Low fat raisin and honey loaf

This is a very easy loaf to make.

300g plain flour
11/2 tspn bicarb. of soda
1/2 tspn salt
300g [10 fl oz] plain yoghurt
2 egg whites
60g raisins
2 tbspn runny honey
butter or margarine to grease the tin

Grease a 900g loaf tin.
Preheat oven 425F/210C/gas 7

Mix the flour, bicarb. and salt in a bowl. Whisk the egg whites with the yoghurt and fold into the flour.Add the raisins and honey.
Spoon into the tin and bake for 20 mins.
Cool in the tin.

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This loaf has a nice light texture. I think it's better eaten warm.

Irish cream tartlets

And now for something completely different....!
This is another recipe to use up a Christmas leftover, but this time it's a small bottle of Baileys that we were given in a hamper.
We were invited for a meal to a friend's house last weekend and she'd asked me to bring something sweet to have with coffee after the meal. An unusual request, so I hunted through my cookbooks and eventually came up with these little tartlets.
I made some sweet pastry, but shortcrust would do as well. I used 175g flour etc. and this made 12 tartlets.

You need 12 little moulds or barquettes  - these are the ones I used. I bought them on a whim years ago and have never used them! I have 3 of each shape.

Line the greased moulds with the pastry and bake blind.

For the filling you need:

150g plain chocolate, melted
120ml milk
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp caster sugar
3 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp Baileys Irish liqueur
4 tbsp whipping cream, whipped

Chocolate shavings or cocoa to decorate.

Put the pastry shells on a baking sheet.
Brush the bottom of each shell with some melted chocolate.
In a heavy bottomed saucepan, bring the milk just to the boil.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar for about a minute, then stir in the flour. Add the hot milk, whisking all the time.
Put the pan back on the heat and cook till the custard thickens, about 2 mins, making sure you whisk all the time.
Take it off the heat and add the Baileys, then allow it to cool.
When cool, fold in the cream gently then put in the fridge till thickened - about half an hour.
Spoon the custard into a piping bag fitted with a medium star nozzle.
Pipe the mixture into the tartlet cases then put them in the fridge.
Decorate with a curl of dark chocolate.

They're rather fiiddly and time consuming, but they taste great. A special occasion recipe, but worth trying. Lovely texture to the custard, and it blends well with the cream topping.

Orange teabread

Another teabread to add to my collection - a Scandinavian one, or so I thought when I saw the name of the recipe, but it's more of a loaf cake .This comes from a book on baking I bought from a charity shop a while ago - it doesn't have an author - it's just called 'The Baking manual'.

150g butter
120g sugar
3 eggs
grated rind of 2 lemons
60ml orange juice
250g plain flour + 2 tspns baking powder
breadcrumbs to coat the tin
Fat to grease the cake tin.

You don't preheat the oven for this recipe - you put the cake mixture into a cold oven.
Grease a 900g loaf tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together till pale then add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each one.
Mix in the lemon rind, orange juice and the flour.
You sprinkle the breadcrumbs into the greased tin [ I didn't do this as I didn't want wholemeal crumbs around the cake]. The recipe didn't give an amount and I can't see any crumbs on the cake photo in the book. Seems a strange addition.
Pour the mixture into the tin and put into a cold oven then turn the oven onto 180C/gas 4.  Bake for about 45 mins.
The recipe says to turn the cake out and leave to cool under the upturned tin - not sure why?

It's a light, airy cake with a nice citrus flavour. You could ice it with an orange flavoured icing, but I kept it plain. It's good with a cup of tea, but I think it would make a nice dessert, with the addition of some fruit.

Macaroon mincemeat tarts

This recipe is another using up Christmas leftovers and this time it's some mincemeat. I wanted to make something different from mince pies and found this recipe in an old cookbook from the 70s. I'm not going to give the recipe for the shortcrust pastry - everyone has their own favourite one, or you can use Just Rol.

150g s/c pastry [that's 200g flour, 100g fat etc]
4 tbspns mincemeat
2 egg whites
75g caster sugar
75g ground almonds
15g flaked almonds
a few cherries cut in 1/4s

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas 5

Grease a bun tin.

Roll out the pastry, cut out with a 8cm cutter and line your bun tin. [I cut out 10 cases]
Whisk the egg whites till stiff then fold in the sugar and the ground almonds.
Spoon some of the mixture on top of each tart then sprinkle with some flaked almonds. Put a piece of cherry in the middle.
Bake for about 20 mins, or until golden.

The topping is a good contrast to the soft mincemeat. A recipe to keep.

Almond thins

I had some marzipan left over from Christmas so decided to make some of these biscuits. They're fairly easy to make, have few ingredients and are delicious [but not healthy!]. The recipe is one I've used many times, and was in a free booklet that came with a Prima magazine, I think.

The recipe makes about 10 biscuits.

250g butter
100g marzipan
100g demerara sugar + little extra for sprinkling on top
250g plain flour

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a baking sheet.

In a bowl, cream the butter using a mixer with a doughhook [I have a hand mixer which came with dough hooks, so I use this]. Mix in the marzipan and gradually add the sugar and flour, kneading the mixture well.

Make the dough into a roll and put in the fridge for 2-3 hours. Then roll the dough out till it's about 15mm thick, then cut it into strips 15mm x 6 cm and put these back into the fridge for 30 mins.

Put the biscuits onto your baking sheet. Makes grooves in each one using a fork, and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 25 -30 mins.

Coconut ice and yogurt pecan fudge

One of the presents I got for Christmas was a new sugar thermometer. Ever since I was a child,  I've been interested in making sweets. My Mum used to make them, and I inherited her old thermometer. I also inherited her book 'Toffees, fudges, chocolates and sweets' by Mary Novak, and I have a battered copy of Margaret Powell's ' Sweetmaking for children'. I made sweets with my children and yesterday I made some with one of my grandsons. We made coconut ice and he helped me make yogurt pecan fudge, the latter being an excuse to use my new thermometer!

Coconut ice

My grandson wanted to make something on his own, so this is a very easy version.

6 tbspns condensed milk
275g icing sugar
175g dessicated coconut
pink food colouring

Mix together the milk and icing sugar, then stir in the coconut. The mixture will be very stiff. Divide it into 2. Colour one half with the colouring.

Grease and line a small cake tin, and put the white mixture in a layer at the bottom. Put the pink mixture on top and leave to set. Cut into bars or squares.

Yogurt pecan fudge

This fudge is different from the normal vanilla fudge; it's a bit fiddly to make but is very moreish.
The recipe makes about half a kilo of fudge.

225ml natural yoghurt [not low fat or Greek]
1 tspn bicarbonate of soda
400g soft light brown sugar
30ml golden syrup
60g unsalted butter
150g chopped and toasted pecans

Grease and line a 20cm square or round tin with parchment paper.
Put the yogurt and bicarb. in a heavy saucepan and leave for about 20 mins.
Prepare a bowl with iced water.
Add the sugar and syrup to the yoghurt mixture, put the pan over a medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
When the sugar's dissolved, bring to the boil then add the butter. Boil till the syrup reaches soft ball stage [114C/238F]. Take off the heat and dip ther bottom of ther pan in the iced water for a few seconds, then leave to cool till the mixture is luke warm [about 50C/122F].
Beat till creamy then add the chopped nuts. Pour into the tin and leave to completely cool - can take up to 8 hours.
Lift the fudge out using the paper and cut into pieces. Store in an airtight tin or box.

The yoghurt makes this a lighter fudge and gives it a tangy taste. Next time I'll use a square tin, as the slices I cut in the round one were rather big!

Next sweet session I want to try making toffee, so watch this space!

Cranberry crumble muffins

I'm sure it's everyone's 'using up leftovers' time this week, and I'd bought some cranberries and not used them. We love muffins and just to make them a bit different, I added some crumble mix on the top. I saw a chef doing this on one of the food programmes. They called it 'streusel topping' and I don't know if it's different from the run-of-the-mill crumble topping?
I used my usual muffin recipe and added the cranberries and some mixed spice.
This is my tried and tested muffin recipe, gathered from a friend in the US.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to make a different number of muffins each time I use the recipe! Today I made 11.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar]
2 tspns baking powder
1 heaped tspn mixed spice

1/2 tspn salt
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml sunflower oil [ I usually use rapeseed, but only had sunflower left ]

Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas6

Either grease a muffin tin or put paper cases into the holes.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Mix the milk, egg and oil together in a jug then add to the dry ingredients - just stir it gently and don't overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the cases or into the tin filling them nearly full.
For the topping I used 50g plain flour and 25g butter rubbed together and 1 tbspn of soft brown sugar added to the mixture. I then sprinkled a little on top of each muffin.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

A very Happy New Year. xx

ps My lovely dil bought me a cake stand as one of my Christmas pressies. I love it.

Christmas biscuits

I haven't been well, so not posted on here for a while, but I have been baking. My dil is German and gave me the recipes for her Christmas biscuits and I made a selection of them.

This is the recipe for the melt-in-the-mouth vanilla crescents which are on the top layer of the cake stand.

Preheat oven 175C and grease 2 baking sheets.

200g flour

80g caster sugar

175g butter

2 egg yolks

100g ground almonds

1 tspn vanilla essence

6 tbspn vanilla sugar

Mix the flour, sugar, butter and egg yolks together then add the ground almonds and the vanilla esence.

Bring the mixture together with your hands and cut in into 4. Roll out each quarter and put in the fridge for 1/2 and hour. Cut the dough into small strips then loop each strip into a crescent.

Bake for 10 mins till light brown then roll in the vanilla sugar. Cool on a wire rack.

Christmas stars

Preheat oven 100C then 75C. Grease a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

3 egg whites

250g caster sugar

1 tbspn vanilla sugar

1 tspn cinnamon

350g ground almonds

Beat the egg whites till stiff and add the caster sugar.

Take out 3 tbspns to save for the top of the biscuits.

Mix the vanilla sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds together and add to the egg white mixture a little at a time. Make the mixture into a ball and put into a polythene bag. Roll the mixture in the bag till about 1/2 cm thick and a square shape.

Remove from bag and cut out star shapes. Brush the tops of the stars with the reserved egg white.

Put into the middle of the oevn for 15mins then turn heat down for about 30 mins. The mixture should be white, not yellow or brown - if the latter, turn the heat down. Cool on a wire rack.

Holly Christmas biscuits

This is such an easy recipe, but I like the holly decoration on the top. It's a bit fiddly to do, but I think they look Christmassy and a bit different from other Christmas biscuits. The basic biscuit recipe is one I've had for years, and I saw the holly and berries idea in a baker's shop window. I went in and bought some bread and asked about the holly biscuits and the kind lady explained how they were done. So easy, and adaptable to other designs and cutters.
The recipe makes about 12 biscuits.

75g butter
50g icing sugar
grated rind of a lemon
1 egg yolk
175g plain flour
pinch of salt

Decoration:
2 egg yolks
red and green food colouring

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Lightly grease 2 baking trays.

Beat the butter, sugar and zest together till fluffy; beat in the egg yolk and add the flour and salt. Mix to a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half and hour.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then using a 6cm cutter cut out round shapes. A good tip is to flour the cutter so it doesn't stick.

Put the biscuits onto the baking trays.
Mark the tops of the biscuits lightly with a 21/2 cm holly leaf cutter for the leaves and the tip of a 5mm plain piping nozzle for the berries. Chill again for about 10 mins till the biscuits are firm.
For the decoration - using 2 egg cups, put an egg yolk in each one and mix red colouring into one cup and green into the other. Using a small paint brush, paint the colours on the leaves and berries.

Bake for 10 - 12 mins till the biscuits start to colour round the edges.

Cool for a bit on the tray and then finish off on a wire rack.

Lemony almond mincemeat tartlets

We are great mince pie fans, so I'm always on the lookout for a different version. Found this recipe in a Christmas pull-out from 'Prima' magagazine [from the 80s I think!] . It uses ground almonds in the pastry and it's made in a similar way to one of my favourite small cakes,Welsh cheese cake; by this I mean that you have the pastry shell, then a layer of mincemeat, then the lemon cake layer. In the Welsh cheese cake you'd have the pastry, then jam,  then cake.

This recipe makes 36 pies, but thought this was too many for us,so I halved the recipe, taking the measures to the nearest gram. This is the full recipe.

The pastry:
275g plain flour
75g icing sugar
1 tspn cinnamon
175g butter
50g ground almonds
1 egg yolk

45ml milk

450g jar mincemeat

For the cake filling:

115g butter or margarine
115g caster sugar
175g sr flour
2 large eggs
grated rind of a lemon

Icing:
115g icing sugar
15ml lemon juice

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas 5

Make the pastry by putting the flour and cinnamon in a bowl and rubbing in the butter. Add the ground almonds then mix in the egg and milk to make a soft dough. Chill the dough in the fridge for half an hour, wrapped in cling film. Then roll out the dough and cut out 36 circles to line bun tins. Put a teaspoonful of mincemeat in each pastry case.

Make the cake by beating all the ingredients together till nice and smooth. It's just a good old sponge mixture.Spoon on top of the mincemeat then smooth the tops. Bake for 20-30 mins till golden. Cool on a wire rack.

I'm not sure that I'd have bothered about the icing if my dil hadn't been here and wanted to do it! I'd have happy with some sifted icing sugar on top. So she did the fancy lines on top by mixing the icing sugar and lemon juice and putting it into an icing bag with a small hole cut out of one corner.

These little pies are really delicious. A great Christmas offering. Next time I'll make the full 36, just with icing sugar on top!

Walnut, raisin and cheese teabread

I have a friend coming to stay for a few days and have been baking in preparation for her visit. I've made a spice cake, some muffins and wanted something else a bit different to have with a cup of tea.
I decided that a savoury teabread would be unusual, and found this recipe in an old cookery book called 'Cakes, breads and gateaux'.

350g sr flour
1/2tspn salt
pinch cayenne pepper
1 level tspn dry mustard
75g butter or margarine
90g mature Cheddar, grated finely [keep 15g for the topping]
75g raisins
65g chopped walnuts [keep 15g for the topping]
1 beaten egg
250ml milk
Preheat oven 180C/350F.gas4

Grease and line a large loaf tin - 200g.
Sieve the flour, salt, cayenne and mustard together into a bowl, then add the fat and rub it in.
Stir in 75g of the grated cheese, raisins and 50g of the walnuts.
Mix the egg into the milk then add it to the mixture and beat well.
Put into the tin and level the top.
Mix the rest of the walnuts and cheese together and sprinkle over the top of the mixture.
Bake for about 1-11/4 hours till golden.
Cool on a wire rack and serve sliced with some good butter.

The texture and flavour was very good. Not sure if I liked the raisins; maybe I'd use a different fruit next time.
The crunchy topping was a good contrast to the loaf.

Food Bloggers Unplugged

I've been tagged by Suelle of Mainly Baking to join in 'Food Bloggers Unplugged'. This was the idea of Susan at A little bit of heaven on a plate to get to know something about other food bloggers.

Here goes:

1.What, or who inspired you to start a blog?

I was living in France, a bit homesick, and started my blog for my family and friends to read about some of the things I was cooking and baking. It made me feel closer to them.

2. Who is your foodie inspiration?

My inspiration was my mother; she was a superb cook and her speciality was baking. I helped her from a small child, filling tarts, rolling pastry, weighing ingredients. I especially remember my birthday parties, as my friends always talked about the great bakes Mum made - chocolate eclairs, iced slices, fondant cakes etc.


3. Your greasiest batter-splattered food/drink book is?

It's Marguerite Patten's 'Every Day Cookbook'. I was given this as a present [together with her 'Book of Cakes and Baking'] and I used it regularly when I was first married in the late 60s. It's rather old fashioned now, but I still use a few recipes from it.


4. Tell us about the best thing you've ever eaten in another country, where was it, what was it?

Living in France for 7 years, I ate some great food, but my most memorable thing is a stew with wild boar which we ate with our neighbours. He was a keen hunter and his wife did justice to what he caught. The flavours in the stew were so delicious, but Nadine refused to divulge her great-grandmother's recipe!

 5. Another food blogger's table you'd like to eat at?

There are several food blogs I really like, but my favourite one is The caked crusader. I love the variety of cakes she makes and her knowledge of baking.I enjoy learning about the history of cakes too.

6. What is the kitchen gadget you would ask Santa for this year [money no object of course]?

I'd love a new breadmaker, as my old one's not doing its job properly! I'd like a top of the range one this time, as the one I have was bought in my local Lidl in France and has been well used.


7. Who taught you to cook?

I wasn't really taught to cook; I learnt by watching and helping Mum. I did go to evening classes when I was a keen new bride, and learnt to make a wider range of food. We had an inspirational tutor who'd been a cookery demonstrator for British Gas!


8. I'm coming to you for dinner. What's your signature dish?

I make a great coq au vin! But you'd probably only have it once, as I keep a notebook and jot down what I give people to eat, so hopefully they don't get the same thing twice!


9. What is your guilty food pleasure?

Nutella - on toast, in a sandwich, any how!


10. Reveal something about yourself that others would be surprised to learn.

I love eating raw Brussel sprouts! Haven't tried them with Nutella yet - mmm, an idea!


I have to tag 5 other food bloggers so I've chosen:

Anna at At Anna's Kitchen table
Phil at As strong as soup
Jean at Baking in franglais
BG at Brownieville Girl
Kate at It's the Norm


There's no obligation for you to join in if you don't want to.