Bake to the future
Rich Myers hit the headlines for using the wrong type of US-produced sprinkles on his bakes. Now the Leeds chef has his first cookery book out named after his business Get Baked.
Edible Cookie Dough
Makes 24. Ingredients: 320g plain flour, 300g dark chocolate chopped up if in bar form, 420g softened unsalted butter, 230g caster sugar, 460g light brown sugar, 5g sea salt, 70g double cream, 10g vanilla extract
Preheat your oven to 180C/gas 4. Start by baking the flour for 15 minutes. Just bang it all onto a baking tray as evenly as possible, and you’re good. When baked, leave to cool at room temperature. If you’ve got dark chocolate chips then you’re good to go, but if your chocolate is in bar form, chop it up into small chunks. Cream the softened butter, sugars and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the beater attachment until light and fluffy. Scrape down the base and sides of the bowl, then add the cream, vanilla and chocolate and continue to beat for another minute or until incorporated. Once the flour has cooled, add it to the cookie mixture and beat until mixed thoroughly. Your cookie dough is now ready. Try it with some good-quality vanilla ice cream, or just eat it with a spoon – I quite literally don’t care. Keep refrigerated and eat within three days. The cookie dough will also keep in the freezer for up to a month.
Strawberry Limeade Pie
Serves 10–14. Ingredients. For the ginger biscuit crust: 700g ginger biscuits, 400g unsalted butter, cubed, 5g sea salt. For the lime posset: 800g double cream, 200g caster sugar, 80g light brown sugar, grated zest and juice of 5 limes. For the strawberry jam: 600g fresh strawberries, 350g granulated sugar, juice of 1 lemon, 1 tbsp liquid pectin (available from your favourite online retailer)
To make the ginger biscuit crust, turn your ginger biscuits into a fine crumb using a food processor or blender (or a bag and a rolling pin). Once your biscuits are pulverised, add them to a mixing bowl. Microwave the butter in a microwave-safe container until fully melted. Add it to the bowl of biscuit crumbs and mix together using your hands, making sure that there are no dry patches. If the mix feels a little dry, melt another 50g (1¾ oz) of butter and add a tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency. You’re looking for wet sand. Press the ginger biscuit crust into a 30cm pie tin, lining the base and the sides.
For the lime posset. It’s super simple, and hardly anything can go wrong. Heat the cream in a heavy bottomed saucepan over a medium heat, stirring continually so that it doesn’t catch and burn at the bottom. After a few minutes, or when the cream is starting to get warm enough to take an extremely relaxing bath in, add the sugars, lime juice and zest to the pan and continue to stir. Bring the cream to a simmer, but and let it do its thing for a few minutes, adjusting the heat accordingly so that it doesn’t get too hot, then take it off the heat. You want to make sure that the sugar has com
pletely dissolved, which it should have done, but you can check by rubbing a small amount of the mixture between your fingers. Be careful, obviously. I don’t need another lawsuit on my hands. Fill the crust with your posset mixture and leave to cool at room temperature. Once cool, bang it in the fridge for at least six hours or until it’s set. Ideally, overnight is best.
For the strawberry jam, all you’ve got to do is put all of the ingredients into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and place it over a medium heat. Give them a stir and bring to the boil. As soon as the pan looks like a bubbling strawberry-laden party of chaos, turn the heat down to low and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally with a heatproof spatula. Take off the heat and decant into a heatproof container to cool. Once cool, spoon the jam on top of the set lime posset layer, being careful not to pile it all into the middle. Use a small offset palette knife or the back of a spoon to evenly spread the jam all over the pie, making sure not to cover the edges of the crust. Place the finished pie in the fridge for a few hours. Eat within three days, or keep in the freezer for up to a month.
H2O Truffles
Makes 20 truffles. Ingredients. 600g 55–70% dark chocolate, 600g still water, 5g sea salt, 25g chopped nuts of your choice
Make your dark chocolate ganache replacing cream with water. Put your chocolate into a stainless steel or heatproof glass bowl and set aside. Heat your water in a small, heavy-bottomed saucepan over a medium
heat. Treat water exactly the same way as cream is treated, ensuring that it doesn’t come to a rolling boil. When you see small bubbles forming and the water has been steaming for a few seconds, remove from the heat and pour it directly onto your chocolate. After you pour the water into the bowl of chocolate, the chocolate will seize and it’ll look awful, because water is chocolate’s worst enemy, but as you stir the mixture, they will be forced to emulsify, eventually becoming one. The ganache will look thinner than if you used cream, which is common sense really because water is thinner than cream.
Once your ganache looks sensational, add the salt. The salt brings out the natural flavour of the chocolate and just makes it more chocolatey. It won’t make your ganache salty, just make sure you use the measurements I’ve suggested. Once emulsified, decant the ganache into a 5cm (2in)-deep tray and leave to cool at room temperature. Once the ganache has set, you’re ready to make your truffles.
You need to set up a little truffle station: place your chopped nuts into a small bowl, half-fill another small bowl with some warm water and place a teaspoon in the bowl of water to warm the spoon. You’re also going to want a clean towel to dry off your spoon in between truffle scooping. Using the teaspoon, scoop a truffle ball and drop it straight from the spoon into the bowl of chopped nuts. Carefully roll the truffle in the nuts, then remove it from the bowl and place it on a clean tray lined with foil or greaseproof paper. Repeat the process until you’re all outta truffle, remembering to dry your teaspoon in between scooping so that you don’t end up with any excess water. Your truffles are good to eat straight away, but you can place them in the fridge, where they’ll keep ever so happily for up to one month.
Get Baked 15 North Lane, Headingley, Leeds LS6 3HG.