Ok, so this is just a quick post to force me to start posting again, but hopefully i will have some proper updates soon. My camera is currently dead though, so i can’t promise that the pictures will be of any decent quality. I have been cooking a fair bit, (carrot cake, coq au vin, veggie lasagne, muffins, and much more) i’ve just had a chaotic past few months so haven’t really managed to update.

So anyway, back to the bread… It turns out that you can put pretty much anything in bread and it’ll work. Latest one included tomato puree, tomato ketchup (we ran out of puree) and any interesting looking herbs we could find (coriander and some other nonsense). Making a new loaf tomorrow. Tempted to use beetroot to see if it’ll go pink. I’ll let you know how it goes!

I also made a couple with lemonade. They were incredibly tasty but fell apart quite easily…

So i’ve been playing about with this recipe for years and i think i’ve finally perfected it. It’s all to do with taking them out the oven after an exact amount of time, whether they look ready or not. That said, i do have a fan oven, so those of you without one should add a minute or two onto the cooking time. I also have to admit that when making some of these the other day, i completely failed to take any pictures of them before feeding them to my friends, so until i get the chance to make some more you’ll have to put up with the cartoon above, nabbed from the fabby folk at Webweaver.

Em’s Finest Chocolate Chip Cookies

4oz Butter
4oz Caster Sugar
3oz Soft Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
6oz Plain Flour
1/2 tsp Salt 
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
4oz Chocolate Chips 

1. Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5 and line trays with baking parchment (or grease well.)
2. Cream the butter until pale.
3. Mix the sugars together and slowly add to the butter.
4. Beat the egg and vanilla together and add to mixture
5. Mix together the flour, salt and bicarb and add gradually rest of ingredients. The mixture should now be soft and sticky.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips.  (Note: it is best NOT to use a food processor to add the chocolate, as it breaks it up and prevents it from remaining in chips.)
7. Dollop onto a tray making sure to leave space between them as the mixture will spread in the oven
8. Bake in the oven for 11mins. (Slightly longer if your oven is not fan assisted.) When you remove them from the oven, they will be slightly crisp around the edges, and will still be very soft in the centre. This means that once cooled, the cookies will be soft and slightly chewy.
9. Leave to sit on the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a wire cooling rack.
10. Eat!

I fed these to my friends last week and they went down a treat. One (slightly tipsy) person was even heard to say that they were better than Millie’s cookies. I’m not sure of that but i do promise you that they’re good!

So yeah i made a cake. A lemon cake. Except i only decided this at the last minute, mid way through making a plain sponge. So i mish-mashed a few recipes together and came up with this…

For the sponge:

Ingredients
110g/4oz butter or margarine
110g/4oz caster sugar
2 medium eggs
110g/4oz self raising flour
3tbsp Lemon juice (approx)

Method
1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. 
2. Line 2x18cm/7in cake tins with baking parchment or grease them
3. Cream the butter and the sugar together until pale. 
4. Beat in the eggs. 
5. Sift over the flour and fold in using a large metal spoon.
6. Add lemon juice (more if you like it really lemony – i just chucked in as much as i could) 
7. Divide the mixture between the cake tins and gently spread out with a spatula. 
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes until an inserted skewer comes out clean. 
9. Allow to stand for 5 minutes before turning on to a wire rack to cool. 

 

For the filling and topping:

Ingredients
75g/3oz butter, softened
250g/8oz icing sugar, sifted
3 tbsp lemon juice

Method
1. Mix together all ingredients until smooth and pale.
2. Once cakes have cooled, spread filling on one cake and use to sandwich the two together.
3. For added prettiness sprinkle the top with a small amount of icing sugar. 

For starters, i ended up with a lot of fairly runny sauce with quite a lot of onion in my sauce (using a gigantic onion when the recipe calls for a small one probably isn’t the best idea) which meant that every mouthful was full of onion. Could have perhaps been better had i blended the sauce, but i’m just too damn lazy. Thankfully both i and my other half like onion. Secondly, i didn’t quite fry the aubergine as it tells you too – i’m a scaredy cat and am feart of large pans of oil. So it didn’t go as crispy as it should.

Taking all that into account, putting it into wee dishes probably wasn’t the best idea. Too much sauce, surrounding the aubergine definitely took away any crispness it had in the first place. Oops. Better luck next time hopefully! Still it tasted damn good and it looked ok in the end. 

You wouldn’t imagine that a skewer is hard thing to buy, would you? Just one single metal skewer so i have something other than a fork to prod my baking with (forks make lots of holes which spoil the prettiness, skewers only make one.) But it really is. Even that wonderful place of magicalness that is Lakeland didn’t have what i wanted. They had posh, ridiculously fancy cake testers (that would be no more useful than normal ones) or packets of gazillions of metal barbecue skewers for some stupid sum of money. But all i wanted was just one single (preferably round) thin stick of metal. Apparently nowhere sells them.

Eventually i went into John Lewis and bought a (cheap) packet of barbecue skewers which will do the job even if they’re not quite what i wanted. And i suppose they’ll be useful should i ever decide that kebabs and barbecues are the way forwards. Or perhaps i’ll just use them to have play sword fights whilst waiting for things to cook.

Hmmph.

(Awful picture, sorry!)

It’s essentially a stir fry with some sort of sauce (i can’t for the life of me remember what it was – bit of tomato, wine and anything else i could find in the cupboard i suspect.) Otherwise it has paneer, cashew nuts, onions, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic. I would suggest frying the paneer separately first – i didn’t on this occasion and it all wet a bit squishy. The nuts were a good idea as otherwise the texture of the meal would have ben a bit same-y (and we can’t be having that now can we?!)

I made two batches last time, one cheese and one plain. The recipes are more or less identical – simply swap the cheese and sugar over and wham bam you’re sorted! I love this particular recipe as it doesn’t involve baking powder which i never seem to have in the house… (Note to self: Buy baking powder!)

Scones (Recipe adapted from BBC Food website)

225g/8oz Self raising flour
Pinch of salt
55g/2oz Butter 

 25g/ 1oz Caster sugar for plain scones
40g/1oz Grated cheese for cheese scones (I usually use a mixture of parmesan and strong cheddar.)

1. Heat oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7
2. Mix together flour and salt. Rub in butter. (This should create a slightly sticky, crumbly consistency.) 
3. Add sugar/cheese and mix.
4. Add milk and mix until you have a soft dough 
5. Roll and cut out scone shaped bits of dough. Place on greased tray. Alternatively, just dollop onto the tray – not quite as neat looking but just as tasty.
6. Brush the tops of scones with milk to glaze. I normally add a little grated cheese to the top of the cheese scones at this point.
7. Bake for 12-15 minutes until risen and golden.

Yum! Cheese on the left – plain on the right. (Please excuse the bad picture and the slighty nibbled one – they were too tempting to resist!) These keep for a few days but can go a bit solid if left for too long, so eat the up quickly!

So it started with a loaf tin. Up until that time i cooked occasionally and baked occasionally. Then i was given a loaf tin, a shiny new loaf tin.

Out came the yeast, out came the flour. (Ok so i had to go buy the flour, but the principle’s the same. It was Allinson’s Strong White for anyone that’s wondering.) And then all i did was follow the recipe on the box. I’ve always been slightly sceptical of recipes on boxes (i always feel that there must be a better ones out there) but i have to say that this one really worked.

Bread (courtesy of the Hovis Fast Action Yeast box.)

500g Strong Bread Flour
25g Butter
1 1/4 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Yeast 
300ml Warm water

1. Mix together the four and salt, rub in the butter and then stir in the yeast.

2. Stir in the water and mix into a soft dough by hand.

3. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead well for 10 minutes by hand.

4. Shape the dough and place in a tin or on a baking tray. Cover with a clean damp tea towel to stop the dough drying out (cling film works as well) and leave in a warm place until doubled in size (1 1/2 – 2 hours).

5. Uncover and bake in an oven, preheated to 230C for 30-35 minutes. The baked loaf should sound hollow when tapped underneath.

Et voila!

I also had a go at a brown loaf a few days later by simply using a different bread flour (hovis seeded brown). I think i preferred the white, but this was still good.

So bread= yum=success!

Anyway i thought i’d use some of that spare time to tell you about the various messes i manage to make in my wee kitchen.

Enjoy!