BakedIn Baking Club March Box… Chocolate Orange Hot Cross Buns

I really look forward to receiving my BakedIn Baking Club kit each month. My heart skips a beat when I see the long green box on my doormat. The March box was a perfect recipe for Easter… hot cross buns. They sent all the dry ingredients for you to either make traditional or chocolate orange hot cross buns.

As well as the packets of flour, sugars, yeast, spices, sultanas, chocolate chips etc, they also sent a butter measure (as always), a piping bag, baking parchment and the easy to follow recipe card. Last month they sent a tea temple from teapigs which I loved, so I was very happy to find they had sent another one in this box too! This time it was their Everyday Brew and it was so refreshing. Perfect to start the day the right way or as an energiser mid-morning with a hot cross bun 🙂 This tea is extra special for another reason, apart from the fact it tastes so good. Most of their tea comes from Rwanda, a country that unfortunately still has a stigma attached to disability. Teapigs fully funds one house (the teapigs house) which provides specialist care and accommodation for children and young adults with disabilities, and they also send donations to other similar houses and to help with the costs at the UCC Children’s School, a school which has over 500 children (52 of them with severe physical or learning disabilities). Every time you buy a pack of the teapigs Everyday Brew, they donate some of the money to these extremely worthwhile causes. So you get a cuppa that makes you feel good in more ways than one!

The kit also included a little pot of Boddington’s Berries orange marmalade to use as part of the glaze for the buns. The citrus smell as I peeled back the foil top was just beautiful! And it tasted as good as the smell suggested.

I had never made hot cross buns before so was excited but nervous about making these. I knew with BakedIn though every stage of the process would be explained brilliantly, and the end results would be scrumptious. I was right. The hardest part of the whole thing was the waiting while the dough proved. The recipe involved kneading the dough by hand, but I’ve had a bit of a kitchen nightmare which has meant I haven’t had much worktop space, so I used my stand mixer to knead mine. I followed the rest of the recipe exactly. I was so impressed with the resulting buns! We all tried each of the flavours and couldn’t decide which we preferred. They were both delicious. It was really good to have the chance to try a different flavour to the traditional ones too. They were so soft and light yet so so tasty. BakedIn continuously impress me with their recipes and their attention to detail. I have recommended them to so many people as they are such a fantastic club to be part of.

The Baking Club usually costs just £7.99 per month, which INCLUDES delivery! It is amazing value considering everything you receive, and the fact you are baking recipes exclusively created for BakedIn by Michel Roux! Michel Roux!!!!!! I know!!!!!!! How lucky are we?? If you enter the code TRY499 at the checkout you will receive your first box for £4.99! Click HERE to go to the website and begin your baking adventure. Happy baking! 🙂

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BakedIn Baking Club… Chocolate Honeycomb Cake

I get so excited when the middle of each month comes round. I have 3 subscription boxes arrive then… one for craft, one for cake decorating, and one for baking. The baking one, as regular readers will by now know, is the utterly fabulous BakedIn Baking Club. Each month this subscription sends a box full of all the dry ingredients and little extras you will need to create a stunning recipe created exclusively for the Club by world renowned chef Michel Roux. February’s box was the most indulgent one I’ve received so far. Every month I am so impressed by the recipe provided, and the ingredients included are always top quality.

You can see from the above picture how BakedIn think of every little thing you could possibly need to make the recipe yourself. All of the dry ingredients are provided already weighed out for you in numbered packages, so it is super-convenient and even easier to follow the recipe. Trust me, you’ll want to make the Baking Club recipes time and time again, and you can, as the recipe card lists everything that is in each package so you can buy it all yourself for the next time. It also lists any wet ingredients you will need, usually just butter, eggs and milk, things everyone has in their homes anyway. As you can see, you also get any baking paper needed to line tins and a skewer so you can test when your cake is done. Every month you also receive an extremely handy butter guide. This is so you can measure the butter needed without using scales if you don’t have any. It works with any standard 250g block of butter. I used it for this cake as it needed 200g of butter. Just to show how accurate it is I then weighed my butter. See how good it is for yourself…

The recipe was incredibly easy to follow, as always, and a huge bonus with this month’s was getting to lick the bowl at the end! I could happily have eaten the cake batter raw it tasted so good! But the end result cake was just divine. So indulgent. Beautiful moist chocolate cake, with fluffy chocolate buttercream inside, chocolate ganache on top, and gorgeous crunchy honeycomb to add the finishing touch. Each month Michel Roux gives a tip on how to further enhance your bake, and this month he suggested crushing up the honeycomb and using it with a stencil to make a pretty design on top. I decided to use a peacock stencil (random I know) and decorated the top of the cake with that. I loved the effect the crushed honeycomb made. Overall I was massively impressed with this cake and will definitely be making it again. Luckily the recipe cards are wipe clean so can be kept in perfect condition forever!

The February box had an extra little gift inside to enjoy… a wonderful Chocolate and Mint tea temple from Teapigs. This was just beautiful. It was like drinking an After Eight mint! There was even a card with a discount code to use on the Teapigs website. I will definitely be taking advantage of that!

If you would like to try the Baking Club for yourself it costs just £7.99 per month which includes delivery. It comes in a box perfectly shaped to fit straight through your letterbox so you don’t have to wait in for it to arrive. BakedIn have an offer on at the moment though which lets you try the first box for just £4.99!

Click HERE to go to the BakedIn website and enter code TRY499 at the checkout, and you will receive your first box a few days later for the amazing price of £4.99.  Happy Baking!