Creativity for the Uncreative by Chloe

Until recently I shied away from being described as creative. As an author, I suppose it was a reasonable description, but even when my first novel was published I didn't feel as if the title suited me. Creative people wear smocks and multiple piercings, they practise mindfulness at sunrise and stay up half the night discussing philosophy. They don’t wear jeans and spill fruit juice down their t-shirts just before they have to go out and watch trashy documentaries when they’re tired.

But I think it’s time I re-claimed the word ‘creative’. My university degree – my first love – is science, and I always rejected being ‘creative’ as it seemed to be the opposite to ‘scientific’. What rubbish! Scientists are some of the most creative people out there. If you look at the way inventions were refined, mathematical equations defined and new theories opined, it is a world of rich, extraordinary thinking. Creativity is “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness”. There are no limits as to where you use that creativity.

I’m sure many of you are as creative as Joe and Jenny, Rulers of this Blog, are. I cannot claim to match them in terms of the width and depth of their creativity but I do dabble with knitting and sewing, I love baking and I make up lies for my day job. All these things are, of course, creative, and most of them I’m not much good at. But I've come to believe, that true creativity isn't in mastering these skills. True creativity is in learning new things. You might not be the first person to knit a sock or make a special cushion so you can sit on the stairs more comfortably (OK, you may be the first person to do that), but if it’s new for you then you are creating something in your life – inventing a new part of yourself.

In the last five years I've tried to teach myself all sorts of new things. I taught myself to knit, to touch-type, to write in Teeline shorthand and to use a sewing machine. I've made a Christmas tree out of baubles. Not all of those things would be considered creative by most people, but they have sparked my imagination and enriched my life. Creativity doesn't just mean crafts.

As I write this I have just taken possession of a DVD containing 48 lectures outlining the classics of British literature. This was something of an impulse purchase when I stumbled across the company The Great Courses. Have you heard of them? They provide over 500 courses – from meditation or calculus, to world history or the appreciation of art – given by leading university professors and experts. Is it creative? I don’t know, but it’s new, it’s making me use my brain (as a full-time mum of a young baby this is something I value!) and it’s widening my experience of the world.

I'm no longer scared of being called creative. Somewhere, deep down or on the surface, we are all creative. It’s part of being gloriously human. We just have to decide what we want to spend our time creating. If we never stop learning new stuff, we’ll never stop inventing new parts of ourselves. And isn't that an adventure?

What new things have you been learning recently?

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Chloe is a long-standing friend and has appeared on this blog a few times in the last year . Chloe is a teller of tales - some short, some long, some prize-winning. She started writing by accident a few years ago and forgot to stop until it was too late. Her first novel, The Art of Letting Go, was published in July 2014. Chloe lives in Devon with her husband and son, where she makes puddings, avoids spiders and wages war on misused apostrophes. You can catch up with her on her website, or chat to her on Twitter.

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Kitchen Gadget 11. Non-stick Sheets

A long time ago, back when this Kitchen Gadgets series was in its infancy, we talked about pizza. We mentioned in passing that we use non-stick sheets to stop our pizza sticking to its baking tray. It might have been a fleeting reference but the truth is that we have a growing collection of these sheets and we love them. We use them nigh on constantly.

You might then ask why it has taken us so long to give them a post of their own. The truth is that we use them in so many small little ways that it's been hard to think of a recipe to give you that highlights just how useful they are.

You see we baked biscuits on them and popped one in our roasting tin for sweet buns. We've used them for breadsticks and for collecting fresh pasta. The more I looked them more I saw them lurking in the background of bake after bake, blog post after blog post, they are the unsung heroes in our kitchen.

So, here's just one more recipe that we use a non-stick sheet for: Stollen.

Stollen
This is Joe's modified version of Delia's stollen recipe. We use our bread machine to make the dough and then plait the stollen and marzipan into three strands as this disperses the marzipan throughout the stollen - not just in the middle. Unorthodox, but tasty!

7g Dried Yeast
350g Strong White Bread Flour
50g Caster Sugar
1/4tsp Salt
110g Butter
1 Egg
150ml Milk
Zest of 1/2 Lemon

200g Dried Fruit and Nuts, approximately (use what you have around):
 - 100g Sultanas
 - 25g Glace Cherries
 - 25g Mixed Peel
 - 25g Apricots
 - 25g Flaked Almonds

200g Marzipan


1. Put all the ingredients, minus the fruit/nuts and the marzipan, in a bread machine on a dough cycle. Once finished mix in the fruit/nuts.

2. Split the dough into three equal pieces and then roll these into three sausages of equal length and thicknesses.

3. Flatten the sausages and tweak if needed to make them the same.

4. Roll out lengths of marzipan approximately a fingers width in diameter and lay them along your dough stopping 5cm short of each end.

5. Wrap each length of dough around the marzipan to re-form them into sausages.

6. Plait the three strands taking care not to stretch the dough as you do so (it will want to stretch!). Once you've finished plaiting tuck the ends of the plait under and transfer to baking sheet lined with a non-stick sheet.

Ours turned out to be a little long for the tray...

7. Leave to rise again (until doubled in size if you can be that patient).

8. Bake at 170C fan for around 30mins or until the top is golden and the bread sounds cooked (hollow when tapped - normal bread making rules apply).

9. Transfer the stollen on its non-stick sheet to a wire rack and allow to cool.

10. Once cool turn over and the sheet should just peel away.

11. Enjoy with a cup of tea!

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Chocolate and Salted Caramel Swiss Roll by Mel

Today's post comes to you from a bit of a time warp. Due to crossing the international date line on an overnight flight we're skipping the 17th September this year and going straight from Tuesday in Canada to Thursday in New Zealand. Strange!

Since we've temporarily ceased to exist we've got the first of our guest posts for you today. Over to Mel:

You will by now be very familiar with the Great Swift Bake-Off, but as Joe stated in his first Bake-Off post, he got the idea from a friend who’d done something similar. Well, that’s me. In a much less organised manner, I and my friend and colleague Nikki vie for ‘Queen of the Cake-Off’ on an approximately monthly basis. So far we've covered ginger cake, lemon drizzle, Halloween, brownies, cupcakes and an Easter spectacular, plus a few more - we've reached about 10 now. This week it was Swiss rolls; inspired by the Great British Bake-Off the other week I went for a Chocolate and Salted Caramel swiss roll, I can’t take credit for the recipe I’m afraid, but here it is:

Chocolate and Salted Caramel Swiss roll

For the cake mix:

• 4 eggs, separated into whites and yolks
• 70g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (or extract)
• 80g plain flour
• 20g cocoa
• 1 tsp baking powder

For the salted caramel:

• 80g light brown muscovado sugar
• 25g butter
• 1 tsp water
• 100ml double cream
• 1 pinch flaked sea salt

For the butter cream:

• 200g unsalted butter
• 350g icing sugar
• 100ml of the cooled salted caramel sauce

Apologies for my photography skills, I’m not as kitted up camera wise as Jenny and Joe!

Start by whisking the egg whites to stiff peaks – using a gadget always works best for me, hand whisking is too much hard work. I've been given a tip that it’s best to do this in a glass bowl rather than plastic, as plastic can retain some greasiness, even after washing, which will prevent the whites from whisking well, so I always whisk eggs in glass.

Once you've got stiff peaks whisk in the sugar then gradually combine in the egg whites whilst still whisking, add the vanilla essence at this stage too.

Sieve the dry ingredients over the egg mixture and gently fold it in, trying to keep as much air as possible in the eggs. The air makes the sponge stay nice and light, and less like a pancake . . . more on that later.

  

Gently pour the mixture into a lined, greased tin ~21x31cm, and even the mixture out by tipping the tray and gently smoothing with a spatula, do not bang it, all the air will disappear! Approximately 8 minutes in the oven (175C for fan oven (190C non fan/gas mark 5 1/2)) and you will end up with a nice springy sponge, slightly pulling away from the edges of the tin.

Whilst the sponge is still hot, spread a piece of greaseproof on a clean work surface, tip the sponge straight out on top and peel off any lining paper you used. For a nice tight roll, use a knife (doesn’t need to be a sharp one) to score a line along the short edge about a centimetre in and about half the depth of the sponge.

  

Use the greaseproof to grip the hot sponge as you tightly roll it up, the sugar now stuck to the outside will help it come apart again later, but if you try to roll it cold you tend to end up with massive cracks. Leave it to cool.

Meanwhile:

  

Melt together the sugar, butter and water to make the caramel. Swirl it rather than stirring, otherwise you’ll probably end up with crystals instead of caramel. After bubbling for a few minutes, take it off the heat and whisk in the cream and the pinch of salt (I used ground, not flaked, don’t think it ought to make a difference really). Again, leave to cool.

Meanwhile some more:

Beat the (room temperature) butter to soften it, and then gradually beat in the icing sugar and ¾ of the caramel sauce. It gets quite stiff once you’ve added all the icing sugar, but eases off a bit once you add the caramel.

  

I piped my buttercream, filling the bag a little at a time so that it doesn’t get too warm from my hands, and using a star piping nozzle makes for nice patterns later. And here the humble water glass, essential to filling a piping bag, and not making a mess once it’s filled . . . 

  

Unroll the sponge roll and pipe/spread some of the buttercream across the surface, then roll tightly. You don’t need to pipe perfectly to the edges, the buttercream spreads to the ends as you roll it tight.

  

First to admit I’m rubbish at piping, but here’s my attempt at a nice smooth covering, with nice arty ridges created by the star shaped nozzle. Drizzle with the remaining caramel sauce and voila, an iced chocolate and salted caramel swiss roll, fit for a Queen of cakes.

Yes, I won. Unfortunately Nikki’s recipe stated whisking the eggs whole, rather than whites separately, which meant almost no volume to her sponge . . . so it ended up a bit like a rolled up pancake. But she’s not the only one to make that mistake, I attempted a Slimming world friendly Chocolate and strawberry roulade earlier in the weekend, and also ended up with a slightly pancakey sponge. Tasty though, and much less guilt eating it!

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Mel is an Electronic Engineer living in Stevenage. She designs and tests motor control circuits at work, but like to fill her spare time with activities like baking, knitting, cross stitch or just hanging out with her pair of house bunnies. She met Jen on the first day of university, when they found themselves sitting together in an introduction session, having unconsciously grouped together as some of the few female engineers in the room!

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The Great Swift Bake Off: Round 7 - Layered Cake

This month it's layered cakes in the office. As it's my final round before bowing out from the remainder of the competition I thought I should put a little extra effort in. I wanted something summery and decided to base my concoction on a Frazier cake. I was concerned that the two layers may have been insufficient so twisted the traditional structure somewhat, ending with three layers of cake topped by Frazier and then Italian meringue.

Joe's Strawberry Layered Cake:

For the sponge:

4 Egg Sponge Mix (Vanilla)

100g Raspberries, puréed 

2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

For the creme patisserie:

4 Egg Yolks

70g Cornflower

600ml Gold Top Milk

1 Vanilla Pod Equivalent (paste / powder / extract)

To Assemble:

4 Egg White Italian Meringue Mix

1/3 jar Lemon Curd

500g Strawberries (minimum, I used more to pick even sized ones at the edge)

 Sieve the raspberry purée into a bowl.

 Split the sponge mixture three ways, putting one third in a prepared 8 1/2" tin, one third in with the raspberries and ...

... one third in with the cocoa powder.

 Spread the mixtures into tins

and bake for 15-20 minutes at 180C.

Whilst they are baking make the crème patisserie. Add the egg yolks to the sugar and cornflower and mix into a paste.

Heat the milk with the vanilla before adding bit at a time to the egg mix. Put the whole mixture back in the pan and heat gently until thickened. Spoon into piping bags and refrigerate.

Whilst everything is cooling line your tin with acetate. 

Once cool, layer the cakes with lemon curd in between. I went chocolate, raspberry then vanilla but this is up to you.

Arrange half strawberries up against the acetate, packing them in tightly. Pipe the cooled crème patisserie in between the strawberries firmly before adding a spiral to protect the cake from the remaining strawberries. 

Pile in the rest of the strawberries, chopped roughly into quarters.

Cover with the remaining crème patisserie. You can see I panicked that mine was too runny and now it is too thick! Trim the acetate to a sensible height (about 1-2cm above the crème pat.).

Pipe in the Italian meringue before applying a blowtorch.

Chill before serving.

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The Great Swift Bake off: Round 4 - Victoria Sponge

This month in the great swift bake off it's time to call in the W.I. - it's the Victoria Sponge round. This was the most restrictive brief to date and the results were all of a high standard!

I used a 3 egg sponge mix as a base, using equal weight eggs (weight with shells), flour, butter and castor sugar. I used 1 large egg and 3 bantam eggs, and also enriched it with two extra bantam yolks; can you tell Lemon has been off her lay? I also added a teaspoon of baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder and 1/8 teaspoon of salt. For the filling I made a strawberry jam with equal weights strawberries to sugar and then added a good splosh of sloe gin at the end to add to the flavour.

Being a man I cracked out the power tools, beat my butter and sugar into submission and then whipped the whole lot until it submitted into being a fluffy mass.

I then split it between two tins, ready for baking.

Once cooled it was time to assemble. I went a little wild and added rosemary flowers as well as the usual jam, cream and castor sugar (oh and edible glitter). I studded the top with the flowers before sprinkling the remaining petals over the jam.

The result: third of six to take the overall lead. 

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