COOKBOOKS GALORE

There's nothing like chocolate for cheering a day up. I was given a large bar for Easter, so wanted to stretch it out by using it in a cake. I love loaf cakes, and this is one of my favourites. It uses courgettes as well as chocolate, and I just happened to have one medium sized one that needed using up. It also uses soft brown sugar, a bonus as I've no more caster sugar! You need: 2 eggs, 80ml honey, 120ml sunflower oil, 100g soft light brown sugar, 2 tspn vanilla exctract, 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1/2 tspn bicarb, 1 heaped tspn coffee granules, 45g cocoa powder, 210g plain flour, 2 small courgettes or 1 medium grated, and 200g dark chocolate cut into chunks and divided into  2 x100g portions Preheat oven 170C/gas4           Grease and line a 200g loaf tin Whisk together the eggs, honey, oil, sugar and vanilla. Sift together in another bowl the flour, bicarb, baking powder, coffee and cocoa: mix together then gently add to the egg mixture. Fol...

In these difficult times, we’re all using up what we have in our store cupboards. Finding some pecans, a bit of golden syrup and some ground almonds made me think of a recipe I’d kept from a supermarket magazine ages ago. I had plain flour, so that would be fine for the pastry. Preheated oven 190C/gas5.   2 x deep bun tins Pastry: 100g plain flour, 25g caster sugar, 50g ground almonds, 85g butter, 1 egg and 2 tspn lemon juice. Put the flour, sugar, almonds and butter in a processor and blitz till crumbs ( doesn’t take long) Add egg and juice through the feeder tube and bring together using your hands. You can also make the pastry in the traditional rubbing in way. Wrap in film and put in the fridge for about 15 mins. Roll out thinly then cut out 18 circles using a 7-8 cm cutter. Press carefully into the tins. Prick the bottoms then leave to chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Filling: 70g melted butter, 50g light muscovado sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 2 tbsp golden syrup...

Something to cheer us up in these miserable days. Was given a bottle of local cider, and had several apples needing using up, so found this recipe from an old Woman's weekly magazine. You need:  330ml cider, 150g melted butter, 4 medium apples, peeled, cored and grated, 2 large eggs, 150g soft brown sugar, 300g plain flour, 2 tspn bicarb, 1 tspn mixed spice, 1 tspn cinnamon, 1/2 tspn grated nutmeg, 200g raisins or sultanas and 100g roughly chopped pecans. Preheat oven 180C/gas4         Grease and line a 20cm spring form cake tin. Pour cider into a pan and bring to boil. Lower the heat to simmer and let the cider reduce. You need about 100ml. Melt the butter in another pan and pour the cider over to cool a bit until just warm. Mix the sugar and  eggs into the apples and pour in the butter and cider. Mix together. Sift the flour and spices together then fold into the mixture. Finally add the fruit and nuts and stir together. Pour into the ca...

I'm never too sure about veg in cakes. I quite like carrot cake, but didn't like the parsnip one my friend made, and courgettes, well I haven't really used them. So I was surprised to find that they were an ingredient in a delicious cake someone brought for a social evening recently. I asked for the recipe and this is it! For the cake: 2 large eggs, 80ml runny honey,100g soft brown sugar, 120ml veg oil, 2 tspn vanilla extract, 100g vanilla yoghurt, 1 tspn bicarb, 1 tspn baking powder, 260g plain flour, 2 small courgettes, grated, 100g milk chocolate [chopped roughly] Ganache: 50g milk chocolate, broken into pieces and 50ml double cream Preheat oven 160C/gas3                        Thoroughly grease and flour a large bundt tin  - make sure you do the corners. Put the tin on a baking tray. Whisk the eggs, honey, sugar, oil, vanilla and yoghurt together. Squeeze any excess water out of the courgettes and add to the b...

A quick and easy recipe to use up a large tin of apricots I found in the back of my store cupboard. In season you could use fresh apricots. You need: a pack of shortcrust pastry [or of course, make your own] a large tin of apricots [or 500g of fresh] 75g soft butter 75g caster sugar 75g ground almonds 1 egg flaked almonds to decorate Preheat oven 200C/gas6                      A 24cm tart tin Roll the pastry out to fit the tin then put into the fridge. Take apricots out of tin and pour off the liquid. If using fresh, wash them, remove the stones and cut in half. Mix the butter, sugar, ground almonds and egg together to make a batter. Pour this into the tart tin. Arrange the apricots on top and bake for 30 mins. Take out of the oven and sprinkle flaked almonds on top then put back in oven for 5 mins. The tart can be eaten warm or cold. It was good eaten with some vanilla ice cream. You could use other fruits in...

I always try and make a galette in January. You can find them in all the pastry shops and supermarkets in France, as they're made to celebrate the arrival of the Kings on January 6th. Have sadly lost all my little fèves that I collected [the little china figures that go into the galette des rois]. Whoever finds the fève is king or queen for the day and gets a crown! Decided to make it a bit different this year and added chocolate to the frangipane. It's so useful to have the puff pastry ready cut out into a circle, as in France, but a large dinner plate used to cut round to make the circle is fine. You need: 2 packs of butter puff pastry, 200g dark chocolate, 125g ground almonds, 125g caster sugar, 125g soft butter, 25g plain flour, 3 eggs and 1 yolk, and 1/2 tspn almond extract Preheat oven 200C                             A baking sheet Beat the eggs and sugar together till light and fluffy. Add the alm...

                                                            Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Healthy,                                           Happy New Year.