Pear and Almond Cake

It’s always difficult to start again in the New Year. Not just resuming work, the gym and everything else that's been totally ignored whilst we happily vegetate on sofas for 2 festive weeks - but cooking too (especially when your camera cable goes walkabout). We've grown accustomed to nibbling on cold leftovers and Quality Street or grazing on bits and pieces from the fridge. As a result the idea of whipping up a huge cake or batch of yet more cookies seems bizarre. The food magazines are full of healthy living, salads and superfoods… yet its snowing outside and you’re craving something carby. Especially when in my house there's still an untouched Pannetone, 2 Christmas puddings and a hunk of Christmas cake left to eat. The relaxed seasonal eating style has been reflected in my cooking recently - some irresistible yet super simple cheddar and chorizo straws, dulce de leche shortbread sandwiches for relatives and these ridiculously moreish cheese crackers. All good food that makes for excellent snacking, but a tad out of place on the blog in January.

I think this cake is a happy medium. It’s simple, isn’t too rich and contains fruit to be mildly healthy if you have strict New Year’s resolutions still going strong and is really comforting in snowy weather. This cake slightly unnerved me whilst in the oven as it properly filled the tin right up to the top, but as the pears sunk into the mixture it just about stayed constrained. The recipe can be found here, it comes from the trusty Good Housekeeping magazines – after sorting through 3 years of GH magazines the recipes are now all neatly in one big tempting lever arch file so expect more recipes from there soon! Including my first attempt at candy making with a batch of tablet – pretty much pure sugar and therefore unsurprisingly delicious and addictive…Coming soon!

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!

Cherry Chocolate Snow Cookies

I’m back! And just in time for Christmas – only two days to go! Cookies come in to their own at Christmas, I think, as part of cookie exchanges, gifts for party hostesses, decorations for the Christmas tree or simply as a last minute and simple festive bake. There are a never ending amount of recipe variations and cookies are a great way to incorporate many Christmassy flavours into one mouthful – such as in these cookies. With chocolate, sweet dried fruit, a snowy icing sugar covering and a little bit of virtue from oats, these make the perfect holiday treat. If you’ve left a present last minute, or have a unexpected visitor now coming for Christmas lunch, these cookies will make the perfect gift – everybody else will be jealous! The dough is really quick to make because you add the egg, butter and sugar all at once, saving you time in the busiest period of the year. The recipe comes from Dan Lepard who originally uses dried cranberries – obviously a very appropriate flavour for Christmas. However we didn’t have any so I used dried sour cherries instead which have the same chew and sour taste and so were just as delicious. The cherries worked nicely with the dark chocolate – all coming together to make a perfect Christmassy bite. Enjoy!

Celebratory Chocolate

On Monday I finished my mock exams. Exams which caused my left hand (I'm a leftie and proud) to feel like it was going to fall off after all the writing its done. Exams that caused revision which did its best to ruin the Christmas holiday. Exams that made me miss the January sales. Exams that have caused a persistent aching back after being hunched over hours of exam papers. Exams that kept me out of the kitchen. Exams that buried my room under revision lists and guides and files and notes. Everybody knows there's only one way to celebrate the end of exams. Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart. Ok, maybe that was just me. But it’s a pretty good way to go! The recipe came from one of my top Christmas presents this year – a copy of Rachel Allen’s latest book, Entertaining at Home. I love Rachel Allen and our house has all her books, but this one was extra special because it was signed! I’m yet to meet the lady herself and the book was won from an auction, but its still exciting. I knew that I wanted to try something special to celebrate exams – something more complicated and different to what I normally make. This tart certainly went there for me! I practised pastry making, caramel making, and tried to improve my resistance around large bowls of melted chocolate. I’d never made caramel before and was extremely nervous but, although it wasn’t completely perfect, it turned out tasty and not at all burnt! The pastry provides the necessary crunch after all the soft sweetness of the tart fillings. The caramel is the strong sweet kick, with just a hint of salt at the end. The chocolate layer is thick and soft, like a mousse or truffle, but the use of dark chocolate prevents everything becoming too sickly. Perfect.  As you may be able to see from the above picture, I had a slight issue with my caramel layer. Although it tasted divine, my fear of burning it meant I removed it from the heat too early and it was not thick enough (the consistency should be almost like dulce de leche). This meant when the chocolate was poured on top, the caramel in the centre was pushed from underneath and spilled out. In the end this wasn’t too bad as it caramelised the pastry at the top which was delicious, but it’s something to bear in mind. Overall, I was more than pleased with this tart. It was my first baking challenge of 2011, and it was utterly irresistible! Having a slice in my lunchbox every day makes me feel like I’m eating at a fancy restaurant, and makes those exams seem a hundred years ago… You can find the recipe here – enjoy!

Gingerbread House

For a good couple of years now, my family has intended to make a gingerbread house. We have seen the kits and finished products, the pretty snow-icing and sweetie decorations. Every year, “we should really make one of those”. Every year, we somehow don’t get round to it. Not anymore!
This is my little gingerbread house! I was nervous about making it, hearing recipe stories about collapses and breakages but thankfully none were had with my gingerbread baby! My sister and I built and decorated it carefully, and the sturdy biscuit survived a trip from London to Suffolk and back again. These houses are so much fun to decorate as you can truly let your imagination run because every house is an individual creation.
This turned out to be a very fun Christmas bake. My own house was filled with gorgeous gingerbread scents and then in the corner sat this cheery and colourful gingerbread cottage. So cute!

Next year I will be definitely making a gingerbread house again, and would like to experiment with it more. I’d like to try melting boiled sweets for windows, cutting out doors, making a different shape (tall and thin or a long gingerbread bungalow), stringing fairy lights in the inside – so much! Perhaps this will take a couple of Christmasses…
The Daring Bakers December challenge was a gingerbread house so no doubt you have seen many many creations these last few weeks! But if you still want to see more (they are all so beautiful!) click here. I used this gingerbread house recipe, which is apparently best for shaping and creating not eating – but it didn’t stop me and it tasted delicious! Also, with this recipe you get a LOT of leftover dough. I think you could freeze it for cookies another time, but I just created a whole forest of snowy trees and a family of groovy people to surround the house. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year – Venice photos coming soon. X

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everybody! 2009 has been a good year for me and my little piece of the blogosphere – I’ve spoken to new lovely bloggers and discovered many gorgeous new blogs to become addicted to, been published for the first time on TasteSpotting, celebrated my first blogoversary and generally learnt so much about blogging! Of course, lots of delicious things have also been baked, consumed and enjoyed (with a few disasters along the way). I am very much looking forward to 2010, a whole new decade, and seeing how the blog progresses into its third year.
I hope everyone has a gorgeous holiday wherever you are. I won’t be posting again until January in the next decade (!) as I’m off to see in the new year in Venice. Happy Holidays people :)

Christmas Gifts No3: Mince Pies

There isn’t anything that screams “classic British Christmas” to me than the humble mince pie.
Crisp and flaky pastry houses the juicy Christmas mincemeat, topped off with a festive-shape pastry topping and dusted with a sprinkling of icing sugar snow. Delicious.
Christmas wouldn’t be the same without mince pies for me: they just symbolise it (along with a classic Christmas Cake). The reason I love them so much is mainly in the making: the rolling out of the pastry, twisting open the rich jars of mincemeat, gently laying on mini pastry stars, candy canes and snowflakes to top each little morsel, with Wham and Slade playing in the background. Aand…relax. (Of course its more hectic and over-excited on sugar and festive spirit than that..but you know.)

You can buy mince pies anywhere, but often the pastry will be stodgy and the mincemeat filling turns out as a heavy lump. They are so easy to make and turn out so much better – its worth the miniscule effort :) Plus, nothing can fill your house with a more Christmassy scent, and no Christmas tin can make a face light up brighter! I made my own mincemeat last year here, and you can use any sweet pastry recipe (I like to add the zest of an orange to make the pastry extra festive) you like.
:)

Christmas Gifts No2: Orange Chocolate Marzipans

With all the gifts I give to my friends or family, I think its nice to give something a bit different or special. Even if I am giving someone a specific thing off their list, I like to give a small extra gift as a surprise. It just makes present giving more fun. Which is why these little sweets appealed to me – I hadn’t seen a similar recipe before and they looked like they tasted truly delicious. And again, there’s just something in the name that lets you know these are going to be good.

These marzipans are another simple gift – requiring a total of about ten minutes hands on time. You just blend the ingredients to form a soft and squidgy (and full of flavour) marzipan, cut into small circles and let dry for a couple of hours. Then cover each one with a swirl of chocolate and piece of candied peel – if you are a fan of this often-hated treat. What could be easier?
These went down a storm as after-dinner treats in front of Strictly Come Dancing! They have all the perfect textures – soft soft marzipan, light crunch from the chocolate and chew from the candied peel. The orange flavour in the marzipan adds a little bit of Christmas “zing” and you could enhance this with orange flavoured chocolate if you so wished. You will be popular when you make these – find the recipe here.

Christmas Gifts No1: Chocolate Truffles

On the blogs right now, you’d have to have been severely absent not to notice the huge amount of Christmas Gift posts. There are cookies and candy-canes, jams and jellies. Anyone would be overjoyed to receive a scrumptious hamper of goodies, jars of chutney or box of chocolates as a gift from a foodie friend. I haven’t given away homemade Christmas presents before, but for Christmas this year on the blog I thought I’d show some gifts really worth making. I’ve got several goodies coming up but first – chocolate truffles. Chocolate & Cointreau Truffles, to be precise. You can surely tell they are going to taste good when you read the name! But also, these are so simple to make, so you can make lots quickly for every lucky recipient. I can never resist a truffle. For my tenth birthday I held a truffle-making and cookie decorating party – that is the strength of my affection for the truffle. For some reason I do always think of them as a Christmas thing – perhaps because they are so rich – and this is the first time I have made them in a very long time.
From my experiences, I learnt several things about making truffles:

• Heat the cream gently but don’t let it get too hot or your truffles will split.They take practice to get the perfect sphere, but even a misshapen pentagon truffle tastes delicious.
• Cut your chocolate very small (you could even grate it) before pouring the cream over it so that the chocolate melts faster.
• Do not make the truffles too big. Glorious as they are, a plate full of mini truffles looks far nicer than half a plate of huge ones. Plus, they are very rich.
• They only need a light roll in the cocoa-covering – mouthfuls of cocoa powder ruins the effect.
• After making your truffle balls, they need to firm up before you attempt to put them in pretty gold cases.

I made chocolate truffles with a splash of Cointreau and grated zest of an orange. I chose to roll in either cocoa powder or coconut but you could do chopped pistachios or almonds, icing sugar, crushed amaretti biscuits, hundreds and thousands, festive chopped candy-cane or edible glitter – whatever takes your fancy. You can also cover the truffles in melted chocolate (tempered if not coating, there’s not much need if you are) for more richness.
Chocolate Truffles
150ml double cream
150g chocolate
1. Heat the cream gently – either in the microwave for 1.5minutes or over a low heat.
2. Put the chopped chocolate in a bowl and pour over the hot cream. Stir slowly to form a ganache. Cover and chill for a few hours or overnight.
3. Take teaspoons of firm ganache and roll into balls. Set out plates of your chosen coatings, and roll the truffles. Leave for about 30minutes to firm. Place delicately in boxes, cases or on plates. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope you all have a fantastic day - I am having a lovely one with the family.
Recipes to follow soon!