Friday 15th of March 2013

Happy Red Nose Day, everyone.  This recipe for gingerbread men has served me very well over the years and today proved popular at the children's school's 'Bake-Off' for Comic Relief.  These little guys have occupied a lot of brain-space, if not time, over the last few days, so I was actually quite glad to see the gingery little backs of them... They do taste good, though.

300g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
100g soft-ish butter, diced
150g light muscovado sugar
4 tbsp agave nectar (or honey, or golden syrup)
1 large egg
currants and icing, to decorate

Mix the flour, bicarb, and spices together and rub in the butter. Stir in the sugar, then mix the  beaten egg with the agave nectar and mix to a workable dough.  Leave to rest briefly, then roll out to half-a-centimetre thick.  Cut out whatever shapes you like, re-rolling the scraps.  Decorate, as you see fit, with currants.  Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 180°c for 15 minutes or until the biscuits are a pale golden brown.  Cool on a rack, waiting until the biscuits are completely cold before you even think about icing them.

Tonight, just because it's Friday, we had steak with onion rings, salad and garlic mushrooms (prepared as for my Barbecued Garlic Mushrooms and cooked in a hot oven for 15 minutes).  I opened a bottle of good red and sank into the pleasure of the weekend...

Cath xx

Go Shorty

A bit of home baking on the weekend is always a good idea, something to entertain the children and educate them about food a little, while providing a lovely treat at the same time.  Shortbread is a wonderful thing to bake, so simple yet so rewarding.  Because it contains so few ingredients, the preparation time is minimal and a mere fifteen minutes in the oven is bearable for even the most fractious child (or parent!).

Of course butter (and it must be butter when you make shortbread) is not a health food, but the oats I've added to my recipe, plus the introduction of unrefined sugar, with its trace nutrients and minerals, allow me to feel better about this snack than some of the other 'kiddy snacks' around.  OK, so it's not an apple this time, but it's not shortbread every time and that's what matters.  Find a balance, it's the weekend...


Brown Sugar Shortbread

60g porridge oats
190g plain flour
200g salted butter
75g light muscovado sugar

Put the porridge oats into the blender and whizz to a fine powder.  Stir into the flour and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together, then work in the flour-and-oats mixture to form a crumbly dough.  Press into a 20x30cm rectangular baking tin (mine is non-stick, but I still wipe it round with my wonderful Cake Release).  Mark into squares or bars with a sharp knife, then prick holes in each  section with a skewer.  Bake at 180°c for fifteen minutes, until the surface is golden.  Remove to a rack to cool (careful, it's rather fragile at this stage!), then break into biscuits once cooled and firm.  Put the kettle on, make a pot of tea (shortbread's best friend) and put your feet up, that's an order!

Cath xx

Joining Up the Blogs

I've recently joined the UK Food Bloggers' Association, which was set up by Julia from A Slice of Cherry Pie. I've posted over at the UFBA blog tonight, and if you want to find out more about me, you can read my introductory post here.

Not long ago, Hubby asked me if I could make him some caramel shortbread. Could I? I love the stuff, so an excuse to make it was very welcome, especially safe in the knowledge that it wouldn't hang around for me to eat if he wolfed it down! I'd never made it before, having a bit of a fear of boiling a tin of condensed milk for hours on end. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would forget and let it boil dry. When I discovered that 'Nestlé' sell tins of 'Carnation' condensed milk already prepared into caramel 'Duche de Leche', I was thrilled. I used my regular shortbread recipe for the base, which features one of my favourite ingredients, fine semolina, but if you don't have any, just up the quantity of plain flour to 240g. I use unsalted butter for just about everything, but always make shortbread with salted butter. I just seems to taste better that way. As for the chocolate, use what you like. I prefer a half-and-half mixture of dark and milk chocolate - just break 150g of each into a bowl and stir together once they've melted.

Caramel Shortbread

200g plain flour
40g fine semolina
60g cornflour
100g icing sugar
200g soft butter, diced
397g condensed milk dulce de leche
300g chocolate

I make shortbread in my KitchenAid, just paddling everything together until it comes right. You can blast it in the processor, or take the long way round by stirring the dry ingredients together and then rubbing in the butter. Gently knead it into a softish dough.

Press the dough into a greased and base-lined 23cm square tin. Prick it all over with a fork and bake at 150°c. Cool it completely in the tin, then spread over the dulce de leche. Chill for about 30 minutes, then melt the chocolate in the microwave and pour this over the top. Spread it out carefully, then chill until just set. Remove from the tin and cut it into squares (or vice versa, depending on what sort of tin you have).

We had good old pasta and meatballs tonight - I got hold of some linguine (which I love) so I used that and Christopher had great fun getting himself into a mess with it all. We had garlic bread to go with it, and grated parmesan to scatter over.

Holey Mole

Christopher's Birthday is fast approaching and I've got a party to get ready for. That means baking, and lots of it. I baked his cake today, which I'll decorate tomorrow, and made some chocolate cookies and some cheese biscuits. These mini-sized biscuits go down really well as snacks with both my boys , so I thought they'd be a tasty, healthyish addition to Saturday's birthday tea.

Cheesy Bites

100g soft butter
50g cheddar, finely grated
75g mozzarella, grated
200g granary flour
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp English mustard powder
milk

Beat the butter and grated cheeses together, then stir in the flour, baking powder and mustard powder. Add a splash of milk to bring the mixture together into a soft dough. Roll into 32 small balls, then place on oiled baking sheets. Flatten the balls a little with the bottom of a glass (dipped in flour). Prick each flattened round two or three times with a fork.

Bake for 12 minutes at 180°c, then remove to a rack to cool. They keep for about a week in an airtight box, but they're very moreish, so they might not actually make it that far...

After the baking extravaganza, I really needed something straightforward to cook for dinner. I'd ordered a carton of ready-made mole (mo-lay) sauce as part of my Mexgrocer consignment the other weeks, so tonight I tried it out.

I roasted some chicken thighs, pouring the mole sauce over them for the last 15 minutes' of cooking time. Served with some plain basmati rice and some roasted vegetables, it was a really good, easy supper. Christopher was a bit suspicious of the sauce until I told him it had chocolate in it (which is true), then he tried it and it went down a storm. James gobbled it up, same as he does with everything at the moment. Growing boys and all that. I think I'll have to get some more of this stuff in; supper tonight felt like a total skive!

Belly Laughs

We've gone without our Sunday roast for the last couple of weeks while we've been on holiday, so today was the day we'd all been looking forward to. I got a slab of belly pork from the butcher the other day. I've used it in cooking before, but never roasted a big piece of it and always wanted to. I asked the butcher to score the skin for me, which he did, then I rubbed freshly ground black pepper and thyme leaves all over the rind and into the slits. I would have added salt, but can't at the moment if I want James to be able to share food with us (and I do).

As well as the usual roast potatoes and assorted vegetables, I made some apple sauce and a tray of Yorkshire Puddings flavoured with sage and onion. My mum made these regularly when I was little; I think it was originally her Mum's recipe. I find that skimmed milk, or half miolk, half water, makes the best Yorkshire puds. You only need one thick slice from an onion for this recipe, so wrap the rest in foil, pop it in the fridge and use it for something else tomorrow. Just don't accidentally give it to your daughter as a mid-morning 'piece' to take to school, eh Mum?

Sage-and-Onion Yorkshires

300ml milk
1 large egg
100g plain flour
fresh sage, chopped
onion, finely diced

Beat the milk and egg together, then beat in the flour with seasoning to taste. Put some fat in the dints of your Yorkshire pudding tin, then heat until sizzling in a 220°c oven. Pour batter into each hollow, then quickly sprinkle a little diced onion and some chopped sage over the surface of each pudding-to-be. Return the tray to the oven and cook the puddings for 20 minutes until risen and golden brown.

Pudding this evening was one of those happy accidents arisen from a kitchen disaster. I tried a new biscuit recipe the other day, which promised crisp, risen biscuits which were hollow inside. Ha! Having followed the recipe to the letter, my result was more like rock hard ginger pancakes. Loath to waste a whole batch of biscuits, I had to come up with something to do with them, and this is it. It's quite gratifying when a dismal failure turns into a resounding success, like this did tonight.

Apple and Bilberry Crisp

250g ginger biscuits
470g jar bilberries, drained
1 Bramley apple

crème fraîche, to serve

Finely crush the biscuits. Peel, core and slice the apple, then put the pieces, mixed with the bilberries, in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Scatter over a thick layer of biscuit crumbs and bake at 150° for 20 minutes. Serve with crème fraîche.

Pride comes before a...sandwich

Hubby started work early this morning, so the boys and I had breakfast together, then we (mainly I) spent the rest of the morning doing the usual Sunday tidy-up. The mustard-and-cress Christopher and I sowed on some damp kitchen paper a couple of weeks ago was raring to go, so we sampled a little with our lunch. Chris is very proud of his little crop, as you would expect. I'm proud of it too. Egg and cress sarnies tomorrow, I think.

After lunch, when James had gone for his nap, Chris and I took folding chairs out into the garden and spent a pleasant hour or so reading together and making sandcastles in the sandpit. Later on this afternoon, I got the baking urge, so with a little help from Christopher, who loves switching on the KitchenAid and from James, who was simply in a very good mood and happy to play, I made some coconut biscuits. This is one of my select group of regular biscuit recipes – we don’t go long without these in the biscuit tin. They’re lovely, sweet and crisp, plus they keep very well and pack into Karl’s lunch bag for work without disintegrating into a mass of crumbs.

Coconut Biscuits

110g butter
175g golden caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
80g sweetened desiccated coconut
175g self-raising flour

Preheat the oven to 180°c. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, half the coconut and the flour. Form about 30 little balls with the mixture and roll these in the remaining coconut. Place well apart on baking trays, and then bake for 12-14 minutes until golden brown. Leave them briefly on the sheets to firm up, then transfer the biscuits to cooling racks with a palette knife.

Supper tonight was some chicken pieces, simply cooked in the oven, with some herbs, lemon and black pepper. I stirred more herbs and lemon through a big bowl of (150g) couscous made up with some (300ml) of yesterday’s enormous batch of chicken stock, took a portion out for James, and then added sultanas and flaked almonds for the rest of us. With some green salad, the only other thing needed was a bowl of this lemony sauce to drizzle over.

Lemon Crème Fraîche Sauce

200ml crème fraîche
zest 1 lemon
juice ½ - 1 lemon (use enough to get the consistency you want)
fresh parsley, finely chopped

Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl, along with a fine grinding of black pepper. That’s it. I also add a pinch of sea salt (I use Maldon) if the baby’s not having any, but tonight he was, so I didn’t.

Very simple and very tasty. It goes with so many things, too. We have it most often with chicken, but it also goes very well with fish (in fact, I first came up with it as an accompaniment to salmon steaks). Almost best of all, though, I like it, thinned down with a little more lemon juice, as a salad dressing or, left nice and thick, as a dip for crudités. To be honest, I'd eat it with a spoon if I got half a chance, but sadly there are rarely any leftovers.

Smart Cookies

The weather turned nasty this morning, but we didn't have any plans and so stayed at home. Karl didn't start work until one, so we had a lovely, relaxed morning all together. After lunch, when Hubby had left and while James was napping, Christopher and I made some biscuits (although Chris kept wandering off to play with his LeapPad). We've refilled the biscuit tin, which is always a good feeling. Both these types of biscuit are very easy to make, though with different methods, and both keep very well in the biscuit tin (and would keep longer if we didn't eat them so quickly).

Cherry & Oat Cookies

100g soft butter
100g light muscovado sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
140g self-raising flour
50g porridge oats
80g glacé cherries, chopped

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Mix in the syrup and flour, then add the cherries and oats. Stir well to combine, knead briefly if necessary and then form the mixture into 16 balls. Place well apart on lightly greased baking sheets and bake at 180°c for 12 minutes. Allow to crisp up for a few seconds before removing to a rack to cool.

Ginger Fairings

110g butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
175g self-raising flour
pinch of bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp each of ground ginger and ground mixed spice
50g light muscovado sugar

Melt the butter and syrup together, then stir in the other ingredients, mixing well. Form into 12 balls and place well apart on lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 190°c for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. As above, allow to crisp up for a few seconds before removing to a rack to cool completely.


I love both types, but the ginger fairings just have the edge for me!