Holiday time

We're off to France for 3 weeks, so no posts for a while.

After crossing via the Tunnel, we're heading down to near Tours, where we've booked a lovely chambre d'hote for the night.

http://www.closdessources.com/Welcome.html

                                     Then we're off down to the Pyrenees, to stay with friends in their pretty village.

We're going  into Spain for a few days with them.

Then we head back up north west to where we used to live. Again we'll stay with friends, and also visit our former neighbours and more friends.

This is the river at the bottom of our friends' garden, and they're in their punt, the local 'barque'.

Then we head back up to the Tunnel, staying in another chambre d'hote en route

http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/

then home!

Oaty banana muffins

Is it just me, or do bananas ripen more quickly nowadays? I always seen to have a few overripe ones in the fruit bowl. Then, what do do with them? Have made banana muffins before, but not with oats and walnuts.

They're not as 'cakey' tasting as my normal muffin recipe,but are substantial and great with a cuppa! They'd be good for breakfast too.

The recipes makes 12 muffins.

100g oats

200g plain flour

11/2 tspn baking powder

cinnamon to taste [opt]

1 tson bicarb. of soda

little salt

100g light brown sugar

4 ripe bananas

1 large beaten egg

60g melted butter or oil [I used rapeseed]

75g chopped walnuts

Preheat oven 180C/gas4

Grease a 12 hole muffin tin, or line with paper cases.

Put the flour, oats, baking powder, bicarb., salt and sugar in a bowl and mix together. I then mixed in a tbspn of cinnamon as I love it!

Mash up the bananas in another bowl and add the egg, butter or oil and the walnuts. Mix this together and add to the dry ingredients. Mix together gently - don't overmix or the muffins will be hard.

Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 20-25 mins. Cool on a wire rack.

English biscuits

These biscuits are a French recipe given to me by my neighbour when we lived there. Not sure why they're called 'English' biscuits! My grandsons are coming today and they love these. My neighbour always uses half plain flour and half potato flour, but as I couldn't find any potato flour, I used all plain flour. Also the recipe uses some cooking chocolate as well as some with praline in it. I used good milk chocolate instead of the cooking chocolate. They seem to have a better selection of good cooking chocolate in France.

 The recipe makes about 30 biscuits

4 eggs, separated

pinch of salt

100g caster sugar

1 lemon

75g potato flour

75g plain flour

100g cooking chocolate

100g chocolate with praline 

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6/400F

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Beat the egg yolks in a bowl with the salt and sugar till they whiten. Wash the lemon, grate its zest, then juice it. Add the juice and zest to the egg yolks.

Beat the egg whites till firm and add to the yolks' mixture.Mix the flours in carefully .

Put tablespoons of the mixture onto the baking sheet, spacing well. Make them into little rounds with a spoon.

Bake for about 10 mins and let the biscuits cool on a wire rack.

Melt the chocolates together then dip the biscuits half way.



Rosewater and polenta mini bundt cakes

This month's  'We should Cocoa' challenge from Choclette of this blog was to add the ingredient 'rose'. I found this very hard, and had lots of ideas - macaroons, meringues, but decided that I'd make cakes using polenta, as I thought that would go well with rosewater. I had great difficulty finding any rosewater, till I came across a small shop selling Indian products.

A while ago I bought a mini bundt tin, so I decided to use this for my cakes.

250g unsalted butter

250g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
140g polenta
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbspn rosewater

Preheat oven to 160C/140C fan/gas 3.
Spray the insides of a mini bundt tin with Bake Easy Non stick spray.

Beat the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
Add the polenta, flour and baking powder, then the rosewater, and fold gently together.
Spoon the mixture into the bundt tin and bake for about 20-25mins till golden.

I know there's no chocolate in the cakes, so I made some thick chocolate sauce to put in a little pot for each cake. I just melted some dark chocolate, added some double cream, mixed well and then added a little milk to make it slightly thinner. I decorated the top of the cakes with a little piped chocolate. As you can see, I'm no artist at cake decorating! The final touch was rose petals - fresh, I'm ashamed to say, as I had no time to make sugared ones.

I thought that the chocolate sauce might overwhelm the rosewater in the cake, but you could still taste it.

Poppyseed cake

I've been reading a book about Eastern Europe and have become interested in itscooking, especially cakes.
This cake is made without flour, and the only hard work is whizzing the poppyseeds in a food processor or grinder, or even grinding them in a pestle and mortar.

4 eggs separated
125g butter, softened
grated rind of a lemon
100g icing sugar
2 tbspns cocoa powder
50g caster sugar
160g ground poppy seeds
 icing sugar for the top of the cake

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease a 24cm round cake tin.

Beat the butter, egg yolks, lemon rind and icing sugar with an electric beater or stand mixer till thick and smooth. Fold in the cocoa and mix together.
Beat the egg whites till frothy, then sprinkle in the caster sugar and carry on beating till the whites are thick and shiny.
Mix the ground poppyseeds into the eggyolk mixture, then add the egg whites mixture and mix together very gently.
Spoon mixture into the tin.
Bake for about 55 mins. Let the cake cool in the tin.
When it's cold, take the cake out and sieve icing sugar over the top. I put a paper doily on top and sieved over this.

The cake's also nice if you ice it with a simple chocolate icing of icing sugar, boiling water and cocoa.

Chocolate and cranberry flapjacks

I haven't made flapjacks for ages. Each time, I change my original recipe and add new things; today it's cranberries and sunflower seeds.

125 gr butter
75g caster sugar
1 tbspn golden syrup
300g rolled oats
50g sunflower seeds
75g chocolate chips or chopped dark chocolate
50g dried cranberries

Preheat oven 180C/350F/gas4
Grease a 20cm square cake tin.
Put the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and melt over a low heat. Mix well.
Take off the heat and add the oats and sunflower seeds. Stir until well mixed, then add the chocolate chips and cranberries.
Spoon into the cake tin and press it down well with the back of a spoon.
Bake for 25 mins.

Let it cool in the tin for a bit, then mark into 12 squares.