Kirstie’s Handmade Britain – Guess What Mixer She Uses And Where To Find Kirstie’s Recipes

Kirstie's Handmade Britain

Queen of Channel 4 t.v. Kirstie Allsop kicked off her new series tonight: “Kirstie’s Handmade Britain”. The series is all about passion for the crafts, and through the series, Kirstie will be taking up a number of challenges as a way of highlighting particular crafts (from mosaic-making to felt-making to embroidery to flower arranging to willow-weaving) and hopefully encouraging people to become more involved in learning about and taking part in crafts on their doorstep. It’s a little like the Great British Bake Off, except Kirstie is the only contestant in every episode!

And continuing the similarity, in the opening episode, she headed off to the Devon County Show to do some baking and enter the local Afternoon Tea competition. This is a tough one. Any of you who have visited or taken part in such shows understand that it is serious stuff and intense. The standard is high (and my favourite bit at country shows is the auction at the end where you can bid for the prize-winners – combinations such as best floral display coupled with third-place carrot – designed so that everything goes).

As you would expect from knowing the format of GGBO, Kirstie gets some expert help to bring her rapidly up from interested home baker to a level where she can compete meaningfully with the dedicated of Devon. This style of rapid learning is a staple of popular entertainment – some of us are old enough to remember The Generation Game, or even multiple Bond films where our hero quickly assimilates the vast body of knowledge he needs in order to convince as a marine biologist or a maths lecturer. More recently, in the Matrix, Neo learns various fighting skills (“I know ju-jitsu!”) with bursts from his Sony Walkman. We all love the idea of our heroes transforming into supermen.

For Kirstie tonight that meant perfecting her scones and homemade jam together with an exotic choice of afternoon tea patisserie: kumquat éclairs with Chantilly cream filling.

Her experts tonight were Richard Hunt (expert scone maker) with tips on making that scone crumble-free and Loretta Liu on éclairs. Loretta is the real deal, having worked in kitchens for both Gordon Ramsey and Raymond Blanc. If that wasn’t enough, Kirstie calls in a favour from friend Victoria Cranfield to help her with the cake’s damson jam (or “preserve” as we must refer to it when it’s made by an award-winning expert).

Using such experts is a little like pumping your marrow with water – a bit unfair on the self-taught ladies and gents of Devon. But hey, we are all in on the game and with the wonders of Sky+ we can replay until we ourselves have assimilated the expert tips (“I know kumquat jam!”).

Indeed, Kirstie finds the challenge so straightforward that enters an additional event (the single cake competition) and creates a Caribbean fruit cake. Annoyingly and pleasingly (she does me both ways), Kirstie does rather well. Somehow, our titled hero does Everyman rather well and I was a little bit chuffed for her.

I like to think she did so well because she uses a fetching white Ice Blue KitchenAid Artisan Mixer. There, I said it. (Thank you Deborah for the correction)

Kirstie's handmade Britain - with Ice Blue KitchenAid Artisan mixer

Kirstie's Handmade Britain - close up of raised Ice Blue KitchenAid Artisan mixer

[pictures courtesy of Channel 4]

If you are in the UK, you can watch the first episode on 4OD here.

*As an extra bonus, if you want any of the scrummy recipes from Kirstie’s Handmade Britain, here they are!

• Kirstie’s scones recipe (expert: Richard Hunt)
• Kirstie’s Éclairs recipe (expert: Loretta Liu)
• Kirstie’s Caribbean fruit cake recipe (expert: Rosie Davies)
• Chocolate banoffee tartlets recipe (by Jenny Lidster)
• Chocolate tarts recipe (by Gary Nickells)
• Strawberry and white chocolate cupcakes recipe (by Jenny Lidster)
• Kirstie’s damson jam recipe (expert: Victoria Cranfield)

Don’t say I’m not good to you. For extra tips, bring your laptop into the kitchen so you can replay the parts where Kirstie gets the expert advice…

Relevant tags:

• channel4 com/kirstie
• kirsties handmade britain
• kirsty scones
• www channel4 com/kirstie
• channel4 com/kirsty
• kirsty allsop scones