It was all worth the WHISK

Inspired by the most recent series of The Great British Bake Off, I decided to try baking some delicious treats...for the first time ever!

My family has never really been into baking so I don't have too many memories of baking cupcakes or brownies when I was little so for me this was a whole new ball game. As a lover of Pinterest and someone who planned their entire wedding using Pinterest posts, my "I love food" board has been growing and growing however the only thing I've actually tried to make were "no bake Oreo balls" (these were delicious but as the title suggests, no baking was required).

First up was shortbread. I had heard that shortbread is quite difficult to make however it's mine and my husband's absolute favourite biscuit so I thought I would give it a go. I then decided to make my life a little bit harder by attempting to make mocha shortbread biscuits. Considering I had never made dough before, let alone a shortbread dough this was going to be a tough one. I used this recipe that I found on Pinterest and I was pleasantly surprised at how 'easy' it was. I had no idea if I was using the right tools, if my dough was the right consistency or if I had to separate the bars before cooking them or not. So most things went to plan (I think) up until when the method states to cut the dough into bars. I decided to just cut my dough roughly into pieces (instead of 48 perfectly identical bars like the recipe stated) and put them straight into the oven. I now released I should of separated these as when baking they all merged back into one giant shortbread. This wasn't a big deal though as I just cut them once they were done baking. My only other slight mistake was keeping them in for an extra 5 minutes, I originally put them in the oven for 20 minutes but thought they needed 5 more minutes (they didn't). The taste of the shortbread is spot on however they are a little bit drier than I would of like...oh well I know for next time don't I?

Next up it was time for my first cake. As this week is my last few days in my current job, I thought I would bring a cake in for my last day. As it’s autumn and my love for pumpkins has grown and grown since my time in America (due to them being obsessed with all things pumpkin) I decided to make a Pumpkin Cake! This post won't be as the shortbread one as everything went to plan (wahoooo). Here is the recipe I used (again from Pinterest) The only thing I would change next time is that I would double the recipe as I used a Bundt tin and the mix only filled it up a third of the way. The reason I used a Bundt tin was so that I could try and make my cake look like a pumpkin.

Unfortunately the top photo on the post is what I was trying to achieve, this is my attempt. I am happy with my first effort and I will definitely be doing this again to make it look like that top one! My mocha shortbread biscuits are in the background also :)