I’ve decided to revisit some of my previous recipe posts in the hope that somehow my mojo will be rekindled. I got this recipe here from my ever trusted source of BBC Good Food, and in spite of me not being overly fond of fruit cakes, this one really is lovely.
This cake was given a different name by Declan, because we all have that one friend…. anyway give this recipe a go, don’t be put off by the fruit – in fact, think of it as a salad (like Christmas cake, there’s so much fruit in it, is just has to be healthy!!). It is a damp cake with lemon and ginger flavours perfectly complimented by the white chocolate topping – almost like a lemony-ginger sticky toffee pudding taste!
Ingredients:
200g stoned dates
200g butter
300g dark muscovado sugar
2 eggs
50g fresh ginger, grated
Grated zest of 1 lemon
200g self-raising flour
1 or 2 large Bramley apples (you need approx. 250g weight total) peeled and chopped into small pieces
50g white chocolate
Method:
Preheat the oven to 160°C (fan 140°). Grease and line a 20cm cake tin.
Put the dates into a small bowl and cover with boiling water.
In a small pan heat the butter until melted, stir in the sugar and allow to cool slightly.
In a large bowl beat the eggs and add the ginger and lemon zest. Beat in the butter and sugar mixture. Mash the dates and add to the egg mix. Stir in the flour and apple, and spoon into the cake pan. It is quite a runny batter.
Place the cake pan on a baking sheet in the oven and bake for around 1hour and 15 minutes, until well risen and a skewer stuck into the cake comes out with just a few moist crumbs on it.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin. Be patient. Once cooled, melt the white chocolate in a bowl over hot water and drizzle over the cake.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
The first time I saw a recipe for Nanaimo Bars I was intrigued. The name intrigued me, and the photos – they looked delicious, I knew I had to eat them! These bars are, I believe, Canadian in origin and therefore something different to the standard fare I’ve come across so far. Nanaimo Bars are not baked, so they are a wonderful easy treat to make, no risk of burning or overcooking. There was, however, a stumbling block – eggs – not just eggs, but raw eggs. The recipes I saw contained eggs in the mix and raw eggs and I do not belong together. Fast forward too many years to think about. When scrolling through the food blogs I enjoy, I saw this recipe from Naomi of Knead Some Sweets. This is a mint version of the traditional Nanaimo Bar, and, contains no egg (loud cheer from the gallery!).
If you’ve read any of my posts you’ll know I find it difficult to read a recipe and not to think “what if I try this instead of that….” and so I did the same here. I tweaked. For the base, I used Bourbon Cream biscuits instead of Graham Crackers, and skipped the sugar and cocoa powder. For the filling the only change I made was adding extra peppermint extract because you can never have too much mint! For the topping I used Lindt Mint Intense dark chocolate because….read above re mint. This is my version:
Base: Mix together 100g melted butter, 200g crushed Bourbon Cream biscuits and 40g unsweetened desiccated coconut.
Line a 9×9 inch pan with foil or baking parchment and press the base mix into the bottom of the pan. Refrigerate whilst you are making the filling.
Filling: with an electric whisk mix together 120g softened butter, 2 tablespoons custard powder, 240g icing sugar, 1 tablespoon milk, 3 teaspoons peppermint extract and enough green food colouring to give the colour you want. Whisk until the mixture is well blended and light and fluffy. Spoon carefully over the base mixture and smooth it flat. Refrigerate for an hour.
Topping: In a bowl over a pot of hot water slowly melt 120 Lindt Mint Intense dark chocolate with 2 tablespoons of salted butter. Let this cool slightly before spreading over the top of the filling. Place back in the fridge until set – about 1 to 2 hours.
Slice into small squares and enjoy!
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
Having not been allowed out to shop for more months now than I care to remember (thanks Covid19) I finally was given a bit of freedom and went to the supermarket on Saturday. I went at the crack of dawn to avoid crowds of people, but oh, to be able to select my own shopping!! To be honest it was a bit stressful, trying to remember to be even more careful etc, but it was good to do something relatively normal. My baking mojo has mostly vanished (thanks chemo) but every now and then I think how nice it would be just to lose myself in baking once again. During those brief moments I make a note of what I might want to bake so I don’t forget. I have a long list, most of which I suspect I will never accomplish, but it’s the thought that counts isn’t it…..
Anyway, I decided to be kind to myself and not start with anything too complicated and so millionaire’s shortbread it is. There are lots (many /plenty / an abundance of) recipes available for this, with many variations on the theme, but I stuck to basic here and used the as always reliable BBC Good Food as my source and here is their recipe.
I did a few minor tweaks – with the shortbread base I replaced 45g of the flour with rice flour. I like the texture it gives to shortbread and am definitely glad I did this. I baked the shortbread at a higher temperature for longer than the recipe suggested because I like a nice toasty shortbread, but please don’t follow my lead on this. I used a 23cm square baking tin, and used probably about ¾ of the shortbread mix because I prefer a thin base to my bake. I sprinkled some sea salt flakes on top of the caramel, but honestly can’t say I notice it in the taste of the finished product, maybe I’ll use a bit more next time, because I love salted caramel. I did put some edible gold leaf on the chocolate topping, because life is always better with a bit of sparkle!
Ingredients:
For the shortbread base: 180g plain flour, 45g rice flour, 175 butter, 75g caster sugar.
For the caramel topping: 150g butter, 1 x 379g can condensed milk, 100g golden syrup.
For the chocolate top: 350g dark chocolate
Method:
Preheat the oven to 170C (fan oven) and grease and line a 23cm square cake tin with baking parchment.
Chop the butter into small cubes. Combine the flours and add the flour, rubbing in until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix in well. Put the shortbread mix over the base of your baking tin, press down well and bake for 30 minutes (or until browned to your liking!). Once done remove from oven and set aside to cool.
Mix the butter, condensed milk and golden syrup in a pan over a medium heat, stirring occasionally until the mixture is smooth and the butter is melted. Turn the heat up, stirring continually and bring to a boil. You want the caramel to thicken and turn a golden brown colour, this may take a few minutes. Set aside to cool.
Pour the caramel mixture over the shortbread base and leave to cool completely.
Break the chocolate into small pieces in a bowl and melt slowly over a low heat. Pour over the top of your caramel and leave to set before cutting into squares. Enjoy your creation!
Next time I might try it with peanut butter somewhere in the mix………..
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
I’m always curious when I see something quirky, and so this recipe caught my eye – the mystery ingredient it has is sweet potato. I first made this recipe for Sweet Potato & Cranberry cake from the Good Housekeeping magazine. I have no idea what I did wrong, but mine took 20 minutes extra to cook. In any event, it turned out fine, and had a lovely light texture too – I was expecting it to be slightly dense with the potato, but no, there was no clue to its stodgy ingredient. The cranberries go very well in the mix, and I think adding more would work well too. The original recipe also has a streusel topping, but I didn’t think it brought anything to the party (maybe I did something wrong there too). However, I did think I could tweak the recipe slightly, by adding orange and extra ginger. In the original recipe the ginger is only in the topping, not in the cake itself.
This time – with my tweaked recipe – it cooked in the allotted time, and my taste testing panel and I all agreed the orange was a good addition, but it could use even more ginger. I used fresh ginger and added what I thought was a lot, but it wasn’t obvious at all, and I think just a bit more to give a hint of warmth would be nice. But that will be for another time.
This is my tweaked recipe, but please check the link above for the original version too.
Ingredients:
300g sweet potato (peeled weight)
125m vegetable oil
325g plain cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
200g caster sugar
3 eggs
100ml milk (I used almond milk, but dairy milk is fine)
100g dried cranberries
Zest of 1 orange
Large piece of fresh ginger (size of your thumb) grated.
Method:
Chop the sweet potato into 1cm pieces and simmer until soft. Drain, allow to steam dry for 5 minutes then mash and set aside to cool.
Preheat the oven to 180° C (160° fan) and grease and line a 22cm x 30.5cm baking dish.
Whisk the eggs lightly and add in the oil, milk, orange zest, grated ginger and mashed sweet potato.
In a large bowl sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. Add the caster sugar and dried cranberries.
Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix gently just to combine. Scrape into the baking dish and spread to level. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the baking tin and then remove and cool on a wire rack.
Slice and enjoy. Kid yourself that you’re eating fruit & veg 😉
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
Yes, I’m back, well not really, only intermittently. The last few years have been a nightmare, ‘nuff said. We’ve all had a terrible time in different ways, it’s not a competition. Baking opportunities have been limited, but if I get one, I grab it, because for that short time I can forget about everything else. It is my rare break back into a bit of normality.
I kept thinking I need to break this mental block I have about baking scones in the traditional way (rubbing the butter into the flour). I have a good recipe, and it’s super easy, for scones made with oil instead of butter, but the other difference is that these are dolloped on to the baking tray, not cut out, and the end product whilst very light and tasty, is also very crumbly and falls apart a bit too easily. A traditionally baked scone looks so much better and holds together well. You could give someone a plate of traditionally baked scones and say smugly “there you are” and feel proud of your creation – looks are everything in this case. Whereas I feel I have to apologise for the appearance and crumbly texture of my scone recipe.
In Norwich there is a fabulous department store called Jarrolds. Mention Jarrolds and a lot of people will mention their delicious cheese scones….luckily for us, during lockdown Jarrolds published their cheese scone recipe in social media, and in the absence of being able to go into the store to sample them, I felt obliged to try the recipe.
I have made this a few times, each time thinking next time I will do better. I do feel a bit more confident baking these now, but I wouldn’t say I’ve aced it yet. My best is yet to come! Having said that, each time I’ve baked these scones, they’ve been delicious, I’m just critical of my own efforts. With this recipe I have upped the quantity of paprika and mustard powder, and omitted the cayenne pepper – this is a matter of taste, but they really do make a difference. I have (once out of necessity) substituted almond milk for the dairy milk. I tend to use a mixture of mature cheddar and Gruyere cheeses (I don’t like parmesan). Do what works for you. These really are delicious scones. I actually think the egg wash doesn’t bring anything to the party, the scones are so cheesey, that they look beautifully golden brown on the top without help. But that’s just me. Do yourselves a favour and bake these 😊
Makes 6 large / 12 small scones
Ingredients:
300g self-raising flour
65g butter
2 medium sized eggs
135ml milk
120g mature cheddar
35g parmesan
Pinch of paprika, cayenne pepper and mustard powder (adjust to taste)
Large pinch salt
Method:
Preheat oven to 220 degrees (200 fan).
Mix together dry ingredients. Add in the butter and rub together til mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add in the grated cheese and mix in well.
Combine the milk and eggs, make a well in the centre of the dry mixture and pour in enough of the liquid to create a soft but firm dough.
Place dough on floured surface, using a rolling pin to roll out to approx. 1 ¼ inch thick. Cut out scones with a circle cutter and place on lined baking tray. Brush with egg wash.
Bake 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 🙂
We’ve had three days of non-stop, soaking rain and now my roof is leaking. Isn’t life infuriating at times?!
I needed to distract myself by baking and decided to bake a recipe I haven’t baked for ages. I don’t know where the original recipe came from, but it is based on a loaf of bread called “Cape Seed Loaf” which I used to buy regularly in Cape Town. It is a rough, chunky, hearty loaf of bread, and super easy to make as it requires minimal kneading.
Things to remember: this dough is wet and sticky, which is why it is kneaded in the bowl. Kneading time is short, all you really do is moosh (technical term!) the dough around for a while. There is only one rise needed, and it is a much shorter time than for most bread doughs.
Ingredients:
500g strong wholemeal bread flour
50g pumpkin seeds
85g sunflour seeds
25g poppy seeds
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon caster sugar
7g packet easy-blend yeast
2 tablespoons of flaxseed oil (or olive, or sunflower oil)
350ml lukewarm water
1 egg, beaten
Sesame seeds to decorate
Method:
Mix together the flour, seeds, salt, sugar, and yeast in a large bowl. Drizzle over the oil and then stir in the water to make a soft dough. This will be a wet, sticky dough, unlike other breads. Knead this in the bowl for around a minute. This really does need minimal kneeding, and you’ll see what I mean about the dough being wet………
Lift the dough out of the bowl and plop it into an oiled 2lb loaf tin. Press in with your knuckles to fill the tin and make a shallow dent down the length of the middle of the loaf so that it will rise evenly.
Cover with a cloth and leave to rise in a warm place until almost at the top of the tin – approximately 30 – 45 minutes.
Heat the oven to 180°C (160° fan). Brush the top of the loaf with beaten egg and sprinkle over the sesame seeds.
Bake in the oven for 45 – 50 minutes, and cool on a wire rack when done.
I didn’t bother with the egg and sesame seed bit at the end here, and I used a pack of omega seed mix instead of the seeds in the recipe, but it all works anyway!
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing a wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
My poor sourdough starter is no more. Well mostly no more. A hot night, an open window and a moth flew in, it managed to get under the loose cover on the jar and drowned in the starter. I had no choice but to empty it all onto the compost heap. I still have a small amount of the original starter which I did not revive, but I’ll wait until next year before trying to get that working. A bit frustrating, but that’s life. I was leafing through “Bread” by Eric Treuille & Ursula Ferrigno and saw a recipe for a savoury enriched bread. Why not, eh, I thought, that sounds delicious. It doesn’t matter that I can’t think straight, I can do this….and so, dear reader, I baked “Torta Di Testa Di Prosciutto e Formaggio” (otherwise titled Golden Cheese & Ham Bread.
It is an enriched bread dough, with eggs and butter included, and the addition of Emmental cheese and Prosciutto to make it a lovely savoury loaf. Unfortunately I over-proofed the dough and so it collapsed, making it a broader, flatter loaf than it should have been. It was complete stupidity on my part, I accept the blame! I can however say that it still tastes wonderful! This would be a lovely picnic bread, or a great accompaniment to a hearty bowl of soup. And of course, spread with cold salty butter it is a delight.
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons dried yeast
100ml water
1 ½ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
A pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
125g softened unsalted butter
4 eggs, beaten
150g sliced, chopped prosciutto
150g diced Emmental cheese
Method:
Put the water in a bowl and sprinkle the yeast in, leaving for 5 minutes, stirring to dissolve.
In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt, nutmeg and pepper. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeasted water, butter, eggs, cheese and prosciutto. Mix together to form a soft sticky dough.
Turn out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead until silky and elastic, about 10 minutes. Put the dough in a clean bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to rise until doubled in size – about 2 hours.
Empty the dough out of the bowl, knock it back and leave to rest for 10 minutes. Shape the dough into a round loaf, place on a lightly oiled baking sheet, cover with a tea towel and leave to prove until doubled in size – about 1 hour.
Heat the oven to 180°C (160°C Fan).
Bake in the preheated oven for 1 ½ hours until golden brown. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Would I bake this again? Yes, most definitely.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing a wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
I made a chocolate and peppermint cheesecake last week. I searched everywhere but couldn’t find a recipe that I liked, and so instead I tweaked a cheesecake recipe which I’ve tweaked countless times before. It worked, it was delicious, but not quite right. It needs a bit more tweaking, and so you’ll have to wait.
Maybe I should avoid cheesecakes for a while……… I haven’t baked cupcakes for ages so I need to do this instead. I saw this recipe on the wonderful Bitches That Bake blog and decided this had to be done. Check out the blog for the exact recipe. Apologies, BTB, for the 50,000 views of your blog while I made sure I followed your recipe!!
Ingredients:
150g butter, softened
150g golden caster sugar
3 eggs
150g self-raising flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon mixed spice
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180°C (160° fan)
Beat together the butter, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and fold in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ground cloves and mixed spice.
Spoon into cupcake cases and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden.
For the buttercream beat together 150g butter, 175g Lotus Biscoff spread, 300g icing sugar until light and fluffy. Add 2-3 tablespoons of milk so that the buttercream is of a pipeable consistency.
Once the cupcakes have cooled, smother them in buttercream (would you like a bit of cupcake with your buttercream?) Enjoy and feel smug at your creations 🙂
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 🙂
Now that your sourdough starter is nice and healthy, you’ll be wanting to bake. What do you mean sourdough starter, what sourdough starter? C’mon folks, keep up…. here’s the link to the post on how to do it, and it also has the link to the original recipe I used – Sourdough Starter remember?!!
If you recall I never wanted to make sourdough bread. True story. But then I had to see if I could make a sourdough starter, and once that worked I had to see if the starter actually worked, and the rest is history.
So, back to business. In a large bowl you want to mix together 450g strong white bread flour, 50g strong wholemeal bread flour, 10g fine salt. Add in 100g of that lovely sourdough starter and 325ml warm water. Now, don’t be a wimp, use your hands and not a mixer. The best part of baking bread is the kneading, it’s therapeutic. Mix everything together in the bowl and tip the dough out on to a floured surface and start to knead. You can add a little flour at a time if the dough is too sticky, or a little warm water if it’s too dry. Knead for around 10 minutes, until the dough feels smooth, soft and elastic, you will feel the dough change gradually as you knead.
Place the dough in a floured bowl and cover with clingfilm. Put in a warm place to rise for 3 hours. Sourdough doesn’t rise as much as other bread does, so don’t panic. After 3 hours line a medium bowl with a clean tea towel and flour it really well. I would recommend using rice flour for this as it really makes the difference in stopping the dough sticking to the towel. Rub that flour into the towel so that the surface is covered.
Tip the dough out and knead it briefly to knock out any air bubbles. Shape the dough into a smooth ball and dust lightly with more rice flour. Place the dough seam side up in the bowl and leave to rise for another 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 230C (210C fan) and place a small roasting tin on the bottom of the oven and fill the tin with water (to create steam). Sprinkle your baking tray with flour (again, I recommend rice flour). Tip the dough out onto the floured tray. If you want a pattern on the top, slash it with a very sharp knife. I was really nervous about this, thinking I’d split the entire loaf apart, but really, you can be quite brave. If you slash it too gently, you’ll make very little mark on the surface. Practice makes perfect!
Bake the loaf for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden brown, and leave to cool on a wire rack. Now you need the patience to wait for it to cool long enough before you can taste that delicious first slice! A slice of bread and butter never tasted so good.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 🙂
In 2018 I started my sourdough journey. That sounds so motivational….”journey”….but don’t get your hopes up, it’s not! It was a work in progress.
I had always put off baking sourdough bread because you need a starter. What a faff. I prefer easy, who doesn’t want an easy life. But in March 2018 BBC Good Food magazine printed an article on baking sourdough bread and……drum roll….making your own starter. In essence a starter is only flour and water. Could it be that simple? After all, flour and water make glue. I had to try it. There were of course a few attempts which ended up in the bin, but finally I had success. Once I knew my starter was good and healthy, I then felt obliged to bake sourdough bread as I had to know that the whole process actually worked. Reader it did. It’s a miracle! It took me a few goes to get my bread right – the first one looked as though Batman had flown through the middle, but I now seem to bake a reasonably consistently good loaf.
As the year wore on, I got tired of feeding my starter (I’d make a good mum, wouldn’t I). But I felt I couldn’t just throw the starter away, it is a living thing after all! So, after poking about on Google I found that you can dry the starter and store it. This was the obvious thing to do. Basically, you paint the starter onto a non-stick baking sheet, or baking parchment, so that it is spread very thinly across the surface and then leave it to dry out. Once completely dry, peel the starter off the surface and crumble up to store in a clean jar. I found a very good source for information on sourdough starters was King Arthur Flour, it’s definitely worth a read as it covers making, drying, and reviving the starter as well as recipes and tips. It is comprehensive without being overwhelming.
You might guess that having done that, I had to know if I had completely killed my starter, or if I would be able to revive it. Roll on 2 years and we are now in 2020. I had to wait a couple of months because everyone bought out all the bread flour from the shops (for heavens sake WHY?!?!). But finally stock came in and it was back to Google as to how to revive my starter. I based my method on the King Arthur Flour blog linked above. I tried to follow the instructions as closely as possible. Okay, I admit it, that lasted for a day. In the end I reverted to the quantities I had always used in the feed, added to the starter each day without throwing any out, until I had a good and healthy bubbly starter – this took four days, a lot quicker than I thought it would. I then went back to the normal feeding regime of throwing out half the starter and adding new feed to the remaining half.
I am not an expert, but I do know what works for me. I do not seal the jar which the starter is in, I just put a piece of paper towel over the top. I use a half-half mixture of white and wholemeal flour. I keep it out of the kitchen (so no damp atmosphere), and I use a fairly stiff (as in not too much liquid) feed. I always put the starter in a clean container after each feed. I still find the whole process amazing – the starter consists of flour and water, and the bread itself is also just flour and water with a bit of salt. These basic ingredients make the most amazing loaf of bread.
Here is the recipe for the starter (with my adaptations):
Whisk 50g strong white bread flour and 50g strong wholemeal bread flour together with 100ml lukewarm water until smooth.
Transfer to a large jar or plastic container and leave in a warm place for 24 hours.
For the next six days you will need to feed it. Once a day, tip away half the original starter. Whisk together 25g strong white bread flour with 25g strong wholemeal bread flour and 50ml lukewarm water. I actually use 40g of each flour and I couldn’t tell you the quantity of water, I just pour in what I know works. It’s probably around 80ml of water. Whisk the new feed into the remaining half of the starter and set aside.
After a few days you will see some bubbles on the surface and it will smell yeasty. Room temperature is definitely a factor in how quickly your starter will activate and be ready to use. You will notice that over the course of the 24 hours the active starter rises, and drops (you will see the marks on the side of your container).
On approximately day 7 (depending on temperature etc) the starter will be a lot more bubbly and smell sweeter. It is now ready to use.
There are many recipes for sourdough starter on the internet, but this one is so easy and simple, and it works. Remember the process is trial and error, you might need to bin a few starters before creating one that works. Once you know what works for your starter, keep at it and enjoy your baking. Next time I’ll post about baking the bread.
Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I wish you a peaceful weekend 😊
RockCakes&Ramblings 