Artisan Home Baking: Wholesome and delicious recipes for cakes and other bakes
By Julian Day
()
About this ebook
A light Victoria Sponge, gooey Chocolate Fudge Brownies and a sweet Treacle Tart are all delicious treats that do so much more than satisfy your appetite. They bring together loved ones, help celebrate occasions and, most of all, evoke pleasant memories of when these sumptuous treats first passed your lips. In this delightful collection of bakes you'll find classic recipes that are at the heart of home baking; this is the essence of the Meg Rivers bakery, to create traditional cakes, cookies, tarts and puddings to cherish and enjoy.
Nestled in the English countryside, the bakery started its life when Meg wanted to make cakes for her family that not only tasted good, but were also fresh and wholesome. Soon – after her popularity grew at home and abroad – the bakery was born and, now, its mail-order treats travel all around the world for everyone to savour.
If you've been searching for the comforting, traditional bakes that are guaranteed to put a smile on your face, look no further than these marvellous recipes.
Read more from Julian Day
Classic Artisan Baking: Recipes for cakes, cookies, muffins and more Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hill Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Artisan Home Baking
Related ebooks
Deliciously Vintage Baking & Desserts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLOLA's Forever: Recipes for cupcakes, cakes and slices Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLOLA'S: A Cake Journey Around the World: 70 of the most delicious and iconic cake recipes discovered on our travels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis is Gluten-free: Delicious gluten-free recipes to bake it better Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHappy Belly: The Cake Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTea with Bea: Recipes from Bea's of Bloomsbury Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHomemade Cakes, Cookies, and Tarts: More Than 40 Traditional Recipes from Grandma?s Kitchen to Yours Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pies Glorious Pies Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Lily Vanilli's Sweet Tooth: Recipes and Tips from a Modern Artisan Bakery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bigger Bolder Baking Every Day: Easy Recipes to Bake Through a Busy Week Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/530 Mouthwatering Cake & Cookie Traditional Recipes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Little Book of Questions on Boiled Sweets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSmall, Sweet, and Italian: Tiny, Tasty Treats from Sweet Maria’s Bakery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bakeless Sweets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The good stuff Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings35 Delicious Cupcake Recipes: With Nutritional Information Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCakes With A Difference Crepe And Pancake Cakes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaking And Cooking With Pecans Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Healthy Baking Cookbook: A Collection of Delicious And Healthy Diabetic Friendly Baking Recipes You Will Love! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cheesecake Lady - @philacheesecake Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats, by Miss Leslie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMarble Cake 101 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSimple and Yummy: 14 Chocolate Recipes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBrunch: Heartmade Collection, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat British Baking - Cakes & Breads Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSweet Tarts for my Sweethearts: Stories & Recipes from a Culinary Career Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Brownie Diaries: My Recipes for Happy Times, Heartbreak and Everything in Between Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cake Chronicles: Bake a Journey Through 60 Incredible Creations! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDecadent Semifreddo Recipes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Baking For You
DIY Sourdough: The Beginner's Guide to Crafting Starters, Bread, Snacks, and More Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Betty Crocker Cookbook, 12th Edition: Everything You Need to Know to Cook from Scratch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tartine Bread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5From No-Knead to Sourdough: A Simpler Approach to Handmade Bread Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Baking Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Air Fryer Cookbook for beginners: Extremely Easy Recipes to Fry, Grill, Roast and Bake, with Your Air Fryer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wild Bread: Sourdough Reinvented Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Baking for the Holidays: 50+ Treats for a Festive Season Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Favorite Cookies: More Than 40 Recipes for Iconic Treats Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook: Old Fashioned Recipes From New Yorks Sweetest Bakery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Big Book of Bread Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cake Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sheet Pan: Delicious Recipes for Hands-Off Meals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weeknight Baking: Recipes to Fit Your Schedule Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Taste of Home Christmas Cookies Mini Binder: 100+ Sweets for a Simply Magical Holiday Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Muffins and Biscuits: 50 Recipes to Start Your Day with a Smile Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook: Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery and Allysa To Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Instant Pot Fast & Easy: 100 Simple and Delicious Recipes for Your Instant Pot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ultimate Baking for One Cookbook: 175 Super Easy Recipes Made Just for You Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Baking Favorites: 100 Sweet and Savory Recipes from Our Test Kitchen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Model Bakery Cookbook: 75 Favorite Recipes from the Beloved Napa Valley Bakery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Keto Bread: From Bagels and Buns to Crusts and Muffins, 100 Low-Carb, Keto-Friendly Breads for Every Meal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sourdough Whisperer: The Secrets to No-Fail Baking with Epic Results Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Need to Knead: Handmade Artisan Breads in 90 Minutes Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Procrastibaking: 100 Recipes for Getting Nothing Done in the Most Delicious Way Possible Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Artisan Home Baking
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Artisan Home Baking - Julian Day
Introduction
Most of us at one time or another have held a fantasy about turning our hobby into our living. While most of us only dream, Meg Rivers was someone who actually achieved this. I first met Meg when we were both living and working in the Warwickshire village of Upper Tysoe. Our children were of an age and they went to the local school together. We were each running our own small businesses, and we’d often chat about the problems and benefits of working for ourselves. Meg was already something of a celebrity, often appearing in the food pages of magazines, but more impressive to me was that she had the only fax machine in the village, which she let me use! Chatting in her tiny office with the fantastic scents of fruit cakes from the bakery beyond was always a pleasure.
I had no idea then that one day, I would be running the Meg Rivers bakery.
Always a keen cook, Meg had learned to bake helping in her mother’s tearooms in Bowral, in the Southern Tablelands of Australia. In the 1980s, she moved to the UK, married and set up home in rural Warwickshire. When she started a family, like many mums she became aware of her children’s desire for sweet things but didn’t want them to eat the kind of commercial cakes and baked goods available at the time. Having always been interested in healthy eating, Meg was particularly reluctant for her family to eat products made with artificial flavourings, colourings or preservatives.
Knowing that it was possible for treats to be both tasty and wholesome, she began baking at home, making the kind of things she’d enjoyed herself as a child. Family and friends raved about her baking and asked her to bake for them too. Gradually, her reputation grew, and when someone asked her to post a fruit cake to Africa, the idea of a mail-order bakery business was born.
In 1986, Meg found herself needing to provide an income for her family, something that she could fit around the demands of three young children. Starting small and working from her home kitchen, she began baking cakes and selling them mail-order. Her background in PR helped her gain publicity; in those pre-internet days, selling food mail-order was something of a rarity and a young woman juggling the difficulties of being a lone parent with running her own business was also rather unusual. The enterprise prospered and in 1991 she won the Businesswoman of the Year Award. This provided additional welcome publicity and a small cash prize, which Meg used to open a small bakery in Tysoe, Warwickshire.
Meg always insisted on using the best available ingredients and tried whenever possible to source things locally. More than 25 years later, though sadly Meg is no longer with us, we’re still sticking to the same principles. At our bakery in the Cotswolds we often feel we have the best job in the world – we live and work in a beautiful part of the country, making lovely things for lovely people. I’m pretty sure this rural environment impacts on our working philosophy too. Maybe it’s something to do with the slower pace of life in the countryside but we like to take the time required to do things properly. Yes, we live in the internet age when we all expect everything to be available 24/7 and it’s true that our cakes are often made and despatched one day, to be with our customers at the other end of the country the next day. But we strongly believe in retaining an artisan approach. For us, the integrity of the recipe is vital and we won’t ever compromise quality for the convenience.
We’re a small team and we bake our cakes on a small scale, using the same low-tech, traditional methods that will be familiar to any home baker. In this book we’ve deliberately tried to keep the amount of equipment needed to a minimum – pretty much everything needed will be the type that most home kitchens will have. We love what we do and we want others to share the pleasure we get from baking. Our first ever recipe book will show that you don’t need to be an expert to get great results. All the recipes are simple to follow and have been tried and tested by the Meg Rivers team. Many are exactly the same as the cakes we’ve been sending out to happy customers around the world since Meg first started her business. Some have been chosen from ones that are particularly popular with visitors to our café and shop in Chipping Campden, and others are simply personal favourites gathered from family and friends.
There’s something to suit every occasion here; quick and easy teatime treats, tasty and nourishing family favourites and sophisticated dinner party desserts. There are so many reasons to get baking. Cakes are by their very nature a treat and treats are best shared. Meg began baking for her family and that’s a great place to start – who better to spoil than those you love the most?
Baking is fun and the best results come from keeping things simple – don’t take short cuts for the sake of convenience and take your time when baking; it’s a wonderful way to chill out. Always use the best ingredients you can find – because that way even the humblest cake can be elevated to something rather special. There’s always something magical about following a recipe; the alchemy of selecting, measuring and mixing the ingredients followed by the mysterious transformation of the baking process itself – and best of all, you get to eat the results!
Julian Day
Proprietor, Meg Rivers, Bakers of Happiness
family cakes
dundee cake
This almond fruit cake is Meg’s version of an old Scottish recipe. Dundee cake was first sold commercially in the nineteenth century by Keiller’s, a famous marmalade producer, as a way of keeping their staff busy when oranges were out of season. Lightly fruited and with a high ground-almond content, this is a lovely cut-and-come-again cake, ideal to eat at any time of year.
175 g/1½ sticks salted butter, soft
155 g/¾ cup (caster) sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
210 g/1⅓ cups ground almonds
140 g/1 generous cup plain/all-purpose flour
365 g/2½ cups sultanas/golden raisins
115 g/¾ cup mixed candied peel
25 g/1 oz. crystallized ginger, chopped
24 blanched almonds, to decorate
18-cm/7-inch round cake pan, lined with baking parchment
Serves 10–12
Preheat the oven to 150˚C (300˚F) Gas 2.
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs in 2 stages, stirring to a smooth batter each time. With a wooden spoon, fold in the ground almonds and flour, stirring until smooth. Add the sultanas/golden raisins, mixed candied peel and ginger and stir until evenly distributed.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake pan and smooth level