Cinnamon waffles

17 Comments / breakfast, vegetarian /

I warned you that there would be more waffle recipes, so here is waffle recipe number two.

These were for Sunday’s breakfast and I thought I would ring the changes by making them with cinnamon.  They were very popular and Mr OC thought they tasted of cinnamon doughnuts and that can only be a good thing.  They are light, fluffy, sweet and spicy and when they are liberally spread with butter and maple syrup they are very good indeed.

Makes 8 waffles

25g light soft brown sugar
300g plain white flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp salt
100g unsalted butter, melted
170g greek yoghurt (at the moment Total yoghurt comes in 170g pots, so if you have a 150g pot just add a bit more milk. )
200ml milk
2 eggs

Method

Make sure the sugar has no lumps and put this into a large bowl, add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix well. Add the melted butter, yoghurt, milk and eggs and beat the mixture until well combined and lump-free. Leave to stand whilst the waffle maker heats and then cook as directed by the manufacturer’s instructions.  Spread with butter and drizzle with maple syrup and eat immediately.

They freeze very well.

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Chocolate orange marble cake

23 Comments / cake, chocolate, The Ordinary Cook /

I have been craving something chocolatey and orangey for a few days now.  I can’t explain this craving beyond I often crave something choc orangey, or indeed choc coffee-y or choc cherry-y.  You get the picture.

Anyway, we have been invited to the neighbours for a curry night tonight so I thought I should take something sweet along with us. I thought about choc orange cupcakes or choc orange biscuits, but then thought about marble cake and decided that this was the way to go.

Marble cake holds good memories for me.  My mum often made it when we were children, especially for birthdays.  She would colour it like a rainbow using red, green and blue food colouring. That’s a tough birthday cake to beat in my view.

To make it extra special I have covered it with ganache, as this makes it more suitable for dessert it seems to me, but this cake is good just plain and unadorned.

200g softened butter
250g caster sugar
4 eggs
100ml milk
the zest and juice of 1 orange
300g plain white flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cocoa powder mixed with 1½ tbsp warm water

For the ganache:
80g good quality chocolate
80ml double cream

Method
Grease and line a loaf tin that measures 21cm x 11cm x 6cm.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.  Add the zest and juice of the orange and beat again to combine.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Add the milk and beat again.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and fold in gently until well combined.

Spoon half of the mixture into another bowl and then add the cocoa and water mixture  to this half and fold well.

Then spoon blobs of each mixture alternately into the loaf tin and carefully level the top.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or on the middle shelf of the baking oven of the Four-Oven Aga for 45-50 minutes until firm on top and a skewer comes out clean.  Place the tin onto a wire rack and leave the cake in the tin for ten minutes and then turn out of the tin and onto the wire rack until completely cool.

To make the ganache, break the chocolate into a bowl and pour the cream into a small saucepan.  Heat the cream to just under boiling point and then pour onto the chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted and the ganache is smooth.  Spoon over the top of the cake.

I hope the neighbours like it.  Fingers crossed. I liked that piece I sliced off for the picture, I hope they don’t mind the missing slice.

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Spelt, almond and chocolate biscuits

16 Comments / biscuits, chocolate, spelt flour /

These little beauties are not radically different from my Chunky Chocolate Biscuits that I posted about last July.  This, I think, goes to show that whilst some say baking is an exact science, you can play around with the ingredients and still produce something good.  The important thing is to get the balance of wet ingredients to dry ingredients right.  It also has to be said that biscuits are more forgiving than cake.  Take the basic recipe and play around with it. If you don’t have spelt flour, use wholemeal flour, or oatmeal, or plain flour.  You can replace the almonds with oats.  The texture will be different but the biscuits will still be good.

This time instead of adding chopped chocolate to the biscuit mixture I decided to coat the biscuits with melted chocolate as soon as they were cool and it turns out this is a good plan because every bite is guaranteed to have some chocolate in it – always a bonus.

Some more advice is that if you are on a New Year’s diet (although why would you be?) try not to eat three with your coffee like I just have.

100g (4oz) softened butter
100g (4oz) light brown soft sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g (4oz) spelt flour
100g (4oz)  ground almonds
25g (1oz) cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder

100g (4oz) good quality chocolate, melted

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined.   Add the spelt, almonds, cocoa and baking powder and fold in until the mixture forms a stiff dough.

Shape dessertspoonfuls into walnut-sized balls and place onto a baking tray.  Leave plenty of room for each biscuit to spread.  Flatten each biscuit slightly with the tines of a fork.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or the middle shelf of the baking oven of the four-oven Aga for 12-15 minutes until firm to the touch.  Leave to cool on the trays for five minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate and spoon on top of each biscuit.

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Happy New Year

9 Comments / The Ordinary Cook /

I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very Happy New Year.  I hope you have a healthy and very happy 2011.

I look forward to sharing more of my recipes with you this coming year.  One of the benefits of doing this blog, which I would never have predicted when I started out, has been meeting a lot of new friends – fellow bloggers and food lovers.  This has been wonderful.  I would like to thank all of you for your kind, supportive and often hilarious comments.  You really do brighten my day.

I hope this evening goes with a swing for all of you.  For my part it is highly likely that I will fall asleep on the sofa by about 9.30pm and wake up at about 11pm and decide that I am now far too grumpy and have neck ache because I fell asleep in an uncomfortable position and take myself off to bed.  Such a party animal!

Kath xx

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Breakfast rolls

4 Comments / bread, breakfast, The Ordinary Cook, yeast cookery /

We have been lucky this year and had a whole two weeks together as a family over Christmas.  It has gone really quick though and we haven’t done as much as we would have liked with our time together.  My cold knocked me out of action for the first week, so a lot of film watching tucked up on the sofa went on and then this week the weather has been fairly miserable. We have managed a few days out.  But I have tried to make a few special breakfasts, we have had pancakes, waffles, oatcakes and yesterday I filled these breakfast rolls with sausages and fried onions.  Is there a better breakfast than that?

These rolls are easy to make and beat supermarket bread hands down.

500g strong white bread flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
7g fast action yeast
1 tsp sugar
150ml warm milk
150ml warm water

Method

Place flour, yeast and sugar in a large bowl mix well, then add salt.  Mix again.  Add warm milk and water (I add just boiled water to the cold milk and this makes it hand hot, which is just about right).  Using a claw action with one hand bring the dough together.  It should be slightly sticky. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for ten minutes until soft and elastic.  Alternatively if you have a free-standing mixer with a dough hook you can put all of the ingredients in and mix on a slow speed for about seven minutes.

Form the dough into a ball and place in a clean bowl.  Cover with a large plastic bag (I use a bin bag) and leave to rise for about 1 ½ hours.  It should double in size.  Using your fingertips gently prod the air out of the dough, turn it onto the work surface and cut into six equal pieces.  Shape each piece into a sausage shape and place onto a well floured baking tray, leaving plenty of room for it double in size again.  Sprinkle each roll lightly with flour.  Cover again with the plastic bag, making a tent shape to leave room for the rolls to rise and leave for about twenty minutes.  After this time they should have risen to just under double their size.

Place the rolls onto a preheated baking sheet into a preheated oven at 200°c, gas mark 6, or directly onto the floor of the roasting oven of the Aga and bake for twenty minutes until golden brown (check after fifteen minutes and if necessary turn the oven down to 180°c, gas mark 4, or move them to the baking oven of the Aga to cook for the last five minutes).  The rolls will sound hollow when tapped.  Leave to cool on a wire rack.

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Aga cooked turkey

11 Comments / meat, The Ordinary Cook /

I have had a stinking cold.  It’s the sort where only full bed rest will do, but life is just not going to let that happen and I do want to tell you about how my mum cooks the Christmas turkey.  I am only sorry I didn’t manage to post it earlier in the week. It is the best turkey I have ever tasted, moist and delicious.

The one in the picture above is from last Christmas but I never quite managed to post about it.  If you have an Aga then this is the way to cook your turkey.  This recipe is based on a 15lb (7kg) turkey.

Mum stuffs the cavity with two types of stuffing, usually prune and sausagemeat and apricot. You can stuff your turkey with your favourite stuffing. She then slathers the entire bird in butter and then on Christmas Eve night she cooks it for 1 hour in the roasting oven.  This gives it a good start, crisping the skin and bringing the internal temperature up.  She then turns it onto its breast and places it in the simmering oven under a tent of foil and leaves it there overnight. So it gets about 8 hours in the simmering oven.  When she gets up in the morning, and she is an early riser, she turns the bird over and places it back in the simmering oven for another hour or so. Then she checks the internal temperature with a meat thermometer to check it is cooked.  Then transfers the bird to the warming oven, where it sits happily until we are ready for our dinner at about 1pm.  The turkey is still hot and the juices have run back into the meat making for a very delicious turkey.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas.  I hope you all have a wonderful time. Kath xx

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Chocolate Chestnut Cake

24 Comments / cake, chestnuts, chocolate, vegetarian /

This is a good chocolate cake!  I have been meaning to make it since Rachel made it and that was a whole year ago. It had been on my to make list before that as I had looked at it longingly in Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Year, which believe it or not I have had in my possession for seven years.  How time flies, and what a long to make list I must have.

It’s a great cake for this time of year, when chestnuts feature heavily on market shelves and in Christmas cooking.  But to be honest it’s a great cake for any time of the year.

It’s easy to make too and can be enjoyed warm for dessert or cold with a cup of tea (or coffee, or a mulled wine).

250g good quality dark chocolate
250g butter
250g peeled and cooked chestnuts (I use vacuum packed as life is too short)
250ml milk
4 eggs, separated
125g caster sugar

Method
Grease and  line a 25cm round cake tin.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a pan over a gentle heat. In another pan heat the chestnuts and milk together until it just comes to the boil.  Remove from the heat and mash the chestnuts into the milk until smooth.

Whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar together until combined.  Pour in the chocolate mixture and the chestnut mixture and whisk together well. I used a balloon whisk to do this.

In a very clean bowl whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks  and then carefully fold into the chocolate and chestnut mixture.  Pour the mixture into the tin and place in a preheated oven at 170°c, gas mark 3, or the baking oven of the Aga for 25-30 minutes, until it is set, but it will still have a little wobble in the centre.

Leave in the tin to cool a little if you are serving warm or leave to cool completely.  Sift cocoa powder over the top.

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Stollen

11 Comments / bread, cake, marzipan, vegetarian, yeast cookery /

Update 8th December 2020: If you would like to learn to make stollen (an updated recipe to this one) and other delicious Christmas breads you can join me on my online Christmas Breads course.

Well, this is the scene outside:

Poor little birds.  The last two days we have had a lot of snow (well, to clarify I am talking about the Midlands region of the UK and we don’t get that much snow normally. So when it snows all day non-stop we like to talk about it.  It’s weather and we are English!).  This has meant that the roads are a no-go area so it was deemed a baking day.  I have had a lump of marzipan (or almond paste) in the fridge since I made the youngest’s birthday cake at the beginning of December and have been meaning to make stollen ever since.

It takes a while to make, and you probably do need to be having a baking day to make this.

100g sultanas
100g raisins
100g currants
100g candied peel, chopped finely
100g ground almonds
50ml rum
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 x 7g sachets of fast acting yeast
225ml warm milk
500g  strong white bread flour
pinch of salt and pepper
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground finely
6 cardamom pods, husks removed and the seeds ground finely to make ½ tsp
¼ tsp grated nutmeg
finely grated zest of 2 lemons
150g butter cubed
100g caster sugar
225g marzipan
icing sugar to dust

Method

Place the fruit and the almonds in a bowl and pour over the rum and the vanilla extract.  Mix well and then cover the bowl with clingfilm and put to one side whilst you make the dough.

Place the flour, salt, pepper, spices, lemon zest and yeast in a bowl  and pour over the warm milk. Mix to form a dough.  I found that it made a stiff dough with some of the flour not mixed in but figured that this was ok as you will be adding butter to the dough. Leave the dough to rest for ten minutes.  If you have a mixer with a dough hook use this to beat in the butter and the sugar.  Then knead the dough for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.  Make it into a ball shape, place back in the bowl and cover with a large plastic bag for about 2 hours until the dough has doubled in size.  It was a cold day when I was making mine so it took a bit longer than this to rise to double its size.

Using your fingertips, gently prod the air out of the dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured worktop and prod gently into a square.  Then roll with a rolling pin until it is about 2.5cm thick.  Pour the fruit and almond mixture over the top and then knead the dough until all the fruit is evenly distributed.

Cut the dough in half. Cut the marzipan in half.

Prod one piece of the dough into a square and then use the rolling pin until it measures about 15cm x 20cm.  Roll one piece of the marzipan into a sausage that is slightly shorter than the dough and place this in the middle.  Roll the dough around the marzipan and press it well to seal the seam.  Shape into a log shape and place onto a greased baking sheet.  Repeat the same with the other dough and marzipan.  Make sure you leave plenty of room between the two loaves on the baking sheet so that they can rise without growing into one another.

Cover the baking tray with the large plastic bag, making a tent shape so that the loaves won’t stick to the plastic as they rise and leave to rise again until they have almost doubled in size.

Remove from their plastic tent and cook in a preheated oven at 200°c or gas mark 6, or the bottom of the roasting oven of the Aga for about 40-45 minutes.  If you are cooking in the Aga, check at 25 minutes and if brown, transfer to the baking oven for the rest of the cooking time.

Dust well with icing sugar. Rachel Allen recommends doing this when cool, but I did it as soon as they came out of the oven so some of it glazed a little.

Allow to cool before enjoying and if you can manage it leave it to mature, and then tell me how it tasted.

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Mocha Brownies – inspired by Choclette

12 Comments / cake, chocolate, eggs, pudding, The Ordinary Cook, vegetarian /
I have said before how much I love Choclette’s blog about all things chocolate. Well the other week she posted a recipe for Almond Toffee Brownies and they sounded like they may well be the pinnacle of brownies. Today, I felt like making brownies and so I thought I would try her recipe.  Except that I can never really follow a recipe without feeling the need to mess about with it a bit.  So I haven’t yet discovered whether Choc’s recipe is the pinnacle of brownies, but I am sure it is.

My variation is pretty good, with a sugary crust and very moist brownie underneath.  Choclette normally uses duck eggs in her cooking and as my hens lay quite small eggs instead of 3 egg yolks I used 2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg.  I cooked my brownies for longer too, I don’t know why this was necessary, maybe it’s my Aga or the different size tin – a mystery to me.

120g butter
50g plain chocolate
2 tsp Camp chicory and coffee essence
225g caster sugar
2 egg yolks and 1 whole egg
110g ground almonds

Method

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl suspended over simmering water (make sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the water). Add the coffee essence.

Whisk together the egg yolk and whole egg with the sugar until fluffy. Fold in the almonds and the chocolate mixture.  Pour into a greased 8 inch square tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180°c, gas mark 4 or in the baking oven of the Aga for 20-25 minutes.  You want it nicely browned on top but still moist in the centre. Leave to cool in the tin and then cut into squares and enjoy with a cup of tea.

Thank you Choclette for yet more inspiration.


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Medlar jelly

35 Comments / preserves /
The medlars have bletted.

I am ashamed to admit that I haven’t been brave enough to try one raw.  You are supposed to spoon out the fruit and it should taste sweet and cinnamony, but look at them:

I couldn’t do it.

But I could put them in a pot with some cut lemons and boil them up for an hour or so, strain the liquid through muslin, add sugar and boil again to make jelly.  Now I looked at several recipes, including the one at Celtnet and Nigel Slater’s recipe in last Sunday’s Observer magazine and then of course adapted to make my own.

Now both of the above recipes state that you boil the juice and sugar for around 6 minutes.  I boiled mine for a lot longer before it finally looked like it might set.  At the first boiling of about 10 minutes the liquid was still very liquid the next day so I poured back into the pan and boiled again, probably for another 15 minutes or so before it finally showed signs of wrinkling when a little is spooned onto a cold saucer and pushed with a finger.  Now the reasons for this might be that I didn’t add enough unbletted medlars and so didn’t have enough pectin.  But then again Celtnet use all bletted medlars.  It might also have been my fear of burning things and so not having it at a rapid enough boil.  Maybe a gentle boil just doesn’t do the trick.  So I would recommend using about 400g of unbletted medlars (as Nigel recommends) and really boiling the liquid and not being a wimp like me.

The jelly is nice but I am not sure it is really worth the effort of waiting for weeks for your medlars to blet.  I think quince jelly is just as good and not quite as much faff.  If I had a medlar tree I would make them again, or if I receive a boxful again then I will make it, but I wouldn’t go to the effort of seeking the fruit out particularly. As the friend who gave me the medlars said to me, there is probably a reason why the medlar tree is not so popular as other fruit trees. Having said that I have enjoyed the experiment and I am going to attempt to make medlar fudge and that may be a different kettle of fish.

Strained medlar juice

2kg bletted medlars
3 lemons, sliced in half
2 litres of water
granulated sugar, for every 500ml of strained juice add 375g sugar

Method
Quarter the medlars and place into a large pan, add the lemons.  Pour over 2 litres of water and place on a high heat and bring to the boil.  Partially cover with a lid and allow to simmer for about 1 hour until the fruit is really soft.  The time this will take will depend on how bletted your medlars are.  It may take longer.

Pour the fruit and liquid into a jelly bag, or muslin square or a couple of clean tea towels and tie up and suspend from a hook or a tap ( I used the kitchen cupboard handle and a wooden spoon to secure it) until the juice has run out of the bag.  Don’t be tempted to squeeze the bag or the finished jelly will be cloudy.  Measure the amount of juice you have and pour back into the large pan and add 375g sugar for every 500ml of liquid.  My 2kg of fruit yielded 1.8 litres of juice so I added 1.35kg of sugar.  Put onto a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly for at least 4 minutes.  Place a saucer in the fridge or under a very cold running tap and then spoon a little of the liquid onto the saucer, allow to cool slightly and then push it with a finger.  It will wrinkle slightly when it is ready.

Pour into sterile jars, mine filled 7 400g jars, seal and allow to cool.

Serve with roast meats, cold meats and cheese or even spread on toast for a breakfast treat.


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