It’s All In The Name…

When looking through my cookery books, there are some things inside them that scream out at you to make them – just through their name. Culprits of this form of persuasion include desserts such as “Molten Chocolate Cake with Rich Chocolate Sauce” or “Self-Saucing Lemon Pudding” and anything with “Best Ever….” at the beginning. Orlando Murrin’s “No-Fail Cake” is also one of these.

Thankfully, this cake definitely lived up to its name, even when I accidentally added double the pineapple and pineapple juice! In essence, this cake is a light fruit cake. The difference is the pineapple, which makes it lovely and moist and juicy. One reason that it is a no-fail cake, is that the method is so simple: just put all the ingredients minus flour and eggs in a saucepan, wait until the butter has melted and then just fold in the remaining ingredients!

This was a cake I had wanted to make as part of my Advent Series, but for a while I couldn’t find the book it is in – The Clever Cookbook by Orlando Murrin (I think sold with the Express recently, and of course another cookbook I hadn’t cooked from before). Murrin got the recipe from one of his readers in Wales who found it at Bangor Cathedral. The name of the cake in Welsh is “Cacen byth yn methu” aka, of course, never-fail cake. In the introduction above the cake, Orlando Murrin says “I received several dozen letters from readers saying it was the best cake they had ever made, letters from all over the country – not just Wales!”. Whilst I may not go that far, it definitely was good! The only change I might make would be too reduce the amount of mixed fruit just a little bit so the highlight was more on the pineapple and cherries. Although it was a mistake to begin with, I would still keep the double pineapple and juice (just add an extra tbsp of flour).

Cacen byth yn methu – no fail cake, from The Clever Cookbook by Orlando Murrin

Cuts into 8-10 (we got more!)

100g/4oz glace cherries
220gtin of pineapple in juice (or double :D)
100g/4oz butter
350g/12oz mixed fruit
175g/6oz soft brown sugar
225g/8oz self-raising flour
2 eggs

1. Chop the cherries and pineapple (a very fiddly job), but keep the juice. Put in a pan with the pineapple juice, butter, mixed fruit and sugar.

2. Heat to melt the butter but do not boil.

3. Leave to cool, then beat in the flour and eggs.

4. Preheat the oven to 170’C/fan oven 150’C/Gas 3. Line a 20cm/8inch round tin with baking paper, punt in mixture and bake for about 1 1/2 hours, till firm and skewer comes out clean. (I put mine in for just over an hour and it was fine, possibly could have done with even less!)

One hundred and seven…

cookbooks!

There are big ones, small ones, fat ones and thin ones. There’s Delia to Jamie, Nigella to Nigel, Rachel Allen to Darina Allen.
There is Galton Blackiston, Dorie Greenspan, Prue Leith, Sophie Grigson, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Lindsey Bareham and many more! There are books just about soups, just about Asian food, just about cupcakes, just about fish. There are old ones, new ones, my Dad’s ones, my Mum’s ones and my very own ones!

The fact is – we have a lot of cookery books! The problem is – they are not all used as often as they should be…Probably most cooks have a select few cookery books they always turn to, a few they couldn’t really live without. My family is no exception. Certain Nigella Lawson ones hold recipes brought out over and over again. Rachel Allen is one I bake from a lot – as you can probably tell from my previous bakes! You can tell which ones are used (flour on the pages, the odd page stuck together, the cover a touch scrumpled) and which ones aren’t (shiny new covers, stiff to open). It was when we moved our cookery books from dotted all over the house to their new shelves in the kitchen, that I realised just how many of the 107 (!) I had read and enjoyed from cover-to-cover (and many not even that), but not actually baked from. Well not anymore! A new resolution is to leave the well-used ones on their shelf for a bit, as I know how good they are, and work through some of the ones which I have declined. Beginning with The Chocolate and Coffee Bible.

The Chocolate and Coffee Bible does exactly what the name suggests – gives you lots of information all about chocolate (first half) and coffee (second half) and then gives you lots of delicious recipes using either chocolate or coffee – all accompanied with scrumptious photos! It is the perfect book for curling up with and reading all the way through, which I have done many a time! Having now cooked from it, I don’t think there is any other cookbook needed for a chocolate/coffee recipe – it has just about everything in here! Bizarrely, I maybe managed to pick the least chocolatey recipe from this book – chocolate dipped shortbreads.

Originally, these biscuits were meant to be like long Viennese biscuits which used a piping bag to pipe the biscuits out into long lines, and then you dipped them in chocolate at either end. My dough was a bit too thick to pipe, but perfect for rolling so I did that and cut them out instead. They still taste just as nice – crumbly biscuit and the rich chocolate covering. These are also very moreish!

Choc-dipped biscuits, from The Coffee and Chocolate Bible

115g/4oz soft margarine (I always use butter) 15ml/3tbsp icing sugar
150g/5oz plain flour
few drops of vanilla essence
75g/3oz plain chocolate, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C/350’F/Gas 4 and lightly grease two baking sheets.

2. Beat the margarine and icing sugar together in a bowl until very soft. Add the flour and vanilla and mix in well. (I needed a few drops of water to loosen the dough a bit)

3. Put the mixture in a large piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle. Pipe 10 neat lines, each 13cm long. (Or, put some icing sugar on the work surface and roll the dough out quite thinly. Cut with a cutter of your choice).

4. Bake for 15-20minutes until the biscuits are a light golden brown.

5. Put the chocolate in a heatproof bowl and melt over a pan of simmering water. Stir, then remove from the heat. Dip both ends of each biscuit in the chocolate (or half of the circle!), put on a wire rack and leave to cool and set. (I popped mine in the fridge for a while to set, but took them out when immediately when they were set because they taste better when they aren’t straight from the fridge).

Doughnuts!

Yes, the mystery Christmas gift: a seven hole mini doughnut maker!

After I got back from all the excitement of the holidays and started school again – I think we needed something sweet to perk us up again. And, of course, I wanted to try out my present! I wasn’t expecting it at all and it was a real treat. I have, not surprisingly, no experience making doughnuts so I followed the little manual that came with it. It was actually very simple and fun to use, although a little scary the first time! The recipe given is really easy to do because they are ingredients we generally always have in our cupboard, so they can be made at very little notice. The recipe does make quite a lot though, and I think perhaps if I made them again just for the four in my family I might reduce the quantities slightly. Even for us there are limits to the amount of doughnuts we can eat! Also, when you make these you do pretty much have to stand over and watch them the whole time so after a while it gets a bit tiring. However – it is about ten minutes maximum (including making the batter) until you are rewarded with seven adorable and yummy doughnuts!

The recipe flavours them a little bit with vanilla, but once they were cooked this didn’t come through. I used vanilla essence, but the recipe said vanilla sugar would be good. I don’t think that would be any stronger though..I would like to add more, and also experiment with other flavourings – my sister wants to try lemon doughnuts! Next time I make them (which i definitely will be doing!) I would also like to dip them in chocolate like a traditional doughnut. This time I rolled them in sugar flavoured with about 1/4 tsp cinnamon powder to give them flavour. This was yummy and worked well, although I am not sure how to get the sugar to stay on better?

Doughnuts Basic Recipe

Ingredients: 250g plain flour

125g sugar

1/4 litre milk

2tsps vanilla sugar or few drops of vanilla essence

3eggs

50ml vegetable oil

15g (2tbsp) baking powder

pinch of salt

Preparation: 1. Place all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.

2. Make a well in the middle of these ingredients and add the wet ingredients: milk, eggs and oil.

3. Using a mixer, mix all ingredients thoroughly to produce a smooth batter.

Simple as that! Then you just put a teaspoon of batter in each hole. It seems like aboslutely nothing, but by the time I got to the seventh hole, the one I had done first had all bubbled up and grown! From there, I guess the method varies for each version of doughnut maker. If you think you would honestly make them quite a lot – a doughnut maker is a great thing to have! I really enjoyed mine and can’t wait to use it again and experiment some more… :D x

2009!

Well here I am, a little late, but wishing everyone a truly fabulous Happy New Year! 2008 was a good year for me blogging wise of course - it was the beginnings of Teen Baker! We're still on our early first footsteps in the huge blogging world, having been up less than half a year! But I am thoroughly enjoying it and hope it will last for many years to come. I have loved everyones kind and helpful comments, the awards I have recieved which I was truly honoured to get - and everything else! Hopefully a full post and recipe coming very soon :D

xxx

Lemon Ice Cream Tart

So today is the 26th December – otherwise known as Boxing Day, in my view the sad day after Christmas when all the excitement and waiting is over. But, it is definitely not all bad – now I have lots of nice new things to enjoy and lots of delicious food to finish off..what a hardship.. :) . Yesterday I had the great pleasure in receiving some things which will no doubt be featuring on here very soon…doughnuts anyone??

I hope everyone had a thoroughly enjoyable day yesterday and spent it just how you like to. For me it was church, followed by my Granny and Uncle David coming round, getting the lunch ready, present time!!! and then the most important meal of the year – Christmas lunch! We had a fantastically delicious traditional meal – thankyou Mummy :) For pudding, we served Christmas pudding and (finally I mention it!) this gorgeous tart.

We served it a few night before Christmas to some other friends and it went down very well, but we still had half left. Some of the people at lunch yesterday (me included) are not such fans of Christmas pud, so we had this instead. It goes a long way! It does have quite a bit of alcohol in but hey, its Christmas and it tastes yummy. It does make a lot, as I say, so it is perfect at big celebrations. It is also good for Christmas because it does not go in the oven, which is good as the oven will probably be busy with all the rest of the Christmas lunch. Also, it can be made far in advance so doesn't need to be hurriedly done on the day of the celebration. I think our lemons were quite small, as in the end we added the juice and zest of four rather than two, and perhaps it could have had even more lemony taste. Or if you prefer, you could I suppose reduce some of the alcohol. I really liked the ginger nut crust and think it is much more interesting (for this tart) then a plain digestive one, because it adds a sharp extra element.

Lemon ice cream tart with ginger nut crust, from Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

120g butter

400g ginger biscuits

For the filling:

150ml white wine

2tbsp marsala

grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

grated zest of an orange

4tbsp caster sugar

500ml double cream

1. You will need a loose bottomed tart tin with a diameter of about 21cm. Line the base of the tart tin with a single piece of greaseproof paper.
2. Melt the butter in a small pan. Crush the biscuits in a food processor or bash them in a plastic bag. You want them to be a coarse powder.
3. Stir the biscuits into the butter. Line the base of the tin with the buttered crumbs, pushing far up the edges. Put the crumb lined tin in the freezer.
4. Pour the wine into the bowl of a food mixer. Add the Marsala and the grated zest of the lemons and orange. Squeeze the lemons and add the juice.
5. Add the sugar and cream to the wine and zest mixture, then beat slowly until thick. The consistency needs to be soft and thick, so that it lies in voluptuous folds rather than standing in stiff peaks.
6. Scrape the mixture into the crumb lined tin and freeze for at least four hours. Remove from the freezer 15-20 mins before you intend to serve it.

Of course, now that Christmas is over, it means so is my Advent Series. It was not.. ahem…successful, and I, for all manner of reasons, did not quite manage to post every day.. hehe. But I did enjoy doing it and I think I posted more than I normally do, which was fun. Perhaps posting everyday was a little ambitious for me – and I have renewed admiration for those that do this, such as Marie! I hope you enjoyed what I did do!

x

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!