My kind of baking video: Lily Vanilli Bakewell Tart animation (by canongatebooks)

It has been awhile that I bakes anything more complicated than cookies and cheese cake so inspired by BBC Great British Bake Off, I made this intensely chocolate Viennese sachertorte. It took several hours but it is soo worth it.

My piping is a bit rusty and you can see how shaky the first two letters, but practice makes perfect right? Anyway, I would definitely recommend the recipe. The quality of the ingredients are very important so don’t skim on it. I will also probably do a double layer of apricot jam instead of just one. I simply love the contrast between sweet sour apricot and dark bitter chocolate.

Simply have to add Roosje’s picture. The cat decided that she should be the model instead of the cake :-P.

We are saying good bye to summer and what is the best way to do it but bundle up at home, prepare a nice cuppa of tea then heat up the oven to bake delicious tea cakes?

Today my choice fell into a good old traditional English scones accompanied by sliced fresh strawberry, cream and jam. I was first introduced to afternoon* tea & scones by dear Moureen at Scally’s in The Hague. This girl goes there so often that she is on 1st name basis with the owner. Anyway until to date they still have the best scones I’ve ever tasted and since the introduction, afternoon tea has been one of my favourite English ritual.

There are hundreds of scones recipes out there in internet and I believe that I have tried & experimented with half of them! After so many botched experiments and refinements, I am quite proud to say that it is almost Scally’s level of scones: crisp skin, moist inside, and it crumbles at the right moment.

*There has been a correction. I wrote high tea earlier and @adamdsouza was kind enough to correct my misunderstanding. It is good to know that Scones is Afternoon Tea while High Tea is an early evening meal :-)