NOW CLOSED Talk to Stork about your favourite things to bake, and discuss 'Bake Brave' for World Baking Day 2013. £100 Baking hamper to be won

[KatieBMumsnet]

World Baking Day is on Sunday 19th of May and to coincide with this Stork would love to hear what you think of this year's theme "Bake Brave".

Stork say: "World Baking Day is a global event sponsored by Stork and the theme for 2013 is to 'Bake Brave'. From novice to master baker, food blogger to food celebrity, World Baking Day has been introduced to inspire people to step out of their baking comfort zone and master a cake they've never baked before."

For this year's theme, 100 recipes of varying difficulty have been developed and can be found here

Please take a look at the recipes and come back to this thread to let us know what you think. Which recipe would you try to 'Bake Brave' with? Are there any that you've already mastered?

Please also share your favourite treats to bake as well as any top baking tips you may have for other MNers or for getting kids into baking.

Everyone who shares their thoughts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw, where one MNer will win a £100 Baking hamper filled with sweet treats and baking goodies.

Thanks and good luck,

MNHQ

[Glitterfairys]

Thank you Sarah

[SarahAndFuck]

Well done Glitterfairys

[Glitterfairys]

Thank you Katie , I've replied to your pm . I'm so pleased I won , I never win anything

[KatieBMumsnet]

Thank you for all your comments. The winner of the prize draw is...

Glitterfairys

Congratulations, I'll PM you to get your details.

[CMOTDibbler]

It was last night, but I made a 4 layer choc cake with raspberry and chocolate swiss meringue buttercream and 24 raspberry and white choc muffins.
Though a new recipe, the choc cake didn't require bravery but I did have a traumatic moment when the raspberry buttercream split when I added the raspberry coulis. But I beat it like buggery and it came good. And tasted amazing

[stealthsquiggle]

10yo DS baked a cake, a quiche, some mars bar krispie cake and a chocolate cream pie today 6yo DD made big chocolate cake and mini almond cakes yesterday, so I think we did baking day justice.

[Kbear]

I love to bake and have my old faithfuls - cherry and almond cake, apple and blueberry cake and banana bread, but today's bake was inspired by someone in my office going to Sicily on holiday and bringing back Pasta di Mandorla - amazing almond cookies.... I am addicted to almond and I thought I'd give them a go. They are just out of the oven ....

[prakattack]

I bake with my 3 yr old a lot - it turned into our one-on-one time after his little brother was born and we'd bake when baby brother slept in the afternoons.
We're never massively adventurous though and tend to stick to cakes, flapjacks, scones etc.
He loves it and it's really good to encourage him to start reading/ counting/ measuring etc.
Looking at the website, all the cakes look amazing! I think I'd rate myself about halfway up the ladder and I would try the Chocolate Cake with Greek Yoghurt (number 54) - looks gorgeous!

[Nehru]

last night my 10 yo son made chocolate and pecan tart on a sweet pastry

for today he made hot chocolatse souffle

its fecking ace. He can also make lemon tarte, bakewell tart, choux pastry, sausage rolls

amazing

[StainlessSteelCat]

had a like at the site but on my mobile so it didn't work so well. did see a chocolate Brownie meringue cake, but am not sure how difficult it is, will look on PC later.

I bake loads at home, I like adapting recipes that I'm familiar with. I tend not to attempt anything complex at the moment as the youngest demands attention and the food suffers (he's only one, will be going back to interesting recipes when I can! )

I do a lot of bread and cake baking and try to get the kids involved. they like kneading and licking out the bowl best

[ParkerTheThief]

Lovely recipes. I might try the banana and honey one.

My favourite cake is a cherry and almond loaf.
I weigh the eggs and use the same amount of butter/stork.
I use 25% less weight of sr flour and sugar and add ground almonds and grated marzipan (plus cherries)
My top tip for baking is to have everything at room temperature, not straight from the fridge

[peartsue]

Would love to master the Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes 18/100. Daughters 8th birthday soon they would be perfect! We do bake together quite often, son doing cookery at school for the first time at moment and he loves it! My baking tip would be always use right sized tin for cakes and just enjoy :)

[Madratlady]

I'm a fairly confident baker. My husband loves banana cake so that's what I make most. I'm learning to make my own bread at the moment, after several disasters I think I've found a recipe that's just right.

I really want to try the Greek salad cake on the Stork website, it looks a bit different and really tasty!

[ParadiseChick]

Oh I love baking. My gran was an amazing baker, always had tons full of delights. Some of my happiest childhood memories come from the afternoons spent in her kitchen with our 'pinnys' on, baking away. Gingerbread, truffles, tea loaf, butterfly buns, fruit scones, shortbread and dairy cakes. Learning the method, creaming sifting, folding, causing, rolling and measuring carefully.

She died before my wedding, being the youngest I was the only one she didn't get to do a wedding cake for, yet I was the one that baked with her.

I have her tins now. Old tins that I keep full. I have her baking tins too that I use for my gingerbread and fairy cakes, her flan dish and jeely pans. She's the voice in my head when I bake. 'Hair back, pinny on, hands washed' she says to me. She's the reason I fill the sink with hot soapy water ('Wash as you go') before I start and why I crack my eggs into a mug before adding them to the mix (in case there's a bad one she said, I've never had a bad one yet!).

My brave bake would be the wedding cake she never got to do for me.

[headlesshorseman]

So I have just made Miranda's Chocolate brownie meringue cake, I bake loads so it was fairly easy, and it looks scrumptious! Taking it to work tomorrow so we shall see how it tastes

I find the best way to enable children to learn to cook is to accept that they are going to make a mess . Mine have always been in the kitchen with me whilst I baked, from helping to stir when they were toddlers to weighing ingredients.
These things take practice, so letting them loose with age appropriate tasks will be messy but is the best way to learn.

We bake every sunday for the week ahead, a big cake that wont last the day, some small traybakes like flapjack or rock buns for pack lunches, and some biscuits for snacks.

[melliebobs]

I enjoy making banana loaf cake. Well I say I enjoy it's just what I make most often. Dh has a habit of buying too many bananas on a Sunday m come the following weekend they are past it he doesn't want them do banana loaf is suggested. If he likes it he should just say! I'd make it if he wanted it my tip is a damp tea towel around the cake tin in the oven n you get even risen cakes

[DontMeanToBeRudeBut]

The honey banana cakes look really nice and I might well have a go! Most of the things on my level looked scrumptious.

DS is 3 and loves baking with me and his grandma. His favourite bake is gingerbread men with Smartie buttons but he also likes making fairy cakes, biscuits and birthday cake. My general rule for baking with him is to relax and not worry about the perfection of the end result. We have had lots of gingerbread men with no buttons :o

[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes]

Just come back to this after posting earlier in the week to choose a recipe and get the ingredients bought, but I have to say I REALLY don't like the website at all. The photos are nice but I hate the way that they are all crowded onto one page with no space between them, in order to find the name you hover and lose the picture and get an ugly coloured box, The photos drifting about as you move the mouse makes me feel giddy. I would also rather the second level of pictures weren't all in one great long scrolling page but each link on the front page just went straight to the recipe page. The little messages are a bit twee too.

[BlueSkySoftSand]

Ooooh I always use Stork for my baking -think it's because my Nanna did too and she baked the most amazing cakes for our birthdays. My easiest and definitely the cake I get most "my goodness that's gorgeous" comments on is my blueberry cake. Starting to encourage my boys to bake more with me, but find I have more success if I get everything ready in advance.

Love the sound of World Bake Day and recipes look great.

[PolkaDotCups]

I'm impressed with the website. Lovely responsive design with fab photography (my work involves this kind of thing and I'm hard to impress).

I love to bake, my current favourite is a chocolate brownie cake. Even easier than making a tray and a nice thin slice is very gooey, moreish and can be dressed up with a scoop of ice cream and scattered fruit for dessert.

I'll explore the baking site at a more reasonable hour and definitely pick one to try.

[lottietiger]

i love baking bread & cakes and always like to make sure i have a fresh cake in the house. To "bake brave" it would have to be biscuits as they always turn out disasterous :(.
I always use a reuseable liner on all my cake tins, such a lifesaver, it stops anything sticking and can be used again & again.
The website is great, i love the idea that you can test yourself by doing a more difficult recipe each time.

[BlueEyeshadow]

There are some lovely looking recipes on there, but I'm really not one for fancy baking without a very good reason! I like nice simple things that taste amazing without many ingredients or complicated techniques. My favourites are shortbread, 4:4:2 fairy cakes, tea loaf and lemon drizzle cake.

DS1 has a recipe book with really clear, life-size pictures of every step which he really likes. We do fairy cakes and scones from that and they work every time. He likes to read the recipe and talk about other things we could make too. DS2 isn't so much into baking because he doesn't like getting his hands mucky. Hopefully will come with time!

[HannahLI]

So many I would love to try including the chocolate dragon. I think the most that I have mastered is chocolate chip cookies. We love to bake and my top tip for baking with really little children is to keep it simple relax and expect mess, leave yourself plenty of time and enjoy it!

[arcticwaffle]

I bake a fair amount but don't get really excited about it, but my dc all bake regularly and they are getting quite adventurous.

I'd go for ricotta cheesecake or poppy and honey cake, but the dc would go for ceci n'est pas un gateau, for the name, they've been baking French cakes for a project lately. They'd choose something like cream cheese brownies too.

My dc have a book, the Dodo recipe book, where you paste in favourite recipes. They love this. It did have categories "meat", "fish", "Puddings" etc, but they don't eat meat or fish so they changed these first two labels to "icing" and "sweets" So they have a whole category just for icing.