBC for 7am where I had interviews with Gaby Roslin on Radio London, Chris Evans on Radio 2 then amazingly I even did a live tv interview on BBC Breakfast which turned out to be much less daunting then I expected. In total I think I did around 20 different interviews. Even though it was tiring it was amazing and fascinating and I still can’t quite believe it’s happening to me.

liquorice Ice Cream

In the post about Nanaimo Bars I mentioned that I had tried something called Tiger Ice Cream, which is basically just liquorice and orange ice cream swirled together. I absolutely loved it, ever since I’ve been hoping i come across an ice cream shop over hear that makes it, but i’ve never seen it outside Canada. I don’t have two ice cream makers so can’t see how I would be able to make it so I decided to just make the liquorice ice cream. None of my books had a recipe, which I guess isn’t surprising as it’s not exactly the most popular flavour, so I turned to Twitter for suggestions. I was given a couple of suggestions but someone was even kinder to send me Claudia Flemings recipe from her book “The Last Course” a book I have wanted for a long time but which is unfortunately out of print and now ridiculously expensive to buy, so unless anyone wants to give me a copy I won’t be getting it anytime soon. Now, I will admit that at one stage this ice cream looked disgusting, the custard was the most unattractive green colour. I’m sure this is down the the brand of liquorice I used, so I decided I had to add a little colouring to darken it and in the end it looked okay but next time I’ll choose a different brand, because I hate colouring ice cream.

Chocolate Peanut Crinkles

Super simple but impressive cookie recipe today. These are not traditional cookies, they dont have the same texture, they are actually nearer brownies, although not gooey in the same way. The impressive thing about these is that they are rolled in icing sugar so that when they are baked they crackle and reveal the chocolate cookie beneath. The recipe makes loads, I got 45 from the cookie dough, thankfully they were baked as a favour for an event so they didnt go to waste. The recipe comes from the new book by the White House pastry chef Bill Yosses, The Perfect Finish. The book has some wonderful sounding recipes from a Chocolate and Salted Caramel Tart to Chocolate Chip Cookies with Nutella, I cant wait to try some more.