Karen R Savage

Professional Voice Talent, Amateur Actor and Knitter

Tag: baking

Treacle Tart Gone

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On Sunday, 15 March, 2026

In food

Reporting back on last night’s pie post. This is what I came home with,

so I think we can safely call this one a success. None of us in the group had ever had treacle tart before (though I grew up with a number of traditionally British foods, my mother was not a baker, so this was not one of them) and weren’t sure what to expect. The consensus was that it’s like the love child of a ginger snap and bread pudding.

I might make it again, but I will absolutely not do all the work for it that I did this time. I think it’ll taste just as good with powdered ginger* (and maybe a bit of candied ginger minced up), both of which I can get at the grocery store. And depending on my mood that day, I may or may not use a store-bought crust.

*the recipe I linked in the previous post does call for powdered ginger in the filling, and the stem ginger sliced and placed on top as a decoration, but I was also looking at a different recipe that called for a ball of the stem ginger minced in the filling, so that’s what I went with, and didn’t use any for the decoration, because it didn’t come out soft at all – I skipped the freezing step due to lack of time, and I think that might have been load-bearing.

Treacle Tart

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On Saturday, 14 March, 2026

In food

New year’s resolution recipe for March is treacle tart. One of my friend groups is having a Pi-Ides of March party tonight, and when I wondered in the group chat whether I should bring a tried and true pie recipe or try something new, the votes fell on something new.

This is actually a three-fer of new recipes, because I’d never made sweet shortcrust pastry before either, and I also made homemade stem ginger to use in the pie (way, WAY more than I needed for this – truly, I should have halved or quartered the recipe, I don’t use ginger all that often)

Stem ginger recipe

Treacle tart recipe

Sweet shortcrust pastry

Sausage Rolls

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On Saturday, 7 February, 2026

In food

It was a friend’s birthday party last night, and they did a pot luck with the theme of bread, so I decided to make sausage rolls. 

I’ve never made sausage rolls before, so I started with a bread recipe I’ve used before and liked (this potato bun recipe), cut down to a quarter of the original recipe (because the original is HUGE), and then during the shaping step, added a lil smokie sausage, pinched it shut and then finished shaping them.

It worked pretty well, but the ratio of bread to sausage is off. You can just about see one of the sausages in the rear roll and see how much bread there is above it. Next time, instead of cutting the dough into twelve pieces (which works fine when I’m just making plain rolls), I think I’ll do 18… or maybe 24. 

Even though I’ve used this bread recipe before, the whole sausage roll thing was new to me, so I’m going to count this towards my New Year’s resolution. I may yet try another fully new recipe at some point this month, but this will do for now.

I also forgot to take a pic of the rolls before I took them to the party, so what you get is the last three just after I’d warmed them up to eat for breakfast lol

Empanadas

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On Friday, 30 August, 2019

In food

This is my second attempt at empanadas. The first time I made my own dough and it was kind of a pain, and they were too thick and doughy. This time, I found empanada dough discs in the freezer section of the supermarket, so it was a lot easier.

Recipe is this one. I added some diced red potato to the meat mixture and… well, let’s just say, I have a lot more than the three dozen the recipe says it makes. I had bought four packets of dough (a dozen rounds in each packet) and I still have meat left over.

So, I only baked up this first dozen and the rest have gone in the freezer for future use.

Bread Pudding

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On Sunday, 14 October, 2018

In food

I had some stale doughnuts so I turned them into bread pudding. And when I checked the pantry I found I didn’t have any dried fruit, so I added some mincemeat (because that I had, for some reason)

Lemon Cake

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On Sunday, 23 September, 2018

In food

Was reading a post about doctoring cake mixes to make them yummier, and that made me want cake, so…

Lemon cake! (most of which I will take to work with me tomorrow)

Drop Biscuits

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On Monday, 25 July, 2016

In food

I tried my hand at an 18th Century cookie recipe today, and it turned out great!

The recipe is from Eliza Smith’s The Complete Housewife (that links directly to the recipe’s page – folks outside the US may not be able to access it). I first came across it in this video.

This is a very simple egg-leavened cookie. You start by combining the eggs and sugar and then gradually add the flour, then beat the batter to the ribbon stage (and it’s definitely more the consistency of cake batter than of cookie dough). Despite what the guy in the video says, this will not take an hour in a stand mixer. I let mine run for about ten minutes on medium to get it to the right consistency, and I probably could have stopped a minute or two before that. Even with a hand-held electric mixer it won’t take an hour.

Since it was going to be mixed so vigorously, I used cake flour instead of AP, and I added a little bit of almond extract, just for fun (I’m going for yumminess, not historical accuracy).

The recipe recommends doing a double-bake, in order to drive out the moisture and get a super crispy cookie, so after baking them at 400 F for about 4.5 minutes (the video suggested 5 – 6, but my oven runs hot), I let them cool completely while the oven cooled to 250 F, and then popped them in again for 10 minutes. The first bake goes really quickly, so you have to keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t brown.

They are great! They’re super crispy, but not hard, and they just melt in your mouth. I made little cookie sandwiches out of the ones I taste-tested, with some dulce de leche. Yum!

UPDATE: It occurred to me that these had a similar structure to lady fingers, so I decided to try them in a trifle. As far as texture goes, they’re spot on, but they are a little bland. I think next time I might add a pinch of salt to the batter just to give it a bit more depth, and maybe a little bit of lemon extract instead of the almond.

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