Saturday 27 July 2013

UK BIZDEV Flora baking and picnic shop #cbias

I am a member of the Collective Bias®  Social Fabric® Community.  This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client.

When I was asked to do this I was over the moon, the grandchildren love to bake. As far as I am concerned one of the best inventions to the baking market in a long time is Flora cuisine, so easy to use with children, no need to cream, and more to the point Bob friendly, doing this sort of thing sums up my blog nicely, having fun as a gran and building memories with the grandchildren. Not that I need posts like this to do it, we bake regularly. 

I phoned my daughter when I saw the email and asked could I pick up the children and take them shopping, and as they were actually in Sainsbury's at the time I decided my shop would be done there. 

We sat in the canteen and discussed what we were going to make. We have a few restrictions when baking, all Bobs stuff has to be dairy, egg, wheat, gluten and nut free. Any more normal baking I do now I do diabetic friendly as OH is diabetic.



Bob checking the ingredients list to see if it safe. 

So Bob decided he was going to make cakes and have some with butter icing on and as he likes using ready rolled icing then he would decorate some with that as well. 

Fifi decided she would make cakes, use butter icing on some, squirty cream on some and rolling icing on others. We also decided we would do some crispy cakes as well. 

Bobs cakes

4 oz Flora Cuisine
4 oz sugar
2 bananas mashed
8 oz gluten free self raising flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoon rice milk



Bob weighing out his Flora cuisine.


Weigh all ingredients into a bowl and mix. Place in cake cases. cook for approx 15 mins at 160 oC


putting his mix in the cases








Fifis cakes

6 oz low fat Flora margarine
4 oz fruisana sugar (only require 2/3rds of normal amount)
3 eggs
10 oz self raising flour
2 oz wheatgerm

Fifi with the hand held mixer

Cream margarine and sugar.
add eggs and mix
stir in half of flour and wheatgerm, then stir in other half.

Place in cake cases and cook for 15 mins at 150 oC ( fruisana sugar cooks at a lower temp than normal sugar)



Clusters

150g dark cooking chocolate
75 g low fat Flora margarine
5 tablespoons agave syrup
300 g honey and nut clusters

Melt first 3 ingredients carefully over a low heat.
Once melted stir in the clusters, adding more in needed.
Place in cake cases and refrigerate until cool.


putting the clusters into cases


The butter icing I made was a compromise, we used a dairy free tub margarine and fruisana sugar and some icing sugar, this keeps it safe for Bob but also friendly for the diabetic.

Cream 5oz margarine.
Add 1 teaspoon lemon extract
Mix together 5 oz fruisana ( equals 7.5 oz normal icing sugar) and 2.5 oz icing sugar.  Beat into margarine.

We used butter icing on both sets of cakes. The children also rolled out ready made icing, cut circles to cover the top of the  and cut out letters to make their blog names.

Bob spreading his butter icing


Bob did his cooking first so there was no risk of cross contamination. He then amused granddad in the garden making arrows and seeing who could throw nearest the target they put out.

keeping granddad amused while the cakes cool. 


We all had a great time, can work on Fifi's mental maths while cooking, getting her working out quantities.

Bob with his name cakes

and Fifi with hers.


I made a google+ album as well if you want to pop over and see more of the fun, it is here 

12 comments:

  1. wow you do have a lot of requirements to deal with when you do your baking - I bet it's second nature now though. Looks like they enjoyed themselves!

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    Replies
    1. it is second nature, but we still read labels on everything we buy in case they have changed the recipe for the product.

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  2. Lots to think about when baking in your house! I love that you get FiFi doing her mental maths to make it fun and educational. The buns look good too - result! :)

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    1. yes we use mental maths for "you need twice as much flour as marge", or you need an egg for every 2 oz of marge, how many eggs do we need.

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  3. Blimey, what a lot of requirements you have to manage! Great to hear about Flora Cuisine though - I hadn't realised it was dairy free so that would be a great addition to the cupboard for my cake loving vegan daughter! Do you just substitute like for like where recipes call for butter?

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    Replies
    1. certainly in cakes it just 4 oz for 4oz butter/marge. does not work for butter icing and biscuits do not come out looking or tasting like biscuits.

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  4. I am quite a fan of those baking liquids, I call them "accidentally" vegan products. Such a pain when they change the formulation however!

    Never thought about baking being good for maths - but of course it is!

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    Replies
    1. neither does the granddaughter, hidden learning is the best

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  5. They must be learning loads about recipe substitutions, with all those requirements to fit in. Looks like you all had a lot of fun :)

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  6. It was through something like this that I got onto the Flora Cuisine stuff. It's excellent, I use it all the time.
    This looks like you all had such a lot of fun.

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  7. oooh I never thought of using Flora Cusine for baking, it would work brilliantly for my brother who has loads of allergies

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  8. Looks like you had lots of fun :)

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