Gibby Bakes

Recently I've been obsessing over the recipes on the Bunch vegan blog, so when I came across this recipe for a Vegan Miso Mushroom Quiche I knew I had to give it a try! In the spirit of total honesty though, this quiche just isn't for me. I have a very love/hate relationship with miso (I absolutely love the flavour of it in Bunch's recipe for Miso Mushroom Pasta, but for this quiche it was a miss for me). If you're a miso lover though then I guarantee this quiche is for you! The first step was to make the pastry. The recipe calls for the use of shop bought filo pastry, but I really wanted to have a go at making my own vegan shortcrust pastry! This was so easy! By simply rubbing vegan butter into flour and salt, adding water, and then rolling the pastry out to line a tart tin, you end up with the perfect vegan shortcrust pastry case for this recipe! With this recipe being vegan friendly, I was intrigued as to how you would make a quiche filling with no eggs, cream or mil...

Christmas Day is probably the only day of the year that the whole family sits down together for a full meal (unless we go out for tea of course!), making it a really special meal. Usually at Christmas we just have soup as a starter, however this year we decided that we'd switch it up a bit, and naturally I offered to whip us up a tasty first course! After trawling through my recipe books for some inspiration, I came across this Wild Mushroom and Gorgonzola Tart! Admittedly I'd never tried gorgonzola before, but I knew instantly that this was the tart for us!  The tart in all its glory! Disclaimer, not everyone at ours is a fan of mushrooms, so I did make a Butternut Squash and Goat's Cheese Tart, which happened to be gluten-free too, as a second option. Making two starters, a dessert, and biscuits to give as part of Christmas presents meant I was in the kitchen for a very long time on Christmas Eve, but I simply watched a couple of Christmas films, and old Gavin and Stacey ...

Confession time, I'm not really a mince pie lover. If the option is there for a mince pie alternative, I'll usually take it. Whenever I've made them in the past it's usually because I've felt like you have to give them a go at Christmas, and it's certainly been for other people, not for me. Recently though I've been seeing people online use different toppings in place of a pastry lid, and I saw the perfect opportunity to try something new! The Mince Pies with the crushed  shortbread topping! For me, the making of the mince pies is probably more enjoyable than the actual eating, and the method is so easy. By rubbing together plain flour and butter, then stirring in sugar and an egg, you produce a sweet pastry that is wonderfully short and melts in the mouth. Shaping the mince pies is also so easy, as you simply roll out the pastry and use it to line a muffin tin! In the past I've struggled with making the mince pies look attractive, but I'm sure you...

You might call it vanity, but I am not ashamed to say how insanely proud of these Paris-Brest I am! My first attempt at a patisserie style bake, and I'm very happy with the finished results! The final Paris-Brest with a  creme mousseline filling! It's not often I get to talking about the history behind what I'm baking, but with Paris-Brest there's an interesting origin story. Paris-Brest became a staple in French patisseries from 1910, when pâtissier Louis Durand created the pastry, shaped like a wheel, to commemorate the Paris-Brest-Paris bike race that first occurred in 1891. There's your fun fact for the day! Now, on to my method. I actually had three attempts at these so I could practice different pastry creams to use as fillings. There are a few components to this bake, but on all three attempts I used the same recipe and method for the choux pastry rings, so we'll start there.  Before making these Paris-Brest I hadn't had a go at choux pastry for many ...

Coming from Nadiya Hussain's book "Nadiya Bakes", this spanakopita recipe puts a Bangladeshi twist on this Greek spinach pie. I was intrigued when I first read through this recipe, but hearing this kind of bake literally being called a "spinach pie" put me right off. I know spinach is really good for you, and I often add it to curries and other meals for that extra Vitamin C and Iron hit, but only as an extra. I've never made something where the spinach has featured so heavily as the main event before (750 grams in this pie!). What a cross section! However, I'm a big fan of both paneer and ricotta cheese, which also feature in this recipe. I convinced myself to give this pie a go after all. If nothing else, this would be another good opportunity to work with filo pastry! And I'm so glad I did! Both the flavours and textures of this pie are heavenly, and I'd say that the filling is really easy to make! First, the spinach is covered in boiling wate...

Recently I've become aware that my baking has placed a heavy emphasis on cupcakes and other "cakey" bakes, which of course there is nothing wrong with! However, I'm keen to try out a variety of different bakes to develop new techniques and find new flavours. So when I stumbled upon Bake Off's Chetna Makan's recipe for this Indian Potato Raised Pie I knew I had to give it a go!  Although capybaras might have nothing to do with India, I couldn't resist  using my cute cookie cutter for decoration! I've only made hot water crust pastry once before, back in January when I made a Garlic, Tarragon and Mushroom Pie! I was surprised at how easy I found making the dough then, however I remember that I didn't roll the dough out quickly enough. With hot water crust pastry the trick is to work quickly whilst the dough is warm and pliable after the just-boiling water and melted fat is added. This time I knew to move faster.  Upon closer inspection you can see  w...

It's been so long since I last posted! I'm quietly confident that no one has really missed these posts, but I enjoy writing them, and they're a good record of how my bakes go. I've been itching to give my favourite hobby some attention, but with work, hunting for grad schemes, running etc etc I've been struggle to find the time to bake at all, never mind to sit down and write about it! Seeing as it's been well over a month, I have a few bakes in the bag that I can write about now, and I've decided to start with these filo pastry parcels! Salted Caramel and Apple, Pear, Almond and Dark Chocolate, and Rhubarb and Ginger Parcels! For my first attempt at these filo parcels I simply had to have a go at making my own filo pastry, and it was nothing short of disastrous! The first recipe (from a chef I wouldn't dare call out) called for flour, salt, water and olive oil. Surely this would be a simple enough dough to bring together? Apparently not. I tried to foll...

So, I'm back for a second post! I'll take it as a good sign that I'm so eager to start my second post so soon after my first, and what better topic to write about than my baking journey so far.  It feels like the COVID lockdowns happened so long ago, sometimes it even feels like they were part of some fever dream, and it wasn't until I moved home from university in March 2021 that I began to take more of an active interest in baking. I don't want to say that I began to "take myself seriously" as a baker, as this sounds a bit too formal, and I have a bad habit of comparing my bakes to those of professionals. I have to remind myself that I am an amateur baker for whom baking is a hobby to avoid upsetting myself too much when things don't go to plan, or when my finished bake isn't identical to the photos in recipe books. How it started: The first lockdown in March 2020 at least had some kind of novel feeling about it. It was something none of us had e...

So I started a blog today! Truthfully, I'm not exactly sure where to start except with a little about me.    At risk of repeating what I've already said in my bio, my name is James (though my friends have been calling me Gibby since primary school), I'm 23, and I'm currently teaching myself to bake. I would say that my baking skills are somewhat limited, but I love baking regardless. I don't have a particular reason for wanting to improve my skills as a baker other than the fact that baking is a favourite hobby of mine, and it's so incredibly satisfying when a bake goes well. In actual heaven! Me! On holiday in North Yorkshire after our trip to Italy was cancelled! Over a year ago I graduated from Lancaster University with a degree in English Literature and History (although thanks to COVID my graduation ceremony has been postponed until next month, July 2022). Since then, I've not been too sure on what I actually want to do with my life, so I've continu...