Red Nose Day

I have spent my evenings this week making sweets, cookies and cakes to sell at work for our  Red Nose Day fundraiser.

I kicked off the week with cheats fudge from Hope and Greenwood's Sweets Made Simple book.  As promised it was very simple to make, it went down very well and best of all raised £10.00 for RND.

I really enjoyed the TV series that the book accompanied and I love Kitty Hope's style, she can really rock a vintage look.

My second make was Golden Syrup honeycomb, I have made this recipe loads of time but for the first time ever I managed to not only burn the mix but I also burnt the pan!  In fairness the pan was on its way out the door and its only my lack of focus that has meant it wasn't replaced sooner.

Not to be beaten I brought a new pan the following day and set to to make the honeycomb again, It looked perfect but when I whisked in the bicarb I didn't get the usual reaction of a volcanic flow of molten gold.  It was a very much subdued reaction and when I poured it into the tin it was very flat and didn't bubble up. I left it to cool while I tried to work out what had gone wrong, the answer was sitting on the counter top, I had picked up the baking powder and not the bicarb.  It was a lot more brittle than usual and the bubble were very much smaller, in some ways it was more like the crunchies you can buy in the shops.

So I still needed to make another batch as I know some of my colleagues love a bit of chew in their homeycomb so batch number 3 was made, I managed to use all the right ingredients and it resulted in the chewiest honeycomb I have ever made.

So now I need to experiment with a bicarb/baking powder mix to see what results I get with that, but I think I will be saving that for a little while I think we are all honecombed out.

 A batch of the Anthony Worrall Thompson cookies along with a batch of Mary Berrys Double Chocolate cupcakes finished off my contribution to our Comic Relief fund raiser

Time for a cup of tea and watch the Great British Sewing Bee on catch up, I might have to consumer test one of the cupcakes :)


Thanks for reading