Gibby Bakes

Potentially my most praised bake to date, this Summer Pudding, recipe courtesy of Paul Hollywood, consists of a White Chocolate and Raspberry Sourdough case bursting with a mixed berry and Chambord filling! A winning combination, so let's get into it!   I struggled to get a photo of this Summer Pudding so much!  A lot of love goes into preparing this pudding, and the first step is bake a loaf of the White Chocolate and Raspberry Sourdough, which in itself requires a sourdough starter preparing first! To prepare the starter, strong white flour, water, and diced green grapes are combined in a bowl and left for approximately two days to become active. Once active and bubbly, half of the mixture is discarded and refreshed with more flour and water. After an additional 24 hours, the yeast in the sourdough starter are ready to go.  To prepare the the sourdough, strong white flour, the sourdough starter, salt and water are combined in a bowl, kneaded, and then left to rise ...

It's been well over a month since the Barbie movie was released, smashing it's main rival Oppenheimer at the box office and providing the soundtrack to all our Summers! And with the Barbie hype looking like it's here to stay, I'm loving seeing all the Barbie themed bakes on social media, and these Barbiecore cupcakes are no exception! I first saw these cupcakes on Liz Nicolaou's Tiktok page (her page is incredible and totally worth checking out!). I fell in love with them the minute I saw them, and I knew I just had to give them a go. I made a couple of changes to the method, but Liz's design is definitely the main inspiration here, with a few Jane's Patisserie recipes thrown in for guaranteed success! Dance the night away! The first step in creating these cupcakes was to prepare the strawberry jam filling. A simple combination of strawberries and jam sugar is added to a large pan along with the juice of a whole lemon, and is boiled to 105 degrees C. Once th...

How's this for a beauty!  It's been a while since I had a go at a drip cake, and honestly this one caused me quite a bit of stress! But that's hardly surprising, given that this cake consists of six layers of orange flavoured chocolate fudge cake, and is filled and coated with a chocolate orange buttercream! The first attempt at the sponge didn't exactly go to plan, so let's get into it!  My first plan was to follow the recipe for Chocolate Orange Drip Cake from Jane's Patisserie... but my bloody oven went haywire! The sponges were supposed to take an hour to bake, however they were burnt in just under half an hour. Not good, but I know my oven so I really should know better by now. Therefore, I really needed a Plan B.  I decided to go for a fudge cake instead, as even if the cake baked slightly faster than I expected, I find that fudge cake has a tendency to stay moister for longer. To prepare the fudge cake, I followed the recipe for Chocolate Fudge Cake from ...

Before I posted my Double Chocolate and Salted Caramel Focaccia recipe, it'd been almost a month again since I'd written anything! Switching roles at work, an increased time spent commuting, and dedicating more time and effort to running has left me with very little time to sit and get things on the page. I've managed to handwrite bits about a few bakes, but what good is that here!  French Madeleines at the front, English Madeleines at the back!  I've still been finding time to bake though, and these Madeleines felt like a great way to get back into the groove of baking!  I'll be honest, I didn't even know English Madeleines were a thing until very recently! I bought a "Vintage Tea Party" book from a charity book stall, as I was intrigued by what people would consider a "vintage" bake, and surprise surprise these English Madeleines were featured! The method is so easy though. Butter and sugar are creamed together, before eggs, flour, and baki...

Because I'd almost guarantee you've never had focaccia like this!  I've made a fair few focaccias now, including a Feta, Grape and Fennel Focaccia, and a gluten-free Garlic, Chilli, and Rosemary Focaccia, but this loaf is unlike any other, and is definitely up there with my favourites!  A bit of an impulse bake, this Double Chocolate and Salted Caramel Focaccia is also vegan friendly!  I've never made a sweet focaccia before, but it's no surprise that the method is very similar to savoury ones! This bread was hard to  photograph, made even harder by my limited camera skills! To start, a simple dough is made by combining strong white flour, cocoa powder, a little sugar, and yeast with tepid water and olive oil, before kneading to a smooth dough. The dough is then left to proof until doubled in size, which in this case took a little over an hour, before being knocked back and pressed into a rectangular tin. The dough is then proofed for a second time, until it just ab...

And this is why I'm the best colleague!  Just like with my Rhubarb, Pistachio and Rose Cake, these cupcakes came about due to an excess of rhubarb that needed using. Never one to waste food, I set about finding way to get creative with it!  Rhubarb Crumble Cupcakes! That's where these Rhubarb Crumble Cupcakes come in! I've seen variations of fruit crumble cupcakes around on social media lately, but if I'm being honest I don't know why I went with rhubarb crumble, considering I don't really like rhubarb! At least in the Rhubarb, Pistachio, and Rose Cake there were other flavours at play. I ended up loving these cupcakes though, so let's get cracking! These cupcakes couldn't be more simple to prepare! To start with, butter and sugar are creamed together, before eggs, self raising flour, and cinnamon are added. Chopped rhubarb is then folded through, and the mixture is split between the cupcake cases. But hold your horses! Before baking, a crumble, made fro...

It's been a while... but I'm back now! Once again I've found myself pretty burnt out. Usually I'd just dedicate some time to my favourite hobbies (baking and reading!) to make myself feel better. However, I've been finding myself too tired to focus on either at the minute.  The burnout has clearly had an impact on my baking (see my Peach Bellini Cake failure, which I'm attributing to the burnout!). However, with a long weekend last weekend and four days of annual leave to look forward to next week, I can feel the brain fog lifting. I needed a bake that was challenging enough to refocus my efforts but not too challenging as to put myself off. Enter then these Paneer and Onion Masala Rolls, courtesy of Chetna Makan's 30 Minute Indian!  You've gotta respect the swirl! These rolls consist of homemade puff pastry with two filings; a peanut and coriander chutney, and a paneer and red onion mixture.  Chetna calls for the use of ready-rolled shop-bought puff pas...