Apple and mincemeat galette

Mince pies have been filling up the supermarket shelves for the last few months and jars of ready-made mincemeat have sneakily taken their place amongst the baking ingredients ready to jump out and berate you for being completely unprepared for Christmas months in advance. If you’re one of those wonderfully organised souls you’ll have made your own batch of mincemeat several weeks ago. I, on the other hand, found myself baking with the tail-end of last year’s jars until my lovely mum kindly handed me a jar she’d made the other weekend.

Read Full Post »

Whisky cake with chestnut and chocolate ganache

Hip hip hooray! Today is T and Cake’s 2nd birthday! Wow, where have the last two years gone? So much has happened over that time and hopefully there are many more adventures to come. My new kitchen units have arrived (all 120 boxes) and hopefully I’ll soon be busy experimenting with new toys and fancy settings on the oven. I’ve also had the good fortune to get an allotment which will require rather a lot of heavy duty digging over winter but should provide some beautiful fresh ingredients come next summer. But what is a blog without people to read it? Here’s to you, kind readers. Thank you for stopping by, leaving comments and making this blog what it is. I’m sorry not to be able to share this birthday cake with you in person but we can celebrate in spirit. Cheers!

Read Full Post »

Cranberry and orange scones with cinnamon buter

Have you decided what to have for breakfast on Christmas morning? (Or am I weird for planning this sort of thing in advance?) Let me make a suggestion; something special but not too heavy, freshly baked but easy and quick to make leaving you free to sip on Buck’s Fizz and open presents. This year we’ll be tucking into warm spiced scones, studded with juicy cranberries and orange zest spread with sweet cinnamon butter. Sounds like a lot of work? Not at all! Just sneak them out of the freezer into the oven and let them bake while you make coffee.

Read Full Post »

Prune and armagnac truffles

I don’t often have prunes in the store cupboard (I’m not sure why, they’re really very nice) but at Christmas they always make a welcome return to my kitchen ready to be wrapped in bacon and offered up as canapés or soaked in booze for sticky, fruity puddings. They’re one of the few fruits that get my approval to be paired with chocolate because their rich flavour brings out the fruitiness of a good dark chocolate. Prunes and chocolate are best friends with armagnac (probably because they come from the same area of France and spend long nights in the cupboard chatting in French and shrugging their shoulders at the state of my kitchen) and combine to make an indulgent, gooey truffle that you’ll have a hard time sharing.

Read Full Post »

Stollen buns

One of my favourite seasonal treats is a slice of stollen. The German Christmas cake is made from bread dough enriched with sugar and eggs, dried fruit, spices and candied peel. At its core runs a thick seam of marzipan which any almond aficionado will revel in. A true stollen is also be finished off with a blizzard of icing sugar. This year, rather than make a full-sized loaf for slicing, I though it would be fun to make something a bit more portable, easier to share and a whole lot cuter to boot. Hello mini stollen buns!

Read Full Post »

Roasted pumpkin and cream cheese dip

Party season is almost upon us and I’ve been busy trialling recipes for the Christmas crowds. My first party is this weekend but, I think fortunately, I’m not playing host just yet. It’s going to be one of those wonderfully out of character parties where you get to see a totally new side of your friends. On Saturday I’m going to feast on dustbin lid-sized pizza, garlic bread and chocolate fudge cake with my running group which mainly consists of a bunch of fairly health-conscious ladies. I think we’re going to give the restaurant a run for their money in terms of how much we can eat!

Read Full Post »

Roasted chestnuts

Just a quick post to share a seasonal snack. I spent a lovely evening snuggled up with my husband watching a film, drinking scotch and munching on roasted chestnuts hot from the oven. I really wish I had an open fire…

Oven-roasted chestnuts are incredibly easy to make and taste wonderful; slightly sweet with a beautiful smell. Ideal witha  sprinkling of salt.

Roasted chestnuts

Make as many as you want plus some extra in case any are bad.

Try to choose firm, heavy chestnuts. Soft ones are likely to be off.

Heat your oven to 220°C.

Put the chestnuts flat side down on a tea cloth and cut a cross in the shell. Don’t worry if you cut into the nut, this will amke it wasier to peel.

Arrange the chestnuts on a baking sheet cut side up and roast for 20mins.

Peel while warm and spinkle over some sea salt.

Read Full Post »

Panettone (per un buon natale!)

As part of my degree I was lucky enough to spend a year studying in Italy. The town I lived in wasn’t what you’d consider to be pretty, it’s certainly not on the tourist trail but it is in the region of Emilia-Romagna which produces many of Italy’s best-known food exports – parmesan, balsamic vinegar, Parma ham, ragù alla bolognese, mortadella, pancetta, tagliatelle and much, much more. So, as you might expect, most of my year was spent eating as much as possible, trying as many new foods as I could manage. One of my favourite discoveries (and there were lots!) was panettone. Around Christmas, all over Italy, panettoni start appearing in stores, stacked high in bright, colourful boxes. You can get all sorts of flavours: chocolate, coffee, lemon, vanilla filled with thick custard and the ever-classic dried fruit and almonds. My friends and I demolished cake after cake and when we got back home I wanted to recreate the taste of Italian Christmas.

As much as I loved the shop-bought cake filled with custard, it wasn’t exactly traditional. Of course I’m not sure how traditional this version is but it takes me back to my home-away-from-home and went down very well with colleagues and family alike.

Although this doesn’t require a huge amount of effort (especcially if you have a stand mixer) from start to finish you’ll need a good 5 hours. Most of the time the dough will be happily rising in a warm place so you can put your feet up/pop out to the shops/wrap some presents but you do need to have a good window of free time to make this.

 

Panettone

(Adapted from BBC Good Food Magazine)

• 500g plain flour
• 2 x 7g sachet of dried yeast
• 100g caster sugar
• 200ml milk
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g butter
• 150g candied mixed peel
• 150g sultanas
• toasted, sliced almonds
• pearl or demerara sugar

Mix together the flour, salt and caster sugar in a large bowl. Warm the milk to hand hot and, in a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and vanilla. Set aside 2 tbsp of the eggs and save for later. Add the milk and the eggs to the flour and stir to form a soft dough. Keep stirring for a few minutes until the dough becomes smooth. Cover and leave to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Cut the soft butter into small pieces and stir into the dough until combined. This requires some elbow grease if making by hand! Leave to rise for another hour.

Butter a deep, 20cm cake tin and line the base with baking paper. Make a collar for the tin that extends 10cm out of the top of the tin. Stir the sultanas and mixed peel into the dough, form into a ball (the dough will be quite wet) and place in the tin. Leave to rise for 30 mins and preheat the oven to 180°C.

Before baking, brush the top of the dough with the reserved egg and sprinkle with almonds and sugar. Bake for 45-50mins. The panettone will keep well for a week or two if wrapped well. It also freezes well. If, somehow, you end up with stale leftovers, panettone makes amazing bread and butter pudding.

Read Full Post »

Christmas Mincemeat

Well, if you belive the shops, adverts and media Christmas is upon us (it’s not even December!) and, as much as I dislike being harried into preparing early, some things do require a little forethought. This recipe for mincemeat needs two weeks to mature and let the fruit soak up all the brandy. If you make it now it will be perfect by Christmas.

As far as I can remember my mum has always made her own mincemeat from the same recipe. I’ve grown up with the recipe and, to me, it is the quintessential taste of Christmas; no shop-bought brand can match its flavour and richness. The recipe in question is from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, a stalwart of British cooking that has been in kitchens since 1861. The secret lies in using the whole lemon – once zested and juiced the leftover rinds are boiled until tender, minced and added to the mix resulting in a delicious zesty tang. The only small adaptation mum makes is to reduce the sugar which allows the flavour of the fruit to shine.

Mincemeat

(adapted from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management)

The full recipe filled 3 Bonne Maman jars, a 500ml kilner jar and a 1 litre jam jar – far more than I need even with making mince pies for work/friends/family.  Fortunately, in an attractive jar, it makes a nice gift!

• 3 unwaxed lemons
• 3 large apples (I used Bramley apples but any cooking apple will do)
• 450g raisins
• 450g currants
• 450g suet (vegetarian suet can be substituted)
• 400g dark muscavado sugar
• 75g mixed peel (citron, lemon and orange)
• 125ml brandy
• 2 tbsp orange marmalade

Zest the lemons, squeeze out the juice and set aside for later.

Boil the lemon rinds until soft, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, peel, core and slice the apples and cook with a little water until soft and pulpy. Bramley apples work well here as they break down easily when cooked.

In a large bowl mix the lemon juice, zest and apple. Chop the boiled rind finely and stir in. Add the remaining ingredients one by one, stirring after each addition.

Spoon into sterilised jars and leave to mature for at least 2 weeks.

There are so many things you can do with mincemeat besides the obvious pie, try as a filling for baked apples, baked in the middle of almond muffins or in one of my favourite recipes Barney Desmazery’s roly-poly pies.

Read Full Post »

Sloe gin

Yesterday I got home late, tired but happy, having been to stay with a very good friend of mine; a fellow foodie who is always ready to share a good recipe and a nice bottle of wine. The last time I saw her we picked wild blackberries on the windswept north Devon coast and I told her all about my sloe gin-making adventures.

This weekend we were lucky enough to come across a bountiful crop of plump sloe berries while on a ‘country’ walk (and by ‘country’ I really mean a quick wander followed by a pit stop at the pub). Ever-ready, I whipped a ziploc bag out of my handbag – much to the amusement of my fellow walkers – and we got picking. I left the sloes in my friend’s capable hands with the recipe below.

They say that sloes are best picked after the first frost, which, at least round my way, was this morning. The birds haven’t left many berries on the bushes near me but fortunately I picked some back in September. The first frost was easily simulated by popping the sloes in the freezer overnight. My gin has been steeping for about two months now and, as you can see in the photo above, has already taken on a deep red colour.

Sloe gin

Makes about 750ml

You will need a clean 1 litre bottle or jar, preferably with a wide neck.

• 400g sloes, discard any that seem past their best and remove the stalks
• 100g sugar
• 750ml gin, nothing too expensive!
• 2 or 3 drops of almond extract

Prick each berry with a fork or clean needle and pop them in the bottle. This can be a bit laborious and sticky but is necessary to get a bright red colour. If the berries are crushed the gin will go brown.

Pour the sugar over the sloes and add the gin and almond extract.

Seal the bottle and shake every day until the sugar is completely dissolved. Store in a cool, dark place.

Leave the berries to steep in the gin for at least three months and up to a year (if you can bear to wait that long!). Before drinking, strain the gin and decant it into a 750ml bottle or several smaller bottles for an attractive Christmas gift.

Read Full Post »