Live webchat and baking session with Dan Lepard, Fri 8 Jan, 12-2pm

[GeraldineMumsnet]

We've got a Mumsnet first this Friday - award-winning baker and food writer Dan Lepard is our guest for a bake day and live webchat. Should be just the thing to counter wintry gloom and warm up your kitchen.

Dan's involved with the World Marmalade Festival, which promotes all thing marmalade-y and supports the charity Hospice at Home. So he has chosen Ponymum's muffin recipe and given it a citrus-y twist. Full details, ingredients, plus all Dan's variations on the recipe are here.

Please choose the version that tickles your tastebuds and join us to bake along with Dan on Friday. He'll be online from noon.

While your (and our) culinary creations are cooking, Dan will answer questions and swap tips about baking, bread making, marmalade making and the like.

Once your muffins/pudding/traybake are out of the oven, please share a picture of the finished result on your profile. We'll put up pix of our efforts here.

And, of course, if you can't make it on Friday but have a question you'd like to ask Dan, please post here.

[Ponymum]

starlight Please put us out of our misery and just look here. Are you having trouble because you keep typing "muffing tin" into google?

[DanLepard]

test (by MNHQ)

[OverflowingFestiveMum]

ooo fab idea!

I will hopefully be joining in....
may be slightly late start due to nursery drop off (or not depending on snow LOL) but I'll catch up....

off to check ingredients and dream up marmaladey muffin ideas....

[mark12]

Hi have you considered using marmalade and chopped whole orange in a Tea loaf style,instead of using mixed fruits use chopped orange and the sweetness comes from marmalade and a little honey use your favorite recipe and then substitute as above

[Jux]

I was going to join you tomorrow, but my gas pressure is so low at the moment that it took 3 hours to cook a small bread and butter pudding this afternoon. I can only cook on the hob

[Guimauve]

Oh bum. Was going to do this but have accidentally used all my carrots. Do you suppose two courgettes and a parsnip will do?

[susanzs]

Hello Dan, I have never participated in a webchat before. I would be very grateful for a soft GLUTEN FREE yeasty challah recipe (plaited loaf)and also where to get a plaited style loaf tin like the one that Kaiser la Forme used to make (but stopped producing before I could get one) to look like a plaited loaf when making gluten free dough but being too busy to take the time to plait the bread oneself.

Thanks

[dundeemarmalade]

Okay, so this is a massively cheeky request but I actually have three questions. Can I just say that I am (I think) the only mumsnetter who actually has marmalade IN THEIR NAME .

i make so much and eat so much of it (dd's almost-first word was marmalala...) and - is it really that wrong to play the sympathy card - my dear step-mil has recently been diagnosed with the kind of condition that hospice at home know all about see here for details.

Firstly, please could you answer a question that has been causing controversy in my family for several generations - I thought that absolutely all pith needs to be removed, whereas my elders and betters say that chopping the fruit finely enough makes it okay. Who is right?

Secondly, I stupidly volunteered to edit our local nct newsletter. some bright spark did an issue about grief and bereavement last time so we'd like to bring a smile to our readers' faces this spring. if it isn't going to get you in trouble with guardian hq, would you, erm, gizza cheeryful recipe? pleeeeease?

also, as an afterthought, any chance of a sourdough bread solution? have had much success with nigella's fresh yeast recipe from how to eat, but would love to combine this with sourdough preparation.

with heartiest best wishes from all at marmalade towers,
dr dundeemarmalade

[westmilf]

Hey if Delia disappoints try AWT he really gives her a run-despite her being my failsafe for too many years!!!!!!!!!

[henmum]

For those who don't know, Dan is a great baking expert because he tries things out and explains how and why they work, in detail, rather than just issuing recipes. (eg the famous 'hardly any kneading' bread)

Dan, my question is about sourdough and pumpernickel - sort of 2 questions but linked as I believe rye/pumpernickel is made by the sourdough method

I would like to make the sort of German heavy sticky wholegrain rye bread known here as pumpernickel - not Americal style pumpernicket which is light rye bread.
Do you have a recipe? I have only found recipes for the American style one online.

I have tried to make a sourdough starter but gave up after 2 weeks and masses of flour wasted, partly because it was too much trouble, also I wasn't quite sure what I was doing. Also I couldn't have kept it going. Is there a shortcut/easy method?

IKEA do a pumpernickel style bread mix which is fantastic - just add water and bake, for great results. (it's expensive though). I read somewhere that they have managed to dry and incorporate the sourdough starter in the mix. Does this hold out any hope for the home baker?

[BlauerEngel]

Hello Dan,

I live in Germany, where there is no self-raising flour. There are however a number of different kinds of plain flour with numbers on them (such as 540 and 404, IIRC), which are suitable for different kinds of baking, such as heavy bread or fine cakes. As an aside (not my main question), why is there this distinction when it doesn't seem necessary in the UK? Now for my main question. I've been told that I can 'recreate' self-raising flour by adding 25g of baking powder to 500g of plain flour. Most of my cookbooks are in English and some have recipes for cakes with self-raising flour PLUS baking powder. Why are both sometimes necessary? And am I doing OK by just adding two lots of baking powder instead? And where do bicarbonate of soda come into all this?

[OliviaMumsnet]

Hello

I am sure my DH would love me to be able to make sourdough, it's one of his fave things ever - but have never tried even basic breadmaking since our breadmaker some years hence (now on permanent loan to a mate as twas woefully underused) - Dan, please can you tell me how hard it is to get started?

((I'm also really just posting to mark my place. I have marmalade and hoping that I can get things vaguely ready when DS goes to sleep shortly so I can bake along. ))

[Leo35]

DS2 just eradicated my first typed message with a well aimed hand! Orange and raisin muffins for our house made and due out of the oven imminently (nap time not convenient for bake in ).

Geeky question: if I add orange syrup to top of muffins, thus orange drizzle muffins, will they survive freezing? If I do a batch and they really aren't going to get eaten while they are at their best I freeze the remains. If I were a stone lighter I would not be posting this question!

[OliviaMumsnet]

LOL at TeamEdward
Nothing like muffins with greatness thrust upon them!

Right, I have no cinnamon and cant go and get as DS sleepin'
Any thoughts to alternative? I have allspice??

[fishie]

hello dan

i make my own bread, usually with a white flour starter which i keep in the fridge and use about once a week.

i know that you advise rye flour for starters, but i find it needs to be used more often or else it becomes rather sharp. how would half white half rye do?

and where on earth can i get fresh yeast? all the books say "ask at your local bakery" but since mine is a hovis factory i don't think they'd take kindly to me appearing at the door with a bowl. i asked at borough market and they just blinked at me.

[OliviaMumsnet]

LOL at us TE!
??Go without? Think that's what I'm gonna do wrt to the cinnamon.
The marmalade will add a certain je ne sais quoi, won't it?

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Dan's here and we're live from Carrie's kitchen (the Towers only has a kettle). Just getting the oven warmed up and assembling ingredients.

We're going to try to twitpic some pix as we go along and will put them on this page and on our Facebook page later too.

Dan has got some answers to questions you've asked, so he'll post them in between baking.

He'll be online shortly to say hello.

[OliviaMumsnet]

Still assembling ingredients and a woman's prerogative is to change her mind so have gone with allspice.

(and yes, I know am jumping gun here we don't start until 12, but am snowed in at MN's country outpost today and making most of sleeping child)

[MmeLindt]

Not sure if this is going to work, starting now. DC 'helping'

[Guimauve]

Joining in in spirit, as I now have neither carrots nor eggs

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Dan's making carrie's (amazingly tidy ) kitchen his own