Tablet

If you’re still  on a January diet then a) I admire your dedication and b) you may want to look away now. The two main ingredients in today’s post are 1. sugar and 2. condensed milk…which is essentially milk with plenty of added sugar. Yep, tablet is no health food.I’ve wanted to attempt making something in the fudge/caramel/tablet family for a while now but scary stories of scorched sugar and candy thermometers made me hesitate. Along with the fact that I knew I would find it impossible to just. stop. eating. But when my planned baking project was scuppered when the heavy (by London standards at least) snow made me very reluctant to leave the warmth of a house to buy ingredients I had to turn to what was already in the cupboard. I’m glad I finally took the plunge and entered the world of sweet making!After surviving all the heating sugar and endless whisking phases, the step of the recipe I skipped was marking the tablet into squares when it was still only semi-set. Mistake. Whilst the tablet melts on your tongue into crumbly goodness, it sets into one pretty rock solid slab. I only just restrained from breaking out the hammer but eventually perseverance with a big knife meant we ended up with happily oversized shards of tablet, but neat little squares would have been better and easier! I think this is easily one of my favourite things I have made, purely because my suspicions were right and I found it impossible to stop eating! It was sweet, rich, crumbly, melt in the mouth…I could go on! I definitely recommend it if you think you have more willpower than me – you can find the recipe here. Enjoy!

White Chocolate Crème Brûlée with Passion fruit

I had quite a lot of inspiration to make this crème brûlée. Firstly, an article in the Times for a similar recipe which had passion fruit infused in it but no eggs – it was a simple ganache style recipe. Secondly, a random abundance of cream in my fridge that needed using up. Thirdly, it is my sister’s 20th birthday today and she loves white chocolate. As part of her birthday present I made her a book of 20 white chocolate recipes – truffles, cheesecake, tart, cake, mousse – every bake you can think of! A white chocolate crème brûlée was recipe number 16 and so I decided to combine the flavours of this brûlée with the Times passion fruit ideas. I’d never tried making a crème brûlée before but it is a dish I have often ordered at restaurants and enjoyed. I was apprehensive about doing it – visions of cream and eggs turning into a scrambled mess, slight concerns about setting the kitchen on fire with  a blowtorch – but it was actually easier than I thought. In this version, the white chocolate adds extra rich and creaminess to the custard that always contrasts so well with the dark caramel crunch of the topping. The tropical passion fruit works really well in cutting through the richness, preventing the dish becoming sickly and making it fresh. In a lot of white chocolate recipes the specific chocolate flavour gets lost, but happily in this recipe it is clearly distinguishable despite the actually rather small amount involved.White Chocolate Crème Brûlée with Passion fruit, adapted from a BBC recipe
Ingredients: 284ml double cream
50g white chocolate, broken into pieces
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
3 egg yolks
1 tbsp caster sugar , plus extra for topping
4 passion fruit

1. Preheat the oven to 160'C/140'C fan. Heat the cream, chocolate and vanilla bean paste in a saucepan until the chocolate has melted. Take off the heat and allow to infuse and cool for 10 minutes.
2. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until pale, around 5 minutes. Pour in the chocolate cream. Strain into a jug and pour into 4-5 ramekins.
3. Place in a roasting tray and pour boiling water halfway up the sides. Bake for 20-25 minutes until just set with a still wobbly centre. Chill in the fridge for at least 4 hrs.
4. To serve, sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on top of each brûlées and caramelise with a blowtorch or briefly under a hot grill. Leave caramel to harden and cool for a few seconds. Halve the passion fruit and scoop the pulp of one onto the top of each crème brûlée, then serve.

After 10 Chocolates

Doesn’t Christmas seem a whole world away now that spring is evidently on its way? Shortly before Christmas, Jamie Oliver had a festive special on television and one of his ideas, After 10 Chocolates, really stuck out to me. So often with cookery books or shows the same recipes keep appearing over and over again. Chocolate cookies, treacle tart, Victoria sponge, lemon cupcakes – there are endless recipes in nearly every recipe book you buy. The After 10 Chocolates were really refreshing because it was an idea I hadn’t seen before and hopefully its new to you to!

Flavoured sugar soaking before being arranged in stripes The idea is you roll out a long piece of parchment paper – over a metre. Then you get five or six (although you could do as many flavours as you wanted) bowls and add a small amount of demerara sugar to each. Then you flavour each sugar bowl differently with a few drops of extract – I used almond extract, orange blossom water, lemon extract, rose essence and vanilla extract. These form pastes, and you spread these in separate vertical strips down sections of the paper. You can add non sugar flavourings as well – I did a strip of coffee and a strip of salt. It helps to label the different strips before the best part: going crazy drizzling a whole lot of melted dark chocolate all over the sugars. Write your name, write a secret, draw a picture with the chocolate – it all merges together into one long, lacy piece of chocolate with all the different flavours hidden inside…You can either go Russian Roulette with your chocolate – break it all into shards and jumble them up so nobody knows what flavour they’ll get, or keep all your flavours separate. It is so much fun to make – especially when you’re mixing up the sugars and your kitchen suddenly feels like a science laboratory. Favourite flavours in my family were the rose (although be careful not to add too much as it can become overpowering and taste like strong Turkish delight) and the surprise hit – coffee granules. I think this would be a fun, different talking point at a dinner party instead of normal shop bought mints especially as its so easy to do. You can find Jamie’s proper recipe here, enjoy!

Apple, Vanilla and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Icing

Doesn’t the title say it all? Apples. Cream cheese. Maple syrup. Vanilla. Gorgeous. The flavours may sound quite autumnal, and I do have more summery dishes coming up, but I still highly recommend you give this a try (especially with London’s weather acting like it is October). My Mum and I bought a slice of this cake from the fabulous London bakery, Ottolenghi and once we tasted it knew that we had to have more of it – and soon! Luckily we have the Ottolenghi book at home and, double luckily, the recipe was featured in it. The cake is stodged full of big apple chunks, juicy sultanas and the sponge is deep with cinnamon and luxurious vanilla: already very good. But fill and top it with the rich, honey coloured, maple cream cheese icing – delicious! When I tried the raw cake mixture I was nervous as it had a really strong after taste of pure olive oil, not quite what you’re looking for in a decadent cake. But, once cooked, that harsh and obvious flavour is baked away and you wouldn’t even know it was there (in a good way! It adds depth of flavour rather than being a totally in your face savoury taste). This was my first time cutting a cake in half to make a layer cake, hence the smaller bottom half, but hey, it was stable. It was also my first time using a vanilla pod rather than extract or paste. Pods have a stronger flavour than extract and I think are more impressive in creamy vanilla desserts because you can see all the vanilla flecks. The book said to cook this cake for an hour and a half but I only did it for one hour and it was perfect, maybe even a little bit too done. So I would say start around that level and see how you go because obviously all ovens are different. Overall – enjoy this fabulous treat of a cake!

Apple and Olive Oil Cake With Maple Cream Cheese Icing, from Ottolenghi

Ingredients for cake:

• 280g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 120ml olive oil
• 160g caster sugar
• 2tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 3 Bramley apples, peeled cored and chopped into 1cm dice
• grated zest of 1 lemon
• 2 egg whites

Icing:

• 100g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 100g light muscavado sugar
• 85ml maple syrup
• 220g cream cheese, at room temperature

Preheat the oven to 170C. Sift the flour, cinnamon, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl. Meanwhile, whisk the olive oil, vanilla and sugar  together until voluminous and smooth. Next whisk in the eggs, one at a time. Stir in the apples and lemon zest and then the flour. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold carefully into the cake batter. Grease and line two sandwich tins and bake for 45 mins until a cake batter comes out clean. Once cooked, allow the cakes to cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, beat together the butter and maple syrup and sugar until light and airy. Next add in the cream cheese and beat until it’s totally smooth. Use half of  the icing to the sandwich the cakes together, and smooth the remaining frosting over the top.

Yoghurt and Vanilla Pannacotta with Strawberries

Opinions can change. That’s my message today. For example, when Matt Smith started as Dr Who I was determined to hate him (long live Tennant). Now, half way through the series, I very much love him. When I was little, I hated pineapple. Not sure why, not sure how, but that hate is long gone. And until recently, I thought I hated pannacotta. But then I made this one… When I imagined pannacotta, it was always firm and solid on the spoon like a peculiar white jelly. Probably tasting quite milky, perhaps a bit bland. Oh, was I wrong. This version of pannacotta was creamy and soft – set, yes, but to a gentle wobble rather than bounce-it-off-the-walls set. Definitely not bland either, but prettily speckled with vanilla. Also a great part of this dessert was the fact it feels good for you, due to the tiny amount of sugar. Of course, that’s only because its full of double cream but hey ho.
Normally, I’m a very strict recipe follower but this time I made a couple of changes. I used a couple of teaspoonfuls of vanilla paste to flavour, as shown below, because it offers a much richer flavour than vanilla extract but is much less expensive than vanilla pods! Also, I made this pannacotta in a slightly unorthodox way. Instead of boiling the cream mixture over the stove – I microwaved the mixture in a Pyrex jug! Although unusual, this makes the whole process SO much easier and also makes it a one pot pud, minimising washing up. In my hating days, I always visualised pannacotta turned out onto a big plate, but I served these in the glassed for a pretty effect. The glaze on the strawberries was simply done by tossing the sliced strawberries in quince jelly before placing them on the chilled pannacottas, making them shine and giving a bit of extra honey flavour. And after all of that, they were enjoyed happily by the family and we were left wishing we hadn’t halved the recipe! You can find it here and I hope you enjoy making something you once disliked this week!

Semifreddo

It may seem peculiar to be making a frozen, ice cream dish in winter. Except that, for half the world, its currently summer and ice cream is totally apt. You people – I envy you. From September to December I love winter. I’m not much of a Halloween person so for pretty much this whole period I’m excited for Christmas: loving cosy nights in, Sunday night television and fires, hot water bottles and hot chocolate with far too many marshmallows. Then January hits. I’m not a January person. Not particularly a February one either. It’s back to school. Christmas is gone for another whole 12 months. It rains. The morning bus seems to take forever to arrive. I long for summer.
I long for May, June, July and August. My birthday! Picnics on the green, trips to the park after school on a Friday. That after-summer-exam feeling of pure relaxing. Exciting opportunities, the end of the school year. Six long weeks of summer holiday stretching ahead of me waiting to be filled in, booked up, travelled through. Ice cream. So, here’s to summer hurrying itself up and arriving soon. Please?

When my sister saw this, she said it looked like a giant fluffy pillow. And that’s just what it taste like – a soft spoonful of vanilla creaminess. What exactly is not to like? The vanilla creaminess is layered with crunchy hits of chocolate, all softened by a decadent chocolate sauce. Mmm. Once again the recipe comes from the classic Rachel Allen – although you could mix it up a bit by flavouring the vanilla more, I was thinking with amaretto, ginger, or citrus….

Marble Cookies

Recently we had an abundance of chocolate in the house. Dark chocolate, milk, white, chunks – way more than we usually have. It was begging to be used – and I wasn’t complaining ;D

My first thought was to make a marble cake – have dark chocolate and white chocolate flavoured mixtures all nicely swirled in one loaf. But literally none of my books had a simple recipe like this! So, that was out. But I still liked the marble idea so I chose marble cookies.

I thought about melting the light and dark chocolates and incorporating into the halved mixes, but apparently the chocolate flavour doesn’t come through when you do that. Why? Anyway, then I found this little booklet which came with the latest issue of Olive magazine:

I love these little books! Its well worth buying the magazine just for them (although Olive is a very good magazine). Some of the chocolate recipes were a bit random (chocolate martini, anyone?) but also inside was the recipe for “black and white pinwheel cookies”. You get the swirled look by laying the chocolate dough on top of the vanilla dough, and rolling it up like a Swiss Roll. The recipe itself just puts cocoa powder in the chocolate half, but I used some of our dark chocolate chunks and put them in. They made it a bit harder to roll and cut flat, but the taste was worth it! For the plain dough, I added some extra vanilla essence to make the dough stand out more.

In the end result, I think these cookies were okay. I am no1 cookie fan so I still managed to eat a good few :) but I think they could have had something a bit more special. I could try putting white chocolate in the vanilla dough, or perhaps orange for an orange/chocolate combination. They were not the best use for the chocolate abundance – but they were yummy and it just means there is another excuse to use more chocolate next time!

Black and white pinwheel cookies

Makes 40

unsalted butter 200g

golden caster sugar 150g

vanilla extract 2tsp

1 egg

plan flour 300g, sifted

cocoa 25g

1. Cream the butter and sugar using an electric mixer or hand-held electric beater.

2. Beat in the vanilla and egg, then add the flour. Beat until smooth, remove from the bowl, halve and beat the cocoa into one half. Shape both dough portions into rough oblongs. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes until firm.

3. Roll out each dough to £1 thickness, trying to keep the oblong shape. Put the chocolate dough on top of the white dough and trim the edges to neaten. Roll up lengthways like a Swiss roll, then wrap in cling film and chill for 45mins.

4. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160/gas 4. Slice the dough into discs as thinly as you can, put them on a non-stick baking sheet and cook for 15minutes. Cool on wire racks.

There was a bit more chocolate dough than plain, so I made some more chocolate biscuit shapes with it. Until next time :)

Oaty Cookies x 2!

Q: What do you do when it is rainy and cold outside, and your blog feels neglected?
A: Bake cookies!

Or to be precise oat and vanilla cookies, followed by oat and raisin cookies! Both were yummy!
A few days ago I got Rachel Allen’s new book, Bake. I love Rachel Allen and her books – and I’d love to see her if I go to Ballymaloe when I am older.
The first cookie, Oat and Vanilla Shortbread was my first roll-and-slice cookie. I got the dough together and rolled it but I couldn’t get the perfect circles as in her photos, so mine were rectangular. It didn’t affect the crunchy, melt-in-the-mouth taste though! It would be easy to put add-ins to this shortbread – it might be extra good with lemon or orange zest, but they were good with just vanilla.

Oat and Vanilla Shortbread Cookies
Makes about 40

200g (7oz) butter, softened
100g (3 ½ oz) icing sugar, sifted
1tsp vanilla extract
200g (7oz) plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
100g (3 ½ oz) porridge oats

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C (350’F), Gas Mark 4.
2. Cream the butter in a large bowl or in an electric food mixer until soft. (I did both the cookies using first my hand-held mixer and then swapping to my wooden spoon).
3. Add the icing sugar and vanilla extract and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
4. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then stir in the oats and bring the mixture together to form a dough.
5. Using a sheet of cling film to cover the dough, roll it into a log about 30cm (12in) long and 6cm (2 ½ in) in diameter.
6. Allow to chill in the fridge, covered in the cling film, for about 30 minutes until firm.
7. Remove the cling film, slice the log into rounds about 5mm (1/4 in) thick and place slightly apart on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

8. Bake in the oven for 15minutes or until light golden brown and dry to the touch.
9. Carefully transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Whilst those were chilling in the fridge, I tidied up and got started again on Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies. These were slightly different to the shortbread – a much stickier dough. Rachel Allen says you don’t need to line the trays but I always do as a precaution – after my chocolate cookies stuck! Rachel also says you could try putting chocolate in these instead of the raisins – but I’d like them with both!

Oatmeal and Raisin Cookies

makes about 30 cookies

110g (4oz) butter, softened
110g (4oz) caster sugar
110g (4oz) soft brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp water
1tsp vanilla extract
250g (9oz) porridge oats
110g (4oz) self-raising flour
1 level tsp salt (I left this out because my butter was salted)
110g (4oz) raisins

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C (350’F), Gas Mark 4.
2. Cream the butter in a large bowl or in an electric food mixer until soft.
3. Add the sugars and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg, water and vanilla extract while still beating.
5. Reduce the speed and gently mix in the oats, flour, salt and raisins to form a dough.
6. Using your hands, roll the dough into walnut sized balls and place slightly apart on two baking trays.

7. Bake in the oven for 12-25 minutes or until light golden brown but still slightly soft in the centre.
8. Allow to cool on the trays for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool.

As you can see, I slightly overcooked the first batch of Oat and Raisin Cookies so they were a bit darker than the rest. Happily, this did not affect the taste and we are feasting on cookies! Now I'm off to Youth Group at the church where it is Film & Popcorn Night tonight - and I'm stuffed already!