COOKBOOKS GALORE

A belated Happy New Year.  I’ve had great problems posting on here for a while. Hopefully this has now been solved., I love Scandinavian baking and have several Scandi baking books, but to honest, I've never baked from them. Reading an article recently on this type of baking, I thought I must use my books, so decided to make a caramel almond cake. I've adapted it from 'Scandilicious Baking'. For the cake  you need; 20ml milk, 1 tspn lemon juice [or 75ml buttermilk] 75g butter, 3 eggs, 150g caster sugar, 1 tspn vanilla extract, 150g plain flour, 1 tspn baking powder and a pinch of salt. For the topping:  150g flaked almonds, 125g butter, 125g light brown sugar, 50ml milk and 1/2 tspn sea salt Preheat oven 160C/gas3                     Grease and base line a 23cm springform cake tin Stir the lemon juice into the milk to sour it, or use 75ml buttermilk instead. Toast the almonds till they're a light golden colour [takes ...

 This is an unusual cake as it’s made with cream, which is used instead of the usual butter and milk. So the cake is quite firm, tho’ you make it like a sponge cake. You need: 600ml whipping cream, 3 eggs, 1 tspn vanilla extract, 275g light brown sugar, 300g sr flour Topping: 60g butter, 110g soft brown sugar, 2 tbspn milk and 80g icing sugar. Preheat oven 180C/gas4/fan160C Grease and base line a 22cm deep tin. Beat half of the cream with hand mixer till soft peaks. Beat the eggs and vanilla in another bowl till thick and creamy. Gradually add the sugar, beating well between each addition. Spoon egg mixture into a large bowl and fold in 1/4 of the remaining cream, then the flour. Make sure it’s all mixed together. Spoon into the tin and bake for about 50 mins. Leave in tin to cool for 5 mins then put in wire rack.  Beat the remaining 1/4 of the whipped cream into soft peaks. Make the caramel topping : melt the butter in a small pan , add the sugar and milk. Bring to the boil a...

 I got this recipe from a friend recently, and have been waiting for an opportunity to try it out. Yesterday was my friend's birthday, so a good enough reason to bake! It's a caramel Genoese sponge which has an almond topping. I wondered if the name was linked to the opera, but my friend said it was a Scandinavian recipe. Who knows? So you need: 75ml buttermilk, 75g butter, 3 eggs, 150g cazster sugar, 1 tspn vanilla extract, 150g plain flour, 1 tspn baking powder and a pich of salt For the topping you need: 150g flaked almonds, 125g butter, 125g soft brown sugar and 50ml milk Preheat oven 180/gas4                       Grease and line a 23cm springform tin Beat eggs, vanilla extract and caster sugar together till pale and thick,  Add baking powder and salt to flour and stir together. Fold 1/3 of flour into batter with third of the buttermilk, then repeat with other 2/3. Mix together gently and spoon into tin. Bake 40 ...

 I love apricots, but usually in the supermarket they are in little punnets. I went to a market in another town at the weekend, and to my delight, they were selling them on a stall.  This recipe comes from a free recipe card from one of the French supermarkets. It's a popular recipe with my family. You need: 80g caster sugar and 80g soft brown sugar, 1 tspn vanilla extract, 50g ground almonds, 40g soft butter, 1kg apricots, 125g brioche [slices cut from a loaf], 200ml crème fraîche, 3 eggs, icing sugar to sprinkle Preheat oven 180C/gas4                                Grease a large ovenproof dish. Lay the slices of brioche in the bottom of the dish.  Cut the apricots in half and remove stone. Arrange the halves over the brioche, packing together well.  Sprinkle over the ground almonds and the brown sugar. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, caster sugar, vanilla extract, butter and crème f...

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 made Mary Berry's Chocolate Cappuccino Tart as our Easter dessert from her recent Quick Cooking series. My son and family were due to arrive for Easter Sunday lunch, but he had to go into work for an emergency, so my daughter and I were left with a huge leg of lamb and Mary's dessert! It took us all week to eat it!   https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/mary-berrys-chocolate-cappuccino-tart I didn't finish the top in the same way as Mary, just added some Easter eggs. Thought enough cream had gone into it! It's extremely rich and a small slice is enough. Maybe I should have tried to freeze it rather than to eat it all! My neighbour was given several slices, as was a friend. Yesterday my son and family did finally arrive to eat with us, so I decided to make a special cake. My son loves anything caramel, so this recipe seems just the thing. I found the recipe on an American site, but changed the recipe to suit us, and changed the cups into grams. Cake : 150g ...

This is a nice easy tart to make, but gives the impression it's luxurious. It's one of my family's favourite desserts. Here I go reminiscing again, but in France my neighbour over the road had a walnut tree, and gave me carrier bags full of them. Ahhh!  No carrier bags full, but a special offer on walnuts in a supermarket was the incentive for making this tart. For the shortcrust pastry - 250g flour, 130g butter, 2 tspn sugar, pinch salt and water. Am not going to tell you how to make pastry! Preheat oven 180C/gas4                Line a tart tin with the pastry. For the filling - 250g chopped walnuts, 2 eggs, 400ml crème fraîche, 2 tbspn salted caramel and 2 tbspn soft brown sugar Beat the eggs with the cream and the caramel. Sprinkle the nuts over the pastry, keeping a few back to decorate afterwards. Pour over the cream mixture and sprinkle on the soft brown sugar. Bake for 35 mins. Decorate with some walnuts before serving. ...

An easy traybake to make for tea or a coffee morning. Preheat oven 180C/gas4                  Grease and line a 24x33m tin 1 tbspn cocoa plus extra to dust over top 2 tbspn instant coffee granules 2 tbspn warm water 225g each of butter, soft brown sugar and sr flour 1 tspn baking powder 4 eggs cinnamon for dusting top Icing - 100g white chocolate broken in pieces, 50g butter, 3 tbspn milk, 175g icing sugar Mix the cocoa and coffee with the water. Put the rest of the ingredients in a food processor or mixer and blitz together. Add the coffee/cocoa and mix again. Pour into the tin and bake for 30-35 mins. Cool in the tin. For the icing - Melt the chocolate, butter and milk together over simmering water. Sieve the icing sugar and stir into the chocolate mix. Spread the icing over the cake and dust the top with a little cocoa then cinnamon. Cut the cake into bars and if you want, put the bars into paper cases. I just dec...

Since coming out of hospital, I seem to have been lucky enough to have had friends visiting. Now I'm feeling better, they haven't been eating 'shop bought' cake! I made a chocolate cake on Tuesday, but gave the leftovers to my friend to take home. Another friend came today and I decided to make her favourites - rock cakes. Don't think I've made these since schooldays. They were a great hit, and I'd forgotten how nice they are. I suppose the recipe is similar to Welsh cakes, which I often make. This recipe makes 12 and is from my Mum's notebook - I've changed the ounces into grams! 225g sr flour + 2 tspns baking powder, 100g soft margarine or butter, 50g granulated sugar, 1 egg, 150g mixed fruit and about 1 tbspn milk, brown sugar to sprinkle over. Preheat oven 200C/gas6              Grease 2 baking trays. Mis the flour and baking powder together then rub in the fat till it's like fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar and the fruit. Beat the eg...

As I have already decided to make the chocolate cake in my last post for Easter,  I thought I'd make some small cakes for my grandchildren. They love muffins and they came to visit yesterday so we made them together. The first one we made was topped with buttercream and my favourite  Cadbury's mini eggs, but the second batch was a great favourite of my 2 older grandsons - Crunchy Peanut Butter muffins. I always use oil when making muffins - don't think it is really any healthier, but it sounds better than using butter. For the Easter Muffins: Preheat oven 200C/gas6           Grease a 12 hole muffin tin or use 12 paper cases. Sift together 225g plain flour, 55g cocoa powder, 1 tbspn baking powder and a pinch of salt. Stir in 115g soft brown sugar. Lightly beat 2 eggs in a jug then beat in 250g buttermilk and 6 tbspn sunflower oil. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and carefully stir in the wet ones. Mix till just combined - be c...

 Needed to use up two very ripe looking bananas in the fruit bowl, so it would be a banana cake. I think banana goes well with caramel, so made a caramel icing for the top. The recipe uses sunflower  oil and yoghurt, so definitely healthy [if you ignore the caramel!]. Preheat oven 180C/gas4                   Grease and base line a 23cm springform cake tin. In a bowl mix together 250g plain flour with 2 tspn baking powder and 1/2 tspn bicarb. Mix in 250g caster sugar. In another bowl beat together 150ml sunflower oil, 250g ripe bananas [ I used 2 large ones], 2 eggs, 50ml natural yoghurt and 1 tspn vanilla extract. Pour the oil mixture into the flour and stir together till mixed. Spoon the batter into the cake tin and bake for about 40 mins. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins, then turn onto a wire rack. For the caramel topping: Put 85g butter, 175ml double cream and 175g soft brown sugar in a pan over a medium heat ...

I bought some plums from a local market. They were very ripe and needed using, so decided to make a plum cake of some sort. I found this recipe in my late mil's notebook, so not sure where it originates. It's a sponge cake with plums on top, then a sort of streusel layer, some of which sank into the cake and made it taste a bit like flapjacks - hence my recipe title! Grease and line a 20cm springform tin. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 It's an easy cake to make: Put 175g soft butter or marg in the bowl of an electric mixer; add 175g soft brown sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 175g sr flour, 1/2 tspn baking powder and 1 tspn cinnamon, and beat together till nice and creamy. You need 450g plums, halved and stoned. [ If they're not really ripe, put them in a dish in the oven sprinkled with 2 tbspn granulated sugar and bake them for about 20 mins till they've softened.] Put the plums, cut side up, on top of the cake batter and make the topping. Melt 50g of butter, add 50g sr...

I've mentioned my lovely German dil before, and this is one of her family recipes. I bought some Bramleys in a local market, and wanted to make some kind of dessert with them. I love apple cakes and have quite a lot of recipes for them, but this is a bit different in the way you put it together. You get a layer of cake, then a layer of apples, sultanas, cinnamon and citrus zest, then another cake layer. The cake mixture is more like a dough than the normal cake batter, and I found it difficult to spread the second layer over the fruit. It was quite stiff and I kept getting lumps of dough. I spread it as well as I could, but there were some sultanas poking through [unlike my dil's version, where there's not a sultana in sight - well she works in catering!]. Not a very pretty plate - I asked my OH to get a nice plate for me to put it on, and this is what he produced! It can be a dessert or eaten as a cake for afternoon tea. We ate it warm with some ice cream. I...

Another one of my favourite loaf cake recipes. This one uses stem ginger to give a better flavour than ground ginger. I've found a similar shop to the much missed [by me anyway] Julian Graves stores, so I stocked up on walnuts and dried fruit, including apricots. This such a quick loaf to make, and you can chose whether to ice it or not. I think the recipe is a WI one, as my mil gave it to me, and she usually used their recipes. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 900g loaf tin. In a large bowl put 115g wholemeal flour, 115g plain flour, 11/2tspns baking powder, 150g soft brown sugar, 115g soft butter, pinch salt, 2 beaten eggs, zest of a lemon and 2 tbspns of milk - beat it all together with an electric hand mixer. Stir in 175g chopped dried apricots [the no soak ones] and add 3 pieces of stem ginger chopped finely together with 4 tbspns of the ginger syrup. Finely slice a 4th piece of ginger and keep for the top. Spoon mixture into the tin, level, then arrange the 4...

These day, I only make puddings when we have friends or family for a meal - they seem to expect it! I wanted to make something tasty, but not stodgy.  Hunting through my cookery books, I found one I'd bought a few years ago from the famous 'Pudding Club' in 'Three Ways House' in Chipping Camden. If you've nor heard of this club, it was founded in 1985 to save our great British puddings. At the time, puddings were looked on with horror - much too fattening. So the club meets, eat their main course and then 7 different puddings are brought out and devoured. At the end of the evening, they vote for the best one. Looking through the book, many of the pudds are very filling ,but I found one that was marked as 'healthy', and it does contain fruit, nuts and honey and very little fat. I suppose with the latest bad press for sugar, 120g would be classed as a lot, so perhaps it wouldn't be classed as 'healthy'! Many of the puddings are steamed, but...

We have a houseful for Christmas this year, including 2 lovely people from Poland, so thought I'd try out a few family biscuit recipes from the French friend I mentioned recently. The first one is spiced Christmas trees. G's paternal family live in Alsace, so she's grown up with the lovely spicy biscuits and bakes they make at Christmas. I'm going to try out a few and have my grandsons help me, and then they can choose their favourites [as they're going to be here for Christmas anyway]. My daughter and dog came up for the weekend, so we roped her into helping us. She loves decorating cakes and biscuits, so she helped the boys with their trees, and the photo is of her creations. The boys didn't want their efforts put on here, so they ate them! I expect every family in Alsace has their own recipe for Christmas biscuits, but this is the translated Ruff family one, but the decoration is the boys' idea - they wanted garlands on the trees and baubles! 100g b...

Another simple but delicious apple cake. Many years ago I entered a competition in a small magazine called 'Home and Freezer Digest'. You had to send in your favourite apple recipe, and the best 100 would be published. I did get a recipe [called 'Nutty Apples'] in the book, and I won a copy of the book [100 Best Apple Recipes] and a year's worth of the magazine. Why am I saying all this, well I found the rather tatty book in the loft recently, and it has some great apple recipes in it. I still had a few of the windfall apples left so decided top make an apple and ginger cake from the book. It's a small cake, so perfect for the 2 of us. It's unusual because the apple puree is mixed into the cake mixture rather than being a layer in the middle of the cake. This gives the cake a good flavour. It could be used as a pudding with some custard - ideal for this colder weather. Preheat oven 180C/gas4 and grease and line a 20cm cake tin. You need: 225g of app...

Yet another loaf cake to add to my repertoire - well the recipe used a 900g loaf tin, but I wanted a round cake so used a 20cm springform tin. Inspiration for the cake was a few very ripe bananas in the fruit bowl. I rarely use alcohol in cakes, but this time I did what the recipe said, and soaked the sultanas in the rum. I wanted to try a different topping so I used a butterscotch one I'd wanted to try for ages - I know it has a lot of sugar in it, but for a special occasion..........! 100g sultanas 50ml rum 185g plain flour 2 tspn baking powder ½ tspn bicarb pinch salt 2 tspn cinnamon - I used 3 tspns 125g soft unsalted butter 150g light soft brown sugar 2 large eggs 4 small very ripe bananas 1 tspn vanilla extract For the icing: 75g golden caster sugar 15g butter 50g light muscovado sugar 1 tbspn golden syrup 75ml double cream In a small pan pour the rum over the sultanas and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and leave to soak. Preheat the oven 17...

I've posted muffin recipes several times, adapting my favourite recipe. I made a rhubarb tart yesterday, and had enough rhubarb left to make some muffins. I wanted to make something different, but having looked online and not been inspired, I decided to adapt my old faithful recipe  We love rhubarb crumble, so muffins with rhubarb and crumble sound ideal. I usually make the crumble with half oats and half flour, and I use oil instead of butter in the muffins. A healthier option! I used soft light brown sugar instead of my usual caster. For the crumble topping: 50g butter, 50g plain flour 25g porridge oats 50g demerara sugar 1 tsp ground cinnamon For the muffins: 225g self-raising flour 100g soft light brown sugar 1 medium egg, beaten 250ml milk 120ml sunflower or rapeseed oil 200g rhubarb, sliced lengthways and chopped 2 tbspn cold water 50g caster sugar icing sugar [opt] Preheat oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Line a 12-hole muffin tin wi...

As I said in a recent post, plums are one of my favourite fruit. I love making crumbles and tarts with them, but wanted to find something different to try. This recipe is from a Woman's Weekly magazine; it's one of the hundreds of recipes I have to sort out in my cuttings folder! I bought a punnet of plums from the supermarket which were marked as seconds, and they were really hard. Anyway I thought I'd use them in my new recipe, and they turned out soft and juicy. 250g plain flour 170g chopped up butter 1 egg yolk I used my processor to make the pastry, putting in the flour, butter and egg yolk and adding a tbspn of water and blitzing till the pastry started to come together. Roll out and line the flan tin and chill for 30 mins. it's a very short pastry and breaks easily, but is easily patched up. Filling: 1 tspn cinnamon 2 tbspns soft brown sugar 750g plums, stoned and quartered Topping: 1 egg + a yolk 125g creme fraiche 45g soft brown sugar ...