COOKBOOKS GALORE

Orange and cinnamon thins

2012-02-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

My younger daughter is coming today, so I thought I'd make her some biscuits with her favourite flavour, orange. I love cinnamon, so this seemed the perfect one to try.
The recipe comes from a free booklet in a 'Woman's Weekly' magazine a few years back, but I've changed it slightly to give the thins a more orange flavour.

Makes about 30 thins

225g butter
140g caster sugar
grated zest of an orange
1 egg yolk
4 tspns orange juice
280g plain flour
2 tspn cinnamon
pinch salt

Put the butter, sugar and orange rind in a bowl and beat till creamy. Beat in the egg yolk and 2 tspns of the orange juice. Add the salt to the flour and then stir into the mixture till it's all nicely blended.
Make into a ball, wrap in film and chill for about an hour.
Take it out, unwrap and roll dough out between 2 sheets of baking parchment into a 30 cm square.
Take off top sheet and brush the dough with the rest of the orange juice and sprinkle over the cinnamon. Lightly roll it, then roll it up like a swiss roll.
Wrap in film and chill for 30 mins.

Preheat oven 190C/gas 5 and line 2 baking trays with baking parchment.

Unwrap the dough and cut into thin slices with a sharp knife.
Space put well on the baking trays and bake for 10-12 mins.
Cool on the trays for 5 mins or so, then put onto a wire rack using a palette knife.

So you can see that I didn't manage to roll them up like a swiss roll! The dough was very hard to handle, even with baking parchment, and when I rolled it up, it stayed rather flat. I'd left it in the fridge for 30 mins, maybe I should have left it longer.You can just about see a swiss roll-ish shape in the biscuit on the left. They taste very good.
I added a tspn of orange extract to the dough instead of 1 of the 2 tspns of orange juice, and I used a large orange, giving more zest.This gave the thins a good orange flavour.
Would I make them again - I don't think so.

Lime fingers

2012-02-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Limes were on offer today in the supermarket, so I decided to try this recipe which comes from one of my cookery books I bought in France called 'Patisserie'. I had no difficulty finding 'fromage blanc'. Another recipe using oil instead of butter.

200g plain flour
4 tspns baking powder
100g fromage blanc
1 tbspn milk
4 tbspns oil - I used rapeseed
60g demerara sugar
7.5g vanilla sugar [or 1 sachet - I found mine in Lidl]
50g icing sugar
2 tspns lime juice and the zest of 1 lime

Preheat oven to 180C/ gas 4
Grease and line a cake tin 30 x 20 cm.

Mix the flour and the baking powder together in a bowl.
In another bowl mix the fromage blanc, milk, oil and sugar together to get a creamy mixture.
Add the flour to this a bit at a time.
Spread the mixture into the tin and bake for about 15 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.
Mix the lime juice and icing sugar and spread over the cooled cake and cut into 16 pieces. Decorate each piece with a little lime zest.

The icing gave the cake a nice lime flavour, but I think if I did it again, I'd add some lime zest to the cake mixture to enhance this flavour - give it a lime kick. The fromage blanc makes it moist. A nice every day cake.

Thumb biscuits

2012-02-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Apparently today is National Nutella day. I love any combination of chocolate and hazelnuts, so I decided to make a really easy biscuit that I've made many times for my children and grandchildren. Don't know where the original recipe came from - it's in my handwritten notebook. I've made them with jam and with lemon curd, as well as with Nutella.

It makes about 18 biscuits.

175g butter
175g caster sugar
1 egg
175g plain flour
125g plain flour
Nutella

Line a baking sheet with some parchment paper.
Preheat oven 180C/gas 4

Beat the butter and sugar together using a mixer till nice and fluffy.
Beat in the egg then add the flours, a bit at a time.
Leave the dough for about an hour to rest.
Take out tbspns of the mixture, roll into a ball then flatten on the baking sheet. Press your thumb in the top to make a hole. Fill the hole with Nutella.
Make sure you space the biscuits out on the baking sheet, because they spread.
Bake for about 12 mins.
Cool on a wire rack.

I can think of a few variations I must try - adding cocoa to make chocolate thumbs, or coffee essence, lemon juice etc. It's a good basic biscuit recipe.

Chocolate and cinnamon muffins

2012-02-04T06:46:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that everyone has their own tried and tested muffin recipe. I like recipes which use oil instead of butter.
I found this one in a French food magazine and it looked interesting, having yoghurt and coffee as two of the ingredients.
Muffins are quick and easy to make, and these are no exception.

For 12 muffins:

250g plain flour
2 tspns cinnamon
21/2 tspns baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
130g caster sugar
1 egg
80ml oil - I used rapeseed
250g yoghurt
75ml cold strong coffee
12 squares of dark chocolate
Chocolate coated coffee beans to decorate

Preheat oven 180C/gas 4

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin, or use muffin cases.
In a bowl, mix together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, bicarb.and sugar.
In another bowl beat the egg and add the oil, yoghurt and coffee. Mix these together.
Fold in the flour mixture carefully - don't overmix, a few lumps are fine.
Put the muffin cases, if using, into the muffin tin.
Fill the cases half full with batter, then put a square of chocolate on the batter and fill the cases up with the remainder.
Bake in the middle of the oven for about 25 mins.
Cool on a wire rack.
Decorate the muffins with a chocolate bean before serving.

I love the melted chocolate in the centre of these muffins. The texture is quite different from my usual recipe - coarser but still soft. The cinnamon and coffee add another layer to the flavour. I'll certainly make these again.

Banana and raisin teabread

2012-02-01T09:47:00.000-08:00

Yet another of our favourite teabreads. There were some very ripe bananas in the fruit bowl just asking to be used up. The recipe comes from 'Cakes, Breads and Gateaux', a book published in 1979 by 'Living' magazine - anyone remember it?
This one is made by the 'rubbing in' method, and is supposed to keep well, for up to a week, if wrapped in foil. The recipe says that it cuts into 12 slices - depends on your appetite!

175g sr flour
50g wholemeal flour
1/2 level tspn baking powder
1 tspn cinnamon
125g butter of margarine
75g demerara sugar
175g raisins
450g bananas, peeled and mashed
2 eggs, beaten
finely grated rind of a lemon

Preheat oven 180C/gas 4.
Grease and line a 900g loaf tin.

Sift the flours, baking powder and cinnamon into a bowl. Rub in the fat till the mixture is like breadcrumbs.
Mix in the rest of the ingredients - the sugar, bananas, eggs and lemon rind. Beat it together lightly then spoon into the tin.
Bake for 45-55 mins till it's firm to touch.
Turn the loaf out onto a wire rack.
The teabread is nice on its own, or served with butter.

The banana in the teabread keeps it nice and moist, and the raisins didn't all sink to the bottom. A good sign!

Low fat raisin and honey loaf

2012-01-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

This is a very easy loaf to make.

300g plain flour
11/2 tspn bicarb. of soda
1/2 tspn salt
300g [10 fl oz] plain yoghurt
2 egg whites
60g raisins
2 tbspn runny honey
butter or margarine to grease the tin

Grease a 900g loaf tin.
Preheat oven 425F/210C/gas 7

Mix the flour, bicarb. and salt in a bowl. Whisk the egg whites with the yoghurt and fold into the flour.Add the raisins and honey.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 20 mins.
Cool in the tin.

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This loaf has a nice light texture. I think it's better eaten warm.

Irish cream tartlets

2012-01-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

And now for something completely different....!
This is another recipe to use up a Christmas leftover, but this time it's a small bottle of Baileys that we were given in a hamper.
We were invited for a meal to a friend's house last weekend and she'd asked me to bring something sweet to have with coffee after the meal. An unusual request, so I hunted through my cookbooks and eventually came up with these little tartlets.
I made some sweet pastry, but shortcrust would do as well. I used 175g flour etc. and this made 12 tartlets.

You need 12 little moulds or barquettes - these are the ones I used. I bought them on a whim years ago and have never used them! I have 3 of each shape.

Line the greased moulds with the pastry and bake blind.

For the filling you need:

150g plain chocolate, melted
120ml milk
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp caster sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp Baileys Irish liqueur
4 tbsp whipping cream, whipped

Chocolate shavings or cocoa to decorate.

Put the pastry shells on a baking sheet.
Brush the bottom of each shell with some melted chocolate.
In a heavy bottomed saucepan, bring the milk just to the boil.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar for about a minute, then stir in the flour. Add the hot milk, whisking all the time.
Put the pan back on the heat and cook till the custard thickens, about 2 mins, making sure you whisk all the time.
Take it off the heat and add the Baileys, then allow it to cool.
When cool, fold in the cream gently then put in the fridge till thickened - about half an hour.
Spoon the custard into a piping bag fitted with a medium star nozzle.
Pipe the mixture into the tartlet cases then put them in the fridge.
Decorate with a curl of dark chocolate.

They're rather fiiddly and time consuming, but they taste great. A special occasion recipe, but worth trying. Lovely texture to the custard, and it blends well with the cream topping.

Orange teabread

2012-01-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

Another teabread to add to my collection - a Scandinavian one, or so I thought when I saw the name of the recipe, but it's more of a loaf cake .This comes from a book on baking I bought from a charity shop a while ago - it doesn't have an author - it's just called 'The Baking manual'.

150g butter
120g sugar
3 eggs
grated rind of 2 lemons
60ml orange juice
250g plain flour + 2 tspns baking powder
breadcrumbs to coat the tin
Fat to grease the cake tin.

You don't preheat the oven for this recipe - you put the cake mixture into a cold oven.
Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together till pale then add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each one.
Mix in the lemon rind, orange juice and the flour.
You sprinkle the breadcrumbs into the greased tin [ I didn't do this as I didn't want wholemeal crumbs around the cake]. The recipe didn't give an amount and I can't see any crumbs on the cake photo in the book. Seems a strange addition.
Pour the mixture into the tin and put into a cold oven then turn the oven onto 180C/gas 4. Bake for about 45 mins.
The recipe says to turn the cake out and leave to cool under the upturned tin - not sure why?

It's a light, airy cake with a nice citrus flavour. You could ice it with an orange flavoured icing, but I kept it plain. It's good with a cup of tea, but I think it would make a nice dessert, with the addition of some fruit.

Macaroon mincemeat tarts

2012-01-18T05:16:00.000-08:00

This recipe is another using up Christmas leftovers and this time it's some mincemeat. I wanted to make something different from mince pies and found this recipe in an old cookbook from the 70s. I'm not going to give the recipe for the shortcrust pastry - everyone has their own favourite one, or you can use Just Rol.

150g s/c pastry [that's 200g flour, 100g fat etc]
4 tbspns mincemeat
2 egg whites
75g caster sugar
75g ground almonds
15g flaked almonds
a few cherries cut in 1/4s

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas 5

Grease a bun tin.

Roll out the pastry, cut out with a 8cm cutter and line your bun tin. [I cut out 10 cases]
Whisk the egg whites till stiff then fold in the sugar and the ground almonds.
Spoon some of the mixture on top of each tart then sprinkle with some flaked almonds. Put a piece of cherry in the middle.
Bake for about 20 mins, or until golden.

The topping is a good contrast to the soft mincemeat. A recipe to keep.

Almond thins

2012-01-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

I had some marzipan left over from Christmas so decided to make some of these biscuits. They're fairly easy to make, have few ingredients and are delicious [but not healthy!]. The recipe is one I've used many times, and was in a free booklet that came with a Prima magazine, I think.

The recipe makes about 10 biscuits.

250g butter
100g marzipan
100g demerara sugar + little extra for sprinkling on top
250g plain flour

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a baking sheet.

In a bowl, cream the butter using a mixer with a doughhook [I have a hand mixer which came with dough hooks, so I use this]. Mix in the marzipan and gradually add the sugar and flour, kneading the mixture well.

Make the dough into a roll and put in the fridge for 2-3 hours. Then roll the dough out till it's about 15mm thick, then cut it into strips 15mm x 6 cm and put these back into the fridge for 30 mins.

Put the biscuits onto your baking sheet. Makes grooves in each one using a fork, and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 25 -30 mins.

Chocolate and hazelnut teabread.

2012-01-11T12:38:00.000-08:00

The January challenge from We Should Cocoa is from Chele of 'Chocolate Teapot' blog . Her challenge for the New Year is to bake something we think of as healthy which includes chocolate.
Chocolate is healthy isn't it - dark chocolate anyway.
When I think of baking something healthy, I think of a teabread. I've posted several recipes on this blog, but none with chocolate. I played around with a couple of recipes and came up with a teabread with hazelnuts and chocolate. I used cocoa and not a bar of chocolate, and the teabread has no fat in it - doubly healthy! Oh, and nuts are good for you too. Not sure about the golden syrup!

100g caster sugar
175g golden syrup
200ml semi skimmed milk
225g sr flour
2 tbspns cocoa powder
1 tspn baking powder
50g chopped hazelnuts [ I just chopped them in half]
1 beaten egg

Preheat ovwn 180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Put the sugar, syrup and milk into a saucepan and heat it gently till the sugar's melted, then leave it to cool.
Put the flour, baking powder, cocoa and hazelnuts in a bowl and then add the beaten egg and the sugar mixture. Mix thoroughly then spoon into the tin.
Bake for about 45 mins - have a look after 30 mins and cover the top with foil if it's getting too brown.
Cool on a wire rack.
If you don't want a healthy version, you could spread a layer of Nutella on top of the cake as an icing, to add to the chocolate and hazelnut theme.

You can see that the hazelnuts are chunky! The texture is quite dense and sticky, more like a gingerbread than a normal teabread.

Maple syrup and pecan buns

2012-01-08T07:13:00.000-08:00

I wanted to bake something different and also use up a packet of white bread mix that I bought a while ago. I'm not sure why I bought it, as it's not something I ever use.
Anyway, waste not want not, so I found a recipe in an old magazine for buns with maple syrup. I had a can of maple syrup which a friend brought me back from Canada, and there were some pecans left over from an earlier recipe; the recipe even used white bread mix, perfect.

I decided to use this post as my entry for the January 'Sweet pastries and Breads' challenge on Tea Time Treats, the new monthly baking challenge started in November by Kate of 'What Kate baked' blog and Karen of 'Lavender and Lovage' blog. This month it's Karen's turn to host the challenge.

1 pkt white bread mix [275g]
100g pecan halves
100g mixed dried fruit
50g soft brown sugar
50g melted butter
3 tbspn maple syrup
icing sugar to dust the top

preheat oven 200C/400F/gas6
Lightly grease a round 20cm springform tin.

Put the bread mix into a large bowl and make up following the instructions on the packet.
Knead lightly on a floured surface till nice and smooth. Roll out into a 23x35 cm rectangle.
Chop up 3/4 of the pecans and mix with the dried fruit and sugar.
Brush the dough with some of the melted butter leaving a 21/2 cm border, then sprinkle on the pecan mix.
Roll the dough up lengthways and cut it into 8 pieces.
Put the buns into the tin, cut side up and well spaced out. Cover with greased clingfilm and leave somewhere warm for about 30 mins.
Take the coverint off the buns and brush the top with the rest of the melted butter and sprinkle on the rest of the pecan halves.
Bake for 35-40 mins till well-risen and golden. Brush the top with the maple syrup and cool for about 10 mins. Take out of the tin and dust the tops with icing sugar.

These were very like Chelsea buns but with the added maple syrup which made them moist and the pecans which gave them a nice crunch. The buns are a really nice tea time treat .

I don't think using a bread mix made the process a lot quicker, but at least it got used up!

Coconut ice and yogurt pecan fudge

2012-01-03T12:53:00.000-08:00

One of the presents I got for Christmas was a new sugar thermometer. Ever since I was a child, I've been interested in making sweets. My Mum used to make them, and I inherited her old thermometer. I also inherited her book 'Toffees, fudges, chocolates and sweets' by Mary Novak, and I have a battered copy of Margaret Powell's ' Sweetmaking for children'. I made sweets with my children and yesterday I made some with one of my grandsons. We made coconut ice and he helped me make yogurt pecan fudge, the latter being an excuse to use my new thermometer!

Coconut ice

My grandson wanted to make something on his own, so this is a very easy version.

6 tbspns condensed milk
275g icing sugar
175g dessicated coconut
pink food colouring

Mix together the milk and icing sugar, then stir in the coconut. The mixture will be very stiff. Divide it into 2. Colour one half with the colouring.

Grease and line a small cake tin, and put the white mixture in a layer at the bottom. Put the pink mixture on top and leave to set. Cut into bars or squares.

Yogurt pecan fudge

This fudge is different from the normal vanilla fudge; it's a bit fiddly to make but is very moreish.
The recipe makes about half a kilo of fudge.

225ml natural yoghurt [not low fat or Greek]
1 tspn bicarbonate of soda
400g soft light brown sugar
30ml golden syrup
60g unsalted butter
150g chopped and toasted pecans

Grease and line a 20cm square or round tin with parchment paper.
Put the yogurt and bicarb. in a heavy saucepan and leave for about 20 mins.
Prepare a bowl with iced water.
Add the sugar and syrup to the yoghurt mixture, put the pan over a medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
When the sugar's dissolved, bring to the boil then add the butter. Boil till the syrup reaches soft ball stage [114C/238F]. Take off the heat and dip ther bottom of ther pan in the iced water for a few seconds, then leave to cool till the mixture is luke warm [about 50C/122F].
Beat till creamy then add the chopped nuts. Pour into the tin and leave to completely cool - can take up to 8 hours.
Lift the fudge out using the paper and cut into pieces. Store in an airtight tin or box.

The yoghurt makes this a lighter fudge and gives it a tangy taste. Next time I'll use a square tin, as the slices I cut in the round one were rather big!

Next sweet session I want to try making toffee, so watch this space!

Cranberry crumble muffins

2011-12-31T05:29:00.000-08:00

I'm sure it's everyone's 'using up leftovers' time this week, and I'd bought some cranberries and not used them. We love muffins and just to make them a bit different, I added some crumble mix on the top. I saw a chef doing this on one of the food programmes. They called it 'streusel topping' and I don't know if it's different from the run-of-the-mill crumble topping?
I used my usual muffin recipe and added the cranberries and some mixed spice.
This is my tried and tested muffin recipe, gathered from a friend in the US.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to make a different number of muffins each time I use the recipe! Today I made 11.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar]
2 tspns baking powder
1 heaped tspn mixed spice

1/2 tspn salt
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml sunflower oil [ I usually use rapeseed, but only had sunflower left ]

Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas6

Either grease a muffin tin or put paper cases into the holes.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Mix the milk, egg and oil together in a jug then add to the dry ingredients - just stir it gently and don't overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the cases or into the tin filling them nearly full.
For the topping I used 50g plain flour and 25g butter rubbed together and 1 tbspn of soft brown sugar added to the mixture. I then sprinkled a little on top of each muffin.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

A very Happy New Year. xx

ps My lovely dil bought me a cake stand as one of my Christmas pressies. I love it.

Christmas biscuits

2011-12-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

I haven't been well, so not posted on here for a while, but I have been baking. My dil is German and gave me the recipes for her Christmas biscuits and I made a selection of them.

This is the recipe for the melt-in-the-mouth vanilla crescents which are on the top layer of the cake stand.

Preheat oven 175C and grease 2 baking sheets.

200g flour

80g caster sugar

175g butter

2 egg yolks

100g ground almonds

1 tspn vanilla essence

6 tbspn vanilla sugar

Mix the flour, sugar, butter and egg yolks together then add the ground almonds and the vanilla esence.

Bring the mixture together with your hands and cut in into 4. Roll out each quarter and put in the fridge for 1/2 and hour. Cut the dough into small strips then loop each strip into a crescent.

Bake for 10 mins till light brown then roll in the vanilla sugar. Cool on a wire rack.

Christmas stars

Preheat oven 100C then 75C. Grease a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

3 egg whites

250g caster sugar

1 tbspn vanilla sugar

1 tspn cinnamon

350g ground almonds

Beat the egg whites till stiff and add the caster sugar.

Take out 3 tbspns to save for the top of the biscuits.

Mix the vanilla sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds together and add to the egg white mixture a little at a time. Make the mixture into a ball and put into a polythene bag. Roll the mixture in the bag till about 1/2 cm thick and a square shape.

Remove from bag and cut out star shapes. Brush the tops of the stars with the reserved egg white.

Put into the middle of the oevn for 15mins then turn heat down for about 30 mins. The mixture should be white, not yellow or brown - if the latter, turn the heat down. Cool on a wire rack.

Orange Viennese fingers

2011-12-10T05:12:00.000-08:00

My younger daughter's favourite cakes are Viennese fingers. I haven't made them for ages, so decided to adapt my recipe so that it fits in with the December 'We Should Cocoa' challenge. This month Choclette of Chocolate Teapot has chosen orange as the added ingredient.

My first thought was to make some chocolate orange fudge, as I always make some type of fudge for Christmas, but wasn't too sure about this. So when J asked for some Viennese fingers, that solved my problem. I decided to put the orange into the cake mixture and not in the filling.

It makes about 25 fingers, depending on how large you want them.

300g butter [softened]
150g icing sugar
pinch salt
4 egg yolks
grated rind of an orange
3 tbspns of orange juice
2 drops orange essence
300g plain flour
100g Nutella or any chocolate spread of your choice
100g dark chocolate

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5
Grease and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cream the butter in a bowl then add the sugar, salt, egg yolks, orange rind, juice and essence and mix them together gently.
Add the flour and knead the dough well.
Put the mixture into a piping bag with a star shaped nozzle and pipe 6cm fingers onto the baking sheet.
Bake for about 7 mins till golden.
Cool the fingers on a wire rack and when cool spread the Nutella over the smooth side of half the fingers then cover with the other half. Melt the dark chocolate over hot water [or in the microwave] and dip the ends of the fingers in the melted chocolate. You can dip both ends if you fancy!

The addition of a couple of drops of orange essence gave them a really good orange flavour. I love the crumbly texture of these fingers. I shouldn't have put the fingers back down on the paper after I'd dipped the end in chocolate - photo looks rather messy. Still, they taste good!

Holly Christmas biscuits

2011-12-07T05:36:00.000-08:00

This is such an easy recipe, but I like the holly decoration on the top. It's a bit fiddly to do, but I think they look Christmassy and a bit different from other Christmas biscuits. The basic biscuit recipe is one I've had for years, and I saw the holly and berries idea in a baker's shop window. I went in and bought some bread and asked about the holly biscuits and the kind lady explained how they were done. So easy, and adaptable to other designs and cutters.
The recipe makes about 12 biscuits.

75g butter
50g icing sugar
grated rind of a lemon
1 egg yolk
175g plain flour
pinch of salt

Decoration:
2 egg yolks
red and green food colouring

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Lightly grease 2 baking trays.

Beat the butter, sugar and zest together till fluffy; beat in the egg yolk and add the flour and salt. Mix to a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half and hour.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then using a 6cm cutter cut out round shapes. A good tip is to flour the cutter so it doesn't stick.

Put the biscuits onto the baking trays.
Mark the tops of the biscuits lightly with a 21/2 cm holly leaf cutter for the leaves and the tip of a 5mm plain piping nozzle for the berries. Chill again for about 10 mins till the biscuits are firm.
For the decoration - using 2 egg cups, put an egg yolk in each one and mix red colouring into one cup and green into the other. Using a small paint brush, paint the colours on the leaves and berries.

Bake for 10 - 12 mins till the biscuits start to colour round the edges.

Cool for a bit on the tray and then finish off on a wire rack.

Lemony almond mincemeat tartlets

2011-12-05T09:12:00.000-08:00

We are great mince pie fans, so I'm always on the lookout for a different version. Found this recipe in a Christmas pull-out from 'Prima' magagazine [from the 80s I think!] . It uses ground almonds in the pastry and it's made in a similar way to one of my favourite small cakes,Welsh cheese cake; by this I mean that you have the pastry shell, then a layer of mincemeat, then the lemon cake layer. In the Welsh cheese cake you'd have the pastry, then jam, then cake.

This recipe makes 36 pies, but thought this was too many for us,so I halved the recipe, taking the measures to the nearest gram. This is the full recipe.

The pastry:
275g plain flour
75g icing sugar
1 tspn cinnamon
175g butter
50g ground almonds
1 egg yolk

45ml milk

450g jar mincemeat

For the cake filling:

115g butter or margarine
115g caster sugar
175g sr flour
2 large eggs
grated rind of a lemon

Icing:
115g icing sugar
15ml lemon juice

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas 5

Make the pastry by putting the flour and cinnamon in a bowl and rubbing in the butter. Add the ground almonds then mix in the egg and milk to make a soft dough. Chill the dough in the fridge for half an hour, wrapped in cling film. Then roll out the dough and cut out 36 circles to line bun tins. Put a teaspoonful of mincemeat in each pastry case.

Make the cake by beating all the ingredients together till nice and smooth. It's just a good old sponge mixture.Spoon on top of the mincemeat then smooth the tops. Bake for 20-30 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

I'm not sure that I'd have bothered about the icing if my dil hadn't been here and wanted to do it! I'd have happy with some sifted icing sugar on top. So she did the fancy lines on top by mixing the icing sugar and lemon juice and putting it into an icing bag with a small hole cut out of one corner.

These little pies are really delicious. A great Christmas offering. Next time I'll make the full 36, just with icing sugar on top!

Walnut, raisin and cheese teabread

2011-12-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

I have a friend coming to stay for a few days and have been baking in preparation for her visit. I've made a spice cake, some muffins and wanted something else a bit different to have with a cup of tea.
I decided that a savoury teabread would be unusual, and found this recipe in an old cookery book called 'Cakes, breads and gateaux'.

350g sr flour
1/2tspn salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 level tspn dry mustard
75g butter or margarine
90g mature Cheddar, grated finely [keep 15g for the topping]
75g raisins
65g chopped walnuts [keep 15g for the topping]
1 beaten egg
250ml milk
Preheat oven 180C/350F.gas4

Grease and line a large loaf tin - 200g.
Sieve the flour, salt, cayenne and mustard together into a bowl, then add the fat and rub it in.
Stir in 75g of the grated cheese, raisins and 50g of the walnuts.
Mix the egg into the milk then add it to the mixture and beat well.
Put into the tin and level the top.
Mix the rest of the walnuts and cheese together and sprinkle over the top of the mixture.
Bake for about 1-11/4 hours till golden.
Cool on a wire rack and serve sliced with some good butter.

The texture and flavour was very good. Not sure if I liked the raisins; maybe I'd use a different fruit next time.
The crunchy topping was a good contrast to the loaf.

Food Bloggers Unplugged

2011-11-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

I've been tagged by Suelle of Mainly Baking to join in 'Food Bloggers Unplugged'. This was the idea of Susan at A little bit of heaven on a plate to get to know something about other food bloggers.

Here goes:

1.What, or who inspired you to start a blog?

I was living in France, a bit homesick, and started my blog for my family and friends to read about some of the things I was cooking and baking. It made me feel closer to them.

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?

My inspiration was my mother; she was a superb cook and her speciality was baking. I helped her from a small child, filling tarts, rolling pastry, weighing ingredients. I especially remember my birthday parties, as my friends always talked about the great bakes Mum made - chocolate eclairs, iced slices, fondant cakes etc.

3. Your greasiest batter-splattered food/drink book is?

It's Marguerite Patten's 'Every Day Cookbook'. I was given this as a present [together with her 'Book of Cakes and Baking'] and I used it regularly when I was first married in the late 60s. It's rather old fashioned now, but I still use a few recipes from it.

4. Tell us about the best thing you've ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?

Living in France for 7 years, I ate some great food, but my most memorable thing is a stew with wild boar which we ate with our neighbours. He was a keen hunter and his wife did justice to what he caught. The flavours in the stew were so delicious, but Nadine refused to divulge her great-grandmother's recipe!

5. Another food blogger's table you'd like to eat at?

There are several food blogs I really like, but my favourite one is The caked crusader. I love the variety of cakes she makes and her knowledge of baking.I enjoy learning about the history of cakes too.

6. What is the kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year [money no object of course]?

I'd love a new breadmaker, as my old one's not doing its job properly! I'd like a top of the range one this time, as the one I have was bought in my local Lidl in France and has been well used.

7. Who taught you to cook?

I wasn't really taught to cook; I learnt by watching and helping Mum. I did go to evening classes when I was a keen new bride, and learnt to make a wider range of food. We had an inspirational tutor who'd been a cookery demonstrator for British Gas!

8. I'm coming to you for dinner. What's your signature dish?

I make a great coq au vin! But you'd probably only have it once, as I keep a notebook and jot down what I give people to eat, so hopefully they don't get the same thing twice!

9. What is your guilty food pleasure?

Nutella - on toast, in a sandwich, any how!

10. Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn.

I love eating raw Brussel sprouts! Haven't tried them with Nutella yet - mmm, an idea!

I have to tag 5 other food bloggers so I've chosen:

Anna at At Anna's Kitchen table
Phil at As strong as soup
Jean at Baking in franglais
BG at Brownieville Girl
Kate at It's the Norm

There's no obligation for you to join in if you don't want to.

Cranberry and apple crumble pie

2011-11-25T05:57:00.000-08:00

One of out favourite desserts is a crumble, so thought I'd try out this recipe as it's a crumble pie.

175g oats
150g plain flour
125g brown sugar
1/2tspn bicarbonate of soda
175g butter or margarine, melted
2 large cooking apples, peeles, cored and sliced
75g dried cranberries
1 tspn cinnamon
1 tbspn lemon juice

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Grease a 20cm springform cake tin or metal pie dish.

Mix together the oats, flour, sugar and bicarb. in a bowl then stir in the melted fat. Mix together well.

Press 2/3 of this mix into the bottom and sides of the tin or dish.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together - the apples, cranberries lemon juice and cinnamon. Spoon this into the crumble base keeping away from the sides of the tin or dish.
Starting at the edge and working into the middle, cover with the rest of the crumble. Then firm around the edges to seal the top to the sides.
Bake for 30 mins till golden.

What a great idea this is! I love a crumble topping, so having a pie of it is even better! You could, of course, use any fruit you fancied.

Chocolate and apple pancakes

2011-11-19T11:30:00.000-08:00

This month's from 'We Should Cocoa' challenge from Chele at Chocolate Teapot [you'll find the link here - scroll down to find the November challenge] is to use apple with chocolate. Not an easy combination and one I've not tried before.
Couldn't decided whether to make a cake, muffins, scones and in the end I decided to add grated apple and chocolate pieces to our Sunday breakfast American pancakes. These are are a treat we have occasionally from our days of living in Chicago.
This is the basic recipe I always use; it's from a Brit friend who lived near us.

225g plain flour
3 tspns baking powder
1 tspn caster sugar
2 eggs
240ml milk
25g butter

For the challenge I added a grated Cox's apple and about 50g dark chocolate broken into small pieces [you could use chocolate chips if you wanted].

Put the flour, baking powder and sugar in a bowl then add the apple and chocolate and mix together. Make a well in the middle, break in the eggs and add the milk. Stir it together carefully with a wooden spoon - don't beat it. Melt the butter in a saucepan or in the microwave and then pour into the mixture.
Heat a frying pan then pour large spoonfuls of the batter in. They'll begin to bubble and when a nice colour, turn them over.
Serve them in a little stack with a little more butter, and instead of the usual maple syrup, use chocolate sauce. Decadent! I made 8 large pancakes.

Not the most interesting looking photo, and I think I should have made it a pouring sauce instead of mixing chocolate and creme fraiche. They were rather dry. Don't think I'd bother again - I'll stick to the plain ones.

Tyler's cinnamon squares

2011-11-19T06:53:00.000-08:00

My favourite spice is cinnamon, so when I found this recipe I had to try it.
It comes from a very old copy of 'Home and Freezer Digest' magazine, which is sadly no more.

250g caster sugar + 2 tbspns
1tbspn + 21/2 tspns cinnamon
11/2 tspns instant coffee
175g plain flour
2 tspns baking powder
175ml milk
2 large eggs
1/2 tspn vanilla extract
140g butter, melted
Bag chocolate chips

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease and line a 20cm square tin.

Put the 2 tbspns of sugar, the 21/2 tspns cinnamon and the coffee in a bowl and mix together.
In another bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, caster sugar and the cinnamon. In a third bowl beat together the milk, eggs and vanilla.
Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and beat them together.Fold in the cooled, melted butter.
Put half of the batter into the tin, smooth then sprinkle over the chocolate chips and the cinnamon sugar. Put the rest of the batter on top.
Bake for about 35 mins. Leave in tin for 15 mins then put onto a wire rack.

The cake is delicious as it is, but it's even nicer with a chocolate topping. Use your favourite ganache or whatever you fancy. I used 175g plain chocolate and 45g butter - I put them in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and then let them melt, stirring. Don't let the mixture get too hot or it won't be nice and thick to spread over the top. Swirl it over with a small palette knife.

The cake has a real cinnamon flavour and a soft texture.

Austrian cinnamon and sultana cake

2011-11-01T13:48:00.000-07:00

100g soft margarine or softened butter
50g caster sugar
2 tbspns thick honey
225g sr flour
1 tspn baking powder
100g sultanas [or currants or raisins]
1 tspn cinnamon
150ml milk

Preheat oven 160C/325F/gas3
Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.

Beat all the ingredients together in a bowl then put the mixture into the cake tin.
Bake for 50 mins to an hour. Leave in the tin for about 20 mins then turn onto a wire rack.

A nice simple cake which has a good flavour. You can really taste the honey. It's quite a moist cake, but as it's not rich, it needs to be eaten in a couple of days. That's not a problem in this house!
I'd use more cinnamon next time and try a flavoured honey.

Butternut squash and ginger teabread

2011-10-24T04:58:00.000-07:00

I haven't made a teabread for a while, so as I had a butternut squash to use up, I hunted for a recipe in my folders and found this one from 'Good Food' magazine; it's also online and the recipe is here . The recipe is for pumpkin or butternut squash.

I liked the moist texture of the teabread and the flavour of the squash. It's delicious buttered - the slice in the corner of the photo is for my husband who loves butter!

Chocolate and chilli madeira cake

2011-10-20T12:06:00.000-07:00

This month's 'We Should Cocoa' challenge, from Choclette on this blog is to use chilli with chocolate in a recipe.

We are not great chilli fans, but I wanted to join in the challenge, so decided to use my usual recipe for a madeira cake, but to put a layer of chocolate with chilli powder added in the middle and to top it with a bar of Lindt chilli chocolate.

This is my Mum's basic recipe.

250g plain flour
11/2 tspns baking powder
175g caster sugar
175g butter or margarine
3 eggs
3 tbspns milk

I added 2 tbspns cocoa powder, 1/2 tspn chilli powder, 2-3 tbspns milk and 100g chilli chocolate

Grease a 900g loaf tin and preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Cream the butter and sugar together then beat in the eggs. Fold in the flour and baking powder and add the milk.

Put one third of this mixture into another bowl and add the cocoa, chilli powder and milk and mix together.

Put one third of the normal mixture into the loaf tin, then add the chocolate layer and finally the rest of the mixture.

Bake for about 40 mins.

Cool in the tin, and then put on a plate. Melt the chocolate and pour over the top of the cake.

It's not a very glamorous cake, but it tastes good. I liked the chilli flavour in the background of the chocolate layer, but it was too much chocolate on the top of the cake.

Apple and almond tart

2011-10-13T04:56:00.000-07:00

I have some apples to use up, so decided to hunt through my collection of apple recipes to find something different. This recipe is from a booklet I had many years ago in a magazine called 'Home and freezer Digest' which sadly no longer exists. I thought I'd also use this as my offering to Ruth's [of 'Pink Whisk'] October challenge - to use apples in a recipe - which you'll find here

Pastry:

75g butter

175g plain flour

25g ground almonds

1 egg yolk

15ml cold water

1/4 tspn almond essence

Topping:

115g plain flour

1/2 tspn mixed spice

50g butter in cubes

50g light demerara sugar

50g flaked almonds

Filling:

675g cooking apples

25g sultanas

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

I used a food processor to blend the flour and butter for the pastry, then stirred in the sugar and ground almonds. Whisk the egg yolk, water and almond essence together, then add them to the mixture and make into a nice soft dough. Put into the fridge for about 20 mins.

For the topping - put the flour and spice in a bowl, and rub in the butter.Add the sugar and almonds.

Roll the pastry out to fit a 23cm loose bottomed flan tin. I liked Mary Berry's advice on the GBBO masterclass last week - she took the base out of the flan tin, put it on the worktop and rolled the pastry out over it; you could see the base through the pastry so you had a good idea of the size you needed. I didn't try it! Let the pastry chill for about 1/4 hour.

Peel, core and slice the apples thinly then arrange them in circles in the pastry case. Sprinkle over the sultanas and almonds. The tart will seem very full, but the filling will drop a bit when cooking. Cover this with the topping, pressing it down lightly. Bake for 25-30 mins till top is golden and the apples are soft. Cool in tin for 10 mins. If you want, you can dust the top with icing sugar. I think it finishes it off.

We liked this very much; the contrast between the soft apple and the crunchy topping was delicious. One to add to my notebook. I also liked the slight almond flavour in the pastry.

No bake chocolate fingers

2011-10-06T09:13:00.000-07:00

An easy, quick recipe to take over to my grandsons.

It makes 16 fingers.

Grease and line an 18cm square tin

Melt 60g butter, 1 tspn cinnamon, 3 tbspn golden syrup and 200g dark chocolate in a large saucepan.

Then add 250g crushed biscuits - Nice, malted milk, digestive etc. I used just Nice biscuits and crushed them so some were left in pieces.
Mix it all together and spread into the tin.
Leave to cool then put into fridge to chill. Cut into fingers.

The boys loved them, but we found them too sweet even tho' I'd used dark chocolate.

Chocolate mousse tartlets

2011-10-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

We had some of the family yesterday, and as my dil is a chocoholic, I thought I'd make these.

The recipe has been adapted from a French cookery book that my penfriend gave me years ago, but which has languished at the back of the shelf ! The book has some other great tarts to try, so will be posting more recipes. It's called simply 'Les tartes' but I can't find an author.

The recipe makes 8 tartlets.

250g shortcrust pastry [your own or bought]
175g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
2-3 tbspn water
1 tbspn butter - softened
1 tbspn cognac or cointreau [opt!]
3 eggs, separated
chocolate shavings or grated chocolate to decorate

Preheat oven 200C/gas6

Roll out the pastry and line eight 10cm tartlet moulds. Then put them in the fridge for about 15 mins.
Line them with parchment and fill with beans and bake them 15mins; take out the beans and paper and cook them for another 5 mins; leave to cool.

Melt the chocolate over a bowl of hot water or in the microwave and leave to cool. Add the butter and mix till it's melted then add the egg yolks. Now's the time to pour in the cognac or Cointreau. Mix it all together.
Beat the whites stiffly then fold in the chocolate mixture .

Spoon the mixture into the pastry shells and put in the fridge till they're set [2-3 hours].

Before serving, sprinkle some shavings or grated chocolate on top.

I didn't add any cognac or Cointreau to the tartlets as my grandchildren would be eating them. We liked the texture of the chocolate in the filling - silky and very more-ish.

Pecan squares

2011-09-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned is a previous post, my grandson has decided he'd like to bake, so I was looking through some old chiIdren's cookery books and found this recipe . I think it's a strange way to make a cake, but decided to try it anyway.
It make 12 squares.

For the bottom of the squares:

175g butter
75g icing sugar
225g plain flour

Topping:

75g butter
2 tbspns golden syrup [or maple syrup]
2 tbspns milk
1 tspn vanilla essence
50g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
100g pecan nuts

Grease and line a tin 18x27 cm.
Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

To make the base:

Put the butter into a bowl, add the sugar and beat till fluffy. Fold in the flour. Bring the mixture into a ball.
Flour the worktop and knead the ball a few times to make it smooth. Then press the dough into the tin - using the back of a spoon helps. Bake this for about 15 mins till it's golden. Let the base cool.
Put the butter in a pan and melt over a low heat, then stir in the sugar, syrup and vanilla essence.
Beat the eggs in a small bowl, take the pan off the heat then stir in the eggs.
Pour this mixture over the cooled base and sprinkle the pecans over the topping.
Bake for about 25 mins till a dark golden colour - it should still be a little gooey in the centre.
Let it cool in the tin, then cut into 12 squares.

We all enjoyed eating them.

Chunky apple and raisin cake

2011-09-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

I'm a great fan of apple cakes and have posted several recipes on here. This one sounded good, especially as I had some raisins to use up, and a few apples getting soft in the fruit bowl. It comes from my collection of magazine recipes, which one day I WILL organise!
The recipe added peel [which I dislike] and the grated rind of an orange, but I didn't add these as I wanted the spices to come through. I used more spice than the recipe stated as I love them!
A nice, easy cake which we ate warm, as a pudding, last night, with some creme fraiche. The cooking smell was MMMMMMMM!

75g butter or margarine
175g soft brown sugar
110g plain flour
110g wholemeal flour
2 tspns baking powder
1 tspn mixed spice
1 tspn cinnamon
2 eggs
3 or 4 apples - cooking or eating - about 550g
120g raisins
milk

Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin.
Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

In a bowl, mix together the flours, spices and baking powder.
Peel, core and chop the apples into little cubes, put them in a bowl and add 1 tbspn of the flour mixture and roll them in it.
In another bowl beat the sugar and butter/margarine together till it's fluffy. Beat in the eggs and gently fold in the flour mixture.
Lastly add the chopped apple and mix in. If the mixture is too dry, you can add a little milk.

Put the mixture into the tin and bake for about 40 , depending on your oven. The original recipe said to bake for an hour, but I found that mine was ready after 40 mins.
Dust the top with icing sugar.

I like the chunky texture of this cake, but OH didn't like the wholemeal flour addition.

Iced ginger and banana slices

2011-09-23T03:38:00.000-07:00

This was going to be my offering to the 1st birthday challenge, but in my hurry to bake something, I left out the chocolate!

Having arrived back from our French holiday last night, I went over to see my grandsons this morning. Tom, who's 10, and I have started baking together, and I'd promised we could make something. We hunted through his children's baking book and found these. He loves ginger and bananas so they seemed perfect.

Here's the recipe.

125g butter
150g golden syrup
100g light muscovado sugar
2 bananas
2 eggs
2 tbspns milk
250g sr flour
2 tspns ground ginger
1/2 tspn bicarb. of soda

Topping
200g icing sugar
5-6 tspns water
hundreds and thousands/sugar strands [or anything else you fancy] to sprinkle on top

Grease and line a 18x28cm roasting tin.
Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Put the butter, syrup and sugar in a saucepan and heat gently till melted. Take off the heat.
Peel and mash the bananas with a fork.
Beat the eggs and milk together.
Mix the flour, ginger and bicarb together in a bowl, then add to the butter mixture with the bananas and beat till smooth.
Add the egg and milk and mix again.
Pour into the tin.
Bake for 20-25 mins till it's golden and risen. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins then put onto a wire rack.

Make the icing - mix the water and sieved icing sugar to make a good, spreadable icing. Pour it over the cooled cake and smooth it flat. Sprinkle over the sugar strands and leave the icing to set.
When set, cut the cake into 16 slices.

It was great fun to make, especially the icing and sprinkles - mess everywhere, but a very happy grandson!
The other boys enjoyed eating them .

Holiday time

2011-08-31T05:07:00.000-07:00

We're off to France for 3 weeks, so no posts for a while.

After crossing via the Tunnel, we're heading down to near Tours, where we've booked a lovely chambre d'hote for the night.

http://www.closdessources.com/Welcome.html

Then we're off down to the Pyrenees, to stay with friends in their pretty village.

We're going into Spain for a few days with them.

Then we head back up north west to where we used to live. Again we'll stay with friends, and also visit our former neighbours and more friends.

This is the river at the bottom of our friends' garden, and they're in their punt, the local 'barque'.

Then we head back up to the Tunnel, staying in another chambre d'hote en route

http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/

then home!

Oaty banana muffins

2011-08-26T04:34:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or do bananas ripen more quickly nowadays? I always seen to have a few overripe ones in the fruit bowl. Then, what do do with them? Have made banana muffins before, but not with oats and walnuts.

They're not as 'cakey' tasting as my normal muffin recipe,but are substantial and great with a cuppa! They'd be good for breakfast too.

The recipes makes 12 muffins.

100g oats

200g plain flour

11/2 tspn baking powder

cinnamon to taste [opt]

1 tson bicarb. of soda

little salt

100g light brown sugar

4 ripe bananas

1 large beaten egg

60g melted butter or oil [I used rapeseed]

75g chopped walnuts

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin, or line with paper cases.

Put the flour, oats, baking powder, bicarb., salt and sugar in a bowl and mix together. I then mixed in a tbspn of cinnamon as I love it!

Mash up the bananas in another bowl and add the egg, butter or oil and the walnuts. Mix this together and add to the dry ingredients. Mix together gently - don't overmix or the muffins will be hard.

Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 20-25 mins. Cool on a wire rack.

English biscuits

2011-08-25T04:35:00.000-07:00

These biscuits are a French recipe given to me by my neighbour when we lived there. Not sure why they're called 'English' biscuits! My grandsons are coming today and they love these. My neighbour always uses half plain flour and half potato flour, but as I couldn't find any potato flour, I used all plain flour. Also the recipe uses some cooking chocolate as well as some with praline in it. I used good milk chocolate instead of the cooking chocolate. They seem to have a better selection of good cooking chocolate in France.

The recipe makes about 30 biscuits

4 eggs, separated

pinch of salt

100g caster sugar

1 lemon

75g potato flour

75g plain flour

100g cooking chocolate

100g chocolate with praline

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6/400F

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Beat the egg yolks in a bowl with the salt and sugar till they whiten. Wash the lemon, grate its zest, then juice it. Add the juice and zest to the egg yolks.

Beat the egg whites till firm and add to the yolks' mixture.Mix the flours in carefully .

Put tablespoons of the mixture onto the baking sheet, spacing well. Make them into little rounds with a spoon.

Bake for about 10 mins and let the biscuits cool on a wire rack.

Melt the chocolates together then dip the biscuits half way.

Rosewater and polenta mini bundt cakes

2011-08-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

This month's 'We should Cocoa' challenge from Choclette of this blog was to add the ingredient 'rose'. I found this very hard, and had lots of ideas - macaroons, meringues, but decided that I'd make cakes using polenta, as I thought that would go well with rosewater. I had great difficulty finding any rosewater, till I came across a small shop selling Indian products.

A while ago I bought a mini bundt tin, so I decided to use this for my cakes.

250g unsalted butter

250g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
140g polenta
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbspn rosewater

Preheat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3.
Spray the insides of a mini bundt tin with Bake Easy Non stick spray.

Beat the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
Add the polenta, flour and baking powder, then the rosewater, and fold gently together.
Spoon the mixture into the bundt tin and bake for about 20-25mins till golden.

I know there's no chocolate in the cakes, so I made some thick chocolate sauce to put in a little pot for each cake. I just melted some dark chocolate, added some double cream, mixed well and then added a little milk to make it slightly thinner. I decorated the top of the cakes with a little piped chocolate. As you can see, I'm no artist at cake decorating! The final touch was rose petals - fresh, I'm ashamed to say, as I had no time to make sugared ones.

I thought that the chocolate sauce might overwhelm the rosewater in the cake, but you could still taste it.

Date and sweet potato cake

2011-08-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

600g sweet potato

250g butter, softened
300g light brown sugar
4 eggs
300g sr flour
1 tspn or cinnamon
1 tspn nutmeg
14 dates, stoned and chopped
125g walnuts, chopped

Grease a 24cm springform tin and line the base.
Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas 5

Peel the sweet potato and chop into small pieces. Put in a saucepan and cover with water; simmer till soft, then mash till smooth.
Beat the butter and sugar together then add the sweet potato. Add the eggs, beating well after each one.
Then add the flour and spices, dates and walnuts. Mix together well.
Pour into cake tin and bake for 35-40 mins.

This is a moist cake with an usual flavour. In the original recipe you're supposed to keep strips of the sweetpotato and caramelise them in honey, sugar water and cinnamon and you lay them on the top of the cake. I'll certainly make this cake again, and maybe next time I'll make the caramelised strips.

Poppyseed cake

2011-08-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a book about Eastern Europe and have become interested in itscooking, especially cakes.
This cake is made without flour, and the only hard work is whizzing the poppyseeds in a food processor or grinder, or even grinding them in a pestle and mortar.

4 eggs separated
125g butter, softened
grated rind of a lemon
100g icing sugar
2 tbspns cocoa powder
50g caster sugar
160g ground poppy seeds
icing sugar for the top of the cake

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease a 24cm round cake tin.

Beat the butter, egg yolks, lemon rind and icing sugar with an electric beater or stand mixer till thick and smooth. Fold in the cocoa and mix together.
Beat the egg whites till frothy, then sprinkle in the caster sugar and carry on beating till the whites are thick and shiny.
Mix the ground poppyseeds into the eggyolk mixture, then add the egg whites mixture and mix together very gently.
Spoon mixture into the tin.
Bake for about 55 mins. Let the cake cool in the tin.
When it's cold, take the cake out and sieve icing sugar over the top. I put a paper doily on top and sieved over this.

The cake's also nice if you ice it with a simple chocolate icing of icing sugar, boiling water and cocoa.

Chocolate and cranberry flapjacks

2011-08-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't made flapjacks for ages. Each time, I change my original recipe and add new things; today it's cranberries and sunflower seeds.

125 gr butter
75g caster sugar
1 tbspn golden syrup
300g rolled oats
50g sunflower seeds
75g chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
50g dried cranberries

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a 20cm square cake tin.
Put the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and melt over a low heat. Mix well.
Take off the heat and add the oats and sunflower seeds. Stir until well mixed, then add the chocolate chips and cranberries.
Spoon into the cake tin and press it down well with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 25 mins.

Let it cool in the tin for a bit, then mark into 12 squares.

Date and pecan cake

2011-07-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

Need to finish up the bag of pecans I bought from Julian Graves, so found this recipe on an Aussie blog. I've changed it a bit. It's supposed to originate in Israel.

2 eggs
180ml honey + 2 tbspns for brushing the cake
150ml buttermilk
1 tspn vanilla essence
3 bananas - mashed
300g sr flour
1 tspn baking powder
100g light brown sugar
2 tbspns cocoa
1 tspn cinnamon
1 tspn allspice
125g butter - softened
150g dates - stoned and chopped
125g pecans - chopped

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4

Grease and base line a 22cm springform cake tin.
Mix the eggs, the 180ml honey, buttermilk and vanilla essence together till smooth, then add the bananas.
Keep back 2 tbspns flour, then put the rest in a bowl with the baking powder, sugar and spices and mix well.
Add the egg mixture to the flour, and using a hand beater, mix gently, then add the butter and beat till smooth.
Mix the other 2 tbspns of flour with the dates and pecans and fold these into the mixture. Spoon into the tin and bake for about an hour.
Heat the other 2 spoons of honey and brush it over the cake while it's still warm.
The cake keeps for about 5 days in a tin.
It makes a nice dessert, warmed and served with ice cream.

Coffee and toffee muffins

2011-07-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try something different from my usual muffins, but I like the recipe I use, so adapted it. I had a bag of soft toffees in the cupboard and thought they might go nicely with coffee, hence the muffins.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar
2 tspns baking powder
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml vegetable oil [I use rapeseed]
2 tbspn coffee essence or 2 tbspns instant coffee dissolved in 1 tbspn hot water
100g soft toffees chopped into little pieces

Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas 6

Mix the flour, baking powder and sugar together.
Then in a separate bowl mix the egg, milk, oil and coffee essence together.
Add the egg mixture to the flour one and gently mix together.
Grease a 12 hole muffin tin, or use muffin cases to fit the tin.
Fill the hole or case half full, add a few [ 5-6 ] pieces of toffee and add more mixture.
Bake for about 20 mins.
I made 10 muffins out of the mixture.

I'd like them to be more coffee flavoured, so would add more coffee essence next time. I had some bits of toffee left over and put them on the top of a few muffins.

You can see the melted toffee on the top.

Honey, raisin and carrot cake

2011-07-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

As part of our 'trying to lose weight', I thought I'd make a healthier cake! Sounds logical to me! At the end, I decided to ice it with orange flavoured glace icing - not so healthy!
The original recipe is from an old copy of 'Woman's Weekly' magazine, but I've adapted it several times, so I think of it as my recipe now!

3 medium carrots
85g raisins
85g honey
1 tspn vanilla essence
3 eggs
125ml rapeseed oil [or any vegetable oil]
125g sr flour
125g wholemeal sr flour
1 tspn baking powder
1 heaped tspn cinnamon - if you like it, as I do!
25g soft brown sugar
2-3 tbspn milk

heat oven to 170C/325F/gas4

Grease and base line a 20cm springform cake tin.
Grate the carrots - not too finely.
Put the eggs, honey, vanilla and oil in a bowl and beat together.
Then put the flours, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar in another bowl and mix them together.
Add the flour mixture to the egg one and mix it all together well.
Stir in the carrots and raisins and add some milk to make it a nice soft mixture.
Put into the tin and bake for 45-50 mins, middle shelf.

I just mixed the icing sugar with some orange juice to make a thickish icing.

The cake has a nice cinnamon flavour - not too much, just there in the background.

Lemon and semolina squares

2011-07-16T06:37:00.000-07:00

This cake is a family favourite which I rarely bake these days. Younger daughter is coming for the w/e, so thought I'd make it

55g ground almonds
170g natural yoghurt
200g caster sugar
125g melted butter
1 tspn vanilla extract
2 eggs
185g semolina
1 tspn baking powder
2 tbspn pistachios, roughly chopped

lemon syrup:
170g caster sugar
1 tspn lemon zest
1 tbspn lemon juice

Preheat oven 180C/360F/gas 4
Grease a 23cm square cake tin. Line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a bowl, beat the yoghurt, sugar, vanilla extract and eggs together.
Mix the baking powder and semolina together, then add to the yoghurt .

Spread the ground almonds out in a little frying pan and stir them around for about 3 mins or so on a medium heat till they've become lightly browned.

Add the almonds and pistachios to the cake mixture and mix well.
Spread it in the tin and bake for 35 mins. Test to see that the cake is cooked.

While it's baking, make the syrup by putting the the sugar, lemon zest and juice in a pan and adding 125ml water. Bring to the boil, then let it simmer for about 10 mins without stirring. Leave it to cool.

Pour the syrup over the hot cake and leave to cool in the tin.

Using semolina always seem to make a lighter cake.

Hazelnut sandwich

2011-07-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

This recipe is supposed to have Romanian origins.

I've tweaked it a bit, substituting hazelnuts for the original walnuts, and making it a coffee cake, as I love the combination of hazelnuts and coffee. It's the filling that makes this different from the usual Victoria sandwich.

175g butter
175g caster sugar
175g sr flour
1 tspn vanilla essence
3 eggs
2 tbspns coffee essence [I used Camp] or you could use instant coffee dissolved in hot water

Filling:

100g ground hazelnuts
1 tbspn milk
1 tbspn rum
25g sugar

icing sugar for the top

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4

Grease and line 2 x 20cm sandwich tins

Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and vanilla essence and fold in the flour.

Divide the mixture between the 2 tins.

Bake for 20-25 mins till golden.

Leave to cool in the tins for about 5 mins then put the cakes onto a wire rack.

Filling - you can grind whole hazelnuts finely in a coffee grinder or, as I did, buy them ready ground.

Mix all the filling ingredients together and use it to sandwich the 2 cakes together. Sift some icing sugar over the top.

Honey and caramel slices

2011-07-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

Another chance to use my Wilton traybake tin!

My dil asked me to make something for her friends to have with a cuppa. I fancied making something decadent, ok then, calorific, and adapted this recipe from an Aussie woman's magazine. Had also bought a jar of local honey from a lovely local garden centre, which has a shop selling all kinds of goodies.
Makes about 20 slices, depending on how big you cut them!

Base:
200g butter, diced
310g plain flour
115g caster sugar
2 egg yolks

Topping:
2 x 400g tins condensed milk
100g butter, diced
115g honey

preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Lightly grease a baking tin 28x18 cm and line with baking parchment.

For the base:
Put everything into a food processor except for the egg yolks and blitz till like breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolks and about 2 tbspns cold water and blitz again to make a pastry ball.
Cut the pastry in half and roll out one half to fit in the base of the tin. Bake it for 12-15 mins till golden and firm when you touch it.
Wrap the other half of the pastry in clingfilm and put it in the fridge to get cold.

For the filling:
Mix the condensed milk and butter in a solid-based pan and melt the butter over a gentle heat.
Then on a medium heat let the mixture thicken for 5-8 mins, stirring all the time.
Take off the heat and add the honey. Mix together well and leave to cool.
Spread it out onto the pastry base.
Grate the rest of the pastry over the top of the caramel mixture then bake for 20-30 mins till the cake is golden coloured.
Let it cool in the tin before cutting it into slices.

Apricot and white chocolate biscuits

2011-07-08T06:03:00.000-07:00

In this month's 'We Should Cocoa' challenge from Chele of this blog, the secret ingredient is apricots, fresh or dried. [The challenge is in Chele's July 2nd post].
I've made this biscuit recipe many times, and have adapted it for so many different ingredients. I only made half a batch of the biscuits today, as we're trying to lose some weight!

The recipe makes about 20 biscuits, depending on how big you want them! Half of the recipe made 10 good sized biscuits.

250g butter [softened]
150g soft brown sugar
150g sr flour
225g oats
100g dried apricots, chopped into pieces
100g white chocolate, chopped

oven preheated to 180C/350F/gas4

Grease and line a couple of baking trays.

In a bowl cream the butter and sugar together and then add the other ingredients. Mix it all together with a wooden spoon.
Take out spoonfuls and roll into balls, flattening them a bit on the tray. Space them out well.
Bake for 15-20 mins and leave them to cool on the tray.
A nice easy recipe.

They really are delicious!

Variations:
Use dried cherries/dried apple/dark chocolate/nuts/spices - the list is endless.

Fudgy biscuits

2011-07-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

My Mum used to make these for my children when they were little. Found the recipe the other day, so thought I'd make some for the biscuit tin. She used to make 15 biscuits out of the mixture, I only made 12!

125g sr flour
125g butter [softened]
125g caster sugar
1 tbspn cocoa
90g oats
2 tbspns coffee essence [like Camp]

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas 4

Put the flour, cocoa and sugar in a bowl, then rub in the butter.
Add the oats and the coffee essence and mix it all together into a ball.
Make small balls of the dough and put them on a greased baking tray. I use a silicone sheet.
Flatten the balls a bit then bake them for 15 mins.
Sometimes Mum used to roll them in extra oats, but I prefer them like this.

White chocolate torte with cranberries and almonds

2011-07-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

I first made this when we lived in France. It's a meringue mixture with an unusual combination of ingredients.

8 egg whites
200g caster sugar
250g white chocolate, chopped up
190g chopped almonds [skinned]
200g dried cranberries
40g sr flour
a little flour and fat for the cake tin

Preheat the oven 180C/350F/gas4

Lightly grease a 24cm cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment. Flour this and shake out excess.
Beat the egg whites into stiff peaks and gradually add the sugar. Keep beating till it's firm and shiny. Put the chocolate, almonds and cranberries in a bowl and mix in the flour.
Add the egg whites to the chocolate mixture in two lots.
Spoon into the tin and bake in the oven for an hour. Half way through, if the top is getting too brown, cover it with some foil.
Turn the oven off, but leave the torte inside until it's completely cold.

Crunchy topped banana cake

2011-07-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

Baking blogs should come with a health warning - 'Blogging is bad for your weight'!!

To use up 3 bananas that were over-ripe [they seem to ripen so quickly nowadays] I thought I'd make a cake, not a loaf this time. Then I fancied a crunchy top, so I adapted several recipes into this one.

3 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs
175g light brown sugar [the original recipe I used as a base had 350g sugar, which I thought was far too much]
120ml oil [I used rapeseed]
1 tspn vanilla extract
50g chopped nuts - whatever you have; I used walnuts
225g plain flour
2 tspn bicarbonate of soda
1 tspn salt

Topping:
2 tbspns of sugar, flour and nuts, then rub in 1 tbspn butter.
Don't rub into fine crumbs, leave chunky.
This doesn't make a lot of topping, so next time I'll make double this amount.

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 23 cm springform tin, and line the bottom with baking paper.

Beat together the bananas, eggs, sugar, oil and vanilla.
Then add the rest of the ingredients and mix together.
Spoon into the tin and sprinkle the topping on.
Bake for about 45 mins and leave to cool in the tin.

Chocolate and hazelnut cookies

2011-06-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

I need to have something in the biscuit jar when my grandsons come - what should I make? Decided on chocolate, and they love Nutella, so this recipe has both.

Makes about 30 cookies

225g soft butter
140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
2 tspn vanilla extract
225g plain flour
55g cocoa powder
55g ground hazelnuts
55g chocolate chips
4 tbspn Nutella

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Line 2 baking trays with parchment or silicone sheets.

Cream the butter and sugar then add egg yolk and vanilla extract and mix in.
Sieve the flour and cocoa powder together and add the chocolate chips and hazelnuts.
Add to the mixture and stir till well combined.

Take out tablespoonfuls of the mixture and roll into balls. Put onto the baking tray, flatten a bit then make a hollow in the middle of each cookie with the damp end of a wooden spoon.
Bake for 12-15 mins then leave to cool on the tray.

When the cookies are cold, spoon a teaspoon of Nutella into the hollows.

Creme anglaise and apple muffins

2011-06-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I made some creme anglaise to have with our rhubarb crumble. There was a little left over, so this recipe was just perfect.

It makes 12 muffins

90g melted butter
300g sr flour
150g plain flour
1 tspn cinnamon [ I love it so used 2 tspns]
165g caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
250ml milk
60ml creme anglaise
150g cooked apples [I used cox and chopped them up before cooking]
2 tbspn demerara sugar

preheat oven 200C/gas 6/400F

Grease a 12-holed muffin tin or use 12 muffin cases.
Mix together the butter, flours, 1/2 the cinnamon, caster sugar, egg and milk till just mixed.
Fill the cases or holes half full of the batter, then make a deepish dent in the middle and add 1 tspn creme anglaise and 2 tspns apple. Add more batter on top.
Mix the brown sugar with the rest of the cinnamon and sprinkle on top of the muffins.
Cook for about 25 mins till golden.
Leave the muffins to rest in the tin, and then put onto a wire rack.

I like the texture of the muffins with the custard and apple and then the crunchy topping.

I think next time I'd use my tried and tested muffin recipe* and just add the fillings and crunchy topping.

*My usual recipe is 225g plain flour, 100g caster sugar, 2 tspn baking powder, 250ml milk, 120ml vegetable oil and 1 egg. Usual method of dry and wet ingredients and they're baked at 200C/gas6 for 20 mins.

Lemon and almond tarts

2011-06-24T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've invited an old school friend for tea tomorrow, so wanted to make something nice for her.

Found this recipe in one of my Mum's old cookery books, and as I had my dil here this afternoon, and she's doing a cake decorating class, they seemed just the thing. I've changed the ozs into grams. and it worked fine.

Makes 12 little tarts
212 g packet shortcrust pastry [I used Just Rol}
50g butter
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
59g ground almonds
drop of almond essence [not the almond flavouring]
1 rounded tbspn sr flour
grated rind of 1/2 lemon
1 tspn lemon juice [I put in a bit more as I wanted them to be lemony]
icing:
150g icing sugar
drop lemon food colouring
lemon juice

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface,and then cut out 12 rounds with a cutter to fit a bun tin.
Cream the butter and sugar then beat in the egg and ground almonds.
Stir in the almond essence, flour, lemon rind and juice.
Divide this evenly between the pastry cases and bake for 20-25 mins till the sponge is golden and the pastry is cooked.
Cool on a wire rack.
Icing:
Sift 125g of the icing sugar into a bowl and mix with enough cold water to make a thick icing.
Spread over the tarts and allow to set. Leave any left over icing in the bowl.
Add the rest of the icing sugar [25g] too the bowl and mix in a little colouring and enough lemon juice to make a thick icing.
Fill a small icing bag and pipe a lattice on top of each cake. Leave to set.

There's no real need to do the yellow piping - any decoration would do, but I had my dil to do it for me!

The glass plate they're on is one of my Grandmother's. I'd forgotten all about her glass plates till I saw a similar one in a local shop, so I hunted out the box in the attic.

Chocolate and honey madeleines

2011-06-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

Am off today to look after one of our grandsons, so decided to leave something in the cake tin for himself.

Madeleines seemed a good choice, as I brought several tins back from France, and they've remained unused.

The recipe makes 20 madeleines.

150g dark chocolate
70g butter
5 eggs, yolks and whites separated
125g caster sugar
4 tbspns honey
150g plain flour

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Melt the chocolate and butter and leave to cool.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar till they're pale and thick.
Then add the chocolate mixture, the flour and the honey, beating quickly between each one.
Beat the egg whites, but not too thickly, then add these to the mixture, folding in.
Put the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour.
Grease the tins well, as madeleines stick!
Put a heaped teaspoon of mixture into each hole.
Bake for 8-10 mins.

Let them cool for a bit in the tin, before putting them on a wire rack.

Our garden

2011-06-18T07:14:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd have a change from baking and post a few photos of our new garden. It's a pocket handkerchief size, so haven't much room. The first thing we did was to buy a good aluminium lean-to greenhouse, so we could grow some veg. We're growing tomatoes and French beans in bags.

The beans are doing well - have lots of flowers.

We bought 4 different tomato plants, and the cherry ones seem to be ahead atm.

I grew some 'Little Gem' lettuces from seed and have planted a few in between the tomatoes.

We brought some of our plants in pots back from France with us. This rose is lovely - it has a strong perfume. Have lost its label so can't remember its name! It was given to us, in a large pot, by our neighbours. They all arrived smiling, with one pushing a wheel barrow containing the rose and several boxes of wine bottles! What lovely people, and we miss them.

This shrub was growing in the garden and I've trying to find out what it is. Now that it's got flowers, I think it's a deutzia.

We also inherited this climbing rose, which I thought was a wild one, but it's covered in flowers.

Chocolate banana cake

2011-06-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

Had a few really ripe bananas to use up so decided to make a banana cake. Then I fancied something chocolate, so changed the recipe into a chocolate version. I'm very pleased with the result. It's a very moist cake.

150g butter or margarine
150g light brown sugar
300g plain flour
2 tspn baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
4 tbspns cocoa powder
50g dark chocolate broken up [or chocolate chips]
100 ml vegetable oil

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Beat the eggs and sugar together.
Mash up the bananas and add to the mixture.
Beat in the eggs.
Mix the flour, baking powder, cocoa and chocolate together, then add these to the mixture.
Lastly add the vegetable oil, and give it all a good mix.

Spoon into the tin and bake for about 45 mins.
I found that because of the lumps of chocolate, the centre was quite soft. I checked to see if it was cooked in several other places.
Leave it to cool for 10 mins in the tin, and then turn onto a wire rack.

You can see the melted chocolate in the centre of the photo.

Pecan and maple syrup tart

2011-06-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

Bought a large bag of pecans recently on offer from Julian Graves. My lovely friend Jackie brought us some maple syrup from her recent trip to Canada, so, a marriage made in heaven.

It's such an easy tart to make, and if you have some pastry in the freezer, it's even quicker.

Pastry:
250g plain flour
125g salted, cold butter
2 tbspn sugar
3-4 tbspn very cold water

I make this in the food processor, make double and keep half, wrapped carefully, in the freezer. I let the half I'm going to use, rest in the fridge for a couple of hours. I don't like sugar in pastry, even in sweet desserts, so I don't add it.

Filling:
60g melted butter
100g sugar [I used golden caster]
180ml maple syrup
2 eggs
250g pecans

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Grease a rectangular tart tin. [I bought mine from Lakeland and have had lots of use out of it. It's loose-bottomed!] Roll the pastry out into the tart tin.
Beat the butter, sugar and maple syrup together with an electric mixer and keep beating while you add the eggs.
Put the pecans in the base of the tart then pour over the butter mixture.
Bake for 15 mins at 190C/gas 5 then lower the temperature to 170C/gas3-4 [depending on your oven] and bake for another 25-30 mins.
Let it cool in the tin.

Strawberry shortcake stack

2011-06-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

For this month's 'We Should Cocoa' challenge, which you'll find on Choclette's blog here - it's on the June 1st post - we have to use strawberries as our added ingredient.
I decided to make some chocolate shortcake biscuits then layer them with cream and strawberries. My husband was delighted!
I've adapted the recipe from one I found in one of my old chocolate cookery books.

For the biscuits:
225g softened butter
75g light muscovado sugar
50g grated dark chocolate
275g plain flour

Filling:
300ml double cream
3 tbspn milk
100g white chocolate, melted
Icing sugar to dust the tops
200g strawberries
Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas 6

Lightly grease a baking tray.
Beat the butter and sugar together till creamy, mix in the grated chocolate and then fold in the flour. The dough will be stiff.
Roll it out on a lightly floured surface and cut out circles with a 7.5cm cutter.

Put on the tray and bake for 10 mins. Leave to cool on the tray.

Whip the cream till it's just holding its shape. Fold in the milk and the melted white chocolate.

For the stacks - put a shortcake on a plate, spoon on some of the cream, add some sliced strawberries then top with another shortcake, cream and strawberries and put a final shortcake on top. Dust with icing sugar, or another blob of cream and a strawberry.

I didn't use this filling as I didn't have any white chocolate. I used mascarpone cheese mixed with a little sieved icing sugar instead of the cream.

I also used light soft brown sugar instead of muscavado in the shortcakes. They tasted fine.
The shortcake has a nice crumbly texture, but perhaps another time I'd add a little more grated chocolate to the mixture.
The original recipe was for raspberries, 400g, out of which you use some to make a coulis to decorate the plate, and put 3/4 raspberries on top of the cream in each layer of the stack.

Liz's rocky road cupcakes

2011-06-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

I tend to make large cakes, so today, as my grandsons are coming for tea, thought I'd make them some small cakes. This recipe is from my friend Liz.

Recipe makes 12 cakes.

115g soft butter or margarine
115g caster sugar
2 tbspn crunchy peanut butter
2 eggs, beaten
85g sr flour
4 tbspn cocoa powder
100g plain chocolate chips
100g chopped pecans or walnuts [keep 24 to decorate]
200g plain chocolate
24 mini marshmallows

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Put 12 cake cases into a bun tin.

In a bowl, put the butter, sugar and peanut butter and beat till it's light and creamy [with an electric beater].
Beat in the eggs and fold in the flour, cocoa, chocolate chips and nuts.
Put the mixture into the cake cases.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden and firm. Leave them to cool on a wire rack.
Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and leave it to cool a bit.
Spread most of the chocolate over the top of each cake with a knife, leaving some to drizzle over the top of the cakes, then add 2 marshmallows and 2 nuts.
Leave them to set.
Enjoy!

Not a very good photo, but at least it's a photo! NEED a NEW camera!

Chocolate cake with butterscotch and speculoos

2011-06-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

My lovely Dutch friend sent me some goodies recently, including some of my favourite speculoos biscuits. I wanted to use them in a cake of some sort, and found this recipe in a French magazine.
No cooking is needed for the cake.

125g speculoos biscuits
4 dried figs, finely chopped
4 dates, finely chopped
2 tbspns sultanas
60g melted butter
200g milk or plain chocolate - broken into small pieces
15cl cream
2 packets of Werther's originals

22cm cake tin - preferably a silicone mould

Crush the biscuits and mix them with the dried fruit. Press the mixture into the bottom of the tin/mould and put it in the fridge to harden.
Break the chocolate up into a bowl.
Put the cream in a small saucepan and bring to the boil, then pour it over the chocolate.
Stir well till the mixture is nice and smooth. Cool.
Take the base mixture out of the fridge and pour the chocolate over, then put it back in the fridge again to harden [for about 2 hours].
When the cake's ready, put the Werther's into a polythene bag or teatowel and crush them with a rolling pin. Sprinkle them over the top of the chocolate.

Not a very good photo - this is the top of the cake. Am still having problems with my camera.

Orange and apricot loaf

2011-06-03T03:52:00.000-07:00

Yet another version of my favourite bakes - teabreads. I like these cakes because they're quick and easy to make and keep well.

175g dried apricots
150ml orange juice
400g plain flour
175g caster sugar
100g raisins
1/1/2 tspns baking powder
1/2 tspn bicarb
1/2 tspn salt
grated rind of 1 orange
1 egg, beaten
25g melted butter of margarine
sugar of choice to sprinkle on top

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a 900g loaf tin

Soak the apricots in the orange juice.
Then put the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Add the apricots and orange juice, butter, orange rind and the egg and mix it all together. The mixture is very stiff.

Put it into the tin and bake for about an hour till it's golden and firm.

I used golden caster sugar, and only 100g, as 175g seemed a lot. I sprinkled some golden granulated suagr over the mixture in the tin.
Ready to eat with our afternoon cuppa!

The recipe is adapted from a book I've had for ages but not used much - 1000 Cakes and Bakes.

I found it a bit dry, and there wasn't much flavour from the orange juice, so would use a little more liquid next time and maybe some orange essence. An orange flavoured icing drizzled over?
I don't buy raisins often, but they were on offer - need I say more!

I

Hazelnut tray bake

2011-05-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

I love traybakes, so I've treated myself to a new tin - the Wilton 'Biscuit/Brownie' pan [28x18cm]. Now I'm fired up to try it out!
I bought some hazelnuts in Waitrose recently, so thought I'd make something using them.
This recipe is adapted from one that was in a magazine some time ago. I like the idea of a crumble base and then the cake mixture on top of it.

300g plain flour
175g butter cut into pieces
350g demerara sugar
200ml creme fraiche
2 eggs

3 tspns baking powder [level]

150g hazelnuts chopped in half

preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and line the tin with baking parchment.
Sift flour into a bowl and rub in the butter. Stir in the sugar. Sprinkle 350g of this mixture into the tin and press it down.
Beat the eggs and creme fraiche together and stir in the rest of the crumble mixture and baking powder.
Pour this over the crumble mixture. Arrange the hazelnuts on top, pressing gently.
Bake in middle of the oven for about 45 mins. I found that the nuts were getting too brown, so I covered them with parchment.

Now comes the fiddly bit! You need to get the bottom crumble crisp, so put a piece of parchment over the cake and put a baking sheet on top. Invert the cake onto the sheet. Take off the lining paper and put the cake back in the oven for about 10-15 mins.

To put it on a wire rack you need to invert the rack over it to get the cake the right way up. It's worth the effort, honestly!

This is what the finished cake looks like. When Bob had a look at the camera, he deleted the good photos!

Chocolate roulade

2011-05-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

This month's ' We Should Cocoa' challenge from Chele of this blog is not the usual one, to add an ingredient to chocolate. This month it's a technique - the challenge is to make a roulade, which has to include chocolate of course.

My choice of recipe isn't very exciting - I adapted one from a magazine cutting I had, but added white chocolate instead of all cream as the filling.

200g dark chocolate [I used 70%]
150g caster sugar
5 eggs
100g white chocolate
284ml double cream
icing sugar
raspberries or any fruit of your choice to decorate

Line a swiss roll tin [33x23 cm] with baking parchment and preheat the oven 180C/350F/gas4.
Melt the dark chocolate over water or in the microwave.
Whisk the sugar and egg yolks till thick, then fold in the chocolate.
In another bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff.
Beat a couple of spoonfuls of the egg whites into the chocolate bowl and then fold the rest in.
Pour into the tin and bake for about 15 -20 mins till risen and firm to touch.
Sieve some icing sugar onto a piece of greaseproof paper. Turn the roulade onto this paper and cover with a damp cloth. Cool.
Melt the white chocolate over water [not sure if you can melt it in the microwave?]. Whip the cream till firm then add the chocolate.
Take off the baking parchment and spread the cream mixture over the roulade.
Use the greaseproof paper to help roll it up. It doesn't matter if the top cracks!
Decorate the top with raspberries or cherries etc. and some chocolate curls if you want.

You could also add some raspberries to the white chocolate cream. Next time I think I'll try using summer berries.

I'm pleased with the result, as it's actually looks similar to the picture in the magazine cutting!

Confession - I bought the chocolate curls from a lovely shop in a nearby village! They had some fabulous cake decorations.

Hop Pickers' Cake

2011-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

When I was in town yesterday, I found a Bank Holiday bric a brac market. I love browsing in case I find old cookery books. To my delight, there was a stall selling nothing but cookery books. Heaven!

I bought 'The National Trust Book of tea-time recipes' [1991], an old red 'Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book', 'Good Housekeeping's Picture Recipe Book [1954] and 'The Baking Book' [1996] by Linda Collister and Anthony Blake. I like Linda Collister's recipes - she wrote the book that went with last year's 'Great British Bake Off'.

I decided today that I want to make some more British cakes, so decided on a 'Kentish Hop Pickers' Cake' from the National Trust book.

I lived in Kent for many years and visited hop farms. This is a lovely photo from an old calendar I had many years ago.

I've adapted the recipe to suit our likes in spices and dried fruit.

275g sr flour

1 tspn ginger

1 tspn cinnamon

175g soft margarine or butter

100g soft brown sugar

100g raisins

100g mixed fruit with peel

400ml milk

1 tbspn black treacle

1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda

1 tspn cream of tartar

Preheat oven 160C/325F/gas 3

Grease a 900g loaf tin

Mix the flour and spices together then rub in the fat.

Add the sugar and the dried fruits and mix.

Warm the milk and the treacle and add to the flour mixture a bit at a time.

Beat this well, then pour it into the tin.

Bake for 1-11/4 hours.

The cake was the texture of my Granny's 'Bread pudding'. All the fruit was at the bottom in a layer. It was a very runny mixture when I put it in the tin. Maybe it's meant to be more of a pudding than a cake? Perhaps it needed more cooking? There are no photos in the book, so I can't tell how it's meant to look!

I've been doing a bit of research, and I found another recipe for this cake on a traditional British cakes site; it says that the cake is much like a lardy cake in texture, so maybe my cake is OK. It tastes good anyway!

Apple sour cream cake

2011-04-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

I love apple cakes and this is one I hadn't made before. It's good as a cake and as a dessert.

125g butter
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tspn vanilla extract
200g plain flour
11/2 tspn baking powder
1 tbspn cinnamon
2 cooking apples
3 tbspn sour creme
topping
1 tbspn butter
2 tbspn sugar
1/2 tspn cinnamon

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4

Grease and line a 23cm springform tin

Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
Beat in eggs and stir in vanilla essence, flour and baking powder, tbspn cinnamon and the sour cream.
Peel and chop one apple into dice and finely slice the other.
Add the diced apple to the mixture and spoon in the tin.
Arrange the apple slices on top.

Melt the tbspn butter amd mix with the sugar and cinnamon. Brush this over the apple slices.

Bake for about 40 mins till golden and cool on a wire rack.

Easter cake

2011-04-23T12:07:00.000-07:00

We don't like marzipan, so our Easter cake is usually a chocolate one. We're off to Suffolk to our son tomorrow, and my contribution is this chocolate cake.

This is the recipe I use most often. It has oil instead of butter.

190g sr flour
2 tbspns cocoa powder
1 tspn bicarb. of soda
1 tspn baking powder
150g caster sugar
150ml milk
150ml veg. oil [I used sunflower]
2 tbspn golden syrup
2 beaten eggs

Oven 160C/gas3
Grease and line 2 x20cm sandwich tins
Sift flour, cocoa, sugar, bicarb and baking powder into a bowl.
Beat the milk, oil, eggs and syrup together and add to the bowl.
Beat the mixture till well mixed.
Bake in the oven for 30-35 mins. [My cakes took 45 mins in my gas oven.]
Turn onto a wire rack and leave to cool.

For the icing you can use a chocolate butter cream, a ganache or this one, which I find isn't too sickly.

50g butter
4 tbspn sieved cocoa powder
3 tbspns milk
150g sieved icing sugar

Melt butter in a pan and add the cocoa. Stir and heat gently for about a minute.

Stir in the icing sugar and milk.
Take it off the heat and beat it well, then leave to cool and thicken.
There's enough icing to sandwich the cakes together and to spread some on top.
I added chocolate eggs for my Easter cake.

Hot Cross Buns

2011-04-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've carried on my family's tradition of making 'Hot Cross Buns', using the recipe that my Mum and Granny used.
I still weigh the ingredients in lbs and ozs.

I've not given the recipe here as there are so many similar recipes on the web or in cookbooks or magazines.

Here's one I've also made and it's very good.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/hotcrossbuns_397

I made 24 buns, freezing 12 when cool, before I brushed on the sugar syrup.

I love this plate - it's 'Robin' from Emma Bridgewater's 'Birds' series. The buns are covering the robin! Here he is!

Bara brith

2011-04-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

This is my Gran's version of the Welsh teabread. You can also make bara brith [speckled bread] with yeast.

6oz [175g] currants
6oz [175g sultanas]
8oz brown sugar
10fl oz [300ml] very strong tea
10oz [275g] sr flour
1egg

Preheat oven 180C/gas 4/350F

Grease a 2lb [900g] loaf tin

Put the fruit and brown sugar in a bowl and pour over the hot tea. Leave it to soak overnight.
Stir the flour and beaten egg into the fruit mixture and pour into the tin.
Bake for about 1hour and leave to cool in the tin.
Serve as it is or buttered.

I added some cinnamon to the flour, and think next time I'll change some of the fruit for dried cranberries.
I'll also try different flavoured teas and maybe use half white and half wholemeal flour.

Zingy lemon bars

2011-04-08T05:43:00.000-07:00

Had a couple of lemons left in the fruit bowl so thought I'd make a cake. Didn't want to make my usual drizzle cake, so found this recipe in an old copy of a French magazine.

I did a very stupid thing and opened the oven to check that the cake hadn't overcooked - so of course it's now sunk in the middle! I still haven't got the measure of this gas cooker - several things I've cooked lately have been overcooked, hence the checking of the cake! That's my excuse anyway!

Bottom of cake
125g plain flour
pinch salt
35g icing sugar
100g unsalted butter
2 drops vanilla extract

Topping
2 medium eggs
170g caster sugar
grated zest and juice of a large lemon
1 tbspn plain flour
1/2 tspn bicarb. of soda
icing sugar to dust

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F
Grease a 20cm square cake tin.

Put flour, icing sugar and salt in a food processor and mix. Add the butter and vanilla extract and blitz till the mixture becomes a soft dough.
Press this evenly into the bottom of the cake tin and prick with a fork.
Bake for 12-15 mins till it's lightly golden and firmish.
Leave to cool in tin.

Whisk the eggs with a hand mixer till frothy and gradually whisk in the sugar till thick and foamy. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest then the flour and bicarb.
Pour this over the bottom and bake for 20-25 mins till golden brown.

Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into 12 pieces. Dust with icing sugar.

It has a good lemony tang and I like the crunchy base.

Cranberry and cinnamon cake

2011-03-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

Needed to make something quick for tea today, as my new neighbour is coming for a cuppa. This is a recipe I've been meaning to do for ages, so today's the day!
It's out of my handwritten notebook, so presume it's from a magazine or a friend.

175g soft margarine or butter[softened]
175g soft brown sugar
2 eggs
200g sr flour
1 heaped tspn cinnamon
75g dried cranberries
rind and juice of 1 orange
demerara sugar for the top

preheat oven 180C/gas5.
Line a tin 33x23 cm.

Beat the margarine/butter with the sugar.
Add the eggs and beat together.
Add the cinnamon to the flour and fold into the mixture.
Finally, add the cranberries, orange juice and rind. Mix to a dropping consistency.
Put into the tin and bake for about 25mins.
Cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

This cake freezes well, so you can cut it into slices and freeze them in a suitable container.

I think it would taste good with an orange flavoured icing.

Apricot and sultana rock buns

2011-03-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm going through a 'Cook British' phase, so wanted to make some rock cakes. Had some apricots and sultanas to use up so tried a variation on the original. A big success.
Will make double next time, as son arrived, and together with OH ate them! I did manage to salvage one for me!

100g white sr flour
100g wholemeal sr flour
2 tspns baking powder
1 tspn mixed spice
100g soft margarine or butter
50g light brown sugar
50g dried apricots [chopped]
1 egg
2tbspns milk
light brown sugar for dusting on top of cakes

preheat oven 200C/gas 6

Grease or line a baking sheet [I used the reuseable baking paper I got from Lakeland]

Put the flours, baking powder and spice into a bowl and mix together.
Add the margarine or butter and rub in till like breadcrumbs.
Stir in the fruits and sugar.
Beat the egg with the milk and add to the bowl. Mix to a stiff mixture [add a bit more milk if it's too dry].
Put mounds of the mixture on to the baking sheet and sprinkle some brown sugar over each one.

I made 9 good sized cakes.

Bake for 15 mins and cool on a rack

Fruity tea loaf

2011-03-10T13:44:00.000-08:00

Another one of my favourite recipes for teabreads. It's full of juicy fruit that's been soaked in tea and it's spicy too.

375g mixed dried fruit
125g soft brown sugar
150ml hot tea of choice
1 large egg
1 tbspn milk
50g chopped walnuts
225g sr flour
1 tbspn mixed spice

Preheat oven 150C/gas3

Grease and line a 900g/2lb loaf tin.
Put the fruit, sugar and tea in a large bowl and leave to infuse together for about 4 hours or overnight.
Beat the egg and milk together and add to the bowl with the walnuts.
Sift the flour and spice together and fold into the fruit mixture.
Put into the tin and bake for about 50mins to an hour.
Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Can be eaten on its own or with butter.

Pantry paella

2011-03-04T11:44:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd post a recipe that wasn't baking this time.

I watched Nigella's 'Kitchen' series and loved the look of this paella. We're off to North Wales tomorrow to visit our son and family, so I didn't want to go shopping.
Had some raw tiger prawns in the freezer, so this seemed to be the ideal time to try out this dish. We'd brought some paella rice and spices back from Spain last year, and they were just lying in the back of the cupboard.
You'll find Nigella's recipe here

I wish I'd brought a paella pan back too, but I used my new heavy duty Tefal frying pan instead.

This is the finished dish. Nigella suggests you decorate it with lemon slices and coriander, but haven't any lemons left and I hate coriander!

Picau ar y maen - Welshcakes

2011-03-01T04:22:00.000-08:00

Happy St David's Day! Thought I'd make a few Welsh cakes to celebrate. My husband likes them well done and I prefer them golden.

I got my lovely Emma Bridgewater daffodil mug for Mother's Day last year.

This is Gran's recipe which I always use, hence the lbs and ozs! After sprinkling sugar on top, she always added a knob of butter. We ate them warm, straight off the bakestone.

This recipe makes about 24 cakes, but I halved it today as there are only 2 of us; I'm not sure if they'd freeze well.

1lb plain flour
4oz margarine
4oz lard [I use Trex]
4oz currants
6oz caster sugar
1/2 tspn mixed spice
1 tspn baking powder
1 egg
pinch salt
2 tbspns milk

Put the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, then rub in the fat. Add the currants and spice and mix together.
Beat the egg a little then add with enough of the milk to make a firmish dough.
Roll out on a floured surface till about 1/4" thick, then cut into rounds.
Grease a bakestone and cook the Welshcakes for about 3 mins each side till golden.
Cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with sugar. They're best eaten warm, on the day they're made.

Sian's chocolate cake

2011-02-27T08:16:00.000-08:00

The recipe was given to me by my friend Sian ages ago, and I've made it lots of times since.
It's a lovely moist chocolate cake, which uses oil instead of butter or margarine. It keeps well .

190g plain flour
2 level tbspns cocoa
1 level tspn bicarb
1 level tspn baking powder
150g caster sugar
2 tbspn golden syrup
2 eggs [beaten]
150ml veg. oil
150ml milk

Icing
50g butter or marg
4 level tbpns cocoa [sieved]
3 tbspns milk
150g icing sugar

Preheat oven 160C/gas3/325F

Grease and base-line 2 x20cm sandwich tins.

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl then make a well in the centre and add the oil, eggs, syrup and milk. Beat it well and pour into the sandwich tins. It's a very runny batter.
Bake for 30-35 mins then turn onto a wire rack, remove paper and leave to cool.

Icing - melt the butter or marg in a pan, add the cocoa, stir well, and cook gently for about 1 minute. Then stir in the milk and icing sugar, take off the heat, mix well and leave to thicken, stirring occasionally.
Sandwich the cakes with half the icing and smooth the rest on the top.

I find this too much icing, so I only make half the amount of icing and put it in the middle.

Belgian cake

2011-02-21T08:11:00.000-08:00

Having a good sort out in the food cupboard this morning, I found a jar of mincemeat leftover from Christmas.
I remembered having a recipe somewhere which uses it in a cake. It's an old recipe, originally cut out from a magazine, but I've tweaked it several times.

100g butter or margarine
75g dark brown sugar
150g wholemeal flour
1 tspn cinnamon
2 eggs
225g mincemeat
1 tbspn water

Preheat oven 170C/gas 3 and grease and base-line a 20cm square cake tin.

Beat the fat and sugar together till creamy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Fold in the flour and cinnamon then the mincemeat and water.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about 30 mins till golden.
It's got a nice light texture.

I don't know why it's called 'Belgian cake'!

Chocolate black tea cake

2011-02-17T11:58:00.000-08:00

This month's challenge from We Should Cocoa is an interesting one. Choclette from 'Chocolate Log' blog has given tea as this month's special ingredient. The link is here

Mm, not an easy one!

So I've made a chocolate and black tea cake. I found the recipe on allrecipes uk - this is the link.
The original cakesize was too much for two of us, so I halved the recipe, and it still made a good-sized cake.

I made a few tweaks - I used orange tea, as I love the flavour of chocolate and orange, and I had some ground hazelnuts so used those instead of chopped ones. I'd run out of caster sugar, and used soft brown sugar.

In the blurb about this cake, it says that it's best kept for a day before eating it. We didn't wait that long!

The tea gave a very subtle flavour, rather too subtle . Need to use orange zest or maybe add orange juice or essence to the tea to reinforce the orange flavour. Love the texture - the hazelnuts add a slight crunch.

I melted some plain chocolate and spread it over the top of the cake.

Honey and banana loaf

2011-02-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

We love teabreads and loafcakes, so I made this one to use up a couple of very ripe bananas.

This recipe was given to me by my aunt many years ago, and it's delicious. I've changed it to metric.

225g sr flour
1/2 tspn grated nutmeg
100g margarine or butter[softened]
225g bananas [weighed without skins]
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
6 tbspn thick honey

topping
2tbspn honey [warmed]
crushed sugar lumps or nibbed sugar

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 900g [2lb] loaf tin and line base with greaseproof paper.

Put flour and nutmeg in a bowl and rub in the marg. or butter till it looks like breadcrumbs.
Mash the peeled bananas and stir into the flour with the sugar, eggs and honey.
Beat it well until it's evenly mixed.
Put into the loaf tin and bake for about 45 mins. Check that the top's not browning too much, or if it is, put foil on the top.
Allow the loaf to cool then put onto a wire rack. When it's completely cool, brush the honey [which has been warmed in a small pan] over the top and sprinkle on the sugar.

This is nice on it's own with a cuppa or spread with butter.

I brought some nibbed sugar back from France, so used this on the top. I also added some mixed spice to the flour mixture as I love spice!

Scones

2011-01-30T03:18:00.000-08:00

I found some buttermilk hidden in the back of the fridge, so decided this was the time to try the buttermilk scones from Nigella's 'Kitchen'. They're quite generous, like the lady herself! You can find the recipe here.
They taste really good; a keeper I think.
Next time I'll add some dried fruit - cranberries, sour cherries, chopped dried apples or pears. Wonder what they'd taste like with chocolate pieces?!

Chocolate nutty clusters

2011-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Every month Choclette or Chele of We should Cocoa have a challenge, to bake something using chocolate and one other ingredient which they take turns to choose. This month it's Chele's choice, and she's chosen something left over in the cupboard after Christmas. Here's the link to her blog .

I had a lot of nuts left over so decided to make something a bit different; it's a recipe from my friend Liz.

Chocolate nutty clusters

175g white chocolate
100g digestive biscuits
100g nuts, chopped
175g dark chocolate

That's all you need and it's very easy to do.
Line a baking sheet with some parchment paper.
Break the white chocolate into bits and melt over a bowl of hot water or in the microwave.
Break the biscuits into pieces and add to the melted chocolate with the chopped nuts. Put spoonfuls of this onto the baking sheet. Put into the fridge.
Melt the dark chocolate and when cool dip the clusters in it. Put them back onto the baking sheet and back in the fridge to set.
I used brazil nuts, but you could use macadamia nuts, hazelnuts - whatever you fancy. Liz's recipe said it made about 30, but I only made 15!

Spicy oat cookies

2011-01-14T12:15:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd make some cookies for a change and found this recipe in my folder. They're part of my new 'healthy eating' - well oats are healthy aren't they? Forget about the butter and syrup!

It makes about 18 cookies.

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 tbspn golden syrup
1egg
115g plain flour
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn each of cinnamon and mixed spice
115g oats

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Cream the butter and sugar together till it's nice and fluffy. Add the syrup and the egg and beat together.
Fold in the flour, baking powder and spices and then the oats.

Grease a couple of baking sheets and put spoonfuls of the mixture on the sheets; make sure you leave a space between each one as they spread.

Bake for about 15 mins till golden and just firm when you touch them. Leave them to cool on a wire tray.

Coffee streusel cake

2011-01-03T08:08:00.000-08:00

A very Happy New Year.

I wanted to make a different sort of cake, so searched through my books till I found this recipe in an old book of world cookery belonging to my Mum. It's of German origin.

Preheat oven 160C/gas3
Grease and line a 20cm square tin.

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs
175g sr flour
4 tbspn milk
1 tbspn instant coffee dissolved in a tbspn boiling water

Streusel:
85g walnut pieces
1 level tspn coffee granules
115g soft brown sugar
2 tbspn plain flour
30g butter [melted]

Beat the butter and sugar together till nice and creamy.
Add the eggs and beat again.
Fold in the flour, milk and coffee.
Spread half of this mixture into the tin.
Put the streusel ingredients into a blender [ except butter] and make into a fine powder. Add the butter and give it all a quick whizz.
Sprinkle half of this on top of the cake mixture and top with the rest of the cake mixture,
Then sprinkle the remaining streusel on top.

Bake for about an hour in the middle of the oven. Leave to cool in the tin.

I changed the recipe by adding the coffee into the cake mixture - it was meant to be added to icing sugar to be drizzled over the cooked cake. I felt that having the streusel on top was enough. Also I didn't blend the streusel finely - I wanted some texture left, so kept it somewhat chunky.

White chocolate parfait

2010-12-29T06:09:00.000-08:00

We don't like Christmas pudding, so I try a new Christmas dessert recipe every year. Last year it was sticky toffee pudd. and this year I wanted to do something lighter. The recipe said that this amount would serve 8, but it served 3 people who had seconds! I made it in advance and froze it.

The recipe comes from this year's 'Woman's Weekly Christmas special'.

100g white chocolate broken up into pieces
250ml ready made vanilla custard
3 tbspns Baileys liqueur
142ml pot double cream
2 tbspns grated dark chocolate
a few raspberries

small loaf tin lined with cling film

Melt the chocolate and stir in the custard.
Leave to cool then stir in the Baileys.
Whip the cream then add it to the mixture.
Spoon it into the lined loaf tin and feeze overnight.
When it's solid, cover and wrap and label it.
Take it out and put it in the fridge 20 mins before you want to use it.
Put onto a plate, sprinkle the top with grated dark chocolate and decorate with a few raspberries.

Note: it melts quite quickly!

Christmas Day

2010-12-28T10:55:00.000-08:00

Hope you had a great Christmas.

I shan't forget ours in a hurry, as I nearly burnt the house down!

I put some part-baked rolls in the oven to bake, ready to eat with our starter in the evening. Then we went out Christmas morning to visit our son and family and I forgot they were still in the oven! Luckily we came back earlier than we'd intended, as I wanted to make sure that the duck would be cooked ready for our early evening meal. When we opened the lounge door, smoke was seeping under the door from the kitchen, and the kitchen was full of smoke! I quickly turned off the oven, and we had to open doors and windows to get rid of the smoke! My nicely-heated house turned into an ice block!
But it could have been an inferno!

Here are the rolls - blocks of solid charcoal!

Since then, I make sure everything is off before we go out!

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

Wishing you a very Happy Christmas.

Decided to start a new tradition and have muffins for breakfast on Christmas day. The idea is Nigella's, as is the recipe for Christmas morning muffins.

You'll find the recipe on Nigella's site here .

Blueberry muffins

2010-12-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

I found a punnet of blueberries hidden in the depths of the fridge, and as it's snowing outside, thought I'd make some of our favourite blueberry muffins.
Everyone has their own favourite muffin recipe, but this one came from an American friend when we were in Chicago. I loved them so much that I came back to the UK with 2 muffin tins in my suitcase! This was before muffins had arrived here.
Anyway this is the recipe I always use. I've anglicised it !

It's supposed to make 12, but I only ever get 10 muffins from it.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar
2 tspns baking powder
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml vegetable oil [ I use sunflower]
muffin paper cases and muffin or bun tin to stand them in

Preheat oven gas6/200C/400F

Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder together in a bowl.
In a measuring jug add the milk, oil and egg and beat together.
Mix the milk mixture into the dry one, but be careful NOT to overmix. It will still look a bit lumpy.
Spoon the mixture into the paper cases, filling them about 3/4 full. [You don't have to use paper cases - just grease a muffin tin.]
Bake them for about 20 mins - the tops should be golden.

I like this recipe because you can make it into what ever kind of muffins you want.
For fruit muffins, add 200g of fruit - fresh or tinned [drain the liquid from the tin!] and 1 tspn cinnamon in with the flour mixture.
For chocolate muffins, use 40g cocoa and 175g plain flour, and add 100g chocolate chips to the flour mixture for an even better muffin.
For apple and cinnamon muffins, my favourite, use soft brown sugar instead of caster and add 1 tspn cinnamon and 150g chopped apple to the flour mixture.
I made banana ones for my grandsons the other day by adding 2 mashed bananas to the basic mixture.
I've also made peanut butter ones by stirring the liquid ingredients into 4 tbspns crunchy peanut butter then adding this to the dry ingredients.
The list is endless!

Date and walnut brownies

2010-12-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

I'm hooked on dates - the edible kind!

I wanted to join in the 'We Should Cocoa' December challenge. This is the first time I've joined in, so I decided to make some brownies.

The idea is to make something with chocolate, and each month an extra ingredient is added and this month it's dates. This month's challenge has been set by Choclette of Chocolate Log blog. Here's the link .

The recipe is from an old copy of a 'Woman's Weekly' Christmas special magazine.

Makes 24 brownies
200g plain chocolate
250g butter, softened
4 med. eggs
300g caster sugar
125g plain flour
100g chopped walnuts
150g stoned and chopped dates

26x16.5 tin, lined with parchment paper

Preheat oven gas5/190C

Melt the chocolate and leave it to cool.
Then beat the chocolate and butter together; beat the eggs and sugar together till foamy and then add it to the chocolate mixture.
Fold in the flour, then add the walnuts and dates.
Spoon this into the pan and bake for about 30 mins till the cake is just set in the centre.
Leave it to cool in the tin then cut into 24 squares.

I made half of the amount, used a 20cm square tin and baked it for about 25 mins. It turned out fine.

A quick cake fix!

2010-12-09T04:42:00.000-08:00

I made an apple pie yesterday and had some pastry left over. What should I do with it? Then I remembered a childhood favourite - Welsh cheese cakes. There's no cheese in them nowadays, but they're tasty and quick and easy to make.

you need:

a bun tin
leftover shortcrust pastry
1 egg and it's weight in sugar, butter and flour
1/2tspn baking powder
jam of choice - I used Mirabelle plum [home made]

So, roll out the pastry and then cut out to fill the holes in a bun tin.
Beat the butter and sugar together and then add the egg and fold in the flour and baking powder.
Put a tspn of jam on the bottom of the pastry shell and then a heaped tspn of the cake mixture on top.

I cooked them at gas6/200C for 15 mins, when they were golden.

Date and walnut cake

2010-11-27T12:03:00.000-08:00

Sorting out my new food cupboard this morning, I found a packet of dates which needed using. My Mum used to make a very moist date cake, so I hunted in her notebook for the recipe. Eureka!

175g dates, chopped
210ml boiling water
3/4 tspn bicarb. of soda
175g light [or dark brown] sugar
50g soft margarine [or butter]
1 egg, beaten
225g plain flour
3/4 tspn baking powder
40g walnuts, chopped
1 tspn cinnamon

preheat oven gas4/180C/350F
Grease and line a 20cm [8"] square cake tin

Put the dates in a bowl with the boiling water and bicarb and leave for about 10 mins.
Beat the sugar and margarine together [I used butter and light brown sugar, but my Mum used margarine and dark brown sugar] then add the beaten egg, dates and water.
Stir in the flour, baking powder and cinnamon [my addition!] and then the walnuts.
Put the mixture into the tin and bake for about an hour. Mine took 50 mins in a gas oven.
I decided to ice it with some glace icing.

Mum's written that it keeps well. It's very moist.

Hello, I'm back!

2010-11-27T05:50:00.000-08:00

Here I am, now back living in Northamptonshire.

It's been a rollercoaster of a ride getting back here, but I won't dwell on that. Sufficient to say that we've made it, and are busily unpacking boxes and arranging furniture. We've downsized considerably, so are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot!

Here's the van and trailer that arrived with all our worldly possessions - well not quite all, as there's all Bob's tools at one friend's house in France, his motor bike with another friend and my pot plants with a third friend! All these will come back in a hired van in January!

I want to get back to baking, but now have a gas cooker, so think I will take a little while to get used to having a gas oven again.

It's nice to be back, and I'll try and keep the blog up-to-date.

On the move again

2010-09-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

We're moving out of this house on Wednesday, so I won't be blogging for a while. We take possesssion of the new UK house mid October, so will be staying in a holiday cottage in Northants for a few weeks.

Will be sad to leave here and all our friends. Everyone has been so kind to us; it's been like a long holiday.

Au revoir from France, and hope you'll join me again in the UK!

National Cupcake Week

2010-09-14T10:15:00.000-07:00

It's National Cupcake Week, so I made a few this morning as my contribution. I decided that I would make fairy cake sized ones, as this is much more British than the blowsy US cupcakes.

I'm not a huge fan of buttercream, so these are simply dipped in some good dark chocolate from our local chocolatier. I used about half of a 100g bar of 70% dark chocolate for the topping.

It's a simple 100g butter, sugar and sr flour mix with 2 heaped tbspns cocoa powder and 2 eggs.

Just beat the butter and sugar together, add the eggs and beat them in, then fold in the flour mixture.

I also added a heaped tspn of coffee granules to the flour mixture, which Ina says enhances the chocolate flavour. We shall see!

This amount of mixture made 8 small cakes, plenty for the 2 of us.

Plum upside down cake

2010-09-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

My friend gave me lovely plums from her garden.

I decided to make a variation on the gooseberry upside down cake I posted a while back, as it's so quick and easy.
It's just 110g of butter and sugar beaten, then add 2 eggs and 110g sr flour. I added some cinnamon with the flour as I love it!
Butter a 20cm springform tin well and make a nice payer of soft brown sugar in the bottom then add the plums, cut in half and stoned, skin-side up.
Put the cake mixture on top and spread it out evenly.
Bake in oven 180C/gas4 for about 35-40 mins till golden brown.

The plums were very juicy, but the cake tasted delicious. We had some as a pudding tonight.

Cheese and red onion tart

2010-09-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

Another of my 'use up what's in the freezer and garden' recipes.

We've had a good crop of onions this year, both red and white, so I decided to use up the puff pastry in the freezer and make an onion tart. I found some Cathedral Cheddar yesterday in the supermarket, so a marriage made in heaven!

You need:

1 pkt puff pastry
2 big red onions sliced
about 75g Cheddar cheese grated
s&p
dried mixed herbs
1 tbspn oil and 1 tbspn butter
about 1 tspn sugar
sprigs of any herbs you fancy

Preheat oven 210C/gas7 and grease a baking sheet.

Heat the oil and butter in a frying pan and fry the onions gently for about 5 mins till soft then add the sugar, s&p and dried herbs and cook for a further 10 mins.
Roll out the pastry [I've packed my rolling pin so had to use a lemonade bottle. Mum would be proud of me!] and put onto baking sheet.
Spoon the onions onto the pastry leaving about 2 cms round the edge.
Sprinkle the cheese over the top and put the sprigs of herbs on the cheese. I used thyme.

Cook for about 12-15 mins till the pastry is risen and golden brown.

I made a big green salad and a tomato salad to eat with it. Bob also had chunks of crusty bread that I'd made in my new breadmaker.

Apricot and walnut loaf

2010-08-25T10:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, another easy loaf!
I'm now trying to use up the contents of my food cupboard. There were a few dried apricots, sultanas and walnuts left, so this was the perfect recipe.

300g plain flour
21/2 tspn baking powder
11/2 tspn mixed spice
90g diced butter
90g soft brown sugar
200g dried apricots
125g sultanas
90g chopped walnuts
210 ml milk
1 beaten egg

Preheat ovem 180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 900g [2lb] loaf tin

Sift flour, spice and baking powder into a bowl and rub in the butter. Add the sugar, fruit and walnuts and mix together.
Add the milk and egg and mix well.
Put into tin and bake for 45-50 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

I didn't have enough apricots so I also added some dried apple.

Unexpected present

2010-08-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

We were busy packing boxes this afternoon when the doorbell rang. There were 3 ladies standing outside grinning at us.
They were 3 of our lovely neighbours, and when invited in, they produced a package and said it was a souvenir of our time here. We were so moved that they'd thought of doing this.
On opening the present, we found a lovely watercolour, done by a local artist, of La Garette, a pretty village in the Marais Poitevin, our area.

It's not framed as they wanted us to choose what we wanted.

What lovely people we have as neighbours; everyone, without exception, has been so kind to us. Our little hamlet has about 20 houses and we belong to a big village.

The Marais Poitevin is beautiful. It's now an inter-regional park. It's not well known to the Brits and is still unspoilt. It has a variety of scenery, from marshes to the coast. We live in the lovely marsh area with lots of alder trees.

Have a look here.

The black flat-bottomed boat is known as a barque, and is a popular way of experiencing this lovely area.

Tomato soup

2010-08-23T03:45:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd just finish off the post that I did the other day about tomatoes.

I'd roasted a tray of tomatoes ready for soup. It's been too hot to even contemplate soup, but the weather is now cooler so we had some for lunch today.

It was really tasty.

What did I do?

I sauteed an onion in a little evo till translucent, added a few chopped cloves of garlic and some chopped oregano from the garden. Cooked this a little longer, then added the tomatoes and 300ml of vegetable stock. [I used a good veg.stock cube]. I simmered it for about 10 mins then blended it. I checked the seasoning, then we ate it with big chunks of multigrain homemade bread.

Fruit galore!

2010-08-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

We planted a couple of Chasselas grapevines a couple of years ago, and we've just picked our first fruit.

For a small vine we picked quite a lot, and there's more to pick.

Then our friends arrived this morning to bring us some lovely plums from their garden!

We still have yesterday's blackcurrant loaf to eat, we picked a lot of Bramleys from our trees [which I've stewed to eat with my porridge] and now plums..!

I'm going to really miss this garden when we move. It's not huge, but we've become almost self-sufficient in veg.

Blackcurrant loaf

2010-08-21T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'm desperately trying to use up the contents of the freezer before we move. Just before we came here, I ended up running down the road to my friend with an enormous plastic bag full of food from the freezer! I want to do a better job this time, so it's 'use up some blackcurrants' day!

I love teabreads and loafcakes, so was very pleased to find this recipe in a little book I bought ages ago from a NT shop. There's no author's name, and the book is called 'Favourite family teabreads and other delights'.

Here's the recipe which I've adapted.

100g fresh blackcurrants
275g sr flour [plus a bit for tossing the blackcurrants]
100g butter or margarine
100g caster sugar [and a bit for sprinkling on the top]
2 large eggs, beaten
a little milk

Preheat oven 160 fan/180C/350F/gas4

Grease a 900g [2lb] loaf tin

Rub the fat into the flour. Add the sugar then the eggs and stir together. The mixture should be fairly dry, but if it won't come together easily, add a little milk.
Put the blackcurrants in another bowl and toss them in a little flour [to stop them sinking to the bottom of the cake] then mix them into the dough.

This shows that tossing them in flour does work - no I didn't eat 2 pieces!

Put into the tin, sprinkle the top with some sugar and bake for about 45-50 mins till golden.

I used light brown caster sugar and added a little cinnamon to the dough, as I love it!

We still have several bags of blackcurrants left, so watch this space!!

Tomatoes

2010-08-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

I don't plant tomatoes from seed as I only need 6 plants, so this year we bought a tray of 6 mixed varieties. These were - cherry tomatoes, vine cherry tomatoes, beef tomatoes, plum tomatoes, vine plum tomatoes and a round tomato I've forgotten the name of!

As we've had so much hot weather, they've been prolific and they've had a wonderful flavour. They've lacked water, and we've got a hosepipe ban, so I've been using the 3 water butts, now they've run out!

Bob picked yet more today, so I decided to make some soup with some and I made a starter with a few more.

These are some lovely plum tomatoes going into the oven to be roasted, just drizzled with olive oil. These will be for the soup.

This is the starter. It's not a good picture as it's from a French magazine.

It's mozzarella tomato gratin.

for 4 people you need:

6 tomatoes, 1 ball of mozzarella [125g],

4 tbns grated parmesan, 1 clove of garlic

4 stems of parsley, 4 stems of basil, 1 tspn thyme

evo, s&p

Preheat oven 160C/gas6/325F

Cut the tomatoes in 2 horizontally and put them on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle them with the thyme, s&p and a glug of evo. Cook them for about 40 mins.

Grate the mozzarella coarsely. Chop the basil and parsley. peel and chop the garlic.

Mix these with the grated and parmesan and about 10cl evo. Spread this on the cooked tomaotes.

Put under a grill for about 5 mins. Serve warm. Great with grilled chops or steak.

Whoopie pies

2010-08-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

I've seen a lot in magazines and online about whoopie pies so as I had some marshmallows in the cupboard, I thought I'd have a go at some.
This recipe comes from the June edition of Sainsbury magazine and is by Dan Lepard, one of my favourite bakers.
You'll find the recipe on Dan's forum here .
The recipe makes a lot of pies so I halved it. I think the pie is a cross between a biscuit and a cake. As there's no raising agent in the recipe, they don't rise very much. I just spooned the mixture on, but if you want a really good shape, you need to pipe them. Oh, and I added some grated lemon rind to the mixture.

The mixture for the pies is quite thick, thicker than the normal cake mixture.

The marshmallow were big ones, but they melted easily.

This is the melted mixture.

One very important thing, you must let this mixture go cold before adding the soft butter or it doesn't work! I was impatient and added the butter while it was still warmish and it didn't become a nice fluffy filling, just a runny one!

Only had pink marshmallows left,so my second attempt at the filling is yellow rather than white! But at least it worked this time.

I didn't put any icing on top, as the original ones don't have it and I thought they'd be too sweet.

They taste fine, but to be honest, I don't think I'd make them again. They certainly aren't the 'new cupcake' imho. Maybe a chocolate version would be better?