Do what the Viennese do! Eat cake and drink coffee.

After the previous days surprise proposal at the Zoo in Vienna and the awesome evening ice skating under the stars in the city centre today our hangovers needed a slight sugar hit and so we decided to visit one of the many grand cafe's that offer equisite cakes to devour across Vienna.

Living in Cornwall we often watch good old Padstein, celebrity chef Rick Stein and when he was doing a show specifically about his foody weekend in Vienna we just had to visit the cafe that he had visited whilst doing the show.

My fella announced 'If it's good enough for Rick Stein, It's good enough for my fiance' I love it! With not even 24 hours of being a fiance and being engaged I still feel like I'm in a bubble of happiness.

Rick Stein enters the Cafe Landtmann Vienna

Rick Stein eating in the Cafe Landtmann Vienna

We went into the Cafe Landtmann as Rick Stein had done and giggled as we were served by the same waiter. We oggled at the cake menu and my fellas eyes lit up with excitement at the coffee menu.
We were celebrating our engagment and so I decided to have just a few more bubbles. I could get used to Vienna, wining and dining and being spoilt rotten.

Inside the cafe Landtmann Vienna

Patissere counter Inside the cafe Landtmann Vienna

 

 Sightseeing in Vienna City Centre and St. Stephen's Cathedral.

We both enjoyed some fabulous cake and relaxed in the cafe and let the reality sink in that we were in fact engaged and would be getting married!!! EEEEKKKKKK

How to make traditional Viennese Strudel

On our recent trip to Vienna when we heard you could visit the kitchen of a Viennese palace and watch how traditional Viennese Strudel is made and even taste the strudel and we jumped at the chance.

It turned out that the hotel we had chosen was a short walk down hill to the Schonbrunn Palace and it wasn't long before we were learning how to make Strudel, Viennese style. What we hadn't realised that how quiet the tourism scene is out of season. We had our own private viewing!

Schonbrunn Palace Vienna

At first we felt slightly uncomfortable as the lady that was showing us how to make traditional strudel was talking to the whole room even though there was only the two of us there. It was great getting our own personal demonstration but she could have just talked to us rather than on auto pilot talking to an empty room!

Making Traditional Viennese Strudel in the Schonbrunn Palace Vienna

Now armed with the knowledge on how to make see through wafer thin pastry for strudel... we continue to buy British versions in the freezer section of our local supermarket as making that thin pastry bending it and folding it around your arm looked far too complicated!!!!

Wet weather weekends are the perfect reason to stay indoors and bake!

With the weather turning wet, windy and wild over the weekend it's time to stay indoors in the warm and put my baking hat back on.

With a whole weekend to myself I decided to make not one but two bakes this weekend starting with a gorgeous carrot and walnut cake with cream cheese frosting. Followed by a rustic scotch egg pie.
Having a peek in the fridge on a soggy Saturday morning I noticed the sheer amount of carrots lurking in the salad draw and thought to myself what a great excuse to make a delicious carrot cake.

I trawled through my recipe books at home and couldn't find a recipe that I liked and headed off onto the Internet to stumble across this recipe by Paul Hollywood. Looking in the cupboards and not wanting to go out in the rain I amended the recipe slightly to feature walnuts instead of pecan nuts and I had to miss out the mixed spice as this was missing from the spice rack, however I did increase the Cinnamon and ginger slightly to make up for this missing ingredient.

Carott Cake By Paul Hollywood
Ingredients
155ml sunflower oil, plus extra for greasing
230g self-raising flour
 1 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp mixed spice
½ tsp ground ginger
230g light brown muscovado sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 satsuma or mandarin, plus strips to decorate
100g pecans, halved
260g carrots, coarsely grated
 3 medium free-range eggs, beaten

For the icing 
50g butter, softened
200g full-fat cream cheese
150g icing sugar, plus extra to dust
2 tsp orange juice


Method
01. Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan160°C/gas 4. Grease an 18cm loose-bottomed round cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Sift the flour, baking powder and spices into a large bowl. Add the sugar, zest, pecans and grated carrots, then stir until well combined. Stir in the beaten eggs and oil, then mix well. 

02. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean. Transfer to a cooling rack, leave in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn out and leave to cool completely before icing. 

03. For the icing, beat the butter in a large bowl with a hand mixer until really soft. Add the cream cheese and beat again until well mixed. Sift over the icing sugar, add the orange juice, then beat until smooth. Store, covered, in the fridge until needed. 

04. To decorate, fill a piping bag fitted with a plain, small nozzle with icing, then carefully pipe lines across the top of the cake. Give the cake a quarter of a turn and pipe more lines across. Dust with a little icing sugar and scatter some grated satsuma/mandarin zest on the top. 


I've got to say the bake went beautifully, an easy recipe to follow and a great cake and once cooled I moved onto creating the cream cheese frosting. Sadly this is where mt cake was a little bit of a let down. I had bought a healthy living version of cream cheese rather than full fat and it was seriously watery. I tried to make up the icing the best I could but the liquid icing was impossible to thicken up.

Even half a box of icing sugar later couldn't help! A light drizzle of the icing was used on top of the cake and it tasted delicious even if there was a lot of wasted icing and it wasn't quite like the picture.

Moral of the story, don't be healthy when baking! Always use full fat cream cheese when it tells you to. Hopefully the judges on the Great Denby Bake off aren't as strict as Paul Hollywood and will give me credit for my resourcefulness and adaptation of the recipe.

Whilst that cake was cooling it was time to make me a pie! This weekend I was joined at home by my poorly partner with a snuffly flu type cough and cold. What better way to make your loved one feel better than with home made pie. Again heading straight to the Internet I found a recipe for a scotch egg pie from the BBC and this time I altered the recipe slightly to feed just the two of us.

Scotch egg pie - BBC
Ingredients
8 medium eggs
14 Lincolnshire sausages
1 tsp ground mace
1 tbsp thyme leaf
100g fresh breadcrumbs
500g pack shortcrust pastry flour, for dusting
1 tbsp sesame seed

Method  
01. Put 6 of the eggs in a large pan of cold water. Bring to the boil, then remove from the heat. Leave for 5 mins, then lift out eggs and cool under cold running water. Peel. 

02. Snip the ends of the sausages and squeeze the meat out into a mixing bowl. Add the mace, thyme, 75g of the breadcrumbs, 1 remaining egg and some ground pepper, and mix together well – you’ll probably need to get your hands in. 

03. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6. Criss-cross 2 long strips of baking parchment in a 20cm pie tin or round cake tin (to help you lift out the pie). Roll out half the pastry on a lightly floured surface to line the tin. Scatter remaining breadcrumbs over the base of the pastry, then pat in about a quarter of the sausage mixture. Evenly space the peeled eggs on top, then gently pack the meat around and over – trying to evenly cover the eggs without leaving any gaps. 

04. Roll out remaining pastry, cover the pie, then trim the edges. Pinch and crimp edges to seal, poke a steam hole in the top, then glaze with the final egg, lightly beaten with a fork. Scatter with the sesame seeds, then bake for 30 mins. 

05. Remove the pie from the oven and carefully remove it from the tin. Place on a baking tray and return to the oven for 10 mins to brown the sides of the pie. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, then serve in chunky wedges. 

I made my own home made pastry and whilst this chilled in the fridge I moved over to hard boil some eggs and make the sausage meat mixture. Once these were done it was time to assemble the pie and bake.
My only criticism on this pie is that the pastry was maybe a bit too thick and I had to bake the pie for slightly longer as sections were a little doughy. But that was my fault making too much pastry and insisting on using it all! I love to be a bit naughty and love pastry so the thick delicious pastry wasn't a problem but next time I will use slightly less and save my waistline the trauma of eating additional pie pastry!

All in all both recipes were great, both easy to follow and easily adjusted to what I had in the cupboard and avoiding any trips to the local shops in the gale force winds and sideways rain.

I will definitely make both items again and the best bit of news, the pie and cake made my poorly boy feel better.

Great British Bake Off Technical Challenge Week 2, Paul Hollywood Arlettes

Yesterday I found myself with enough time and enthusiasm to attempt week 2 of the Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges, this was making eight Arlette biscuits a recipe from Paul Hollywood.

There's a part of me that wants to do all of the technical challenges this year but I'm sure there will become a stage where I don't own the correct utensils, tools, tins etc to be able to join in but so far so good. Week 1 saw me making Mary Berry's Walnut layer cake and although It was a success it didn't feel that much of a challenge and worst still my partner didn't particularly like the cake!!! Seriously I think there is something wrong with him when he said it was too sweet!

After watching the latest technical challenge I couldn't help think it seemed like a lot of effort for eight biscuits but not wanting to quit at week two I persevered and started by watching the technical challenge section on the BBC Iplayer. Watching as some contestants got in sticky messes, others mixed by hand and others used electric mixers. I was confused at what best to do, after reading the recipe instructions I was clear on what I needed to do, and that involved A LOT of chilling and the use of bread flour and some kneading. All in all an odd recipe to make a biscuit.

The recipe was similar to making a flaky or a rough puff pastry mixing layers of butter and layers of pastry dough. The only difference was that you wrapped the pastry in a layer of butter rather than the other way around. All in all the recipe so far was actually really quite simple, once you had the basic ingredients it was just a case of fold and chill then repeat. After a few hours I was ready to add a layer of sugar and Cinnamon and roll and chill again. Although not a major issue the first problem I had was that I lost some of my dry sugar mix out of each end of the roll of pastry.

Once the dough was chilled again it was time to cut into eight equal sections and roll flat with a rolling pin before baking. Again the dry ingredients caused a slight issue and once I had started to roll the biscuits flat some of them were unravelling and not staying as a tight pinwheel.

Placing the rolled biscuits out onto the baking tray It was time to bake. On the television episode there were lots of comments about the high butter content and how these biscuits could burn easily however I think I was over cautious. After the first 5 minutes of baking the instructions state to flip the biscuits over and cook for a further 3-4 minutes. Another slight issue was that the biscuits were fairly stuck to the baking paper but with a little shuffling they were free and flipped over. However the 8-9 minutes baking time turned into 10-12 to avoid the centres of my biscuits still looking doughy and raw. I'm not sure If my Arlettes weren't rolled thin enough or it was due to my oven. Either way the additional baking time wasn't an issue and I now had eight little Arlette biscuits.

Once cooled with a cup of tea the first two biscuits were devoured in seconds. They taste a little like the flaky pastry and sugar coated edges of an apple strudel. They had the snap, a little flaky crunch and a delicious buttery flavour. All in all very very yummy but you need to be in the house for several hours to keep attending to your chilling and rolling of the pastry so unless I have several hours to spare I'm not sure I will be making them again in a hurry.

Next it's bread week and I've only ever made bread once so this could be an interesting technical challenge. Roll on Wednesday for episode three. I can't wait.

Joining the Great British Bake Off Technical Challenges

After the first episode of the Great British Bake Off I decided it would be a great idea to make each of the technical challenges each week.

Sunday's would become the day to stay indoors and bake with my partner. The summer hasn't been particularly great this year and with lots of soggy Sundays to entertain ourselves this seemed to be a fantastic idea.

The first weeks episode was cake, My favourite thing to bake and our favourite thing to eat and so off to the store I went to purchase the ingredients to make week ones technical challenge Mary's Frosted Walnut Layer Cake.

The first challenge was that the cake was made using three equal sized cake tins and I only had two of the same size and one larger. But with the cake mixture evenly shared out It was a case of cutting down the larger cake to match the other two and I was still on track to making an acceptable bake.

The great thing about making one cake slightly bigger is that there were offcuts for the tasting before the rest of the cake was finished.

Once the cakes were cool it was onto the final stage of decorating. The cake required 10 walnuts to decorate the cake all coated in caramel so the first thing to do was make some caramel. This however, was easier said than done. With my sugar in the pan and the heat rather low my sugar slowly started to melt and bubble and started to colour but I didn't realise how quickly the sugar turned from a light golden brown to a sticky black mess of burnt caramel! 

With attempt number two more successful there were 10 perfect little walnuts covered in caramel cooling and ready to decorate the cake. 

Next it was to make up a butter cream to sandwich between the cakes and finally to finish with a boiled icing. I've got to be honest I've never heard of boiled icing before but it was a mix between royal icing and meringue. 

Once the icing had set over the cake it resembled the texture of snow. It had a texture that was light and fluffy and made a slight crunch when cut and compressed. I'm not sure if it was suppose to be like this but this is how ours turned out. 

All in all I found the cake delicious, however my partner with a sweet tooth declared that the cake was too sweet! Can a cake be too sweet? It did have A LOT of icing in between the layers, a lot of icing around the cake and then the sugary sweet nuts on top so yes it was very sweet but I loved it. 

Next it's time to make Paul's Arlettes which i'm not very confident about making, the recipe for wafer thing rolled biscuits uses simple ingredients however looks like a much more technical challenge.

Soggy sundays deserve the perfect roast dinner

What better way to spend a Soggy Sunday then making a beast of a roast dinner! Last week when I checked the weather forecast for the weekend I was a little saddened to see that the whole weekends forecast consisted of strong winds and heavy rain. Although I had taken part in the Park Run on the Saturday morning sadly I had injured myself whilst running and that meant that even if the weather was good I wouldn't be able to go surfing or cycling on a dodgy knee this weekend. 

With going out and exercising off the cards and leaving the comfort of the nice dry and warm house very doubtful I decided I would put my time to good use and make a full roast dinner for me and the man. 

I love eating roast dinner and to be honest I don't really mind making it but it's a lot of effort when there is just two of us to cook for so it's not very often that we enjoy one in our house. 

Slightly more grateful of the bad weather was my other half who got to stay indoors out of the rain, feet up on the sofa watching the formula one whilst I prepared a full pork roast dinner. 

And YES, there are Yorkshire puddings with our Pork roast dinner! So yes it is acceptable to have yorkshire pudding with ALL roast dinners.

Lemon drizzle and blueberry cake

I love cake! I love making cake and I really love eating cake and it has become a bit of a habit to make a weekly cake. Recently I've made a carrott cake as well as a white chocolate and raspberry cake and multiple banana loafs but after suffering a few colds in our house I have a surplus of lemons that need using.

I decided to make a lemon drizzle loaf cake but wanted to add a few extra flavours and decided to add blueberries into the mix.

Once the cake was cooked it was drizzled with pure lemon juice and sugar yet even though I had pricked the cake all over the cake had risen quite a lot and the lemon juice just kept running off the sides rather than into the cake.

I need to find a better way to get the drizzle into my lemon drizzle cake! Once the cake was cooled it was time to remove from the tin and grab a slice. The cake was delicious however all the blueberries had sunk to the bottom and the lemon juice had barely made it past the top of the sponge. So I made a half/half cake by accident. Lemon drizzle on the top half and a blueberry loaf on the bottom half. It was all very yummy and had to be eaten quickly as a soggy cake can go off in no time at all... or at least that was my excuse my munching my way through a whole loaf of cake in just a few days!!!

If a cake has fruit or veg in it then it's healthy......right?

Seriously naughty white chocolate and raspberry sponge cake

When we offered to host a dinner party at ours just a few days before a friends birthday we wanted to bake something really yummy. But with a very hectic day planned and not a massive amount of time a simple sponge cake was going to have to make do for dessert.

Adding my two favourite ingredients to the cake made a mundane sponge cake into an indulgent white chocolate and raspberry sponge cake.

Melting white chocolate into a bowl and adding this carefully to whisked cream cheese makes an absolutely devine frosting for cakes. then adding raspberries to the mix creates a gorgeous pink layer to sandwich between the two cakes. With the top then decorated with further white chocolate cream cheese mix. Then a few more raspberries and a random choice of marshmallows later I had a totally delicious moist, creamy, fruity sponge cake for the centre of the dinner table made from a simple sponge cake.

 I think If I throw together another cake like this I will make it slightly more indulgent by somehow blow tourching the marshmallows to give them a little colour as well as drizzling more white chocolate over the whole of the top of the cake to tie together the topping.

My first attempt at making home made bread

When we invited some close friends around for dinner we wanted everything to be made fresh and made from scratch and that meant making home made bread for the first time. 

With my other half making a Lasagne from scratch I was on hand to make a sharing bread dish to accompany his lasagne as well as a desert.

Flicking through the pages of a recent Morrissons magazine I came across various bread recipes and one included a tear and share rosemary and roasted onion tear and share bread. 

Having never made bread before I thought that it would be really hard and knew that it took a lot of time with various amounts of proving required. 

What I hadn't realised was that making home made bread is actually incredibly easy! I had never realised just how few ingredients are used to make a loaf of bread and how utterly simple and quick it is to make. I was so worried with all these terms mentioned on the Great British Bake Off of first prove and second prove, knocking back, kneading and gluten structures that it was going to be a challenge to make. 

3 hours after getting all my ingredients out I have 16 delicious bread rolls warm out of the oven ready to eat and now knowing how easy it is to make bread I'm thinking of what else I can make and how else I can adapt the recipe to make other versions of these rolls.  

Carrott cake with cream cheese frosting

It's the weekend and that means down goes my office working full time hat and on goes the "i'm the next contestant of the great British bake off hat....." Ok so maybe I have more chance in featuring in the comic relief versions than the real deal but none the less it is the weekend and I am happy in my little world of baking.

During the week I had gone to the shop to buy an array of fresh fruit and veg but hadn't checked what was already at home and was surprised to find I now had two big bags of carrots. This wasn't going to be a problem as decided this was the perfect excuse to make a carrot cake.

Having a quick hunt around on the internet I found a recipe from Paul Hollywood for an ultimate carrot cake and set to work creating this masterpiece. I've got to say the recipe is really easy and is nothing more than a case of throw in all the ingredients mix and bake. However I did use large eggs rather than medium and thought that the mix was a bit wet when it went in the oven and this proved correct during the baking. The cake was supposed to take around 60 minutes to bake however when taking it out the oven an stabbing the cake with a skewer the cake was still very wet inside/raw. After 90 minutes the cake was done and surprisingly moist still. In the recipe the cake was decorated with cream cheese frosting just on the top but i decided to cut the cake open and sandwich the cream cheese in the middle as well.

The cake is delicious and even with all that additional baking was not dry at all. The only thing I would do differently next time is cut up the walnuts within the cake slightly smaller as several of them had sunk to the bottom. Now the recipe uses pecan nuts so maybe If I had stuck to the original recipe with the correct ingredients things would turn out like they are supposed to.

I'll definitely be making this cake again as it is light and tangy and as it is made with a touch of orange zest and some carrots so it's a healthy cake!!!! 

Pancake Day 2015

As many of my regular blog readers will know I live a fairly busy life, I have a full time job and add a healthy dose of keeping fit and a sprinkling of hobbies thrown in on top. This results in some events slipping by without notice. However when we were both too busy to celebrate pancake day on Tuesday the 17th of February we were not letting that one pass us by.

In 2014 we missed our traditional British pancake day as were away snowboarding in Bulgaria but did manage to find a place on the mountain that served us their version of pancakes. It might be several days after pancake day but we decided to celebrate in style and go for a double dose of pancakes and have a main course savoury followed by a dessert sweet course of pancakes.

In my traditional style I decided not to use a recipe but to simply throw together whatever I could find in the cupboards, after all isn't that what shrove Tuesday is suppose to be about and using up all the left over ingredients before lent?

With a stack of regular pancakes made it was now time to make them into a meal. With a tin of ratatouille, a tin of hotdog sausages some spinach and cheese I made an enchilada inspired dish using pancakes. Popped it into the oven to heat through and created a really delicious dish.

For seconds it was time to dish out the sweet pancakes and for this decided to cook up a batch of american style pancakes that were fat and fluffy and the complete opposite to the savoury ones. Topped with some homemade apple and cinnamon sauce they made the perfect end to a pancake day even if it was after the main event!

Christmas comes early in the photobrook house

When I was in my early twenties I made the decision to move over 300 miles away from the family home, to sunny Cornwall leaving my family in Essex. So when it comes around to Christmas I find it hard to see my family, getting time off work to make the journey back to Essex, for my family to get the time off to make the journey to Cornwall and then there's fitting in my partners family as well, it all becomes a challenge fitting everyone in.

This year my family from Essex decided to make an early Christmas visit to us and celebrate Christmas early. The first weekend in December my family made the journey down to Cornwall whilst we prepared the Christmas decorations, gifts and food to create Christmas just a few weeks early.

With the table prepared and the family enjoying an afternoon glass of wine it was time for me and the boyfriend to rise to the challenge of creating a full roast Christmas dinner for eight people, 

The key to a good roast dinner is having a well timed schedule. Starting with the meat and working backwards from when we wanted to eat we worked out the the huge joint of pork would need three hours to cook. So at 4pm with the joint laced in huge amounts of sea salt it was into the oven whilst operation peeling veg commenced. With my boyfriend, my sister and my mum on hand we had spuds, carrots, parsnips and swede sitting happily in pans of water ready for their appearance in the schedule. 

With a christmas roast dinner it's all about the trimmings and even though we were having pork we had to have a giant sharing yorkshire pudding and cauliflower cheese thrown in for good measure, not to forget pigs in blankets, onion gravy and homemade apple and cinnamon sauce. Whilst the pork cooked for the first hour the veggies were prepared and the onion gravy and festive apple sauce made. This is the easiest recipe and so much nicer than apple sauce from a jar so I thought I would share the recipe below.

Christmas Apple Sauce Recipe

 2 cooking apples - peeled, cored, and chopped into chunks

 1/2 a cup of granulated sugar

 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

 2 tablespoons water

In a heavy bottomed saucepan, add the apples, sugar, cinnamon and water. On a medium heat dissolve sugar, and bring to a boil. Then reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes, or until the apples are soft and have turned into a thick sauce. It's really that simple and tastes amazing!!

With an hour to go the roast veggies went in, the pork came out to rest and the yorkshire goes in. 

With tummies rumbling and the wine flowing we were all delighted when the sharing yorkshire pudding came out and we could start dishing up after our military operation of preparing the perfect pre Christmas dinner. 

The family have now gone back to Essex and the house feels rather quiet but we still have the comfort of lots of left over food and wine from the visit to keep us fed and watered.

Do you have a favourite festive recipe? Do you make something challenging only at Christmas? I'd love to hear about your favourite festive recipes and your perfect additions to any roast dinner in the comments below.

What to make with leftover pumpkin

As Halloween has been over two weeks ago and we still have a mountain of the vegetable left over i've been trying my hand at making different pumpkin recipes. I've previously shared my baking adventure using leftover grated pumpkin to make Indian Dahl burgers as well as making a large quantity of pumpkin cream soup but for this bake I wanted to make something sweet so attempted a winter spiced loaf. 

With a combination of grated pumpkin, honey and melted butter this was added to dry ingredients of flour sugar and spices including cinnamon and ginger. Mixed together and added to a loaf tin this was then cooked low and slow to produce my winter loaf. 

Although my loaf looked nice this wasn't as much of a success as i had hoped and the bread felt quite wet and underbaked. I think If i try the recipe again I will squeeze a lot of the water out of the pumpkin as the loaf was quite heavy, My baking is definitely a learning curve with some recipe's that work and some than don't. It took me about 5 different recipes before I found one for banana loaf that worked and all previous attempts turned out raw, or heavy or just pure inedible. Now that I have perfected my banana loaf it is time to perfect my pumpkin loaf. Although I might just have to wait until next years Halloween before I have spare pumpkin to give this recipe another go. 

Homemade rhubarb and custard pie

A few weeks ago I made a Banana and cream pie and this week wanted to change the recipe slightly to make a rhubarb and custard pie. Rhubarb is one of my all time favourite things and anything cooked or baked with Rhubarb is a winner to me. 

I used the same recipe and method as I did with the banana version but this time used wilted down rhubarb. With the rhubarb a little water and some dark brown sugar I reduced the rhubarb down over a low heat whilst I made the pastry base. 

With the pastry made I decided to lay in a little thicker in the dish than I had used on the previous bake as well as cook for 5 minutes less to give a softer pastry case.

With the rhubarb cooked down nicely I put through a sieve to remove as much liquid as possible as didn't want the base of my pastry case to go soggy.

The rhubarb is then added to the pastry case and left to cool whilst the home made custard is created. You leave the custard to cool and then add to the pie, In the last pie I made with the banana I added another layer of cream to the pie and then coated in sprinkles however this time I wanted the flavours of the rhubard and custard to be the main affair. 

The only addition to the top of this rhubarb and custard pie was rhubarb and custard sprinkles. With a bag of hard boiled rhubarb and custard sweets smashed into crumbs these were scattered over the top of the custard to give a swirly pattern to finish of my pie. 

 The banana and cream pie was amazing but as the pastry was thicker and a little softer and the pie used my favourite ingredient rhubarb this was definitely my preferred version of this pie. 

As I love experimenting and love baking I'm thinking of adapting this recipe once again and trying a version with raspberry and white chocolate. When ever I change a recipe it doesn't always work and often not even edible but now I have perfected the pastry and the custard I'm hoping to keep expanding on baking delicious pies for desert.