ENGLISH MUM

The fresh bread bakeoff: the entries

So thank you to all the intrepid bakers who entered the Fresh Break Bakeoff.  There are some really great entries here – from complete novices to some very accomplished bakers!  Have a look at all the great entries and I’ll be letting you know the winner of all the Marriage’s goodies very soon!

English Mum’s Fresh Bread Bakeoff

So recently I showed you my simple recipe for  easy step by step bread.  I had a lot of comments from people saying they’d quite like to have a go – so now’s your chance!  The newest, shiniest bakeoff is here – and it’s all about fresh bread!  What do you fancy baking?  A nice crusty loaf?  Some shiny conker-brown bagels?  Sticky buns?

The Rules

As usual, we laugh in the face of rules.  As long as you actually bake something bready, take a picture and send it to me (with a link if you have a website), you’re in.

Photos need to be emailed to me at: english [dot] towers [at] gmail [dot] com, with a brief note saying what your bakey masterpiece is and how you’d like to be credited.

Entries must be received by midnight on Feb 14th, St Valentine’s Day.

Cheating

As usual, a bit of healthy rule-breaking is to be embraced and any creative wavering from the theme will be acceptable.  As long as there’s a suitably waffly and entertaining reason why, I’ll let you off.

The Techy Stuff

If you’re a blogger, please link back to this post, and if you’re a tweeter, please use the hashtag #freshbreadbakeoff. If you’re neither, then just ignore this bit completely.

The Prize

The lovely chaps at Marriage’s Millers (www.flour.co.uk) have very kindly offered to provide a prize of a range of their fabulous quality flours, plus some scrapers, so you can bake bread like a pro!  The entries will be displayed in one enormous blog post (this bit causes a total hysterical meltdown in my non-technical brain, but don’t worry, I’ll get over it).

The Judge

The fabulous Hannah Marriage knows absolutely everything there is to know about flour, bread and baking and has foolishly agreed to be the judge.  All bribes and dodgy approaches to be made directly and not via this blog.  The judge’s decision is final.

So that’s it, then.  You’ve got loads of time, plenty of inspiration, and some very ambiguous rules.  Let’s get baking bread!

Easy, step by step bread. And how to knead.

There is nothing, I think, quite as delicious as the smell of bread baking.  I know there are times in the kitchen when you want to rush in, whip up something quick, and rush out again, but there are other times when a quiet potter is just fabulous.  For those times, breadmaking is ideal.  I love kneading bread – there’s something quite hypnotic and soothing about it – and producing a home-made loaf is possibly one of the most satisfying things you can do.

As you know, I’m a bit of a rapeseed oil nut, and it’s perfect for this recipe, being both very healthy and pleasantly nutty in flavour, but you can use olive oil or melted butter. Just make sure it weighs 50g.

450g strong white bread flour

2tsp salt (remember a tsp is flat though, don’t overdo it)

1 sachet (7g) yeast

50g rapeseed oil

300ml warm water

So first, sift the flour and salt, then stir in the yeast.  Measure out the oil, pour that in, then use the same jug to measure the warm water (it’ll pick up some of the oil that was left in the jug) and pour that in.

Stir it around with a wooden spoon, then when it’s roughly together, flump it out onto your work surface.

The science bit:

Think of gluten as the spongy network that holds all the bubbles (of carbon dioxide, but hey, that’s me being picky) produced by the yeast in place.  This is the most important bit of bread making. You want the gluten to form nice strong chains – under-kneaded bread will be tough, so don’t skimp.

Kneading technique:

Everyone’s got their own techniques, but all you’re aiming to do is stretch and develop the gluten and aerate the dough (as well as making sure that all your ingredients are thoroughly mixed).  Most forms of squishing, folding and stretching will do the trick.

First things first: don’t worry if your dough is sticky – you want your dough to be sticky.  Your fingers will get covered in dough – don’t worry!  The stickier your dough,the softer and more plumptious your bread.

Start off roughly squeezing it together and then start pushing it away from you with the heel of one hand (you have to use your imagination a bit here, because obviously my other hand was holding the camera).  Really smoosh the dough across the work surface:

… then bring it in, folding it over, and squish it together:

…then push it away from you again.  Carry on doing that until your dough is soft, stretchy and plump – about ten minutes should do it – and bounces back when you stick your finger into it (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but yes, it should be the texture of a nice soft bum cheek).

Rising:

Flour the bowl and pop your ball of dough into it.  Loosely cover with clingfilm and pop into your airing cupboard alongside the pillows and enormously fat, bad tempered cat (hence the clingfilm).  Leave it for a good hour or until it’s doubled in size.

Knocking back:

Fetch your dough, avoiding your unpleasant feline, pull it away from the edges and give it a couple of thumps with your fist to knock it back.

Additions:

This is the time to add stuff in if you’re being fancy: olives, sundried tomatoes, seeds… whatever you like.  As a rough estimate, I’d keep the ingredients to under 150g.

Shaping:

Plop it once more onto a floured surface. This time, you’re thinking finished product, so give it a quick squish and start forming it into whatever shape you like.  Being blessed with the decorative talent of an amoeba, I usually go for something plain – a rough, ball shape with a slit down the middle, but hey, if you want to plait, don’t let me stop you.

Second rise:

Flour a baking tray and place the dough on it, loosely covering it again and then it’s back to the airing cupboard or sunny windowsill for its final rise.  It probably won’t take another hour, but just wait until it’s nice and puffed up.

Baking:

Preheat the oven to 200/gas 6 and bake for about 20 – 30 minutes.  Obviously a ball shape is going to take longer to cook than a flatter shape.  When it’s done it will be browned, and will sound hollow when you tap its bottom (ooer).

This is quite a soft, farmhouse loaf, but it’s got a lovely texture.  Obviously it won’t keep as well as plastic bread, so it’s best to scoff it warm from the oven.

PS: If you’re a first-time bread maker, make sure you take a picture of your efforts – great competition coming up very soon!

You might also like:

Browse bread recipes

The Great Big Autumn Bakeoff: entries

Well, you didn’t let me down.  You picked berries, you rolled pastry, you bubbled, you baked, you stirred, you probably perspired a little too…

And here they are.  All your gorgeous entries:

And now it’s over to the lovely Amy Lane to find out our winners!

Christmas Countdown: An easy two step ‘personalised’ Christmas cake

One of the things that fascinates me about cooking is the alchemy: why you need x when you bake with y, or how one ingredient affects the others in a dish.  This nosiness (teamed with an endless desire to be baking), often leads to disaster, but hey, if you don’t make mistakes you never learn.

I dislike the snobbery surrounding food, and, like Nigel Slater, believe a recipe is a guideline, not a set of rules to be blindly followed.  Take Christmas cake.  I’m sure a lot of people look at a Christmas cake recipe, with its lists of dried fruit in various quantities, and feel  thoroughly intimidated, but hey, it’s just fruit cake, so I’m going to let you have the basic proportions and let you customise your own cake.  Don’t like raisins?  No problem.  Hate peel (disgusting, devil’s toenails that it is), leave it out.

If you’re a Christmas cake ‘virgin’, then this is the recipe for you.  If you sort all your ingredients before you start, there are basically two steps.  Easy peasy.  As long as you have the basic quantities right, your cake will come out perfectly and more to the point, exactly as you like it.  My ultimate aim is to make a Christmas cake with stuff I’ve got lying around and not have to rush to the supermarket with a list as long as my arm for stuff I’m never going to use again.  I’ve wittered on a bit here so if you want, just skip to the cake recipe.

Dried Fruit

One rule here: choose what you like.  As I mentioned above, I hate peel with a vengeance so I leave it out.  Other people use glacé fruits, snipped into little pieces.  I used a 300g luxury pack of mixed raisins, apricots and cranberries which I saw in a nice foodie place and bought, then topped it up with random half packs of leftover cranberries, prunes (chopped into pieces), dried apricots and sultanas.  Pick what suits you, bin the rest.

Butter vs Oil

Generally if you need lightness in a cake, butter helps as you can beat in air and it holds it well, but I’m finding I’m using more and more oil, (you can whisk it with the eggs and get a similar airy effect), especially Rapeseed, which adds a subtle nutty flavour and, being rich in vitamin E, high in Omega 3 and half the saturated fat of olive oil is obviously a healthy option.  In this recipe you want the moistness, etc, but not the air, so use oil if you like.  I made this cake with Borderfields‘ gorgeously yellow rapeseed oil, which is my absolute favourite and it turned out perfectly.  There’s obviously a bit of water content in butter, so if you’re substituting oil use slightly less.  Having said that, don’t kill yourself (you know me, I don’t do adding up): 100g of butter will be about 90 – 100ml oil.

Sugar

Again, use what you’ve got – the darker the sugar, the more treacly the taste.  I used Muscovado.  You’re melting it, so it doesn’t matter how big the granulation is.

Honey

The honey here gives moistness and sweetness, but you could substitute golden syrup if you don’t like (or are allergic to) honey.  I used Rowse Supahoney with lemon, because I absolutely love its taste (I’m a bit into Manuka honey) and use it all the time so I had a pot open.  You could also use black treacle which gives a lovely dark toffee taste.

The Booze

No rules here.  Last year I used Morgan’s Spiced Rum which has a gorgeous vanilla flavour but not much sweetness.  I’ve mentioned a bit more in the recipe below about sweetness.  I used cherry brandy, which not only has that lovely sweet cherry taste, but gives an almondy hit too.  Use whatever you like/whatever you have.  Again, taste your mixture and adjust sweetness accordingly.  If you don’t want to use alcohol, just double up on the fruit juice.

Fruit Juice

I used cranberry juice, because I thought it would go nicely with the dried cranberries, but you can use freshly squeezed orange juice (bung in the zest too for an extra zing), or juice out of a carton.  It honestly doesn’t matter.

Spice

I make a lot of curries so my spice turnover is quite high.  All I would say is, if the jar of ‘Mixed Spice’ in your cupboard was purchased in the 1940s it’s not going to add much to your cake.  I used 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger and a good grating of nutmeg, but use what you have: mixed spice/ginger/cinnamon/ground nutmeg (not too much, it can be overpowering).  Just make sure it’s fresh.

Right, ingredients sorted? Then we’re off:

The Personalised Christmas Cake

800g dried fruit

175ml good quality rapeseed oil or 200g butter

200g dark brown sugar

4 tbsp honey

120ml alcohol

120ml fruit juice (or two oranges, juiced)

About 2tsp spice

3 eggs

200g self raising flour (or 300g flour and omit ground almonds).

100g ground almonds

Firstly: sort everything out: preheat the oven to gas 2/150 C and double line the bottom of your cake tin/tins with parchment paper (tiger stripe pattern optional).  Weigh all your stuff, crack the eggs into a bowl and mix them… just get yourself completely ready.

STEP ONE:  Pop the dried fruit into a large saucepan along with the butter, sugar, honey, booze, fruit juice and spices.  Stir gently over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar is completely dissolved.  You can bring it up to a gentle bubble, but don’t let it boil vigorously as your alcohol will disappear.

Now leave it to cool.  If you add the eggs straight in, they’ll be scrambled.  Oh, and at this stage, have a taste!  If it doesn’t taste sweet enough, add something else sweet (this is often the case if you’ve used brandy or whisky which doesn’t have much natural sweetness, as opposed to, say, a liqueur – Nigella suggests a tablespoon of marmalade, which I think is a great idea).  If it’s overpoweringly, cloyingly sweet, then a squeeze of lemon, maybe?  It’s your cake – do it how you like it.

STEP TWO: When cooled, stir in the eggs, flour and ground almonds.  Pile into your one large springform tin, or two smaller ones and bake for about an hour and a half for the two small ones, or up to two hours for the large.  Test by pushing a skewer into the centre of the cake.  It should come out clean (excuse the rubbish ‘in-oven’ shot here).

And that’s it! Congratulations, you’ve made a Christmas cake (or two).

When cool, wrap up the cake in parchment paper and then foil, and stash somewhere until you need it, occasionally unwrapping your gorgeous present to stab it with a cocktail stick and slosh with a couple of tablespoons of your chosen booze.  Or just eat straight away.

You can do all that fancy pants marzipan and icing stuff, but for god’s sake don’t look to me for inspiration.  I have the artistic ability of a small pickled onion.

Make sure you write your recipe down.  You just created a family heirloom!

Step by step quick and easy soft bread rolls

I have absolutely no idea why we calls these ‘milk rolls’.  Well, apart from the fact that they obviously contain milk, but then so do an awful lot of other bread recipes.

Anyhoo, whatever their name they’re a firm favourite here.  Their soft texture makes them ideal for breakfast, toasted with a little of our favourite Whole Earth peanut butter and a dollop of bramble jelly.  The boys also like them in their lunchboxes, stuffed with crunchy lettuce, poached chicken and zesty lemon mayo (they ignore the bits of knuckle along with the lemon zest – it’s okay, I’m gradually blunting the grater with my digits).

Anyhoo, enough of my bloody stumps and onto the bread.  You’ll need:

450g strong white bread flour

2 tsp salt

1 x 7g sachet dried yeast

150ml milk

150ml water

50g butter

So first, sieve the flour into a large bowl (or your food mixer bowl), then stir in the salt and dried yeast.

In a small saucepan, warm the milk, water and butter over a low heat until the butter has just melted, then turn off the heat.  The liquid should be at blood temperature when it’s added to the dry ingredients (which means you can stick your finger in without it feeling too warm).  You can do this in the microwave, but remove it as soon as the butter starts to melt and stir gently until it’s all combined, otherwise you’ll be waiting for ages for it to be cool enough.

Making the dough:

Pour most of the milky mixture into the dry ingredients and stir it around with a knife until you get a light dough.  Leave it as sticky as you can bear as you want your dough to be lovely and soft.  You can always add a bit of flour if you really want to, but seriously, the stickier you can manage, the better.

If you have a tiny bit of liquid left over, that’s fine – you can brush it over the rolls before they go in the oven.

Now start kneading.  If you’re using a food mixer, just bung it in for about five minutes and forget about it (great if you’re busy and need to crack on), but by hand is lovely and satisfying too – if I’ve got extra time I often do.

To hand knead:

With the heel of one hand, press and splurge the dough away from you, (imagine you’re smearing it across the work surface) then bring it back, squish it into a ball again, turn it over and then splurge it again.  As it’s quite a wet dough this is a bit messy, but that all adds to the fun.  Again, if you’re getting really messy, you can always add a bit of extra flour.  As you knead it, it will become more elastic and springy and less squelchy.

Double Proving and shaping:

So when you’ve kneaded for about 7-10 minutes and your dough is springy and pillowy-soft (I know I’ve said this before, but a lovely dough ready for proving looks like a nice, round bottom-cheek), cover it with clingfilm and leave it in the airing cupboard or somewhere else warm until it’s doubled in size.

Then, just knock it back with your fist (imagine punching someone you can’t stand – always does the trick for me) and form it into 8 balls.  Either place them on a baking tray or arrange them inside a springform cake tin like I did, then cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.

You can also just fashion the dough into an oval shaped loaf: cut it down the centre and bake it ‘free-form’, you get a nice crust by doing it this way.

Now bake for about 15-20 minutes (for rolls – a whole loaf will take a bit longer) at 180/gas 4 until you hear a hollow knock when you tap the loaf/rolls on the bottom.  You can glaze them if you like with a little leftover milky mixture, or just some plain milk.  I like to dust them with flour.

You can do tons with this dough: squish it flat into a small baking tray, get your fingers in there and squish it, then drizzle with olive oil and maybe dot some olives and rosemary about and you’ve got a bit of a knock-off foccacia.  Add seeds, use wholemeal flour… just experiment (and if you do, send me pics!).

If you want to make sticky buns, my sweet dough recipe is here.

Off to the kitchen with you!

Summery strawberry and white chocolate cupcakes

As I sit here, simmering in my sun-baked conservatory and squinting at the dusty screen, I’m really beginning to believe that summer’s in full swing. Here and there at farmers’ markets and farm shops, the glossy punnets of British strawberries are stacked up high, making it the perfect time to treat your loved ones to some pretty strawberry cupcakes.

I like this recipe as it perfectly demonstrates how easy it is to fling together your own recipes. Don’t listen to those people who say that baking is a science and everything needs to be exact. Fancy adding something to a recipe? Whop it in. If it turns out wrong, well, as my good friend Coastal Aussie said after her recent Kiwi Meringue Pie disaster, ‘it wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t experiment’.

Here, then, is the result of my own experimentation: a strawberry sponge as light and fluffy as a cloud, topped with a swirl of creamy white chocolate ganache. Pandering both to my sweet tooth and my eye for the pink and pretty.

For the cupcakes:

170g butter

170g caster sugar

6 or 7 fresh strawberries, washed and hulled (about 100g)

Squeeze of lemon

3 free range eggs

170g self raising flour

For the ganache:

200g white chocolate

Small tub double cream

First then, beat the butter and sugar together until it’s really pale and fluffy. Next you need to purée the strawberries with a squeeze of lemon. If you’re using a large blender (my stick blender with the handy little cup attachment blew up quite recently), it’s easier to blend the strawberries together with the three eggs as the volume is larger and you’ll get a smoother finish, but if you don’t mind the odd lump, you can just as easily mash them with a fork.

Add the strawberry/egg mixture to the butter and sugar fluff little by little, beating all the time. Don’t worry if it curdles – you can usually get it back by adding a tablespoon of the flour and beating it again. Keep adding until all the strawberry mixture is combined into the batter. Now just gently fold in the flour. The result is so deliciously light and fluffy, and smells so scrumptious, that you might have to give yourself a stern talking to in order to avoid eating it all right now. However, if you’re one of those strange people who are repulsed by raw cake mixture you should be fine. Weirdo.

And now, by some mystical baking magic, (and if you haven’t eaten it all) it will transpire that there is exactly enough mixture to fill 12 cupcake papers with exactly a tablespoon of mixture. Pop them in your preheated oven (oh I forgot that bit – gas 4/180 degrees. Sorry) and bake for a scant 20 minutes until the tops just spring up when pushed. Better to be slightly underdone than over, though, you want these sponges light and airy.

While the cupcakes are baking, make your white chocolate ganache. Melt a 200g bar of white chocolate in a bowl over some barely simmering water (turn the heat off when it’s bubbling).  When it’s melted, allow to cool a little then whisk in a few tablespoons of double cream (every time I do this I curse the fact that I never remember to measure it).  It will thicken up, then loosen again.  You just want it the consistency of softened butter, I guess.  Whisk it up to incorporate loads of air, then either pipe into thick swirls, or just speak generously over the cupcakes

and top with a strawberry.

Pink perfection in a paper case. Try saying that after you’ve been at the cooking sherry.

English Mum’s Big Bakeoff: baking on the edge.

So we did the Cupcake Challenge a while back and it was just the biggest fun ever.  I was thinking of doing another one, and I mulled over biscuits, or maybe whoopie pies (the NBT*), but then I thought no, it’s too limiting.  What we need is a big, mahoosive baking competition where there are no limits – baking on the edge, as it were.

And then the lovely chaps at Green and Black’s said: ‘baking competition?  But we LOVE baking!’ and offered to put up a rather stonkingly good prize in the shape of a lovely Green and Black’s hamper!

So seeing as we’re all baking rebels who embrace a challenge and laugh in the face of danger, I think we should go for it.

Rules? Ha, we snigger at them

There are no rules.  Well, apart from the fact that you’ve actually got to bake something.  You must travel henceforth from this place, bake me something (anything) beautiful.  Be it brownie or bun, teacake or tart, take a picture and email it to me by the end of July (there are NO extra brownie points for using Green and Black’s so you can wipe all those sneaky ‘product placement’ thoughts out of your mind too, you little devils) at contactenglishmum [at] gmail [dot] com.

I’m giving you loads of time so there’s no excuse not to join.  All photos must be in my inbox before the end of July.  If you’re a blogger, please link back to this post.

Entries will be displayed in one enormous blog post and the winner will be hurled from the very top of the Empire State Building.  No, that was a joke.  The winner will be the recipient of one fantastic and utterly fabulous hamper of gorgeousness from Green and Black’s.

There will also be a special Kids’ Prize, so encourage your little ones to get baking!

While you’re at it, Green and Black’s would like to know a little about your sneaky chocolate habits.  They’d especially love to hear from parents with kids aged 4-12, so if you’d be so kind as to fill in their little survey here:

Green and Black’s Survey

… they’d be very grateful.  So are you up for it, then?  Who’s going to knock the last competition’s winner, and this time’s judge: food blogger Eggs, Cream and Honey off the top spot?

*NBT = Next Big Thing

Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns…

So this is slightly cheating as after I’d finished my lovely hot cross buns, I realised I’d forgotten to take any pictures.  So here, then, in a bit of a ‘mash-oop’, as De Brevren would say is a new recipe, with pics from last year.

This recipe takes a bit of time, but is one of those recipes that’s just so much better home-made than bought.  So set aside a chilly Easter weekend (I can definitely remember sunny Easters – what’s happened to our weather?) for an afternoon of kneading and baking.  Nom.

450g strong white bread flour

1 tbsp mixed spice

1 tsp salt

75g sugar

1 x 7g sachet dried yeast

100g sultanas (or mixed peel if you must – bleurgh)

150ml milk

150ml water

Zest of 1 orange

50g butter

First, then, sieve the flour and ground mixed spice together into a large bowl.  Next, stir in the salt, sugar, dried yeast and sultanas.

In a small saucepan (or jug if you’re doing it in the microwave) warm the milk, water, orange zest and butter until the butter is just melted, then turn off the heat.  Let it cool so that when you stick your finger in, it feels like blood temperature.   If your BFF happens to have bought you the most fantastically gorgeous Kitchenaid, like me, then set it on low and slowly pour in the milky mixture until the dough comes together (you might not need all of it so go steady), then plug in the dough hook and set it to knead for a good five minutes.

If you’re old-fashionedy or a still waiting to meet the mixer of your dreams (they do actually come out nicer and lighter if you knead them by hand), you’ll have to get to it for at least ten minutes.  Yes, I know, sorry, but it’s true.  Knead away, then, getting a good kitchen workout into the bargain.  The sultanas keep trying to escape, but grab any of the little blighters trying to make a quick getaway and poke them back in.  Keep going until the dough is nice and springy and firm (apparently, good dough should be the texture of a woman’s breast).

Erm anyway, moving swiftly on… when your dough is sufficiently boob-like, leave it covered in a warm place until it’s doubled in size.   Then, just knock it back with your fist (imagine it’s someone you can’t stand – nice bit of culinary therapy there), and cut it in half, then half again and half again.  Form each of your 8 pieces into a ball and place them on a baking tray.  Cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.

If you want to add the cross, then mix about 2 tbsp flour, a tsp of caster sugar and enough water to make into a paste and either just dribble it with a teaspoon, or pipe it onto your buns (ooer Missus).  Or, you can cut a cross in the top of the buns, like so:

…and pipe the cross into the little lines like so:

But whatever you think.  Let’s not obsess here, they’re just buns.

One thing which is rather fund to do is to place your little buns, well spread out, inside a large, springform tin, which produces a little circle of buns that you have to tear off – good for novelty value:

Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180/gas 6 until they sound hollow when patted on the bottom (sorry, I seem to be filling this recipe with comedy references).  Finally, when they’re just out of the oven, glaze with a tbsp of sugar to which a drop or two of boiling water has been added, or warm up some apricot conserve and brush it on for extra glossy stickiness.

Now, to the important business of face stuffing: if you’re eating them straight out of the oven (a move I heartily recommend), slather them in butter and be done with it.  But if you’re eating them maybe the next day, split and toast them first.  If you’re going to freeze them, slice them in half first so they can go straight in the toaster.

However you like your buns (there I go again), I wish you a wonderfully HAPPY EASTER with your nearest and dearest.  Save me an egg.

The Great Cupcake Challenge

So I’m a bit bleurgh about blogging at the moment. 

I have no inspiration.

I’ve lost my mojo, as it were. 

So I thought ‘ooh, I know, I need a little bit of reader interaction’.  And so I went in the bath (mango and lime bubbles, if you must know) and had a think.  And here’s the plan.  I’m setting you a challenge.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make me some cupcakes (well, not me exactly, I don’t want you to post them to me or anything).  Seeing as Valentine’s Day is coming up and it’s always a huge anticlimax, I thought you could make Valentine’s Day cupcakes.  I want real effort here, now –  none of this watery icing and sprinkles nonsense - proper, beeyootiful cupcakes.

If you’re a blogger, then you can post a picture on your blog, or if you’re not a nerd you can just email me a picture to be posted, proudly, on englishmum.com on Valentine’s Day.

What do you think, then?  You up for it?

Oh and while you’re at it, if you’re truly proud of your pic, you can enter it in this month’s Home Baked Challenge, the theme of which is ‘love’ and of which I happen to be a judge.  I won’t be biased.  Honest.