Pantry paella

Thought I'd post a recipe that wasn't baking this time.

 I watched Nigella's 'Kitchen' series and loved the look of this paella. We're off to North Wales tomorrow to visit our son and family, so I didn't want to go shopping.
Had some raw tiger prawns in the freezer, so this seemed to be the ideal time to try out this dish. We'd  brought some paella rice and spices back from Spain last year, and they were just lying in the back of the cupboard.
You'll find Nigella's recipe here

I wish I'd brought a paella pan back too, but I used my new heavy duty Tefal frying pan instead.

This is the finished dish. Nigella suggests you decorate it with lemon slices and coriander, but haven't any lemons left and I hate coriander!

Picau ar y maen - Welshcakes

Happy St David's Day! Thought I'd make a few Welsh cakes to celebrate. My husband likes them well done and I prefer them golden.

 I got my lovely Emma Bridgewater daffodil mug for Mother's Day last year.

This is Gran's recipe which I always use, hence the lbs and ozs! After sprinkling sugar on top, she always added a knob of butter. We ate them warm, straight off the bakestone.

This recipe makes about 24 cakes, but I halved it today as there are only 2 of us;  I'm not sure if they'd freeze well.

1lb plain flour
4oz margarine
4oz lard [I use Trex]
4oz currants
6oz caster sugar
1/2 tspn mixed spice
1 tspn baking powder
1 egg
pinch salt
2 tbspns milk

Put the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, then rub in the fat. Add the currants and spice and mix together.
Beat the egg a little then add with enough of the milk to make a firmish dough.
Roll out on a floured surface till about 1/4" thick, then cut into rounds.
Grease a bakestone and cook the Welshcakes for about 3 mins each side till golden.
Cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with sugar. They're best eaten warm, on the day they're made.

Sian's chocolate cake

The recipe was given to me by my friend Sian ages ago, and I've made it lots of times since.
It's a lovely moist chocolate cake, which uses oil instead of butter or margarine. It keeps well .


190g plain flour
2 level tbspns cocoa
1 level tspn bicarb
1 level tspn baking powder
150g caster sugar
2 tbspn golden syrup
2  eggs [beaten]
150ml veg. oil
150ml milk

Icing
50g butter or marg
4 level tbpns cocoa [sieved]
3 tbspns milk
150g icing sugar

Preheat oven 160C/gas3/325F

Grease and base-line 2 x20cm sandwich tins.

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl then make a well in the centre and add the oil, eggs, syrup and milk. Beat it well and pour into the sandwich tins. It's a very runny batter.
Bake for 30-35 mins then turn onto a wire rack, remove paper and leave to cool.

Icing - melt the butter or marg in a pan, add the cocoa, stir well, and cook gently for about 1 minute. Then stir in the milk and icing sugar, take off the heat, mix well and leave to thicken, stirring occasionally.
Sandwich the cakes with half the icing and smooth the rest on the top.

I find this too much icing, so I only make half the amount of icing and put it in the middle.

Belgian cake

Having a good sort out in the food cupboard this morning, I found a jar of mincemeat leftover from Christmas.
I remembered having a recipe somewhere which uses it in a cake. It's an old recipe, originally cut out from a magazine, but I've tweaked it several times.

100g butter or margarine
75g dark brown sugar
150g wholemeal flour
1 tspn cinnamon
2 eggs
225g mincemeat
1 tbspn water

Preheat oven 170C/gas 3 and grease and base-line a 20cm square cake tin.

Beat the fat and sugar together till creamy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Fold in the flour and cinnamon then the mincemeat and water.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about 30 mins till golden.
It's got a nice light texture.

I don't know why it's called 'Belgian cake'!

Honey and banana loaf

We love teabreads and loafcakes, so I made this one to use up a couple of very ripe bananas.

This recipe was given to me by my aunt many years ago, and it's delicious. I've changed it to metric.

225g sr flour
1/2 tspn grated nutmeg
100g margarine or butter[softened]
225g bananas [weighed without skins]
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
6 tbspn thick honey

topping
2tbspn honey [warmed]
crushed sugar lumps or nibbed sugar

Preheat oven 180C/gas4/350F

Grease a 900g [2lb] loaf tin and line base with greaseproof paper.

Put flour and nutmeg in a bowl and rub in the marg. or butter till it looks like breadcrumbs.
Mash the peeled bananas and stir into the flour with the sugar, eggs and honey.
Beat it well until it's evenly mixed.
Put into the loaf tin and bake for about 45 mins. Check that the top's not browning too much, or if it is, put foil on the top.
Allow the loaf to cool then put onto a wire rack. When it's completely cool, brush the honey [which has been warmed in a small pan] over the top and sprinkle on the sugar.

This is nice on it's own with a cuppa or spread with butter.

I brought some nibbed sugar back from France, so used this on the top. I also added some mixed spice to the flour mixture as I love spice!

Scones

I found some buttermilk hidden in the back of the fridge, so decided this was the time to try the buttermilk scones from Nigella's 'Kitchen'. They're quite generous, like the lady herself! You can find the recipe here.
They taste really good; a keeper I think.
Next time I'll add some dried fruit - cranberries, sour cherries, chopped dried apples or pears. Wonder what they'd taste like with chocolate pieces?!

Spicy oat cookies

Thought I'd make some cookies for a change and found this recipe in my folder. They're part of my new 'healthy eating' - well oats are healthy aren't they? Forget about the butter and syrup!

It makes about 18 cookies.

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 tbspn golden syrup
1egg
115g plain flour
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn each of cinnamon and mixed spice
115g oats

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/gas4

Cream the butter and sugar together till it's nice and fluffy. Add the syrup and the egg and beat together.
Fold in the flour, baking powder and spices and then the oats.

Grease a couple of baking sheets and put spoonfuls of the mixture on the sheets; make sure you leave a space between each one as they spread.

Bake for about 15 mins till golden and just firm when you touch them. Leave them to cool on a wire tray.

Coffee streusel cake

A very Happy New Year.

I wanted to make a different sort of cake, so searched through my books till I found this recipe in an old book of world cookery belonging to my Mum. It's of German origin.

Preheat oven 160C/gas3
Grease and line a 20cm square tin.

115g butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs
175g sr flour
4 tbspn milk
1 tbspn instant coffee dissolved in a tbspn boiling water

Streusel:
85g walnut pieces
1 level tspn coffee granules
115g soft brown sugar
2 tbspn plain flour
30g butter [melted]

Beat the butter and sugar together till nice and creamy.
Add the eggs and beat again.
Fold in the flour, milk and coffee.
Spread half of this mixture into the tin.
Put the streusel ingredients into a blender [ except butter] and make into a fine powder. Add the butter and give it all a quick whizz.
Sprinkle half of this on top of the cake mixture and top with the rest of the cake mixture,
Then sprinkle the remaining streusel on top.

Bake for about an hour in the middle of the oven. Leave to cool in the tin.

I changed the recipe by adding the coffee into the cake mixture - it was meant to be added to icing sugar to be drizzled over the cooked cake. I felt that having the streusel on top was enough. Also I didn't blend the streusel finely - I wanted some texture left, so kept it somewhat chunky.

White chocolate parfait

We don't like Christmas pudding, so I try a new Christmas dessert recipe every year. Last year it was sticky toffee pudd. and this year I wanted to do something lighter. The recipe said that this amount would serve 8, but it served 3 people who had seconds! I made it in advance and froze it.

The recipe comes from this year's 'Woman's Weekly Christmas special'.

100g white chocolate broken up into pieces
250ml ready made vanilla custard
3 tbspns Baileys liqueur
142ml pot double cream
2 tbspns grated dark chocolate
a few raspberries

small loaf tin lined with cling film

Melt the chocolate and stir in the custard.
Leave to cool then stir in the Baileys.
Whip the cream then add it to the mixture.
Spoon it into the lined loaf tin and feeze overnight.
When it's solid, cover and wrap and label it.
Take it out and put it in the fridge 20 mins before you want to use it.
Put onto a plate, sprinkle the top with grated dark chocolate and decorate with a few raspberries.

Note: it melts quite quickly!

Christmas Day

Hope you had a great Christmas.

I shan't forget ours in a hurry, as I nearly burnt the house down!

I put some part-baked rolls in the oven to bake, ready to eat with our starter in the evening. Then we went out Christmas morning to visit our son and family and I forgot they were still in the oven! Luckily we came back earlier than we'd intended, as I wanted to make sure that the duck would be cooked  ready for our early evening meal. When we opened the lounge door, smoke was seeping under the door from the kitchen, and the kitchen was full of smoke! I quickly turned off the oven, and we had to open doors and windows to get rid of the smoke! My nicely-heated house turned into an ice block!
But it could have been an inferno!

Here are the rolls - blocks of solid charcoal!

Since then, I make sure everything is off before we go out!

Happy Christmas!

                                          Wishing you a very Happy Christmas.


Decided to start a new tradition and have muffins for breakfast on Christmas day. The idea is Nigella's, as is the recipe for Christmas morning muffins.

You'll find the recipe on Nigella's site here .

A quick cake fix!

I made an apple pie yesterday and had some pastry left over. What should I do with it? Then I remembered a childhood favourite - Welsh cheese cakes. There's no cheese in them nowadays, but they're tasty and quick and easy to make.

you need:

a bun tin
leftover shortcrust pastry
1 egg and it's weight in sugar, butter and flour
1/2tspn baking powder
jam of choice - I used Mirabelle plum [home made]

So, roll out the pastry and then cut out to fill the holes in a bun tin.
Beat the butter and sugar together and then add the egg and fold in the flour and baking powder.
Put a tspn of jam on the bottom of the pastry shell and then a heaped tspn of the cake mixture on top.

I cooked them at gas6/200C for 15 mins, when they were golden.