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Baking & Preserving

We stock a wide range of bakeware, baking accessories and preserving gear, with products to suit just about every type of cook and budget. With heavy-duty oven trays and Bake-o-Glide to frangipane moulds and cake tins in every size and finish imaginable, our bakeware section is an Aladdin's cave. And, if you're a jammer, marmalade-maker or fruit-preserver, we provide all the tools of the trade - throughout the year!

Featured Recipe: Italian Biscotti

Baking & Preserving Instruction:
Why not try this classic, long-lasting biscuit. The traditional accompaniment to espresso or cappuccino.

Ingredients:
450g butter
400g cups sugar
5 eggs
250ml milk
3 tsp. anise extract
900g unbleached white flour
6 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Method:
Cream the sugar and butter in a large bowl, then add the eggs and mix in. Add the milk and anise flavouring; mix well.
Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into ehat should be a creamy-textured mixture. Mix the a well-combined dough with a spoon or baking spatula.
Put enough dough on a lightly floured surface to roll gently into a log, approximately 1-foot long by 2-inches wide. The recipe should make about 7 or 8 of these logs. Place on non-stick baking sheets without greasing and flatten with palm of your hand. Bake 2 or 3 logs per sheet.

Bake at 180 Celsius/Gas Mark 4 until light brown, approximately 10 minutes. Remove from oven and gently cut into 1-inch slices on a diagonal. Put the slices on their sides on the baking sheets and return to the degree oven to toast until golden brown. Turn each biscotti over and brown evenly on both sides. Cool, and then store in airtight containers for up to 4 months.

This recipe makes around 60 biscotti.

Hints and Tips

If you’re relatively new to baking, the following advice will hopefully help:
  • When it comes to the size of tin required by a recipe, don't feel that you have to stick too rigidly to this - the different brands often vary by over a centimetre for a given size, anyway!
  • Bakeware made from anodised aluminium is more conductive than steel-based non-stick products. As a result, it cooks slightly quicker and produces a crisper finish on pastry.
  • If you need to change the size or weight of a finished product, it's safest to keep the proportions of the ingredients the same and simply scale up or down. Remember, however, that cooking times and temperatures will vary depending on the tin size used (depth and width).