… and a few hearts (it was close to valentines day)

I thought it was about time that Ivy and I did some proper baking together, and what better to start with than Gingerbread men – or people, to be more PC. I nearly made the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery book but that involved leaving the mixture overnight – will try that another time. This is good old Mary Berry, but probably fairly basic.

Ivy had a go at rolling out her very bit of dough and helping with the cutting and adding the eyes. She possibly enjoyed eating bits of the mixture more however and dusting flour all over herself and the floor?

I don’t know how good at biscuits I am, I always end up rolling the dough too thin and I slightly over baked some of them! Oh well, they did taste great in the end, I even love them when they’ve been in the tin a while and are little soft. This recipe made a ton but perhaps that is partly because of the rolling out issue.

150g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsps ground ginger
100g Margarine (I used butter)
175g light muscovado sugar
4 tablespoons golden syrup
1 egg beaten
currants to decorate

Preheat oven to 1ª0 degrees. Lightly grease 3 baking trays
Measure flour, bicarb and ginger into a bowl, run on the marg/butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs then stir on the sugar. Add the syrup an d beaten egg then mix to form a smooth dough, kneading lightly with the hands towards the end.

Divide the dough in half and roll out one half to  about 5mm thick. Cut out gingerbread men and ladies and place them on the baking traces, decorate with the currants creating eyes and mouths, buttons etc. Repeat!

Bake in the oven for about 10-12 minutes until slightly darker in colour. Cool slightly on the tray then lift off on to a wire rack.

Good fun to eat too – biting off limbs and heads.

Jo did some customised cookies a few weeks ago. Her ones had chocolate in them, but as she pointed out in her post, the recipe by Gill Meller (here on the Guardian site) specifically encourages you to vary the “extras”.

It’s a great, reliable recipe which is perfect for either making just the cookies you fancy… or making cookies based on what you’ve got a surfeit of.

A few weeks ago, I made a flaked almond and current batch as I seemed to have acquired a kilo of the former. Then this morning, in a 20-minute speed-bake sess before work, I made these – after discovering not one but two pots of, er, mixed peel at the back of the cupboard, left over from mincemeat making at Christmas. I’ve also got some big bags of pinenuts from the cash and carry – seemed like a combo worth experimenting with. I also had a spice mix I’d made for pickling in the summer, based on allspice, ginger, cinnamon and stuff, so that went in too.

Very nice they are too. Satisfyingly chewy. Great way to use up peel, which isn’t the most charismatic of ingredients.

I have wanted to try making something sweet with beetroot for a while, I never used to like the stuff at all until Lawrence introduced me to beetroot and cheese sandwiches. This recipe is from the Riverford cookbook you can use carrots instead or a mix of both I guess. The beetroot looks so beautiful when it’s grated and added to the mix, I wish it kept that bright red/purple look once it was cooked. It’s very simple to make and bakes very evenly with a lovely colour, the texture very moist and you really can taste the beetroot, which I like – nothing worse than making a cake with ingredients for the sake of it and all you taste is sugar. I added a bit of cinnamon by the way, I think it needed something extra, perhaps nutmeg would work too?

So I also decided to have a go at making muffins, English ones that is. The intention was to make them early and have them for brunch but we decided to go to the Tate in the morning so it turned into afternoon tea. I’d never realised that they were cooked on the top in a heavy saucepan – I was convinced it wouldn’t work and the insides would be gooey dough once I cut them open – but they weren’t, they were perfect! I don’t think I’ll ever buy a pack of muffins again, very simple and just half a bag of flour, some salt, yeast and bit of sunflower oil. Oh, and dusting with semolina to create that lovely crisp texture on the outside is essential. I followed the recipe in River Cottage Bread book:

500g white bread flour
325g warm water
10g salt
5g dried yeast
drizzle of sunflower oil
semolina for dusting

Mix the dry ingredients, add the water and combine until it reaches a sticky dough then add the oil and turn out on to a surface to knead – the key is in the kneading (Daniel Stevens’ book explains all the methods very well) and leave until doubled in size, took about an hour for me. Then deflate the dough and divide into 9 pieces, shape each into a round (again, research this), flatten to about 1-2cm, cover in semolina and leave on a board covered in a plastic bag until doubled in height. Heat a heavy bottomed saucepan (even better if you have a Rayburn or Aga) over a medium heat and carefully place about 3 muffins at a time in the pan. Cook on one side for a minute or two then turn, cook for a further 10 minutes turning occasionally. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Cut open, toast and pile up some poached eggs on top (with a sneaky bit of cheese in between) or keep it simple with loads of butter and some Marmite. So rewarding!

This is another recipe from Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache. I still don’t really get this book. It’s ostensibly got a diet angle, but replacing the flour in your cakes with rice flour and vegetables isn’t exactly slimming when you’re still liberally using sugar. But anyway, for people like me who like to eat well without agonising over every bite, this is a rather lovely cake.

I do not like coffee. I’ve never drunk coffee – well, bar one experiment as a child, where I added several spoons of sugar, and held my nose as I didn’t like the smell. I still don’t particularly like the smell, but I have a soft spot for coffee cake, on occasion. It reminds me of visiting my grandparents in Kew when I was about four.

This one was made for the 70th of my father-in-law, Bryan. We got stuck in on Friday, and, in a semi-coincidence, visited Kew on the Saturday. I’ve not been there for about 35 years, and even saw the cafe that had abided in my mind’s eye as the origin of the coffee walnut cakes.

Anyway, Eastwood calls this “Coffee and Walnut Courage Cake”. But really it’s just a carrot cake disguised as a coffee and walnut cake. Carrot cake is traditionally flavoured with cinnamon and possibly iced with a lemony cream-cheese icing, but this cake proves there really is no reason to not cake it other directions.

The mixture doesn’t rise terribly well, so this does really need the size of cake tins Eastwood specifies: two 18cm diameter, 5cm deep jobs, preferably loose-bottomed. Greased and lined.

Preheat oven 180C.

200g rice flour
120g walnuts
3 eggs
160g light muscovado sugar
250g of finely grated carrot
2t baking powder
1/4t salt
5T coffee essence.

Quick discussion of the coffee essence. The book says “5 tbsp (125ml)”. This is a little confusing as 1T = 15ml, so 5T = 75ml.

Also – why worry about “coffee essence”. You’re more likely to have real or instant coffee in your kitchen already, so just make a bunch of strong coffee, filter it if it’s got grains, then reduce it.

Anyway. Whizz up the nuts and flour in a processor.
Beat the eggs and sugar, preferably with an electric hand blender, for about 3 minutes, until smooth and increased in volume.
Beat in the baking powder, salt, and coffee, then also add the carrot and flour/nut mix. Mix by hand until evenly blended.

Divide mixture into tins and bake 30 mins. Cool for 10 mins in tins, then remove and allow to cool completely.

Icing:
50g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
75g mascarpone
Slug of strong coffee

Soften the butter with hand blender, then add the mascarpone and coffee. Sieve in the icing sugar, and mix by hand to stop it flying everywhere. You can give it a buzz with the hand blender when it’s combined to make it extra smooth and creamy. Cool in the fridge for 15 mins before using the sandwich and ice the cooled cakes.

Decorate with walnut halves.

Another stupendous recipe care of Dan Lepard in the Weekend Guardian. Recipe here.

I wouldn’t call myself a scone connoisseur, but I’ve certainly been making them most of my life. I’ve always been something of a purist with scones – 98% of the time I’ll make plain scones. No sultanas or any of that stuff. Occasionally savoury ones with cheese.

But I do like ginger, I love ginger beer, and I had some crystallized ginger in the cupboard. Dan Lepard does credit this recipe (or at least one using lemonade) to Marilyn and Gary Barker’s Patchwork Teahouse, “set deep in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges”. Never been myself, but thanks to Marilyn and Gary, and thanks to Dan for passing it along, with his ginger beer variation.

They don’t use any butter – you just mix your crystallized ginger and beer with crème fraîche and egg then blend that into the flours. Easy peasy.

Made these on Friday, with my in-laws arriving. They’ve from Devon, home of the scone, but seemed very happy with this variation. And luckily, entirely unbidden, they arrived with a large pot of clotted cream, making the whole experience even more delectable.

My fellow baking enthusiast at work, Ms Hannah Mearns, lent me The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook by Tarek Malouf.

I made these. They were delicious. I ordered the book from Amazon. Home Delivery Network were crap… and I’ve still not got it! I want to make some more goodies from it. Among other things, I want to make both its chocolate cupcake and its chocolate muffin recipes, to indulge in the never-ending debate about what distinguishes the two.

Anyway, these cookies used a nifty technique where you make the dough, roll it into a sausage, then freeze the sausage for an hour. You then cut rounds and bake ‘em. It gives the finished biscuit a nice, almost production-liney regularity. Kinda.

Pecan and white choc is a quality combo, but this basic recipe is probably fairly versatile, so I’ll try some other variations… when HDN delivery my flippin’ Amazon order. Hmph.

I love this recipe, it really deals with a cookie craving and you can adapt it so easily. The original recipe was in the Guardian Weekend (January 20 2007) with some other delicious cakes and tarts by Gill Meller. I like adding rolled oats and raisins but this batch was milk and dark chocolate. I’m about to make some oaty ones with dates (dates in cakes and biscuits are always a winner).

The Recipe:

125g unsalted butter
100g unrefined granulated sugar
75g light muscovado sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
100g extras – chinks of chocolate, oats, nuts, dried fruit, preserved/crystalised ginger, pinenuts etc….

Oven at 190 degrees, line two baking sheets with baking parchment.
Melt the butter, put the two sugars (I vary the sugars too depending on what I have) in a bowl, pour over the butter and beat well. Break in the egg and add the vanilla, beat to combine. Sift in the flour, bp and salt then stir in your chosen extras.
Dot heaped dessertspoonfuls on the trays leaving plenty of space between. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to harden on the tray for a few minutes before lifting up the baking parchment and transferring to a wire rack.

Then, put the kettle on.

I would be posting Tipsy Tart – the alternative to Christmas pudding that I made on Christmas day. It’s a South African recipe and like all their puddings – delicious! In the chaos however I neglected to photograph it so I’ll just have to make it again and post it at a later date.

This therefore is not a very Christmassy recipe but delicious all the same, I always like trying new chocolate cake recipes. It’s from the Chocolate book I’ve used quite a lot now and I made it for my sort-of-sister-in-law’s ‘cake day’ to celebrate the impending birth of Ivy’s cousin.

It’s a melted chocolate recipe, something I seem to have trouble doing lately – I don’t seem to be able to heat it to the right temperature or I keep burning it. Not sure what’s going on, a whole bar of Green & Blacks wasted though, most annoying.

It’s the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas tonight, so I better do this quick before it’s no longer seasonal.

I’ve never been a huge fan of mincemeat or mince pies, but you’ve got to make them right? I did some mince pies again this year, again using a handy Delia mincemeat recipe as really, it’s so easy, there’s no excuse to buy it. After the mince pies, I had some left over, so mincemeat muffins seemed a good solution. Jo gave me this recipe, which seems similar to this one on jamieoliver.com, but in useful metric measurements.

300g sr flour
1 tsp bp
1 tsp mixed spice
100g soft light brown sugar
175g mincemeat
1 egg, lightly beaten
100g butter, melted
175ml buttermilk
1 tbps milk
2 tsp demerara sugar

Preheat oven 200C.

Mix flour, bp, mixed spice (I used some ground allspice, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg; up to you really – all those things are suitable) and brown sugar.

In separate bowl mix mincemeat, egg, melted butter, buttermilk and milk and add to dry ingredients. Mix briefly.

Spoon into muffin cups or greased muffin tin and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Cool in tin for 10 mins before turning out.

Very nice. Though not quite as nice as Jo’s cranberry muffins.

Oh, and on the buttermilk issue. It’s not that easy to get, and if you can get it, it tends to be cultured buttermilk, which is not unlike runny live yogurt. So I’m thinking you could probably use yogurt instead if you can’t get buttermilk (and water it down a bit with milk if it’s too thick). The cultured buttermilk is weird stuff. Real, traditional buttermilk is the liquid you drain off after you’ve churned cream to make butter – it’s not cultured at all, and it more resembles milk than yogurt. I’ve never seen anything like real buttermilk for sale anywhere; I suppose there’s not the demand for it.

I love brownies. They’re the quintessential tray-baked chocolate hit. Although I’ve got another recipe I’m very happy with, it’s always nice to try something new.

These are from Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache, a recipe book I’ve got very mixed feelings about. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever reacted quite so strongly to a recipe book. Look, I’m going to have a rant ok? I know I should probably do it on my blog, but well, I’m doing it here, so tough.

This book was a Christmas present from my mum, and although in many ways I’m very much in a suitable demographic – like the author, Harry Eastwood, I love cakes (obviously), and I’m fascinated by using vegetables in cakes – in others I’m just so far off, I’m clashing. Notably, possibly, because I’m a male who’s not interested in “cooking myself thin” – to me, food is about balance, with indulgence in the form of decent home-made cakes and puddings balanced by good wholesome nutritious meals.

The most irritating thing about this book is its insistence on photos of Eastwood and her chums, and their offspring. Too many photos of them. I blame Sir Jamie. As much as I have a deep admiration for Jamie Oliver, arguably he started the trend for cookbooks with loads of photos of the smirking chef. In the 1970s and 1980s, the cookbooks I grew up maybe had a photo of Delia or Prue on the cover, then inside you might have had pics of the food. Much as I don”t want a few dozen pics of Jamie and his mates smirking in his recipe books, I don’t want them of Eastwood and her crew here. I don’t want to see the cook with her fancy necklace and sunglasses and fairy wings (and, hell, adults shouldn’t really even wear fairy wings – at least not outside the confines of a festival, and even there it’s questionable). Pics of food – great. Pics of cook and friends – not so great.

That’s not her only crime though. She anthropomorphises her cakes, frequently referring to them as “she”. And frequently, painfully mangling metaphors. In the case of these brownies, we get “This recipe is dangerous. Sinful and completely irresistible, this brownie is so wicked you could drown in it. Like a bad man, this is a girl’s deathbed. If it were poison, you would still be glad you’d tried it.” Eh? So it’s a body of water, that’s a man, who’s a bed, which is poisonous? What are you on about Harry?

Still, ranting aside, a recipe book is only as good as its recipes. So until I’ve tried a few more of the recipes in the book, I should chill out on the ranting…. except I can’t. Jeez. I’m going to have to cover the irritating pics up. And even just glancing at her descriptions of cakes as female is making me grind my teeth. “She’s everything you’re not allowed.” No she isn’t. She’s an it. It’s a cake. You are allowed cake.

Anyway, the recipe. The brownies. Well, compared to my double-choc ones, making these is arduous. My double choc ones are a five minute job, these are a half-hour job. So in my thinking they should be six times as good. Well they’re not. They’re very nice indeed, and another great way to use beetroot – which combines so well with chocolate. Plus, they do get a lovely flavour from the use of ground hazelnuts. But they’re just a bit convoluted to make.

After that rant, I’m not sure I can face typing out the recipe in full… here’s a simplified, tweaked version.

Preheat the oven to 160C, or 140C if you’ve got a fan oven.

Grind 100g of hazelnuts in a processor until they’re as fine as you can manage. Set them aside, then grind up 150g dark choc in the processor too. Leave it in the processor bowl.

Grind Peel and dice 400g of beetroot, and microwave it for 10 mins in a bowl with a little water, and clingfilm over the top. (I didn’t grow up with a microwave, so that’s a nifty lesson.)

Whisk together 3 eggs, 250g light soft brown sugar and 1/4 t salt in a roomy bowl with a handheld electric whisk. Keep going until it’s trebled in volume (about 5 mins).

Add the hazelnuts, 2 T white rice flour, 70g cocoa, 2 t baking powder and 1 t vanilla extract to the egg mix and combine.

When the beetroot is cooked, add it to the processor, and puree it. The heat of the beet will melt the ground choc. When all nicely pureed and melted, fold this mix into the egg mix.

You can sprinkle it with some more chopped hazelnuts, then bake for 35 mins.