Mary-Anne Boermans - Great British Bakes: Forgotten treasures for modern bakers

CONTENTS

Food writer and baker extraordinaire Mary-Anne Boermans has delved into the UKs glorious baking history to rediscover the long-forgotten recipes of our past. These are simple recipes that fill you with confidence, honed and perfected over centuries and lovingly adapted for use in 21st-century kitchens.

Here you will find such tempting delights as Welsh Honey Cake, Butter Buns, Pearl Biscuits and Chocolate Meringue Pie. They are triple-tested recipes that do not rely on processed, pre-packaged ingredients and they are all delicious. And Mary-Anne reveals the stories behind the bakes, with tales of escaped princes, hungry politicians and royal visits to Britains historic bakeries.

This very special collection sits confidently among the best of British cookery writing, with recipes that have stood the test of time and that will both surprise and delight for years to come.

MARY-ANNE BOERMANS was a finalist in the 2011 series of The Great British Bake Off and is now a successful food blogger. Mary-Anne has been cooking and baking for more than 40 years. She is passionate about home cooking and has amassed a library of over 900 cookery books, with an emphasis on traditional, British recipes. She lives in Worcestershire with her husband and daughter. This is her first book.

Mary-Anne Boermans remains one of the most original and exceptional bakers I have encountered during my time on The Great British Bake Off, and this impeccably researched and fabulously eclectic cookbook, years in the making, is her masterpiece.

Much of our current British culinary obsession appears to be focused on modernity; the latest thing, the shock of the newbe it molecular gastronomy, foraging, seasonality, or nose to tail eating. What Mary Annes book reminds us, is that there is no such thing as a new idea, and that all these fashionable culinary conceits are simply reworkings of those things our forebears considered to be basic, prudent home economics.

What excites me most, however, is the way that Mary Annes recipes bring British history to life through the prism of the palate. Thanks to her baking, Ive been transported from 17th century England to 18th century Wales, 19th century Scotland and beyond. Now its your turn.

For food historians, for seasoned bakers looking for pastures new (yet old) and for curious novices alikethis is YOUR chance to taste-bud time travel.

Enjoy.

Sue Perkins

I believe that being able to prepare food, whether for yourself or for others, is such a fundamental skill, it is as important as knowing how to swim. I also love a bargainwhatever the context (auction, car boot sale, supermarket)because getting a bargain means that Ive won! Its a great feeling, and you can win so often in the kitchen. Food you make yourself is cheaper, better tasting and better for you than anything made commercially. You can dodge all the additives and preservatives. Most of all, it is the simplest, easiest and quickest way to job satisfaction: an architect might wait a decade before seeing a project constructed, but give me a store-cupboard and a hot oven and I can have a batch of amazing scones baked in just over 20 minutes. It can make you feel proud when others enjoy your food but you can also feel excited just looking at a batch of baking and thinking I made that!. I also love the sheer alchemy of baking: mix basic ingredients this way and get cake, vary them slightly and get pastry. Magic.

I have always had an interest in cooking because I was surrounded by it as a child. In those days, which are only as far back as the 1970s, meals werent bought from a shop; they were lovingly created from scratch at home. In our pantry, the tins for homemade biscuits and cakes were never empty. I dont remember seeing either my mother or my grandmother use a recipe book. The need for self-reliance imposed during the Second World War had, for them, become habit, and now everything was carried in their heads and adapted to the ingredients available. I am lucky enough, and old enough, to have had cookery lessons in school, during which I learned how to make pastry, cakes and the basics of meal-making. Later, when I travelled the world and then lived and worked overseas in Kuwait, Singapore and Australia, I was always interested in the local foods and eager to try making the dishes for myself.

When I started a family, I was keen for my daughter to eat traditional, home-made food, unadulterated with artificial additives and preservatives, and so I turned to the recipes of the past, when preservatives, colouring and flavourings werent so much a part of daily food. I began picking up old cookery books in charity and second-hand bookshops, others I found on online auction sites. My collection steadily grew and is rapidly heading towards a thousand publications, but with it I discovered a whole variety of baking and cooking ideas that, over the years, had somehow fallen by the culinary wayside: books devoted solely to cakes and biscuits; hundreds of local and regional specialities now long forgotten; traditional pie and tart recipes based on local, fresh ingredients and home-made breads. Then I discovered whole books online, either painstakingly transcribed by hand, or digitally reproduced through scanned images of their pages. The Wellcome Institute Library has made available online its archive of 17th-century manuscript books, containing almost ten thousand handwritten recipes; these have proved an absolute goldmine of fascinating recipes and household tips.

In 2011 I entered the BBCs Great British Bake Off and was successful enough to reach the final of the competition. In developing recipes for the weekly challenges, I was able to draw on the many resources I had collected and was surprised and delighted by the sheer number of unusual, quirky and tasty baking recipes I found. This book represents the merest tip of a gigantic baking iceberg or treasure trove to be found in the recipes of the past.

The more I read and experiment, the more I learn from these old, but not forgotten, recipe collections. My approach to each recipe has developed something of a pattern. Out of respect to the original author, I initially bake each recipe, to the best of my ability, exactly as it was written, however many centuries ago that was. Depending on the result, I then tweak it, or not, as required. When Im happy with the taste, I take a photograph of it. Each recipe in this book has been baked by myself at least three times, and some of them many more times, until they are perfect.

My aim with this book is to highlight and, hopefully revive, the range and surprising sophistication of our baking ancestors. No need for expensive ingredients either: the simplest of cupboard contents can be drawn on to create delicious bakes dating back over 400 years. I also learned a great deal from the recipe writers, many of them anonymous and unknown, including how to test a brick oven is at the right temperature, the size of a Restoration spoonful (25ml) and how to hot ice a fruit cake.

I hope you enjoy discovering these recipes and their stories and also that you find delight in the traditional baking of the British Isles.

Everyone likes something new and exciting, and Im no exception. When it comes to food, however, for me, old is the new new. Im both intrigued and enchanted by the long-forgotten recipes of our past and have long wondered why they have fallen by the culinary wayside.