Making a gingerbread house with Neff

I’ve already shared a couple of pictures here and on my social channels of the gingerbread house i helped to construct at a blogging event a week or so ago. And it was billed as a bit of a bake off, which involved competition and skill. Thankfully I’d been teamed with some proper food bloggers who brought their knowledge to our team’s enthusiasm. Before being let loose on the challenge, we learnt more about the ovens and what lie ahead of us and although the dough had been made for us in the interests of time, instead of a recipe to follow we had to use our instincts, which is where those food bloggers came into their own. Between them they knew how long to cook the individual shapes for, and how to make Royal Icing. I quickly learnt this is where my icing goes wrong as I’ve not made that type of icing before. Lesson number one learnt and stored away for home use!

But starting off there was a simple cutting out job to do. First the templates and then the templates and gingerbread dough. With the dough cut out one of the most challenging parts of the evening was fitting the dough onto the trays to go into the oven, as with three teams cooking there was as much competition for oven space. Thankfully none of us were so competitive that we resorted to dirty tactics, everyone played fair, even to the point of checking on each other’s baking.

I’m a fan of Neff ovens, I’m on my second at home - the second one as when we did our kitchen we opted to upgrade our appliances too, and it was an easy choice when our kitchen suppliers asked which brand of appliances we wanted. Definitely Neff. They’re reliable, cook well, look good and why move from what you know?

Our only regret, well with hindsight, that has to be the timing of our kitchen refurb, which was just as the ‘slide and hide’ models were starting to be available. Of course, hindsight is a wonderful thing and I’m not sure we would have delayed it just for an oven door which disappears, but I know one thing, next time we buy an oven that’s what we’ll be aiming for.

Another thing I learnt from the evening was that clean ovens are more efficient than, well than mine. That’s lesson learnt number two, but that’s one that is likely to take a bit more elbow grease, or delegated elbow grease, to put right. But it’s something to aim for, kitchen goals and all that…

With our gingerbread baked and trimmed - it’s important to do that while it’s still warm, and a tip we picked up was to use those templates again, and not worry too much if it cracks, as there’s always icing. That’s my own real-world, icing loving, tip there - but it works.

While the main components were cooking we set about making some gingerbread and French stick canapes; there were circles, stars, snowmen and Christmas tree shapes - and more besides. Not liking to waste any of the dough I attempted some triangular bunting shapes, see above. The shapes expanded during cooking, and so the PR friendly bunting transformed into stepping stones to go outside our house.

And that icing, that’s all mine - it’s a bit wobbly in places, but not bad for a first attempt at lettering, hey?

Construction was made easier with many hands, and so I can confirm many hands do make light work. After my mini-venture into icing, I was happy to leave the construction cement-like icing to those that really knew what they were doing, happy to record the events in much the same way that Kevin McCloud does on Grand Designs, but with much less mud.

Confident that our house wouldn’t fall down, it was time for decorating, and the next challenge of the evening was trying not to eat our construction supplies - well until the decorating was done that is.

You’ll have seen my 3D tree here before, but I’m sharing it again because I’m so proud of how it turned out. I’d love to say it was planned, but when I saw two stars and a circle going spare, along with plenty of green icing I couldn’t help myself. The jelly babies proved to be the perfect baubles, and the tree looked great in our garden.

It was my first time making a gingerbread house, and it was way easier than I thought, especially with the combined knowledge of our team’s food bloggers. If you’re tempted to try one for yourself, give it a go, as not only is it fun to make, it also tastes fantastic too as my work colleagues can testify - and I’m sure it’ll be easier with the recipe too, so here’s the recipe of our gingerbread houses - thanks Neff.

* This is a collaborative post, but as usual all views are my own. Thanks to Neff and their partners for a great evening, and of course for the gingerbread house!

Wine tasting at Roccafiore

Well, when in Rome - or more accurately, Umbria…

Exactly, we just had to visit a vineyard on our trip to Italy this autumn, and MOH lost no time trying to find just the one. And that’s how we ended up at Roccafiore, a vineyard in Todi close to where we were staying. What interested me was what they call the “natural and sustainable viticulture” which we learnt means a more natural way of producing wine.

It’s just a small vineyard set in the hills of Todi, the terraced gardens where we had our tasting were very pretty - usually the tastings take place inside, but as it was unexpectedly warm we were more than happy to sit in this pretty setting. When we arrived the workers were having their lunch, and they were a great advert for their company - I’ve said it before, but you can tell a lot by a company by their workers, and later when we saw them at work, they looked equally as happy.

Having our tasting outside meant more work for our host as she fetched and carried everything we needed, including a pretty jam jar of flowers and a wine passport for us to make notes about the wines in, and some weird dog-like biscuits (in the basket) which I wasn’t much of a fan of.

We’d chosen to have lunch alongside the wine, which is always a good move, and the lunch included some of the charcuterie from pigs kept on the land, which tasted as good as it looks. There’s also olive groves on the land and they also produce olive oil, which we tasted slathered over bread, and also very tasty. Tasty isn’t a word I thought I’d use about olive oil, and it’s here we realised that we don’t use olive oil in the same way at home, and it’s wasted how we do use it!

When it got to the part of the tasting that the price list came out we surprised ourselves by considering the olive oil. We didn’t buy any though as there were only 3l cans available, and this summer aside, we couldn’t think of when we could make use of so much olive oil to do it justice, which was a shame.

We also did the calculation on the optimum bottles of wine to ship home, which turned out to be three cases. Red, of course, although even I was tempted by a couple of the whites. And so a couple of weeks after we returned from Italy, some of their Il Roccafiore, a Sangiovese and Prova d’Autore (a blend of Sagrantino, Montepulciano and Sangiovese) followed us home.

As I said at the top of this post, when in Rome (or Umbria)…

A spot of baking: savoury, sweet and with gin

After a particularly busy week today has been a day of cooking and baking, and that's a great way to destress.  The radio is turned up a notch or two, I have the house to myself and I'm in the process of making a lasagne for tea and while the rosemary focaccia cooks I'm already thinking about what's potentially up next.

It's been a while since I made focaccia though and luckily I had some yeast that was still just about in date and willing to do its thing.  If you've got quick active yeast at the back of the cupboard like me then it's worth knowing that salt kills yeast and sugar helps it.  So if you're not sure if it's going to do anything mix it with warm water and a smidgeon of sugar, if it froths use it, if not throw it away and head to the shops for some more!

I've the rest of the packet to use up so there could be plenty more focaccia to come, or even better pizza oven pizzas.  Making bread always amazes me, so few ingredients but such a lovely outcome.  The kneading is therapeutic too, and go some way to counter the stresses of this week.

I mean, from this:

To this, about thirty minutes later:

It smells good, and I'm looking forward to tucking into it later on. 

The bolognaise of the lasagne is cooking away and there's just the cheese sauce to make.  In the local supermarket earlier I was feeling lazy so thought I'd buy some but it was not to be as they only had carbonara sauce on the shelf.  I was clearly meant to make my own. 

Finishing with something sweet

Now that I've got into the mindset of baking today, I want to continue.  You may remember I have a penchant for cake and would happily eat cake for breakfast.  They do in Portugal, and so that means it's allowed.  It's probably also why I like Portugal so much, in fact I even know the Portuguese word for cake (it's bolo in case you need it)

Thinking about what cake I could make I remembered a cake my SIL made on our last visit - a gin and tonic cake.  I know, it sounds delicious doesn't it, I can tell you hers was and the flavours have been stored away for future use.  There was also a strawberry and prosecco cake which I'm hoping will also reappear when we visit in the future. 

THE MAIN INGREDIENTS - BUT WHICH GIN TO USE?

But gin and tonic cakes, they definitely work.  But which gin?  We already have a selection (as you can see) and I suspect that each will give the cake its own flavour, and there's plenty of scope to experiment.  I think this is where miniatures, like these from Just Miniatures could come into their own.  For example I think a more fresh and floral flavoured gin would work well in a cake, but we tend to be drawn to more robust, juniper styles to drink.  Clearly I'd like all the gin, but that's not so practical. 

In my quest to find a recipe I'd use, I've already found the following recipes:

• Gin & tonic cake, BBC Good Food
• Gin & tonic loaf, Good Housekeeping
• Gin & tonic tray bake, Delicious magazine
• Iced gin & tonic bundt cake, Sainsbury's magazine

But I'd be keen to know if you have recipe you stand by, or of course, ones to give a miss.

* This is a collaborative post but all views are my own.