Mini-Bakewell Tarts

While doing the Christmas baking I ended up with spare pastry and frangipane. Normally at this time of year I would make mini mincemeat tarts, but I had run out of mincemeat too, and given the snowy weather I didn’t fancy going out to get any. I therefore decided to put jam in the instead, thereby turning them into Bakewell tarts.

All I did was roll out the pastry and then line a muffin tin with pastry rounds. I blind baked them for about 10 minutes, until they were just starting to brown around the edges. Then I added a thin layer of jam, and topped this with a spoonful of frangipane mixture and then a sprinkling of flaked almonds. They were then baked for another 12 minutes or so, until the frangipane was golden.

Traditionally these would be made with raspberry jam, but we only had gooseberry and elderflower, which was delicious. I think they would be really good with blackcurrant as well, as a bit of tartness helps to set off the sweetness of the frangipane.

These were so good that R wouldn’t let me share them when we had friends round!

Christmas Cake

This Sunday is Stir-up Sunday. This is the last Sunday before Advent, and is the day to make your Christmas pudding and cake. Traditionally everyone in the household should stir the mixture for luck.

We actually made our Christmas cake a couple of weeks ago, as we had more time then, and the pudding will come from the WI. It is definitely a good idea to make these items in advance. They keep for ages, improve with age, and it means less stress in the build-up to the big day. It does still feel a bit early to be thinking about Christmas though.

Christmas Cake
(based on Delia's recipe)

900g dried fruit (mix of raisins, sultanas, currants)
3 tbsp brandy
225g plain flour (I used Doves gluten-free)
1 tsp salt
A good grating of nutmeg
1 tsp mixed spice
225g butter
225g soft brown sugar
4 eggs
50g chopped almonds
1 dsp treacle
Zest of an orange
Zest of a lemon
Juice of an orange (only if making gluten-free, as it needs the extra moisture)

Mix the fruit with the brandy and leave covered in the bowl overnight.

Preheat the oven to 140C.

Whisk the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add the eggs a bit at a time while whisking well. The fold in the flour and spices, followed by the fruit, almonds, treacle, juice (if using) and zest.

Spoon into a lined 20cm round cake tin, and bake for about 4 1/2 hours. When it is cool remove from the tin. It then needs feeding! Poke some little holes in the top and drizzle over some brandy. This can be repeated a couple of times over the next few weeks if you like it boozy (and who doesn't?). Wrap tightly and store in a cool place (like the back of the larder so your father can't find it).

It can then be iced closer to the time - post on that to come.

Parkin

I hadn’t really heard of parkin before, and then once it was sitting in the tin it suddenly seemed to be all over the internet. I obviously hit the zeitgeist! It sounded like the perfect thing to serve at our Bonfire Night supper, post Battersea Park fireworks. With steak and ale pie beforehand it certainly added up to a hearty meal!

It needs to be made a few days or up to a week in advance, which allows the flavours to develop and it become sticky and yummy.

I tweaked a recipe from Delia, but there are loads about this year, including this one from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I particularly like the idea of putting stem ginger in it. Hix have it on their dessert menu too. I highly recommend making this, and I am pretty sure it won’t be a year before I make it again.

Parkin

200g golden syrup
25g black treacle
75 butter
100g soft brown sugar
225g oats (I used Pinhill, which are quite small)
100g plain flour (I used Doves gluten-free)
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1 egg
1 tbsp or so milk

Preheat the oven to 140C.

Weigh the treacle and syrup into a saucepan (the measurements are approximate as I found it impossible to weigh them accurately – too sticky!). Add the butter and sugar and stir over a low heat until the butter is melted and the sugar dissolved.

Then stir the syrup mixture into the dry ingredients, before lastly adding the egg and milk. If you are using gluten-free flour then you may need a bit more milk.

Pour into a greased tin. I used a rectangular one, maybe 8 x 13 inch. Bake for 2 hours, until the whole kitchen smells of the spices.

Now you need to be patient. Once it has cooled remove whole from the tin and wrap tightly in foil and place in a tin. Don’t touch it for at least four days (and we waited a week). The stickiness it develops will be worth it!

This was a good recipe to adapt to gluten-free (as long as you are OK with oats) as it has a relatively low flour content, and becomes really moist and sticky as it matures. No one even noticed that it was gluten-free, which I always think is the best compliment.

Lavender and Lemon Drizzle Cake

I wasn’t quite sure how to name this cake. The lavender is in the cake rather than the drizzle, but it becomes a bit long-winded if you call it a lemon and lavender cake with lemon drizzle. I’m sure people get the idea anyway. The photo isn't the greatest either - the sun was too low - but it was good practice.

The inspiration for this cake came after I found some lavender in the supermarket. I have wanted to cook with it for ages, but we can’t grow our own as we don’t get enough sun, and it has proved difficult to source.

The first thing I made with it was some lavender shortbread, which made a lovely accompaniment to the chocolate sorbet. I was then toying with what to do next. I assume now that it is open it will lose its potency pretty quickly. R has been talking about lemon drizzle cake for ages, and I can’t even remember the last time I made one. The more I thought about it the more I thought the addition of lavender to this cake might be a good one.

The floral note contrasts well with the sharpness of the lemon. I upped the lemon quota a bit from my normal recipe, and the balance seemed pretty good. Next time I might try using partly ground almonds and partly flour (gluten-free) to try and get the damper texture I was after. This would make a great cake for tea party, with its delicate floral-ness.

Lavender Lemon Drizzle Cake

150g butter

225g caster sugar

225g plain flour (I used Doves gluten-free)

4 eggs

Grated zest of 2 lemons

Juice of 1/2 lemon (you might not need this with regular flour)

Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

75g caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, then add the eggs one at a time, followed by the flour and lemon zest a bit at a time, then stir in the lemon juice. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 50 mins, until a skewer comes out clean. Prick the cake all over with a fork (or the testing skewer).

Stir the remaining lemon juice and sugar together and then pour over the cake while it is still hot. Leave in the tin to cool completely.

Drawing Room Tea Cake

Why is it that as soon as the dietician said that I couldn’t eat wheat all I wanted to do was bake stuff? And I have this real urge to learn to make bread properly. I even started looking up courses on the internet, until I realised it wasn’t really feasible! (For the record, one of the courses at the Lighthouse Bakery would be my choice).

The bread will have to wait and see if I can go back to eating wheat, as I don’t feel confident enough with regular bread-making to start experimenting, particularly as it must be difficult as all the gluten-free bread I have come across so far is not worth eating!

Cakes and cookies/biscuits are another matter however, particularly since I have discovered Doves gluten-free flour. I just use this in place of regular flour, adding a bit of extra baking powder if the recipe demands it, and some xantham gum. So far everything has worked out pretty well, and people can’t tell they are gluten-free if they don’t know.

One of the best things has been this cake. It has been on my must-cook list for about a million years, but I couldn’t find the required ‘vine fruit mix’, and since I didn’t know what it was I wasn’t sure what to replace it with. It turns out just to be a mix of raisins, although they are particularly good raisins. The recipe is from an old Waitrose recipe card, where it goes under the name of Lady Grey tea cake, and the vine fruits are from there, but any raisins or sultanas could be substituted. As cake goes this is pretty low fat too. It doesn’t have too much sugar, and there is no butter or oil in it at all.

The flavour of the tea really shone through, as did the lemon, and soaking the fruit made the whole cake really moist. R even said I could make this again – the highest praise!

Drawing Room Tea Cake

2 tea bags (I used Whittards drawing room tea, which has bergamot in it)

125g caster sugar

300g vine fruit mix (any combination of raisins or sultanas would do)

2 medium eggs

225 plain flour (Doves gluten-free)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp xantham gum (only if you are using gluten-free flour)

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Pour 300ml of boiling water over the tea bags, in a bowl. After about three minutes remove the tea bags and put the vine fruit mix in. Stir well, and then leave to soak for 4-12 hours (trying not to eat them all as you walk past).

Then just add all of the other ingredients to the fruit and water, stir well, and pour into a lined 1lb loaf tin. Bake at 180C for about an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. I found it needed another 15 minutes or so.

Serve sliced, with tea (or eat standing up in the kitchen because you can't resist!). It made the house smell heavenly too.

Baked Cheesecake

I have been threatening to make cheesecake for about a year, but something else always seemed to come along and take my attention. It’s definitely something that needs a crowd, or R and I would be the size of a house. However, I did manage to find a slightly lower-fat version, and on this evidence it doesn’t affect the taste.

Baked Cheesecake

This is based on a recipe from BBC Good Food, but I have changed some of the quantities a bit.

140g digestive biscuits
40g butter
600g Philadelphia Light
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
3 tbsp cornflour
75ml sour cream or crème fraiche (about half a small tub)
Vanilla pod
1 tsp vanilla essence
Grated rind of 1 lemon
A small squeeze of lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a 20cm loose-bottomed/springform tin with baking parchment (if your tin is non-stick I reckon you don’t need to line it, but I don’t want to be held responsible if you can’t get it out!)

Get out all of the stress of London commuting by bashing the biscuits to crumbs (or perhaps that is just me).

Melt the butter and mix with the biscuit crumbs, then press into the base of the tin and bake for 10 minutes. Once removed from the oven turn the temperature up to 240C.

Meanwhile whisk the Philadelphia with an electric handwhisk on low speed (or the old fashioned way) until creamy. Then add the sugar in large spoonfuls, whisking between each. Add the cornflour, and then the eggs one at a time. Only beat enough to combine the ingredients, try not to overwhisk. Then add the lemon zest and juice, vanilla extract and the seeds from the pod, and finally the sour cream. The mixture will be quite runny.

Pour the creamy mixture into the tin, and tap lightly to get rid of any bubbles. Bake at the high temperature for 10 minutes, at which point it was just brown around the edges. Then turn the oven temperature down to 110C, leaving the oven door open for the first few minutes, and bake for another 25 minutes. I found it was still very wobbly in the centre after this, and so it had another 20 minutes in the oven. Then turn the oven off and leave for a few hours to cool (or overnight, which is what I did). Wrap in foil and put in the fridge until about an hour before you want to serve it.

We had this with raspberry coulis (put a punnet of raspberries in a saucepan with a tiny bit of water over a very low heat. When the juice has started to run add a tablespoon of icing or caster sugar and cook until the raspberries have broken down. Sieve to get rid of the seeds if desired).

The original recipe said it served 8, but 5 of us with small seconds only ate half, so I reckon it could go a very long way!

Nigella's Chocolate Macaroons

I came home from work last night quite late and generally fed up, and R was not home yet from drinks after work. More time on the computer or TV didn’t really appeal, and we have people coming for supper this evening, so I thought that I would get 5Live on the radio and do some cooking.

As I opened the fridge I realised that there were a whole lot of raspberries that we bought in the farmers market at the weekend which were starting to look a bit soft. It looked like there was enough for a jar of jam, so I decided to give it a go. I have never made jam before, although I have helped my mother on occasion. I therefore am not quite sure why 8.30 on a Tuesday night was the time to try it, but there we go.

Raspberry Jam

I weighed the raspberries, and then put them in a non-stick pan (for ease of washing up) over a low heat, until they had softened slightly and there was some liquid in the pan. I then added the same weight of caster sugar and stirred to combine. It was then brought up to the boil and simmered until a drop on a frozen saucer wrinkled when pushed (probably took between 10 and 15 minutes, but I wasn’t paying much attention). Then I poured it into a jar, and by some miracle there was the perfect amount for one jar. I think I might have to make scones now!

Then I needed a pudding for supper tonight. I have had my eye on Nigella’s chocolate macaroons for a while now, as they are gluten-free and look yummy. This therefore seemed the moment to try them. I haven’t changed anything, although next time I might make a half batch, because good as they are this makes a lot.

Nigella’s Chocolate Macaroons

2 egg whites
200g ground almonds
30g cocoa powder
175g icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 200C, and line a baking sheet. I just bought a Bake-o-Glide type sheet, and it was brilliant for these.

Then just stir all of the ingredients together. I would recommend a large bowl for this. It looked for ages like there wasn’t going to be enough egg white for all of the dry ingredients, but if you persevere then you end up with a very sticky chocolatey dough.

Have a bowl of cold water close by, and then wet your hands before rolling into walnut sized balls. The water really does help, and making neat balls was much easier than I expected. Put on the baking sheet. I found that they didn’t really spread much, so you can put them quite close together. Then bake for 11 minutes, before removing from the oven and cooling on a rack.

I then found you need to hide them from your husband, so that there are enough left for supper!

Hampshire weekend

I like going down to my parents for the weekend. Partly it is getting out of London and getting some country air, but it is also spending time in the kitchen without feeling guilty about not doing chores in the flat.

There was absolutely nothing planned for this weekend, which is such a luxury. My mother had already done most of the cooking for Saturday, so I didn’t get too involved with that. On Sunday however, I decided that I wanted to start the day with ricotta pancakes, which seem to have caught my attention a few times recently.

After a bit of googling we ended up with Gordon Ramsey’s recipe for ricotta and banana pancakes with pecan and maple syrup. Apart from a bit of faff with whisking the egg whites and stirring them in, this was a simple recipe which tasted delicious.

I then wanted to make a rhubarb based pudding for Sunday lunch. Again, I hit the internet, with the thought that something with almonds and possibly orange would be good. This recipe from Waitrose looked good, and it was really simple to make. It was really light and moist (hate that word), with the different flavours coming through well, and complementing each other. You really got the taste of the rhubarb, which of course was the whole point.

Both of these recipes are going in my ever expanding file.

Chelsea won at the weekend too, so Wembley here we come (although I don't really like going there for a semi).