Edinburgh

A few weeks ago, my parents and I went up to Edinburgh – to see the sights and have a fabulous foodie time. I had my first ever Michelin-starred dining experience at Tom Kitchin’s The Kitchin, which certainly did not disappoint. We also had a great time wandering around Edinburgh Farmers’ Market…

The tablet stall (and tablet tasters) must have been my favourite stall.Tablet is a Scottish sweet – like a firmer fudge, mainly sugar and totally irresistible! I bought some and also look forward to attempting my own very soon. A stall selling a huge (and tempting) array of cakes and pies Oink, the business that made the perfect hog roast sandwich at lunchtime, complete with stuffing and apple sauce – delicious! Chutneys, relishes and jams The amazing chocolate stall selling more flavours of chocolate you could ever think of: Chilli, Black Forest, Mango, Salted Caramel, Raspberry, Red Pepper and Candied Orange to name just a few!

Just before catching the train home, we visited the magnificent The Dome. In the grandest of surroundings – complete with heavy chandeliers – we enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea…Middle Layer: fruit scones with strawberry jam and whipped cream.
Bottom layer: Sandwiches – Roast Beef & Horseradish Sauce, Ham & Mustard or Egg and Cress.   Top Layer: Lemon French Fancy, Apple Pie, Chocolate Eclair and Strawberry Cream Tart.

All in all – a thoroughly delicious weekend and I can’t wait to visit again!

Passion Fruit Curd Tart

Never let it be said that baking is a stress-free hobby. Passion fruit curd making is distinctly stressful. For nearly five minutes you stand whisking a bright orange watery liquid on an almost negligible heat, so you turn it up just a smidge, then all of a sudden the colour changes to sunny yellow, the curd thickens rapidly and you’re terrified your curd is curdled and your sore hand from 30+ minutes of squeezing and straining passion fruits will all have been in vain. Pheeew. Thankfully today I got the curd just at the right time. And oh, the results were good. I love passion fruits. As soon as you cut one in half their super sweet, fresh, summery aroma is released. The orange pulp is sweet yet sharp and the black seeds are a shot of crunch. Even the inedible skin is beautiful with its deep purpley/pink colour. They are the perfect fruit for welcoming in the summer sunshine and their name is well deserved. I wanted to make a passion fruit curd tart after sampling the individual ones with meringue from top London bakery Ottolenghi. Despite owning the Ottolenghi book the recipe was not to be found – its kept top secret because the tarts are so popular! After a little searching around, I found a Waitrose recipe that I felt would work. My tart doesn’t have meringue – to save both time and calories – and I made one large one to use a new tart pan. Also, the curd is not cooked again once being added to the tart so it stays delightfully creamy and soft.  As I’ve mentioned – I did not enjoy juicing and straining 12 passion fruit. Mine were not hugely ripe so this may have been a factor but I found I spent a long time pushing every last drop of juice away from the pips and through the sieve, so as not to waste any and make as much juice as possible. If you are less concerned about waste you could use more passion fruit or perhaps riper ones would yield more juice easily. Overall, I very much enjoyed the end result of this tart. The lemon pastry adds an extra dimension of summery fruitiness and the passion fruit curd was smooth, buttery and full of that distinctive passion fruit zing. The best part? This tart needs no accompaniments. Armed with a (generous)slice, a fork and a chair in the sunshine I was extremely happy. Enjoy :)

Original Beans with Phillip Kauffmann

Around a month ago now, I had one of the best mornings in a long time. My Dad and I headed to La Fromagerie, an utterly delicious foodie haven in London, and attended a breakfast class/chocolate tasting/lecture led by Original Beans founder Phillip Kauffmann. Original Beans is a small chocolate company that focuses on creating the purest, best chocolate whilst using chocolate production as a way of preserving the environment and rainforest, mainly in South America. I’d never truly understood the process of making chocolate or considered the idea of combining chocolate & conservation, so it made for a fascinating morning.I couldn’t ever explain the importance of good chocolate, the detail of chocolate production or all the messages that Original Beans stands for a) without making this post a million words long and b) as cleverly as Kauffmann (who used a digital photo frame full of wonderful photos of the rainforest and plenty of chocolate tasting to guide us through the process). I made a whole page of notes and learnt so much but the most important information can be found on the Original Beans website. My favourite piece of knowledge was that the chocolate we eat comes from the bitter pips of the cacao bean, but the cacao flesh can be eaten normally and tastes like a cross between a lychee or pear. I was also amazed to learn that the variety of cacao bean used affects the flavour of the final product, and yet there are hundreds of varieties of cacao bean yet to be tried! Now, for what we ate…The hot chocolate above was pretty much like drinking pure melted chocolate: divine! With a crisp brioche bun to accompany it, it was the perfect start to a morning full of chocolate. 

           

Next came a mini Danish pastry: the juicy raisins were the closest health food we were getting this morning. After that delicious detour from chocolate, the chocolate returned with a bang: chocolate stuffed pancakes. Rich, thick, smooth chocolate and crispy pancake – it was a perfect send off. In between these foodie feasts, bowls of Original Beans chocolate had been circling the tables as we tasted each different chocolate the company makes. Again, I’m not a chocolate professional but all I can say is they all tasted divine and a world away from your standard Cadbury’s – much deeper and more intense. We left that morning extremely full and almost unable to look at anything more chocolatey, but also full of knowledge about the whole chocolate making process.

All in all it was a marvellous morning and I urge you all to check out Original Beans chocolate!

Mini Orange Drizzle Cakes

Its currently that time of year when the weather can’t really make its mind up – should it let the sun shine or should it be gloomy and grey? Should it be getting dark at 4pm or 5pm? It’s also the time of year that inspires the spring clean. In my house the bedrooms are being reorganised, paperwork from all corners of the house is being filed, clothes are being sorted, drawers are being emptied and their contents examined. The last drawer to have the spring clean treatment was the kitchen drawer containing baking bits and bobs. Piping bags, cookie cutters, baking parchment, the heavy rolling pin – everything covered the table. Including a set of tiny loaf tins hidden at the back, bought excitedly but never used. Today that changed! Today was one of those gloomy, rainy days but I ignored it, put on an orange jumper and started baking zingy, fresh orange drizzle cakes. I whipped these up in about half an hour but their scent lingered happily in the kitchen: making it smell fresh, delicious and drawing me constantly back to the baking. Also, because they’re mini they only take 10-15minutes to cook so there’s not too long to wait before you can be enjoying these! The cake edges are crisp and golden, giving way to the soft and moist centre. The crème fraiche in the recipe ensures these stay soft whilst giving them a bit of extra tang which complements the tang of the orange. The orange glace icing on the top adds an extra burst of sweet and rounds everything off simply. I liked these because it’s more interesting than one large cake but makes a refreshing change to cupcakes. I hope you give these a try and that they brighten up a gloomy day in another kitchen. Enjoy :) Mini Orange Drizzle Cakes (makes 8) Ingredients: 100g caster sugar
115g softened butter
2 large eggs
115g self raising flour
2tbsp crème fraiche
2 large oranges – the zest and juice
100g icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C/350’F/Gas Mark 4 and line the cake tins.
2. Beat the butter and caster sugar until light, creamy and well combined. Add the eggs one by one, beating after each addition. Add the juice of one orange, and zest of both.
3. Add the flour and crème fraiche and fold the mixture gently until fully combined. Divide the mixture between the cake cases – filling them about 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the cakes spring back and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool in their tins.
5. Mix the icing sugar and remaining orange juice until smooth and fairly thin so that it is easy to drizzle. If there is any orange juice left over, use the cake skewer to poke small holes in the cakes and pour over the juice.
6. Once the cakes are fully cooled, remove from the tins and paper and drizzle over the icing. Enjoy!

Triple Chocolate Oreo Fudge Cookies

I’m not the best cookie maker. Sometimes they cook quicker than expected, occasionally they might spread out into each other, sometimes the eggs might look like they’ve curdled the mixture before you’ve added the flour. However, with a cookie title like this I doubt you can ever go too wrong. And the delicious results of this bake certainly proved me right.Green&Blacks dark Cocoa powder. Double chocolate stuffed Oreos. Butterscotch pieces. White chocolate chips. These cookies had them all. These may not be complicated, elegant or top notch gastronomy but they sure are good. There are moments for clean, healthy, simple foods and then there are days like this that call for pure treats!

The original recipe called for caster sugar, but at the friend’s kitchen we were baking in there was only dark muscovado sugar. We ran with it, despite the drastic difference between the two, and the cookies turned out great. The dark sugar added more of a deep caramel flavour and I think made the centre of the cookies softer and more brownie/cake like. The edges of the cookies were satisfyingly crunchy and each bite filled with a little nugget of chocolate goodness. Despite their richness, when paired with a tall glass of milk these just become rather addictive. So grab a film, curl up on the sofa, relax and….enjoy.

Benedict Bars

The trouble with reading food blogs is they always make me hungry. I think it is impossible to look at pages of cakes, pies, tarts and all manner of other delicious things without feeling a little bit envious. And then it becomes all too tempting to reach for the biscuit tin. To avoid snacking endlessly, I have a few times I prefer to read blogs: 1) Last thing at night – having just brushed my teeth I’m not feeling the need to eat more or 2) First thing in the morning on my phone – its unlikely that early in the morning I will be motivated enough to move for food unless its proper breakfast. Of course, there are downsides to these as well. When I came across these Benedict bars last thing at night it became rather difficult to go to sleep as I craved some nutty, jammy, biscuity goodness…

When I finally got round to making these I was not disappointed. The recipe makes a generous tray full but I know that tray will be finished very soon. The bars are comprised of a layer of shortbread, a thin layer of jam (I chose cherry instead of the suggested raspberry) and a flaked almond topping. Boy, do these layers work well together. The time in the oven toasted the almonds and enhanced their nutty flavour, the jam was sweet and sticky and the shortbread base rounded everything off perfectly. Definitely a fan. I don’t think I would make any changes to the recipe. Before baking, I felt the bars looked like they needed extra almonds but I had no spare. However, after baking the layer was definitely thick enough. I did have to bake my bars for 10-15minutes extra than the recipe states to make my almonds golden/toasted but all ovens vary. I look forward to trying these again with different jams – its such an easy recipe and sure to be a hit at school fairs, coffee mornings, afternoon tea….whenever!You can find the recipe here and obviously, I highly recommend it. Now I’m off to catch up on some blogs…safely armed with my hefty square of Benedict bar :)