History Bakers: Chocolate Coconut Fingers (The Great British Bake Off - Week 5 – Chocolate)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off’s chocolate week, staff at the History Centre tried their hand at making various chocolate recipes from the archive. I was particularly intrigued by a recipe for chocolate coconut fingers. This recipe was taken from a 1962 souvenir recipe book, compiled by members of the Kingston Wesley Church. It was written by Miss B. Harrison, and was altogether quite easy to follow – though I had to make two attempts to get it right!

Image: Recipe for Chocolate Fingers, C DCE/848/9

The recipe called for:

- ½ lb block milk chocolate

- 1 egg

- 1 cup coconut

- ½ cup castor sugar

For my first attempt, I melted the chocolate in a saucepan and then poured it into a cake tin, trying to spread it out into a smooth layer. I must have had it over the heat for too long, because the chocolate started to harden while still in the pan, and it was quite a battle to get it out! I thought at the time that the chocolate layer seemed quite thick, and decided to reduce the amount I used for my second attempt.

Next, I beat the egg in a bowl and measured out a cup of disseminated coconut and half a cup of sugar. I mixed these together until everything was combined, and then spread the mixture on top of the cooled chocolate. For my first attempt, I definitely used the wrong type of tin, and the fingers came out incredibly thick. I also struggled to get them to cook all the way through, and found them very crumbly to pick up and move into a container.

Here's a picture of my failed chocolate coconut fingers! They tasted great, especially chopped up and put on top of some yoghurt, but I wanted to give the recipe another go before bringing it in for everyone to try. 

Image: Attempt No. 1

My second attempt was much better. I started with a flat baking tray and used butter to cover it with a sheet of parchment paper. I made sure that I had everything prepared before I started to melt the chocolate, so I didn’t accidentally cook it for too long! Spreading the chocolate into this tin was far easier, and I laid it in quite a thin layer so it didn’t melt too far into the coconut concoction on top.

Instead of the half a pound that the recipe mentioned, I melted around 150 grams of chocolate – and it still turned out to be too much for the amount of coconut batter I had! Thankfully, because I used a much bigger tin this time, I could just trim off the unused edges of the chocolate.

Image: Adding the chocolate

I made the coconut mix in the same way as my first attempt – I just beat the egg, added in the other ingredients and then mixed them all together. It let me use up the rest of the bag of disseminated coconut, so I didn’t end up with half a bag sitting in my baking cupboard forever. Woo!

Image: Coconut mix before adding to the
rest of the recipe

Using a spatula, I spread the coconut mix onto the cooled chocolate in a layer that was probably around two centimetres thick. I trimmed off as much of the excess chocolate as I could, which was made significantly easier by the baking paper. Then, I put the tray into the oven at 180 degrees Celsius, and baked it for roughly 20 minutes until it was golden brown.

Image: Adding the coconut mix

After they were done baking, I allowed the fingers to cool overnight before cutting them up into fingers and popping them in a tin to take with me to the History Centre. This attempt was such a success that all of the fingers were eaten the same day I brought them in!

Image: The finished Chocolate Coconut Fingers

Some of the comments left by our wonderful taste-testers at the History Centre were as follows:

‘Lovely flavour of the coconut and chocolate together, soft chewy texture – very good!’

‘Very chewy – right ratio of coconut to chocolate’

‘Absolutely delicious! 10 out of 10 – well done.’

‘Super tasty, not a coconut fan but would eat many of these!’

‘Very lovely, soft, sweet – delightful.’

‘Love these! They remind me of coconut Haystacks that my nanna used to make! Fab.’

‘Beautifully light and flavoured – Thanks!’

All in all, I would say that my second attempt at this recipe was a success. Using less chocolate was definitely the right decision, as you only need a small amount to cover the bottom of the fingers and they are already very sweet! I don’t usually like coconut-flavoured sweets, but this recipe was absolutely delicious – I would highly recommend!

 History Bakers: Chocolate Melting Moments (The Great British Bake Off - Week 5 – Chocolate)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With chocolate week just gone here is one of our chocolate themed recipes.

For chocolate related recipes we had to look in the slightly more recent collections for recipe ideas the chocolate bar itself not being invented until 1847. This took me to one of our recipe books from the Anlaby Road Methodist wives and mothers club (C DCT/1716/1/11) from around the 1950s. This was a collection of recipes from some of the members of the club and this particular recipe was submitted by a Marianne Boyd.

Image: C DCT/1716/1/11 - Recipe for Chocolate Melting Moments

Initially, it grabbed my attention because on Bake Off this week I believe someone made melting moments for an element of their ‘showstopper’ and I’d not really seen them before so was keen to try them out! I looked at the recipe and figured they looked easy enough to make, the recipe was certainly very simple!

I decided firstly that I would double the recipe mainly because I thought if I was cracking an egg I might as well use as much as possible. However, even when doubling it, I was a bit disappointed with the number it produced. So, if you want to make more than say 15-20 of these, I’d maybe triple the recipe (I still had some egg left over!) 

Image: Ingredients for the recipe

Once I’d converted the ingredients to metric, I began by creaming the margarine and sugar. I thought for accuracy’s sake I’d do this by hand and found it came together very easily.

I then added the egg, I’ve never come across measuring egg in teaspoons before, it’s a strange substance to try and measure in quite a small spoon! At this point I realised I didn’t have any vanilla, and I didn’t fancy a trip out so instead I opted to leave it out, I added a drop more egg and hoped the chocolate would be the dominant flavour anyway!

I don’t know if you spotted it, but I realised at this point that the recipe itself had left out the key ingredient - the cocoa! (Sorry Marianne to point out your mistake!) I assumed this could be sieved in with the flour and added my best guess of 2 dessertspoons full. The mixture at this point looked amazing and it did take some willpower not to eat it out the bowl!

Image: 1. Creaming butter & sugar           2. Adding the egg                       3. Mixing in the cocoa 

The final step was to roll into balls and coat in the oats. The mixture was definitely stickier than I thought it might have been for this process but apart making a bit of a mess it worked well.

Image: 1. Rolling the oats                   2. Consequences 

I popped them in the oven at a guessed temperature of about 170 C for 10 minutes. They spread out and hardened a little, so I took them out to cool and harden a bit further before feeding them to my housemates and colleagues for their feedback.

Image: The finished Chocolate                

Melting Moments

Beth – oaty, sweet but not too sweet, a very nice texture!

Rosemary – like a mixture between a flapjack and a soft shortbread. Very good though, tastes nice!

Sol – Really enjoyable! The flavour of the oats and cocoa together was very nice, and the texture was great.

Soft and chocolatey – very nice

Kyle – Very chocolatey and crumbly. Couldn’t really taste the oats.

Caoimhe – Great combination – didn’t taste ‘too chocolatey’ – delicious!

Overall, a very simple and enjoyable recipe to make with excellent melt in the mouth results!

History Bakers: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice (The Great British Bake Off – Week 4 – Back To School)

History Bakers: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice (The Great British Bake Off – Week 4 – Back To School)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. This week’s category was Back To School. I decided to interpret ‘Back To School’ quite literally as my own return to baking after a long period of not baking regularly. This blog focuses on my relationship with baking and the first historic recipe I made for the return of History Bakers.

I did a reasonable amount of baking at school as Food Technology was a mandatory subject up to GCSE level and I chose to study it for GCSE too, though admittedly only because we had to choose a technology option. After leaving school, I did little-to-no baking in my shared student kitchens and just as little baking when I was living with my mum over the Summer. I only really returned to baking when I moved in with my current partner who is an excellent, though sporadic and frenetic baker. 

Immediately before I started working at the History Centre I had two jobs, one of which was packaging Yorkshire puddings at the Aunt Bessies factory on Freightliner Road and the other was working as a barista at Hangout, a small bakery and cafe on High Street. I was not really trusted to do any baking in my first year of working there—I was barely trusted to make coffees—but I did get to observe some very talented bakers making some very tasty food: fresh bread, blondies and brownies, cakes, pasties, and the like. Over time I was gradually given a few more baking responsibilities, but I left that job after being moved to a location in the newly refurbished House of Hammonds, which had none of the charms of the little bakery on High Street.

Some years ago, I must have gotten it into my head that baking is overly difficult or not worth the effort, especially when you can buy tasty ready-made baked goods from most decent shops. I won’t pretend that baking is easy, though it really can be sometimes, but it is definitely rewarding and the food is generally so much nicer than anything you can buy in a normal shop for a reasonable price.

Since I started working at the History Centre and long before we brought History Bakers back, a number of staff have brought in delicious food for everyone to try, food that they took the time to bake by hand—Kirstie's brownies and Laurel’s cheesy sausage rolls come to mind. I thought this was such a lovely gesture and one that I have not experienced very often in previous workplaces. Now I have it in my head that learning to bake is also learning to give, because it is difficult to imagine somebody baking a whole pie or a loaf of bread just for their own use. I think that in the absence of a commercial incentive, practically everybody would be baking with little more in mind than the idea of creating something nice and sharing it with people they like.

Image: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice recipe, C DCE/848/9

Almond Slice

I chose to make an Almond Slice, which I found amongst The Records of the Hull (East) Circuit of the Methodist Church under the reference C DCE/848/9—Kingston Wesley Church souvenir recipe book, 1962. I feel slightly guilty about choosing such a recent recipe from a collection that stretches back to 1810, but I wanted to choose something with simple instructions and relatively few ingredients—and which sounded tasty. We have Miss E. Colbridge to thank for this recipe, so on the off chance you can get word to her, please offer our thanks.

Below you will see a list of all the ingredients and a photograph of most of the ingredients—I forgot to include sugar in the photograph but thankfully remembered to add it to the recipe. I used roughly twice the amount of ingredients listed below to make sure there was enough to go around.

Image: Ingredients used in the recipe(minus 
the sugar)

After I had changed the measurements from imperial to metric, I noticed that the pastry needed egg yolk and the filling required egg white, so I separated two eggs and measured out the rest of the ingredients. To the egg yolks, I added the flour and the margarine and then mixed this all together. The result was too powdery for my liking, so I separated a third egg and mixed the yolk into the pastry, which finally gave it a texture I was happy with. I spread the pastry on the bottom of the dish at roughly half an inch of thickness.

Once I had evenly spread out the pastry with the back of a large spoon, I turned the oven to 180 degrees and began making the filling. I added the icing sugar and ground almonds to the egg whites and mixed them all together with a whisk. When I was happy with the consistency of this mixture, I set it aside and spread a thin layer of raspberry jam over the pastry using a tablespoon. Next, I slowly poured the filling on top and tilted the dish gently from side to side like one of those handheld marble maze games.

 

With the filling evenly spread out, it was time for the final touch, split almonds. My interpretation of split almonds was to chop a bunch of whole almonds up into roughly three pieces per almond and liberally sprinkle the results over the dish. This ultimately made it quite crunchy and difficult to slice up. My partner suggested that what was meant by split almonds is what she calls ‘flaked almonds,’ she also suggested toasting the almonds before I use them as a topping next time. 

Image: Ready to bake ingredients.

I put the result into the oven for 30 minutes, and after checking it over, decided it could do with another 10 minutes. 

Image: The finished Almond cake ready for slicing.

Reviews

Household:

Dilara – “That was nice. Gooey and crunchy, good combo.”

Gemma – “Nice and gooey and the almonds on top add a nice crunch.”

Sofya – “These are really good. Crunchy but also gooey.”

Staff:

Sarah – “Nicely almond-y with just enough jam. Lovely!”

Laurel – “Lovely – would make myself. Sweet, tasty + almond-y.”

Kyle – “Very tasty, the chopped almonds are a little too chunky for me but the raspberry jam is very nice.”

Caoimhe – “Delicious! Right ratio of jam to almonds.”

Nick – “Very tasty.”

Graham – “Very tasty, moist, recommended! Reminds me of my youth 😊”

I must admit I was surprised by how well it came out and how well it was received as I have not baked anything from scratch for a long time. The flavour reminded me of an old-school raspberry jam tart with almond flavourings. I plan to make it again as it was relatively simple and very tasty, and because I can’t think of what else to do with the rest of the ground almonds.

History Bakers: Scotch Crumpets (The Great British Bake Off - Week 3 - Bread)  

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year, staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With bread week a few weeks ago, here is a recipe for Scotch Crumpets. Is it a crumpet or Pancake?

Image: C DCT/1716/2 page 11

Finding a suitable bread recipe proved a lot harder than I had first anticipated. A great deal of the historical recipes are sweet, with only a few sources breaking out into the savoury baking/cooking world. I finally settled on ‘Scotch Crumpets’ as I had always wanted to give crumpets a go and thought this to be the perfect opportunity. Full disclosure, they are definitely more of a pancake than a crumpet, but they are still very yummy, quick and easy. This recipe comes from C DCT/1716/2 – Anlaby Road Methodist Church recipe book.

Ingredients:

2 Teacups full of flour

1 tsp butter

1 tsp golden syrup

½ tsp salt

½ teacupful of sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

½ pint of milk (I used buttermilk as the recipe suggested sour or buttermilk if possible)

Method: 

This is probably the easiest pancake recipe I have tried. Minimal measuring, put it all into a bowl, mix it all up and it’s good to go. The most difficult part of the recipe was deciding on the size of teacup to use to measure the flour and sugar. In the end I settled on a medium teacup, which yielded around 25 – 30 small pancakes in total. 

After combining all of the ingredients and giving it a quick stir I was ready to make the crumpets/pancakes. 

As with any pancake recipe, the first one you cook is always the practice one, and these scotch crumpets were no exception. I dreadfully burnt the first batch trying to gauge how long to cook them for before turning, as there were no clear instructions within the recipe other than ‘turn once’. I decided to go with the basic rule of thumb and turn when small bubbles show on the surface of the pancake. This proved too long for the level of heat, so I ended up with black and charred little rounds. 

Image: First attempt!

On my second go I was more measured in my approach. I turned down the heat and cooked them slower, making sure I watched them. This batch turned our perfect and proved to be light and airy little sweet rounds of pancake. 

The recipe states using a teaspoon measure of mixture for each little pancake and this worked well, although they are quite time consuming as I had to do them in about 5 batches to cook all of the mixture. 

In the end they turned out rather well, the staff at the History Centre enjoyed them also. This is now my go to pancake recipe and I will be making them again. If you decide to give them a try, try toasting them in the toaster to make them a little crispy. 

Image: The finished pancakes/crumpets

Comments:

‘Perfectly fluffy scotch pancakes! Yum’ – Joey

‘Tastes divine – I would say fluffy scone!’ – Caoimhe

‘Delicious, lovely and soft’ – Debbie

‘Really delicious sweet flavour and so soft, definitely more of a pancake but a delightful one! Could eat the whole bag’ – Rachel

‘Delightful little pancake, perfect texture and sweetness for me’- Sol

‘Nice and cakey, tastes great’ - Kyle