Almond and Apricot Biscotti… January’s BakedIn Baking Club Recipe

I’m a firm believer in starting as you mean to go on, and the New Year started wonderfully thanks to BakedIn Baking Club. Every month they send a new recipe kit for you to make, and the recipes have all been created by Michel Roux exclusively for BakedIn. What I particularly loved about the January box was that, like the previous month, it contained a recipe for something I have always wanted to bake but never got around to doing. I’d actually imagined biscotti was a tricky delicacy to make, but this recipe proved me wrong.

The box, as always, contained all the dry ingredients needed for the recipe. If more than one dry ingredient needs to be added at the same time, they pack those together in one packet for convenience. You might look at the box and think there were only 6 dry ingredients as there are 6 packets, but some of those packets had a few things in. This makes the baking process so much easier, having everything pre-weighed for you. BakedIn even include extra bits you’ll need such as baking paper or a skewer to test something is baked throughout. It’s the little touches like those that shows how much they care. They make sure you have absolutely everything you could possibly need, and they pack it all in a sturdy box which fits perfectly through your letterbox. Obviously for food safety reasons they can’t send eggs or chilled ingredients but they are easy enough to buy, and most people will already have them in their kitchen anyway.

Anyway back to the biscotti. I followed the recipe card and was really surprised at how easy it was to make them. The nutty aroma that filled the kitchen was just so comforting.

This is how they looked after their first bake and before cutting. I was already happy with it at this point as it looked pretty much how it was supposed to. Phew! I’d had visions of mine spreading off the baking sheets and dripping all over the bottom of the oven, or rising too much so their shape was wrong…. I told you I thought it was trickier to make than it actually was!!!

I sliced each into 1 inch slices and returned them to the oven to get that crunchiness that biscotti is known for. At this point I was sat nervously on the kitchen floor in front of the oven, watching to make sure I didn’t burn them! I needn’t have worried, and now I know for next time that I don’t need to keep my eye on them!

The final stage was to drizzle white chocolate over them. This made them look extra indulgent and scrumptious.

They were delicious dunked in a cup of coffee. That made them literally melt in your mouth. They were equally good on their own though. This is yet another wonderful recipe from the Baking Club which I will be making again and again.

If you fancy joining the BakedIn Baking Club, it costs just £7.99 a month including delivery, and you can cancel at any time. Your first box is sent within a few days, and then your next box is sent at the same time as everyone else’s. I love the fact you get a box almost straight away. Most other subscription boxes make you wait until the next box is due, and if you’ve just missed the deadline for that month it can be a long wait for your first one! BakedIn understand you will be keen to get baking, so make sure you have something to get on with.

BakedIn are running an offer at the moment to give you your first box even cheaper! If you click HERE and enter the code TRY499 at the checkout, your first box will be just £4.99 including delivery. Definitely worth a try! Happy Baking!

DISCLAIMER: BakedIn don’t ask me to provide a review nor do I receive any form of compensation for my posts. I pay fully for my subscription and like to share the details of them with you as I truly think the Club is a wonderful subscription. All views and opinions are my own. 

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A Gingerbread House from the Festive BakedIn Baking Club

As you all know, I have been a member of the BakedIn Baking Club for a while now and it never fails to impress me with the recipe each month. December’s box really really excited me! Shockingly I had never made a gingerbread house before, so as soon as I opened the box and saw an array of sweets and the recipe card I let out a little happy squeal. I had visions of Hansel and Gretel and an instant Christmassy feeling swept over me. I hadn’t been feeling particularly festive until the arrival of this box, but this really changed that!

The box contained the recipe card, lots of different sweets, all the dry ingredients needed for the gingerbread and the icing, a butter measure, baking paper, and templates for cutting out the shapes needed to construct the house. As you can see, each packet is clearly labelled with a number. This makes following the recipe so much easier and makes it ideal to do with children. My 9 year old son Luke couldn’t wait to help me with this one! After watching some episodes of The Great British Bake Off I was a bit nervous that my gingerbread would collapse, as that seemed to be a common problem with some bakers. I needn’t have worried. Baking Club recipes are created exclusively for BakedIn by Michel Roux, so it goes without saying that they are perfect. No chance of collapse with this recipe!

Making the house with Luke was one of the highlights of the Christmas holiday. He loved decorating it most of all. The only trouble was he loved the end result so much he wouldn’t let us eat it for ages!!! Luckily it still tasted amazing when he finally agreed to breaking it up.

The house had stained glass effect windows which looked stunning when we placed a battery-operated tealight inside the house. We did originally use a little torch but the tealight looked better. Luke said it was as if there was a fire glowing inside. There might not have been a real fire but there was a definite real feeling of warmth and happiness from making this recipe. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we decided that we will make a gingerbread house every Christmas from now on. You really can’t beat the contentment that baking with your family brings.

BakedIn Baking Club is a club suitable for everyone. People who have never baked before or who are just beginning to bake will love how easy the recipes are to follow. The recipe cards have photographs of each step so you know you are on the right track. The ingredients are already weighed out for you so you don’t have to spend ages doing preparation. All the dry ingredients you will need are included so you don’t have to buy a big bag of something you might not need again for a while, meaning less waste. People who are regular bakers will enjoy being able to add the scrumptious recipes to their own repertoire.

It costs just £7.99 a month to be part of this wonderful Baking Club. That price includes postage so it is amazing value for money. If you are interested in joining it too, you can have your first box for just £4.99!

To get your first box for £4.99 click  HERE  to go to the BakedIn website and enter code TRY499 at checkout.  Happy Baking!

DISCLAIMER: I pay for my subscription and receive no compensation for writing reviews for them. All views are my own honest opinions. 

Banoffee Cookies… November’s BakedIn Baking Club

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t particularly excited about making this month’s Baking Club bake. I know, it’s a terrible thing to say but it’s the truth. The box arrived a couple of days ago, conveniently dropping through my letterbox so there was no waiting around for it to be delivered. The first thing that I saw was the lovely bright new packaging… a beautiful green which made it stand out from the boring brown envelopes which arrived with it.

I get really excited to open this box each month to discover what wonderful recipe I will be baking. I am a huge fan of Michel Roux, so to receive all the dry ingredients I need to create one of his exclusive recipes is just a joy. I opened this box with my usual eagerness and after opening the lovely paper that the ingredients are wrapped in, I saw the one word I usually really don’t like… banoffee. I have a huge sweet tooth but I have never found a banoffee recipe of any description that hasn’t been disgustingly sickly and far too sweet. So, in all honesty, my heart sank a little when I opened this box.

How silly was I? I should have known this would be different! After all, in all the time I have been subscribing to the Baking Club, there hasn’t been a single bad recipe. I can honestly say with my hand on my heart, these cookies are ridiculously scrumptious! The perfect amount of sweetness, not sickly at all, but bursting with flavour and texture. They contain fresh banana as well as dried banana chips for amazing flavour, and delicious fudge pieces for texture and indulgence. I like cookies to be chewy not crunchy, and these were perfect. Lovely and chewy and moist, with a little crunch from the dried banana on top. All finished off with a drizzle of white chocolate on top. They were delicious still warm from the oven, and they were delicious cooled completely. In a word… Heaven!

I have loved BakedIn Baking Club from the instant I received my very first recipe box, and this month I love them even more for introducing me to a banoffee recipe I can finally enjoy! I will be making these cookies again and again as we all really really enjoyed them. That’s the beauty of this Club. The recipes come with ingredients pre-weighed for you, but the recipe card clearly tells you how much of each ingredient you have so you can make them whenever you want to in the future too. I keep all my recipe cards from them in a folder so I know where to find them quickly.

I cannot tell you the amazing recipe that I used to make these treats, as it is exclusive to BakedIn and it wouldn’t be fair. However if you would like to join the Baking Club and receive these fantastic recipe kits for yourself, click HERE to receive your first box for the incredible price of just £1.99! After that, it costs just £7.99 per month which includes postage. Well worth every little penny.

Happy Baking!

BakedIn Baking Club…. Autumnal Spiced Blackberry Muffins

I really look forward to my BakedIn Baking Club box arriving each month. The chance to bake something delicious using a recipe created exclusively by Michel Roux for BakedIn is just so exciting, and I love the anticipation of what each recipe might be.

The October box was a beautiful Spiced Blackberry Muffin recipe. The eagle-eyed readers amongst you will have noticed I used blueberries instead. Here’s why. I had gone with a friend and my son to pick some blackberries not long before this kit arrived, and had found a perfect place with an abundance of big juicy berries. As we were about to start picking them though, an elderly gentleman approached us and told us we should leave them. We thought he was joking but it quickly became apparent he wasn’t, as he proceeded to go on and on about how they were food for the birds. We did tell him there were more than enough for the birds and for us and if we didn’t pick some they’d just go rotten there were so many, but he just wouldn’t leave us alone, saying “Birds can’t go to Tesco”. He was so rude and his manner was so unfriendly, he was actually making us feel very uncomfortable, so we decided to abandon our berry picking. I went to Tesco to buy some the next day, only to find they weren’t selling them any more! I searched for any bushes locally as the perfect place we had found was miles away on a nice day out, but sadly the berries had all gone. Luckily the helpful BakedIn team told me that this recipe would work with blueberries too, so that is what I had to use. I will be making these again next year though as soon as I spot ripe blackberries around!

The Baking Club kit arrived as always in a box that fits perfectly through the letterbox. It contained all the dry ingredients needed for the recipe, already weighed out and placed in numbered packages to make following the recipe card simple. It also contained a handy butter measure guide, the recipe card, a skewer, and squares of baking paper.

The baking paper squares were to make muffin cases out of, which I thought was wonderful. They ended up looking like the lovely tulip muffin cases you can buy, but were so easy to make! I just needed a glass that was the same width as the cups in my muffin tray, which I had, and then it was a simple task of folding the paper around the bottom of the glass. It didn’t take long at all to get them all made and placed in the trays ready for the mixture.

The instructions were, as always, very clear and easy to follow. You really can’t go wrong with these kits. I would say they are completely foolproof. The kitchen had the most amazing aroma of cinnamon and almond while I was preparing and baking these. It felt very Autumnal and cosy. The recipe made 20 muffins, which was great as they were so delicious they disappeared rapidly!

The addition of cinnamon pearl sugar on the top added a beautiful sweet and spicy crunch. They really were scrumptious!

I don’t believe in giving much away about these recipes as they are exclusive to the Baking Club, but I can say in the months I’ve subscribed there hasn’t been a single recipe I haven’t loved. It is so easy to get stuck in a rut of just baking the same things for convenience, so this Club is a great way to try new bakes you might not otherwise have come across. It is ideal too for those days when you really want to bake but time is short. The fact the ingredients are weighed out for you cuts out so much preparation time, so you can just get on with the fun part. I tend to do mine with my 9 year old son, as the recipe card is so easy to follow. A perfect way to spend quality time with your family, and a great way to bring everyone together to enjoy the end results!

Christmas is fast approaching, and if there’s someone you are struggling to find a gift idea for, why not buy them a Baking Club subscription? It would make  a beautiful gift for any occasion. How about a house warming present? Give someone the smell of home baking to fill their house every month, along with a sense of pride and achievement when they have created something delicious.

The Baking Club subscription costs £7.99 per month, including postage. That is already a fantastic price, but the lovely BakedIn team are so sure you will love their Club, they are letting you have your first box for the crazy price of just £1.99!!! You can cancel at any time should you want to (although I doubt you will).

To get your first box for the ridiculously low price of £1.99, click HERE to join the Club using the discount code they will provide on that page. Happy Baking!

Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Loaf – Bakedin Baking Club September Recipe

Do you love to bake but sometimes just don’t have the time? Work commitments keep eating into your free time? Say hello to Bakedin Baking Club.

I subscribed to the Bakedin Baking Club a while ago and have to say the recipes just keep getting better. Just when you think they’ve peaked with how delicious a recipe can be, they bring out the next one and it’s another “Wow Factor” one!

Every month you receive a wonderful box full of all the dry ingredients you need to bake a recipe created exclusively by Michel Roux. You also receive extras needed such as baking paper, skewers, etc. You just need to provide the eggs and any chilled ingredients.

This might just look like 6 ingredients but it’s not. Different ingredients that go in to the recipe at the same time are packaged together in one bag for convenience, all of them weighed out exactly for you. Only top quality ingredients are used too. You don’t have to spend ages weighing everything out, which is great when you are short of time. All of this costs just £7.99 a month which includes delivery so it is fantastic value for money. The recipe card is clear and easy to follow and all the measurements of the dry ingredients are listed so you can make the recipe again any time you fancy.

I love marble cakes. The different colours and flavours really appeal to me, so I was very excited to get this Marble Loaf in the oven! The recipe said to line the loaf tin with the baking paper provided, but I have a huge supply of loaf tin liners so I decided to use one of those instead. I followed the rest of the recipe to the letter though. The vanilla and chocolate aromas from each bowl made my mouth water. Just look at all the flecks of ground vanilla in there! Yum!

Spooning the 2 mixtures into the loaf tin and gently swirling them together was fun. I tried not to do it too much as I didn’t want a chocolate loaf on it’s own. (Well I wouldn’t have minded really but I wanted to do it right hehe). So this was how it looked before and after baking:

 

The next part was to make the chocolate glaze topping, melt the white chocolate using their brilliant chocolate melting method, and make the feathered design on the top. They had provided skewers to test the loaf was ready, to swirl the mixtures, and to make the effect on top. Perfect!

Every recipe card has a Top Tip from Michel Roux on a way to enhance the recipe even more. The tip with this one was how to make a hot chocolate using any leftover chocolate topping. As you can see in the main picture, I did that, and it was scrumptious! The Marble Loaf went down really well in our house and with some Mums at my son’s school, who I gave some to. I will definitely be making this again and again, and making sure I have extra topping for more hot chocolate!!!

Bakedin Baking Club is perfect for beginners and for more experienced bakers alike. The recipes are exclusive and the numbered packages of ingredients make them super-convenient and easy to follow. They are also ideal to make with children, as the recipe includes clear photographs of each stage. Perfect for quality fun time with the family.

If you are tempted to try a Bakedin Baking Club recipe box for yourself, click HERE and you will receive your first one for just £1.99! That doesn’t even cover their postage to send it! You will receive your first box within a few days of ordering it so you don’t have to wait weeks like you do with some other subscription boxes. You can cancel at any time, although I know you won’t want to once you’ve tried your first one. Happy Baking!

DISCLAIMER: I pay for my subscription and have not been asked to write a review. I just love to promote fantastic products and services and this is definitely in that category! All views and opinions are my own honest thoughts. 

 

Bakedin Baking Club…. Featuring Exclusive Recipes from Michel Roux!

August traditionally sees the start of a new series of The Great British Bake Off, and people up and down the country go baking bonkers! Everyone gets inspired to try their hand at new things, and everyone wants to be able to bake like the experts we all look up to.

One such expert we aspire to follow is the wonderful Michel Roux, known and loved worldwide as a top pastry chef and the godfather of modern cuisine.

Bakedin Baking Club is a monthly baking subscription box which sends you all the dry ingredients you need to recreate a beautiful recipe which has been exclusively developed for them by Michel Roux. Everything arrives neatly packed in a box that fits through your letterbox, and each ingredient is weighed out exactly for you and clearly labelled so there is no chance of getting it wrong. As well as the dry ingredients, you receive a very detailed recipe card which contains photographs of each stage, serving guide, and a list of any extra ingredients you will need (which only amounts to a couple of things usually), and you also receive extra bits and pieces like baking paper and skewers to check your cake is ready. They think of everything for you! August’s recipe was white chocolate and cranberry squares, so this picture shows what was included:

It came with the detailed recipe card, caster sugar, flour, baking powder, white chocolate, cranberries, icing sugar, pistachios, a butter measure, baking paper, and a cake test skewer. Each recipe card also features a top tip from Michel Roux to go with his recipe, often a little extra way of enhancing the recipe even more. I love the fact you have the exact amount of ingredients that you need. No need to worry about how to use up the rest of a bag of an ingredient you don’t tend to use much!

I bake a lot at home but so far, each kit I have had has been for something I’ve never made before, which has been fantastic. The first one was THESE WHOOPIE PIES, and the next one was a scrumptious malt chocolate cake (picture at the end of this post). I can honestly say though that I will be making all of these recipes again as they were so delicious. August’s recipe was the lightest fluffiest cake with the most beautiful flavour. It was a massive hit in my house and disappeared very quickly! These kits aren’t the same as using a packet mix, where you just add water or egg to one powder mix. These kits are still baking from scratch, the only difference being that most of the ingredients have been weighed for you, like having your very own kitchen assistant. You still have the huge sense of achievement when you complete the bake, and anybody can do it and get fantastic results!

The fact that everything is labelled so clearly and the recipe has photographs of each stage makes these kits ideal to do with children. My 9 year old son looks forward to this box arriving just as much as I do! We love the surprise factor too, not knowing what yummy bake is lined up for us until we open the box.

So, who is this subscription box suitable for? I would recommend it to everyone! Parents wanting to spend quality time baking with their children, baking novices looking to learn some new skills and recipes, skilled bakers looking to further their recipe repertoire, and you can even buy a subscription as a gift for someone else. I love baking and have already learnt a lot from these kits. The way they tell you to melt chocolate in these recipes is brilliant! I’m not going to give that tip away on here, but it really does save a lot of mess and washing up and makes the potential of ruining the chocolate impossible, unlike other methods people use.

The Bakedin Baking Club costs just £7.99 a month, including delivery. That is an amazing price considering how much you get, including Michel Roux’s expertise!

If you would like to try it for yourself click  HERE  and you will receive your first box for the unbelievable price of just £1.99!!!! A huge £6 discount! That really is an offer too good to turn down. If you decide it’s not for you after trying it (highly unlikely though) you can cancel at any time, so you have nothing to lose. Happy baking! 🙂

DISCLAIMER: I pay full price for my subscription and have not been asked to write a review. I truly love this Baking Club though and I believe in sharing information about companies/products/services I enjoy. Sharing is caring after all! All opinions expressed are my own. The link provided is part of Bakedin’s Referral programme, which anyone can take part in when they join too.  

Double Trouble Whoopie Pies… BakedIn Baking Club

Last week I decided to join the BakedIn Baking Club, which is a monthly subscription box which helps you make scrumptious recipes created by the one and only Michel Roux. In the extremely unlikely event that you don’t know who that is, Michel is a world-famous pastry chef who is also known as the godfather of restaurant cuisine. That is one of the reasons I decided to try this box out. Michel Roux developed the recipes!!!

When you join this Club, every month you receive a box containing all the dry ingredients you need to make the recipe. Obviously things like eggs are hard to send in the post so you will need to provide a couple of basic ingredients yourself, namely chilled or liquid ingredients. Everything is weighed out for you so you don’t have to mess around weighing out lots of different things, and each ingredient is packed in a bag with a number on. The recipe card tells you what is in each numbered bag so you really can’t go wrong.

One of the things that impressed me was they even send the baking paper you will need. This box contained 6 sheets of baking paper to bake with and 2 grip seal bags which you could use as piping bags for the buttercream. Little details like that make me happy. Another thing I loved was the Butter Me Up butter measurement guide.

This card is to be used with standard 250g blocks of butter. When you position it next to the block, you can accurately measure out the correct weight of butter you need without having to weigh it! I tested this a few times and it was spot on. It also has a handy conversion guide on it. I shall be laminating this to make sure it stays in perfect condition.

All of the ingredients are listed on the inside of the box, with allergens in bold as required by law. It even gives nutritional information!

Another thing I love about this Club is the fact they send your first box out within a day or two. With most subscription boxes you sign up, but you have to wait weeks until the first box is delivered. BakedIn understand you will be excited to get started so, no matter when you join, they send your first box straight out. All of these little details make you feel valued as a member.

My first box was Double Trouble Whoopie Pies. I had never made, or even eaten, a whoopie pie before, and if it hadn’t been for this box I probably never would have! I now know I have been seriously missing out! If I’m honest I wasn’t even entirely sure exactly what they were. I’m hanging my head in shame. If you’re unsure like I was, I would say they are a cross between a soft cookie and a cake, sandwiched together with a delicious filling. In this case, they were beautifully chocolatey with an extra hit of chocolate in the white chocolate buttercream. They tasted sooooo good. My Other Half and my son both tried one, which very quickly led to another, and another. They are ridiculously moreish, and I can see me becoming addicted to them!

The recipe card was extremely clear and easy to follow. It was a perfect way to involve my son too. He had fun finding the right pack and adding it to the mixture, and rolling the dough into ball shapes. He could really even have done this one on his own, the instructions were so well written. The card gives you baking times, preparation times, servings, skill level (this was 2 out of 5), and tells you what you will need, and what you have received in the box. There’s even a Top Tip section at the end of the recipe, written by Michel Roux.

Am I going to continue with this subscription? Definitely! Would I recommend it to others? Again, definitely! It is perfect for all skill levels, for bakers and non-bakers alike. It would make a fantastic gift too. Imagine receiving this as a housewarming present! Freshly baked goods fill a home with a wonderful aroma and so this would be perfect. The smell of chocolate lingered in my house all day after baking these!

BakedIn Baking Club costs £7.99 a month, and that includes delivery. This box cost the Club £2.57 to send. If you add on to that the cost of the packaging, then the ingredients and the little extras, and the fact you are receiving a recipe from a world famous pastry chef, I’m sure you’ll agree it is exceptional value for money.

If you are interested in joining, click HERE to receive your first box for just £1.99 including delivery, saving you £6 off the usual price! You can cancel at any time, although once you’ve tried a box I doubt cancelling will even enter your head!!

DISCLAIMER: I pay for my subscription and will continue to do so. If you join using my link though I will receive a bit of credit as part of their Referral programme, which you will also be able to take part in after you have joined should you choose to. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own, and BakedIn did not ask me to write this review.