Wishing all my lovely readers a very happy Christmas. I hope that you all get to share some lovely time with friends and family, or some lovely peaceful time, whichever you are lucky enough to get this year.
Merry Christmas,
lots of love,
Kath
(Image of holly from karenswhimsy.com)
Posted in The Ordinary Cook
I am ridiculously pleased with an early Christmas present from my parents. A Nordicware bundt pan.
I made vanilla bundt cakes immediately but today was time for a bundt cake that can be shared with We Should Cocoa, this month hosted by Choclette. She chose orange for this month’s challenge and I love the combination of chocolate and orange.
The chocolate bundt cakes have orange zest and juice added and are beautiful drizzled with the orange flavoured icing. Delicious.
110g butter, softened
150g caster sugar
3 eggs
150g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons of yoghurt ( I use Total 2%)
Zest of a large orange
Juice of half a large orange
For the icing
75g icing sugar
juice of half a large orange
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°c, gas mark 4 or use the Baking Oven of the Aga. Butter or oil the bundt pan. Although, I did run a test on mine and the non stick coating worked a treat without greasing beforehand.
Making sure that the butter is really soft (I left mine out of the fridge for two days and it still wasn’t soft enough – a testament to our chilly kitchen), place all of the ingredients into a large bowl and whisk with an electric whisk until you have a smooth batter.
Pour a teaspoon of the batter into each hole of the bundt pan and place in the oven. Cook for about twenty minutes until they look cooked and if you lightly touch them the cake will spring back.
Leave them in the tin for a few minutes and then turn onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Make the icing by mixing the icing sugar with the orange juice. If you think it’s too runny then add a little more icing sugar as it will depend on the juiciness of your orange.
Place the little cakes on a serving plate and drizzle with the icing.
You could make this in a large bundt pan, in which case you will need to double the recipe and cook for about 45 minutes. Test the cake with a skewer which should come out clean after being pushed to the centre of the cake.
Posted in cake, chocolate, The Ordinary Cook
Tagged bundt pan, cake, Chocolate and orange bundt cakes, orange icing, we should cocoa challenge
This cake was born during a night out with friends. It was one of those nights when we threw caution to the wind and drank cocktails! Crazy, I know! (We don’t get out much these days).
I indulged in an Amaretto and Ginger Ale. Goodness, it was good. My friend, let’s call her Tallulah, (that’s the name she wanted to be known by if I ever wrote this post) said it would make a good cake. Ginger topped with a layer of marzipan.
I got to it that very week. The ginger cake topped with marzipan was good but not great. A couple of weeks later and I felt inspired enough to try again. Adding the marzipan into the batter makes for a deliciously moist cake and the combination of pieces of chewy, zingy crystallised ginger and soft, comforting marzipan is a winner.
This cake is perfect for this time of year because it just shouts Christmas to you. It’s also a good way to use up your marzipan trimmings from the Christmas cake. This cake will last at least a week. So it’s a good cake to have around at Christmas to share with visitors. Thank you Tallulah, for the inspiration (and for a great night out).
150g butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
200g black treacle
200g golden syrup
250ml milk
2 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
300g plain flour
60g crystallised ginger, chopped into small chunks
150g marzipan (made like the recipe here with 1 tbsp Amaretto added in place of the lemon juice and almond extract, or shop bought), chopped into chunks
Method
Preheat the oven to 170°c, gas mark 3 or use the baking oven of the Aga. Line a tray that measures 30cm x 20cm x 5 cm (the Aga half roaster) with foil or silicon liner. If you are using foil, butter well.
Place the butter, sugar, spices, syrup and treacle in a pan and heat until melted. Take off the heat and stir to combine. Beat the eggs lightly. Add the eggs and the milk to the syrup mixture and stir well to combine. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and add the liquid to the flour. Mix well. Add the chopped crystallised ginger and the marzipan and pour the mixture into the tin.
Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes to an hour until lightly springy to the touch. Be careful not to overcook it. Leave to cool in the tin. Wrap in fresh foil and eat a slice whenever you feel the need to indulge.
Posted in The Ordinary Cook
My girls both love our local library. They get very excited. The eldest chooses her books very quickly. The youngest can never make a decision. In the end, the only way she that will reluctantly make a decision is if you tell her (for the fifth time) that you (really) are leaving in five seconds. Anyway, the eldest chose The Usborne Little Book of Christmas Cooking (the youngest chose a story about Christmas Unicorns, eventually). This book is really lovely. It is full of biscuit and cake recipes with a Christmas theme. Each step of the recipe is illustrated with a drawing to help children understand each stage.
On our first read-through both girls were taken with the Painted Biscuits recipe. They each wanted to make them for everyone in their class. That is sixty biscuits, yes, sixty biscuits. All of which need stamping out, and all of which need painting.
Actually, it wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be. The girls helped stamp out half the dough and then (even more helpfully) painted those whilst I stamped out the rest. We got a bit of a production line going.
They were appreciated by everyone in their class I understand, and why not? They are light and buttery and they look lovely with their festive shapes and colours.
This recipe makes enough to make 60 small biscuits. It can easily be halved if you don’t have two classes of children to feed.
150g softened butter
100g icing sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g plain flour
To decorate:
1 egg white
food colouring
clean new paintbrushes
Method
Preheat the oven to 180°c, gas mark 4.
Cream the butter and icing sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix well. Sift the flour into the bowl and mix until it comes together in a ball of dough. Place in the fridge to chill for twenty minutes.
To make the paint, lightly whisk the egg white and divide between as many cups as you want colours. Add a few drops of your chosen food colour to each cup.
Grease baking trays with butter ( I needed four to make 60 biscuits, but you could do this is rotation, cooking one batch at a time).
Lightly flour the work surface and roll out the dough to about 5mm thick. Stamp out shapes and place them onto the greased tray. Paint away to your heart’s content with the coloured egg white.
Bake in a preheated oven for 10 minutes until lightly golden.
Use a palette knife to place them onto a wire rack to cool.
Posted in biscuits
Tagged cut out cookies, painted christmas biscuits, stamped biscuits
This is based on a recipe from the book I reviewed recently, Molly Stevens’ All About Roasting. I have been intrigued by roasted grapes since I saw them on Michele’s blog back in April. Then I saw them in Molly Stevens’ book and then again on Michele’s blog just last week. I knew I had to try them.
There is a recipe in Stevens’ book which calls for slow roasting of grapes for a couple of hours. I really want to try these but haven’t had the organisational ability needed for this yet. The combination of squash and grapes grabbed me though. I made them last week with pumpkin, apple and grape and it was delicious, but we had tucked in before I remembered to take a photograph. So I made it again last night, this time with a butternut squash we had grown in the garden and some apples off one of the trees. We had it with roast chicken both times. But it would be good with anything, especially pork. Mr OC has taken the left-overs to enjoy at work today.
Molly Stevens’ suggests that you use either grapes or apple with the squash but I really like using both. The tartness of the apple works well with the sweetness of the grapes and the squash.
Stevens’ suggests that you could use marjoram, rosemary, thyme or sage. But my herb of choice would always be sage, as it is my favourite and it works well with the grapes and apple.
This makes enough for 3-4 as a side dish
20g butter, melted
1 tablespoon olive oil
5-6 sage leaves chopped finely
1-2 tablespoon of maple syrup
½ butternut squash
1 green apple
3-4 handfuls of grapes
salt and pepper
Method
Chop the butternut squash into cubes and the apple into 8 slices. Place the squash, apple and grapes into a bowl and toss with the butter, oil, maple syrup, sage and salt and pepper. Spread into a single layer on a roasting tray and place in a preheated oven at 200°c, gas mark 6, or in the middle of the roasting oven of the Aga. Roast for about 40 minutes until the squash, apples and grapes are nicely caramelised and tender. Serve hot or at room temperature.
Please try it, it is delicious. Michele’s recipe for grapes and sausages looks worth a try too. That is next on my list now I know how lovely roasted grapes are.
Posted in The Ordinary Cook
Today is All Soul’s Day. I didn’t know about All Souls Day until I read about it in my Shropshire recipe books in the summer and I have been waiting ever since to make these Soul Cakes.
All Souls Day is a Christian festival and these days some churches hold special services for people to attend to remember those that are no longer with us.
In ye olden days it was a tradition that the poor would go a-souling and offer up prayers of remembrance for the relatives of their wealthier neighbours in return for money or food. Then, in more recent years, it was the children who would sing “A soul-cake, a soul-cake, please good missus, a soul-cake. One for Peter, one for Paul, three for Him who saved us all” and would receive a soul cake in return. A bit like trick or treating (in the nicer parts of town).
It was/is believed that All Souls Day was/is the day when the spirits of the dead will visit loved ones. I like that idea very much. I am not at all religious but would love to think that loved ones who are no longer with us are still able to visit and see how we are getting on with the ups and downs that this life throws at us. So in celebration of all the memories of loved ones no longer with us I have made these Soul Cakes.
Three of the Shropshire recipe books that I have all use the same recipe, which is credited to Mrs Mary Ward. She is known to be the last person to keep up the tradition of giving out Soul Cakes at her home in Pulverbatch. She died in 1853 at the ripe old age of 101. Rather amazingly, to celebrate her 100th birthday she wore her wedding dress of yellow satin and received Holy Communion with her friends and neighbours. I wish I could squeeze into my wedding dress now! The story goes that she never suffered from a day of illness in all her long life. She must have been some kind of lady Mrs Ward. I wonder if she is looking down on us today? I hope she is and I hope she is proud that her recipe is still being used 200 years on.
The problem with old recipes though is that they can take a bit of interpreting. Here it is as it appears in the books I have.
“Three pounds flour, quarter pound butter (or half pound if the cakes are to be extra rich), half pound sugar, two spoonsful of yeast, two eggs, allspice to taste, and sufficient new milk to make it into a light paste. Put the mixture (without the sugar or spice) to rise before the fire for half an hour, then add the sugar, and allspice, enough to flavour it well; make into rather flat buns and bake.”
Right, where do I start? How big are your spoonfuls of yeast? Teaspoon or dessert spoon? How much allspice should I use? A pinch or two teaspoonfuls?
How much milk will be needed? Rather flat buns? Should I cut them out like scones? Or shape them like bread rolls? What temperature should I cook them? I appreciate Mrs Mary Ward would have cooked them on her fire, but should I treat them like bread and scones and use high heat for a short period, or like a cake and so cook them at a moderate heat for longer?
So the soul cakes you see here might not be anything like the good cakes made by Mrs Mary Ward.
These days I think we might have a sweeter tooth than we used to and I must say these are rather dull eaten on their own. However, with a bit of butter and jam, they wash down a treat with a cup of tea.
This is how I made them (with thanks, and maybe apologies, to Mrs Mary Ward). I halved the original recipe as I doubt I will be swamped with singing children later.
750g plain flour
100g butter
1 teaspoon yeast
1 egg
350ml milk
100g caster sugar
1½ tsp allspice
Method
Preheat the oven to 220°c, gas mark 7.
Place the flour and yeast into a large bowl. Melt the butter and warm the milk. Beat the egg in a mug or small bowl. Add the butter, milk and egg to the flour. Mix together well until smooth. Make into a ball. Cover with a large plastic bag or oiled clingfilm. Place in a warm spot and leave to rise for half an hour. Add the sugar and allspice to the dough and knead until well combined. Place onto a lightly floured board and roll rather flat! Now I admit to having no idea how flat you should roll these. I tried about 2 cm and these are a bit too biscuity. I also tried about 4 cm and these work well as a scone. I also tried the last one like a bread roll and that worked well too.
Place in the hot oven and bake for about 20 minutes until golden. They taste good warm with butter and strawberry jam.
I am glad I tried these, but perhaps there is a reason they aren’t made so much these days. They are a bit dull and I have tasted better scones/ sweet bread. I like the ideas associated with them though.
Posted in Shropshire recipes
Tagged All Soul's Day, Shropshire recipes, Soul cakes, traditional recipes
Eek! This is my late entry to this month’s We Should Cocoa Challenge, hosted this month by Choclette. She came up with the great idea of combining chocolate with chilli this month. I was up for the challenge but unfortunately time ran away with me. So at the very last hour I made these. They are very moreish. At first bite they taste like a normal chocolate but then it hits you with a great big spicy kick.
These particular truffles have a secret ingredient. Should I tell you? Oh, go on then.
My mum bought these for us when she was on holiday earlier this year. They are a little pod of espresso with added cocoa. You drink the contents with the attached straw and after that you whir around like the Tasmanian Devil for the next ten minutes. They are fab! Unfortunately they don’t seem to be available in the UK, so if you want to add the espresso element, which is there to boost the chocolate flavour of these truffles then just add 20ml of strong espresso.
I had various theories about how to get the chilli flavour – dried or fresh? Minced or sliced? Should there be a bite of actual chilli in there? In the end I decided that I should use fresh and infuse the cream with slices of said chilli, seeds et al, and then sieve these out. I thought it would need to infuse for an hour or so. Let me tell you here and now it doesn’t! Thankfully I checked after five minutes and that was enough to give the cream a sufficient chilli kick ( read definitely enough, any longer and it will blow your head off).
100g good quality 70% chocolate
200ml double cream
1 red chilli, sliced with seeds
20ml espresso
chocolate flakes for rolling ( I used chilli flavoured chocolate flakes)
Method
Place the sliced chilli and seeds with the cream into a pan and heat until just below boiling point. In the meantime chop the chocolate finely, you can do this by whizzing it in a food processor, should you have one. Remove the cream from the heat and let it infuse. Try it after a few minutes and if it seems to have enough of a chilli kick then sieve the cream over a basin to remove the chilli. Return the cream to the pan and briefly heat just to warm through. Add the chopped chocolate and the espresso and stir gently until smooth. Place this in a bowl in the fridge to firm up. Take teaspoonfuls and roll into chocolate flakes or cocoa powder.
The beauty of this ganache is that it also makes a mighty fine and warming hot chocolate for bedtime.
Just heat a cup of milk in a pan until warm. Add a tablespoon of the ganache or about three of the truffles and whisk until well combined. Heat to the desired temperature and enjoy.
Thank you Choclette, and I am sorry for being so rubbish at organising myself.
To continue with the theme of mint…
Whilst I was picking the mint for the Shropshire Mint Cakes I picked enough to make a jar of concentrated mint sauce to make sure that we have some for our roast lamb this winter. Mary Berry, the source of this recipe, (although I have also found it in one of my Shropshire recipe books), suggests that you make this concentrate in June just before the mint flowers. I never make it then, as winter seems so very far away and I always think about it but never get round to it. But actually the mint in my garden flowers in June and then rejuvenates itself and flowers again in September and this year is still growing new shoots even now.
This mint sauce is made with the tender and strongly scented new tips. I managed to pick 50g, which is a fair amount of mint in a bowl. But as you only need a teaspoon or so each time you make mint sauce, this will last me through the winter roasts until the new mint comes through next spring. If you have plenty then double up and make a jar for a friend. It will definitely be appreciated.
To use the concentrate in the winter. Take a heaped teaspoon of the concentrate and mix in a bowl with a slosh of vinegar and it’s ready to douse your lamb.
50g mint sprigs
100ml vinegar (Mary Berry suggests distilled vinegar but I use white wine vinegar)
75g granulated sugar
Method
Wash a jar and its lid well in soapy water, rinse in clean hot water and place in a low oven for 15 minutes to sterilise.
Place the vinegar and sugar in a pan and bring slowly to the boil (this will allow the sugar to dissolve before boiling point is reached). Now you can either chop the mint leaves using a knife and then add to the hot vinegar or you can put the leaves in a food processor and add half the vinegar and pulse until finely chopped, then add to the rest of the vinegar (be careful with the hot vinegar). Pour into the warm sterile jar and seal immediately.
Well, this is my first post in what I hope will become a series of Shropshire recipes. ( I suppose Fidget Pie was the first, but hey…). Over the summer I found three books on Amazon,
and I found another today, which is winging its way through the British postal system as we speak. I want to share some of these recipes with you to celebrate the traditional recipes of my lovely county.
The reason I found this fourth book is because I found the recipe for these mint cakes in the red and white book by Mary de Saulles, unfortunately the list of ingredients omits the sugar. So I found myself searching for the original recipe to find out how much sugar I should be using and I think it is in this book and I found the recipe online.
Whilst searching for this though, I found that a recipe for Shropshire Mint Cakes was published in an Australian newspaper on 24th April 1935. How fantastic is that? A Shropshire lass in search of a local recipe is assisted by a newspaper article published on the other side of the world 76 years ago. The internet is a marvellous tool.
I couldn’t use this recipe either though because this one doesn’t seem to specify the amount of butter that you use. The search has also revealed that like all recipes these little cakes can be adapted, one recipe uses currants but suggests that you could also use dried figs and the other recipe suggests the use of both currant and mixed peel. One recipe suggests that you make them by spreading the mixture over a square of pastry and topping with another square, cook, then slice into squares. The other suggests that you make individual cakes. I thought the latter would make for a neater cake, especially if my lack of dexterity became involved.
The Shropshire Mint Cake is a bit like the Eccles Cake, but with the addition of fresh mint. You can really taste the mint and at first you think that these might be an acquired taste, but I can assure you that they soon become just that. I had acquired a taste well before I was eating the fourth one in a row, warm from the oven (my well-known lack of willpower again!).
I urge you to give them a try.
For the pastry:
200g plain flour
100g butter, diced
1 tbsp caster sugar
enough cold water to mix
For the filling:
2 tbsp chopped fresh mint
80g caster sugar
80g currants
50g softened butter
1 egg to glaze
Method
First of all place the chopped mint into a bowl and add 40g of the caster sugar and mix well. Leave to sit for at least an hour until the mint juices start to run.
Make the pastry by placing the flour and the diced butter in a bowl and rubbing the butter into the flour using the tips of your fingers, lifting your hands up high over the bowl to incorporate air. (I would use my food processor, but it broke and is at my Dad’s as he valiantly tries to repair it for me – thank goodness for Dads). When it looks like fine breadcrumbs, stir in the tablespoon of sugar and add enough water to make a smooth dough. Flatten the dough slightly into a disc and wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for thirty minutes.
Place the currants, mint mixture, remaining sugar and the butter into a bowl and using a fork combine well.
Roll the pastry quite thinly and cut out discs using a scone/cookie cutter. Place half of these discs onto two baking sheets. Then place teaspoonfuls of the currant mixture in the middle of the discs. I used a scone cutter that measures 6 cm and this made 24 little cakes.
Beat the egg with a fork and then brush a little of the egg all around the edge of the discs of pastry and place another disc on top, sealing well around the edge by pressing with your finger. Brush the egg all over the tops and then place the baking trays in a preheated oven at 200°c, gas mark 6 or the middle/bottom of the roasting oven of the Aga for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Remove carefully onto a wire rack and leave to cool a little before you sample your first one.
It’s mid October and the light for taking photos is lousy, but the weather (cold and blustery) demands comfort food of the highest order. Mr OC had phoned at lunchtime asking if I had any recipes for lentils that he could make for his lunch the next day. I took this as a hint that he wanted me to make something with lentils that he could take for his lunch. So we had some of this for tea with a pumpkin and potato mash and he took the rest in his flask today.
Serves 4
100g chorizo, diced chunkily
1 large onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
2 carrots, peeled and diced
1 sprig rosemary, chopped finely
4 sage leaves, chopped finely
1 bay leaf
a glug of Madeira or Marsala or sherry (optional)
400g tin of tomatoes
100g split red lentils
400g tin of beans (I used three bean salad but you could use cannellini, kidney or whatever you like or have)
600ml vegetable stock
salt and pepper to taste at the end of cooking
Method
Fry the onion in a little oil in a large saucepan for a few minutes until starting to go translucent. Add the carrots and the garlic and continue to fry for a few more minutes until the carrot is beginning to become tender. Add the chorizo and the herbs and fry until the oil begins to leach from the chorizo. Pour in a good glug of Madeira wine (if using) and continue to cook until that has almost evaporated. Pour in the tomatoes, the beans, lentils and the stock. Bring to a simmer and simmer gently for at least 40 minutes (I left it in the simmering oven of the Aga for two hours). Taste and season accordingly with salt and pepper. Serve with crusty bread or pumpkin and potato mash like I did last night. A meal fit for a king, or a man who likes his stew.
Tagged Aga cooking, casserole, chorizo, comfort food, lentil, pulses, stew
