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.

Date and walnut cake

Sorting out my new food cupboard this morning, I found a packet of dates which needed using. My Mum used to make a very moist date cake, so I hunted in her notebook for the recipe. Eureka!

175g dates, chopped
210ml boiling water
3/4 tspn bicarb. of soda
175g light [or dark brown] sugar
50g soft margarine [or butter]
1 egg, beaten
225g plain flour
3/4 tspn baking powder
40g walnuts, chopped
1 tspn cinnamon

preheat oven gas4/180C/350F
Grease and line a 20cm [8"] square cake tin

Put the dates in a bowl with the boiling water and bicarb and leave for about 10 mins.
Beat the sugar and margarine together [I used butter and light brown sugar, but my Mum used margarine and dark brown sugar] then add the beaten egg, dates and water.
Stir in the flour, baking powder and cinnamon [my addition!] and then the walnuts.
Put the mixture into the tin and bake for about an hour. Mine took 50 mins in a gas oven.
I decided to ice it with some glace icing.

                                 Mum's written that it keeps well. It's very moist.

Hello, I'm back!

Here I am, now back living in Northamptonshire.

It's been a rollercoaster of a ride getting back here, but I won't dwell on that. Sufficient to say that we've made it, and are busily unpacking boxes and arranging furniture. We've downsized considerably, so are trying to fit a quart into a pint pot!

Here's the van and trailer that arrived with all our worldly possessions - well not quite all, as there's all Bob's tools at one friend's house in France, his motor bike with another friend and my pot plants with a third friend! All these will come back in a hired van in January!

I want to get back to baking, but now have a gas cooker, so think I will take a little while to get used to having a gas oven again.

It's nice to be back, and I'll try and keep the blog up-to-date.

On the move again

We're moving out of this house on Wednesday, so I won't be blogging for a while. We take possesssion of the new UK house mid October, so will be staying in a holiday cottage in Northants for a few weeks.

 

Will be sad to leave here and all our friends. Everyone has been so kind to us; it's been like a long holiday.

Au revoir from France, and hope you'll join me again in the UK!

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Woolen Embroidery 

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