Kitchen

We're having a new kitchen installed starting on the 28th, so today is my last day for using my oven.

Tomorrow, OH and friend are taking out the last part of the old kitchen which I've been hanging on to, the sink unit, dishwasher, cooker and washing machine.

From tomorrow, I'll have a microwave and a slow cooker in the dining room for 2 and a bit weeks.  What fun!

So I decided to have a bit of a Bake In today, last time in my gas cooker, as it will be looking for a new home on Freecyle. I'm having a new electric oven and gas hob. The gas cooker was in the house when we bought it, so we decided not to change it till we changed the kitchen.
The Bake In - I made some chocolate chip muffins, a banana loaf, cheese scones and a very easy Bara Brith - not using Gran's recipe, but one a new friend gave me.


  I made the cheese scones from the Good Food site; here's the recipe:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/cheesescones_1287

The banana bread recipe is on  here:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5128909220207442213#editor/target=post;postID=322625739046901167

The choc. chip muffins recipe is also on here, as a variation of the blueberry muffin one:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5128909220207442213#editor/target=post;postID=4498877915182098045

I'm not going to post photos of these.

You might like to try the easy Bara Brith loaf. It's an 'all in the pan together' sort of recipe.

300g mixed dry fruit
150g light muscovadi sugar
150g butter
200ml strong cold tea
50ml orange juice
275g sr flour
2 tspns mixed spice

preheat oven 180C/gas 4 and grease a 900g loaf tin.

Put all the ingredients except the flour and mixed spice into a big saucepan and heat gently till the sugar's dissolved and the butter has melted. Mix the flour and spice together and mix this into the saucepan. Make sure you mix it thoroughly.
Spoon into the tin and bake for about an hour till golden. Cool in the tin. This teabread will keep for a week if you wrap it in foil. I think it's best eaten a day after it's made, to give the flavours time to mingle, and it's easier to slice too! Serve it buttered, of course.





 It's so quick and easy to make, and it has a good firm texture and a nice lot of dried fruit. I used a tablespoon of mixed spice as we really like it.

So I won't be posting for a couple of weeks, unless I find a great recipe to make in the microwave or the slow cooker!  Promise I won't post microwave meringues or chocolate cake made in a mug!

Chocolate date muffins

This month's challenge from We Should Cocoa is to bake something with chocolate, but not containing sugar i.e.get sweetness from another source. I decided I wanted to make some muffins, as I'd found a sugar-free recipe in a leaflet from a supermarket.

So many sugar- free recipes taste, well, sugar-free! Some years ago I'd experimented with various non-sugar sweeteners, when my Mum wasn't allowed sugar, but loved cake. I found then that pureed dates were the most effective sweetener. They're easy to prepare and find, and compared to other dried fruits I'd tried as sweeteners, they didn't overwhelm the flavour of the cakes. They're healthy too - good source of fibre, minerals and vitamins! This muffin recipe used dates, so had to try it.

250g plain flour [can use sr flour and leave out the baking powder, but still use the bicarb.]

2 tspns baking powder

1/2 tspn bicarbonate of soda

3 tbspn cocoa powder (add another spoonful if you’d like them very chocolatey)
2 eggs

150g dried dates
90ml sunflower or corn oil

1 tspn vanilla essence
about 100ml milk
150ml water to cook the dates

Preheat oven 200C/gas 6
Grease a 12 hole muffin tin.

Put dates in a small pan, along with 150 ml of water and boil gently.
In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa.
In another bowl, beat eggs with a fork. Add milk, vanilla and oil.
Take dates off heat, and blend to form a smooth paste. Add them to wet ingredients.
Pour all of wet mixture into dry. Stir until just combined – the batter will look lumpy. The mixture should drop easily off the spoon. If it doesn’t, add a little more milk.
Spoon into tin. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes. If the tops spring back when pressed they are ready. Leave them to cool for around 5 minutes - this makes it easier to take them out from the tins.

My plate is a Christmas present from a friend, who knows I love china. I love its colours.

The muffins were good, but OH thought they were rather dry, so maybe I should have added some more milk. The original recipe said 75- 150 ml, which was rather confusing.  The sweetness was just right, for me anyway.
The recipe suggested adding chopped walnuts or chocolate chips to the mixture, so there are variations to try. It's a denser texture than my normal muffins, but is a good recipe for a sugar free one and I'll make again.

We Should Cocoa is a monthly baking challenge hosted alternately by Choclette of Chocolate Log blog and Chele of Chocolate Teapot blog, and sometimes by guest hosts. The challenge is to bake something with chocolate and an extra ingredient chosen monthly by them. January's challenge is to bake something using an alternative to sugar. This month it's Choclette's turn to host the challenge.Have a look here for further details.

Clementine and Brazil nut cakes

There's a good selection of citrus fruits in the shops and my favourite is a clementine. The January challenge from *Tea Time Treats is to use any citrus fruit to cheer up our post Christmas palates in a teatime recipe, so this one fits the challenge.
I've been reading that most people today lack selenium, and that 5 or 6 Brazil nuts can  give the daily amount needed. So a recipe containing them instead of flour, and one which uses oil and not butter, must be healthy for you! The recipe comes from a book on Nuts which I bought from a charity shop years ago, but I've changed it over the years to our tastes.
The caramel part is a bit fiddly to do, but I think the results are worth it. Had is as dessert when my son and partner came on Sunday, and they were very impressed.
You need:
1 lemon [unwaxed is best]
10 clementines
150g brazil nuts
100ml olive oil [not extra virgin, just ordinary and mild]

3 eggs
275g golden caster sugar
1 tspn baking powder
 mint to decorate and some icing sugar to dust the top

Preheat oven 180C/gas4
Grease and base-line eight 150ml  ramekin dishes with greaseproof or parchment paper.

Wash the lemon and four of the clementines and put into a pan.
Cover them with boiling water, reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 30min until clementines are tender.

Take the clementines out with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Cook the lemon for a further 10min or till tender.
Drain, but keep 200ml (7fl oz) liquid and cool slightly.
Cut the fruit in half and take out all the pips, then roughly chop.mark
Grind the nuts in a food processor till finely chopped, then tip out and set aside.
Don't bother to wash the processor bowl, just put in the cooked fruit and blend to a purée.
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the oil, eggs and 125g (4oz) sugar until slightly thick and foamy. Stir in the ground nuts, fruit purée and baking powder.
Divide among the ramekins and put on a baking sheet. Bake for 25min until slightly risen and firm to the touch. Cool.

Peel the other six clementines, take out the pips and divide into segments, taking the pith off.

Heat remaining sugar in a small pan with 150ml (¼ pint) of the reserved cooking liquid until sugar dissolves. Bring to the boil and cook until pale caramel in colour. Keep an eye on it as it burns!
Dip the base of the pan into cold water to stop the caramel cooking, then stir in the remaining liquid. Put it back on the heat, stirring until the caramel has dissolved. Stir in the clementine segments.
Loosen the edges of the cakes, turn on to individual plates and take off the paper .
Pile the fruit segments on top and spoon over the caramel. Decorate each with a mint sprig and a dusting of icing sugar.

*Tea Time Treats is a monthly challenge by Kate of What Kate Baked blog and Ros of Lavender and Lovage blog. It's Ros's turn to host the challenge, so have a look here .

You can use other orange types of fruits in the recipe, and I have made them with ground hazelnuts. The caramel syrup is quite sweet and I love the contrast between that, the soft orange flavoured cake and the juicy caramelized clementine segments. The mint just gives it another little burst of flavour.

Savoury tartlets

Something savoury for a change.

 I recently bought myself a deep fluted tartlet tin from our excellent local family 'everything you'll ever need' store, so for New Year's Eve, I made some tartlets to have as part of the buffet.
I suppose they're like little quiches, as they have an egg filling.

I made 2 types -  bacon and cheese and mushroom and garlic.

I used the HB's recipe from their 'Perfect Pies' book, but used my deep tin instead of making them in mini muffin tins. I made 18 tartlets. I can't find the recipe online so this is what you'll need.

The pastry is a shortcrust one with a little grated cheese added, rolled and and cut out to fit your tin.

The egg custard type filling is enough for the 18, and it's just eggs, creme fraiche, some chopped parsley, s&p.

For the bacon and cheese you need a little onion fried with the bacon, put into the pastry case and top up with some egg custard. Sprinkle some grated cheese on top.

Mushroom and garlic filling is just chopped up mushrooms fried with sliced Spring onions and crushed garlic. Again you put the filling into the pastry case, top up with egg filling.

Bake them at 200C/gas 6 for about 20 mins till nice and brown and the filling is set.

I froze the cooked tartlets and then reheated them from frozen.

These are the bacon ones topped with cheese

The mushroom and garlic ones

I preferred the bacon and cheese ones - good flavours, soft texture, but not too soft.  I also liked the pastry with some added cheese. OH preferred the mushroom ones, as he's not too keen on cooked cheese. He liked the texture of them, especially the little hit of garlic.

Chocolate meringue log

A very Happy New Year! Here's to lots of great baking.

After the success of the meringue on Christmas Day, I thought I'd try a variation as a dessert for New Year's Eve. I hunted through my cookbooks and folders and found a recipe for a meringue log in a Home and Freezer Christmas book. Anyone remember Home and Freezer magazines, littles ones which were always in racks by the checkouts?
Anyway I thought it sounded ideal, although it has a fewextra ingredients in it, like mini marshmallows.
You could use a chocolate sauce as the filling instead of the spread if you wanted, as this what was in the original recipe. I thought the spread would be more substantial when rolling up the log. I had visions of the sauce running out of the sides of the log! I know there's hazelnuts in the spread, but I don't think this will change the taste of the log very much.


5 egg whites, beaten
150g icing sugar, plus 1 tbsp extra
2 tsp cornflour, sieved
 1 tbsp cocoa powder
400ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
chocolate spread such as Nutella - or use chocolate sauce if you prefer
50g raspberries and a few redcurrants of you can find them
100g mini marshmallows

to decorate
extra icing sugar and cocoa powder, to dust
*chocolate sauce and raspberries or any red berries

Preheat oven to 150C/gas 1. In a clean bowl beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating till the mixture is creamy and gooey. Then whisk in the cornflour and cocoa.
Spoon the mixture onto a Swiss roll tin lined with baking paper. Bake the meringue for 1 hour then set aside to cool.
In a bowl whisk the double cream with icing sugar and vanilla seeds till it's thickened.
Sieve some icing sugar and cocoa powder onto a large piece of parchment paper then turn the meringue out onto the paper.
Spread the chocolate spread on top , followed by the whipped cream, then dot with raspberries and mini marshmallows.
Carefully roll up the log, using the parchment paper to help you, and dust with more icing sugar and cocoa. Serve with some *chocolate sauce and raspberries. I had some recurrants in the freezer, so added a few of those.

* I made a simple chocolate sauce using double cream and melted chocolate.

It was delicious. A lovely combination of flavours - the only thing I wasn't sure about were the marshmallows -they weren't really necessary to the filling, a bit chewy. The chocolate sauce gave it another kick of chocolate - you can never have too much chocolate imho, but again, it isn't absolutely necessary to the log.

Chococlate and raspberries are always a good combo, and this is a log I'll certainly make again.