Three different types of canape

I can't believe that The Great British Bake Off has nearly come to an end! I've had such a lot of fun challenging myself to make something new each week, and it has all gone so quickly!

This week for the signature challenge the bakers had to make three different types of savoury canapé, using choux pastry, another type of pastry and a third which could be anything of their choice. I'm afraid that I've bent the rules a little this week, and my third canapé is actually a sweet canapé, as sweet things tend to go down better in this house! I could perhaps have completed them all in the allocated two and a half hours, but chances of finding all that time to myself are very slim, so they were all made individually.

I started with choux pastry canapés. I've never made choux pastry before, and I chickened out a couple of weeks ago when it came up on the programme, so this week I knew I had to give it a go. I used this recipe - Choux Buns Recipe - savoury canapés with a cream cheese filling. To my complete surprise they actually worked well, looked pretty much as they were supposed to, and were very tasty!

The second savoury canapé recipe was from a recipe shared by my sister on her blog - Cheese Straws. I'm hoping that these count as shortcrust pasty canapés. They are pretty easy to make, very tasty, and the recipe makes plenty. They are also a good recipe to make with children, as they can cut them out into all different shapes.

Finally, for my sweet canapés I made Mini Chocolate and Ginger Brownies, using a recipe from BBC Good Food - Mini Chocolate and Ginger Brownies. I've never used crystallised ginger in baking before, in fact I had to ask a lady to help me find it on the shelf in the supermarket. The chocolate brownie bites were pretty easy to make, although they took a lot longer to cook than the recipe suggested, I often find that with brownie mixtures for some reason. The resulting brownie had a nice firm texture which was easy to cut up into the little squares, although they did turn out to be a little taller than the picture suggested, more like mini brownie towers.

And here's a picture of them all together, just to prove that I did at least bake them not too far apart!

I'm linking this post up to the Great Bloggers Bake Off, which is hosted each week by The Crazy Kitchen and Mummy Mishaps.