Plain scones

 The secret to a good scone, in my opinion, is to knead the dough lightly and shape by hand. If you don't knead the dough enough, the scone will be too crumbly; knead it too much or - heaven forbid! - roll it out, and your scone will be too heavy.

Ingredients

300g self-raising flour
50g caster sugar
75g butter
160ml milk

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180oC. Sift the flour into a mixing bowl, add the sugar, cut the butter into small pieces and add to the flour and sugar mixture, rubbing it gently with your fingertips until it is the texture of breadcrumbs.
2. Add the milk, mix with a spoon, and then knead gently until you have a smooth dough.
3. Divide the dough into eight even pieces, form each piece into a ball, and flatten slightly to form a fat, rough disk. Any cracks and folds will add texture to the finished scone.
4. Place the rounds on a lightly floured baking sheet and bake for about 14 minutes, until they are golden.

I've been making scones for years but I have to confess that it took me a while (okay, years!) to realise that, while not rolling and cutting them was fine, I'd gone too far in the other direction and that by barely kneading the dough at all my scones were crumblier (and heavier) than they should have been. Nonetheless, I have lots of happy memories of making scones with my kids for friends and family, so here are a couple of photos from the archive.

Raspberry blondies

Ingredients

175 g butter
200g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
200g white chocolate
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs
200g self-raising flour
75 g frozen raspberries

Method

1. Melt the butter, light sugar, caster sugar and 100g of the white chocolate in a bain marie. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
2. Line a square 20 x 20 cm tin with greaseproof paper. Preheat oven to 180oC.
3. Add the vanilla extract to the cooled mixture, followed by the beaten eggs, one at a time.
4. Add the flour, and mix until smooth.
5. Add 50g of the remaining white chocolate, broken into small pieces, together with the raspberries, and pour the batter into the tin.
6. Bake for 50 minutes until just set, and leave to cool in the tin.
7. Melt the remaining 50 g of white chocolate in a bain marie and drizzle over the blondies.

Mango, coconut and lime cake

I've been a late comer to Great British Bake Off but now I'm hooked. I have to admit that I'm in awe at how talented (most of) the participants are, but it's also clear that keeping it simple and getting the basics right is often the surest route to success.

One thing that I hadn't expected was to be inspired by the use of unusual ingredients, but after watching a recent episode I decided it was time to reboot my banana bread.

The 'recipe' here is just the proportion of dry to wet ingredients, the basic methods and cooking times. You can use it as a template and swap ingredients in and out - tinned peaches instead of mango, oat milk instead of coconut milk, replace the chilli with some ginger and so on.

Ingredients
120g caster sugar
60g soft butter
150g tinned mango, drained and pureed
50g coconut milk
1 egg, beaten
140g self-raising flour

juice of 1/2 lime
2 or 3 drops of chilli sauce

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC and line and grease a small loaf tin.
2. Cream together the sugar and butter.
3. Add the mango, coconut milk and egg to the butter and sugar, and mix well.
4. Mix the flour into the resulting batter, then add the lime juice and chilli sauce.
5. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, and bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes until golden.
6. Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Chocolate swirls

Sammy is a fan of all things chocolate, and when I asked him what he fancied as an alternative to the ginger crush in my ginger swirls, he immediately suggested these. The results were great. Adding chocolate to dough tends to be disappointing, as it makes the dough dry while also diluting the impact of the chocolate. But spreading chocolate across a layer of dough and then rolling it solves both of those problems, and the result is both light and chocolatey.

Ingredients
the dough
175ml warm milk
300g strong white flour
1/2 egg, beaten
2.5g instant yeast
12g demerara sugar
25g melted butter
2.5g salt

the filling
1/2 egg, beaten
100g dark chocolate

the glaze
25g demerara sugar
25ml water
caster sugar for sprinkling

Method

1. Combine all of the dough ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and mix well. With the dough still in the bowl, stretch and fold, leave for 15 minutes, then repeat the 'stretch-and-fold'/15-minute rest cycle three more times. Leave dough to stand for a further hour at room temperature.
2. Melt the chocolate in a bain mairie. Form the dough into a boule, then roll out on a well-floured surface to form a rectangle. Brush the surface with the remaining beaten egg, spread the melted chocolate over it, and roll it to form a swiss roll.
3. Cut the roll into slices, and arrange them next to each other in an oiled and floured flan tin or on a baking tray, and leave to rise for 1 hour.
4. In the meantime, make the glaze by heating 25g of demerara sugar in 25ml of water until all the sugar has dissolved. 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, set the oven to 200oC.
5. Once the swirls have risen, brush them with the glaze, sprinkle with caster sugar, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until they are golden brown.

Ginger swirls

These ginger swirls are sweet and spicy, and go brilliantly with a cup of coffee. 

Ingredients
the dough
175ml warm milk
300g strong white flour
1/2 egg, beaten
2.5g instant yeast
12g demerara sugar
25g melted butter
2.5g salt

the filling
10g melted butter
100g ginger crush

the glaze
25g demerara sugar
25ml water
caster sugar for sprinkling

Method

1. Combine all of the dough ingredients together in a large mixing bowl and mix well. With the dough still in the bowl, stretch and fold thoroughly. Cover dough and leave  to stand for an hour at room temperature.
2. Form the dough into a boule, then roll out on a well-floured surface to form a rectangle. Brush the surface with melted butter, spread the ginger cross over it, and roll it to form a swiss roll.
3. Cut the roll into slices, and arrange them next to each other in an oiled and floured flan tin or on a baking tray, and leave to rise for 1 hour.
4. In the meantime, make the glaze by heating 25g of demerara sugar in 25ml of water until all the sugar has dissolved. 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, set the oven to 200oC.
5. Once the swirls have risen, brush them with the glaze, sprinkle with caster sugar, and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until they are golden brown.

Rolled, filled dough

Filled slices, waiting to prove

Flapjacks

One of the underrated aspects of British food culture is our tradition of home baking. These flapjacks are really easy to make, and taste delicious. If you want, you can jazz them up a bit with some ginger or dried fruits.

Ingredients

200g unsalted butter

200g demerara sugar

200g honey

400g porridge oats

Method

1. Line and grease a swiss roll tine and set the oven to 180oC.
2. Put the butter, sugar and honey in a medium saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.
3. Add the porridge oats, mix well, and transfer to the prepared tin.
4. Bake for 20 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out and cut into squares.

Moist chocolate cake

This has been our standard chocolate cake for a few years now, but I decided to revisit it and add a couple of notes about the tin and the cooking time, together with posting some new photos. This cake should be really moist - not just in the middle but almost out to the edge. There's no point doing the skewer test on it - that will simply tell you that you should have taken it out of the oven 15 minutes ago! Also, it is important to use a small tin for this, so that the cake is quite high. I bake this in a tin which originally contained a Glenfiddich Christmas cake, and which is 16cm in diameter.

Ingredients
150g butter
250g dark chocolate (>70% cocoa solids)
150g demerara sugar
5 medium eggs
100g plain flour

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC and line your cake tin with greased baking paper.
2. Break the chocolate into small pieces, place in a large bowl with the butter and sugar, and heat in a bain marie until melted.
3. Separate the eggs. Add the yolk and flour to the chocolate mixture, and beat thoroughly.
4. Whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Mix a couple of spoonfuls into the chocolate mixture, then fold the rest in gently but thoroughly.
5. Pour into the tin and bake for 25 minutes.

Banana and apple cake

Autumn is definitely here, and yesterday we went for a lovely long walk around Roslin Chapel, where we collected lots of sticks for wands, together with a selection of leaves and nuts. It's seven years since I have been in Scotland at this time of year, and I had forgotten how beautiful it can be. (We've been lucky, with reasonably mild temperatures and a lot of dry days.)

I usually make this with bananas only, but today is Wednesday, which means it's time to finish off any leftover fruit and veg before our new veggie box arrives. In addition to two very ripe bananas, there were also some delicious little russet apples, so I added them to the mix.

Ingredients
275 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
110 g margarine
225 g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tart apples, peeled, cored and diced
75 ml milk
1.5 tsps lemon juice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
50 g raisins

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC and grease a loaf tin. (Mine is stuck in the cellar at the moment, hence the round cake tin in the photo above.)
   
2. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. Add the bananas, milk, eggs, lemon juice, vanilla extract, cinnamon and raisins to the margarine and sugar mixture, and mix well. Fold the flour into the resulting batter.
4. Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake in the preheated oven for 60 minutes until golden.

Orange polenta cake

I first made this cake a few years ago, and have baked it intermittently ever since (whenever my children allow me to make something other than chocolate cake).


I took this cake along to the book group I have just joined (at Blackwell's on South Bridge, in Edinburgh). My cake was finished off almost instantly, which is more than can be said for this month's book - the diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, in which the wife of Lev Tolstoy spends 40 years complaining about her husband.

Ingredients
for the cake batter
2 large oranges
1 cup of strong green tea
6 green cardamom pods
6 eggs
150 g quick-cook polenta
150 g ground almonds
250 g golden caster sugar

for the syrup
1 orange
50 g caster sugar
50 ml water

Method

1. Place two of the oranges in plenty of water, bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Drain the oranges, cut into quarters and allow to cool.
2. Make a cup of strong green tea, and add the cracked cardamom pods to it.
3. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line and grease a springform cake tin.
4. Peel the orange quarters, remove the pithy centre and any pips, and puree in a food processor.
5. Transfer the orange puree to a mixing bowl, add the polenta and 50g of cardamom-infused green tea, stir well and leave to sit for 5 minutes or so.
6. Add the eggs, almonds and caster sugar and beat well. Pour the mixture into the tin, and bake for about 45 minutes.
7. Meanwhile, zest the remaining orange. Make a syrup by heating the caster sugar, zest and water until the sugar is dissolved. Strain through a tea strainer to remove the zest.
8. Allow the cake to cool before removing from the tin. Prick it all over with a toothpick, and pour the syrup over it.

Banana bread

Nine months ago I started making a batch of focaccia in my kitchen, and today I finished! Okay, it didn't take me nine months to make the bread, but that is how long it took us to get the oven fixed. (It's a long story, and there were mitigating circumstances.) Anyway, I felt the oven needed to be shown who was boss, so I made a point of taking up where it had so rudely interrupted me back in January, and produced a tray of focaccia.

Next up for the great oven celebration was some banana bread. I got a recipe from the BBC Food Website, and tweaked it a little. Apart from being really easy, and quite delicious, it's a great way of using up those guilt-inducing overripe bananas which everyone seems to have in their fruit bowls.


Ingredients
140 g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
60 g butter
110 g caster sugar
1 egg
2 ripe bananas, mashed
35 ml milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon juice

Method

1. Set the oven to 180oC, and line a loaf tin (20 cm x 10 cm)
2. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the salt and cinnamon.
3. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
4. Add the bananas, milk, eggs and vanilla extract to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix well.
5. Fold the flour into the resulting batter, mix well and add the lemon juice.
6. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin, bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes until golden.
7. Allow the bread to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before transferring to a rack.

Dutch Jewish ginger buns (gember bolus)

I came across these ginger buns (gember bolus) in the cafe of the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam. I googled "ginger bolus", but all I came up with were reports of people choking to death in Thailand. Eventually, I found something which appeared to be related on a blog called Bake My Day! So I contacted the author of the blog where I had found that recipe and she very kindly got back to me with a version of what I was looking for. Needless to say, I then fooled around with the recipe a bit (well, quite a lot) and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
dough
500g plain flour
7g active yeast
320g milk
30g water
20g brown sugar
20g margarine or butter

syrup
200g brown sugar
200g water

filling
250g ginger crush in syrup

for sprinkling
more brown sugar

Method

1. Put the syrup ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, cover and remove from the heat.
2. Combine all of the dough ingredients. If you have a food processor with a dough hook, then knead for a couple of minutes on the slowest settng. Alternatively, mix the ingredients thoroughly with a spoon, then stretch and fold in the bowl until you have a smooth dough. Cover the dough and leave to rise for about 1 hour.
3. Oil 16 muffin cases and put them on 2 muffin trays. Set the oven to 200oC.
4. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and divide  into 16 equal pieces. Very lightly turn each of the pieces in the flour, then press out to form a rough circle. Put a teaspoon of the filling mixture in the centre of each circle, and form the circle into a ball, crimping it closed with your fingers. Place each of the balls into one of your prepared muffin cases, and when the tray is full cover it with clingfilm and leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.
5. Remove the clingfilm from the trays, glaze each ball with 1 dessertspoon of syrup, sprinkle about 1/4 teaspoon of brown sugar over each of them , transfer trays to oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.
6. Remove the trays from the oven, transfer the buns from their cases to a cooling rack. Pour a little more syrup over the buns before serving.

Cinnamon knot buns (zeeuwse bolus)

I don't usually just lift other people's recipes, but I have to start this post by admitting that I have copied this more or less directly from a wonderful blog I came across called Bake My Day! This is stage one of my plan for reproducing the delicious little buns filled with candied ginger which I ate in Amsterdam. I thought I would start with the dough, and as this recipe is for a Dutch sweetened bread of Jewish origin, it seemed a good place to start. (We bought the matrushka oilcloth in the background of the photo below at the street market in Albert Cuypstraat.)


Ingredients
500 g plain flour
7 g salt
7 g fast action yeast
320 g milk
75 g butter or margarine
zest of one lemon
250 gr soft brown sugar
2 tbs cinnamon

Method

1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt, fast action yeast, milk, butter or margarine and lemon zest. Start by mixing it thoroughly with a spoon, then when it comes together mix by hand and knead until you have a nice light dough. Put the bowl inside a plastic bag, leave in a warm place (if you have one) for 45 minutes (a little longer if you don't have a warm spot in your kitchen). In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar and cinnamon and set aside.
2. Weigh the dough and divide into 16 equal pieces. Form each piece into a ball, place on a tray, cover with plastic and leave to relax for 20 minutes or so. After 20 minutes, take each ball and roll it gently out into a rope, about 20 cm long - see photo below. (You should be able to do this between your hands, but feel free to roll it on a flat surface if needs be.)
3. Now sprinkle plenty of the sugar and cinnamon mixture over a clear work surface, and one by one roll the dough ropes in it until they at least 30 cm long, making sure they get thoroughly coated with the sugar.
4. Finally, form the ropes into knots, as per the photo below. (This is very easy - just find the mid-point, wrap one end of the rope around your finger, remove the finger from the resulting hole and poke the end of the rope through. Then repeat for the other side.) Place the coils on an oiled baking sheet, cover with plastic and leave to rise for about 60 minutes until they have more or less doubled in size. You will probably have to use two baking sheets and bake in two batches. (Because my sugar wasn't quite sticky enough, I cheated and sprayed the finished knots with a little water and sprinkled them with some extra sugar just before baking.) Turn the oven on to 250oC.
5. Bake the knots for 8 minutes. They should be brown and even a little crisp on the outside, but still very soft on the inside.

'raw' ropes

rolling the rope in sugar, and forming the knots

risen knots

Apple crumble cake

We had to bring Carmela's birthday forward this year, as on her actual birthday we will be in Italy, where we won't know anyone. As a result, once again she will be having two birthdays. In addition to the customary chocolate cake, I decided to make an apple cake for the adults, as I had been gifted a bag of cooking apples. Having made this, I'm not sure why there aren't more crumble cakes.



Ingredients
For the cake
juice of 1 lemon
4 small cooking apples
1 tsp ground cinnamon
200g caster sugar
200g butter or margarine
200g self-raising flour
4 medium eggs

For the crumble
1 tsp ground cinnamon
50g caster sugar
50g butter or margarine
50g self-raising flour

Method

1. Grease and line a springform tin, and set the oven to 180oC.
2. Peel and core the apples, cut them into very thin slices, place in a bowl, just cover with cold water, and add the lemon juice.
3. Mix all the crumble ingredients together, and rub gently with your fingertips until it has the texture of rough breadcrumbs.
4. Put the remaining sugar (200g) and the eggs in a large bowl, and beat very thoroughly, until you can leave a trail on the surface of the mixture.
5. Meanwhile, gently melt the butter or margarine, turning off the heat while there are still some solid lumps left in it, stir and leave to sit for a few minutes.
6. Pour the melted butter or margarine into the sugar and egg mixture, sift in the remaining flour (200g) and fold into the mixture gently.
7. Strain the apple pieces.
8. Pour half of the mixture into the tin, then add a layer of apple slices, then add the rest of the mixture and another layer of slices. Top with the crumble mixture.
9. Bake for 45 minutes.

Coffee sandwich cake

My cake repertoire is pretty limited, so when my sister Annie said she'd like me to help her make a cake to take to her birthday party I was pleased both to be able to spend some time with her and to expand my range of cakes. Annie decided she wanted to make a coffee cake so I had a look on the internet and found a suitable recipe on the BBC. Needless to say, we didn't follow it to the letter (for the simple reason that I don't have an electric mixer at present), so the main change was to replace the use of the mix with conservative use of a bain marie together with a bit of stirring and whisking. The result was surprisingly successful, and another reminder of how easy it is to become over-dependent on technology. (If you want to see the original recipe, you can find it here.)



Ingredients

Cake
150g caster sugar
150g butter or margarine
3 eggs
150g self raising flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 coffee cup of espresso coffee

Icing
225g icing sugar
100g butter or margarine
strawberry jam

Method

The cake

1. Preheat the oven at 160C, 325 F,gas 3. Line the bottom of a medium-sized springform cake tin (8") with greaseproof paper and grease the bottom and sides.
2. Add the sugar and the butter to a bowl, heat very gently in a bain marie (by placing the bowl in a large saucepan with some water at the bottom), and once the butter has softened mix very well with a fork or a whisk.
3. Beat the eggs with a fork and then add them gradually to the mixture with 1 tbsp of flour each time, mixing with a whisl. Make sure you don't use all the flour.
4. Add the rest of the flour and the baking powder to the mixture and whisk it in gently.
5. Add half of the coffee to the mixture, and whisk it in. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minute.

The icing

1. Meanwhile repeat the bain marie process with the butter and the icing sugar, and mix very well with a fork.
2. Gradually add the remaining coffee to the butter and icing sugar.

Putting the cake together

1. When the cake is done, allow it to cool for 20 minutes or so, and carefully remove it from its tin. With a large, sharp knife (an 8" cook's knife, for example), carefully cut the cake in half, crosswise, so you have two, equally sized cakes.
2. Place one of the halves cut side up on a plate, and spread with plenty of jam. (4-6 tablespoons)
   
3. Gently place the other half cut side down on top of the jammy half, then cover it with the icing. Leave to cool in the fridge.

For Annie
I haven't included a picture of Annie in this post for the very simple reason that she didn't want me to. I just hope you enjoy the cake as much as I enjoyed making it with you. Happy birthday.

Plum crumble

When I was a child growing up in Stirling, there was a pear tree, an apple tree and a plum tree in our fairly small back garden. The apples were a now rare variety known as Stirling Castle which were quite tart - halfway towards being a cooking apple - The pears were inedibly woody but the plums were Victoria and were delicious. Unfortunately, one year the crop was so large that the poor little tree literally snapped in half under the weight of the fruit. I saw some Victoria plums in the greengrocer's the other day and they looked, felt and smelt exactly like the ones I remember from my childhood, so I decided to make some plum crumble with them.



Ingredients
the filling
750g plums
3 tablespoons of demerara sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

the crumble
250g plain flour
150g butter or margarine
100g demerara sugar
50g rolled oats
50g almonds (either ground or slivers)

Method

1. Stone and halve the plums. If they are a little hard, then stew them in a saucepan for a few minutes with the sugar and cinnamon. If they are already very ripe then this is not necessary. Put the plums in a medium-sized ovenproof dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix the butter or margarine with the flour, sugar, oats and almonds, and rub gently between your hands until it has the texture of fine breadcrumbs.
   
3. Cover the plums with the crumble mixture and bake for 30 minutes in an oven preheated to 190oC.

Proportions and preferences
Sometimes in life it's best to be left wanting more, and I think this definitely applies here. You should be left with the feeling that if only there had been a little more of the crumbly topping then it would have been perfect: if you don't have that feeling, then there was probably too much topping and not enough fruit.



Apart from the crumble:fruit ratio, the other big issue when making crumble is how cooked the fruit should be. For soft fruits (ripe plums, blackberries and that kind of thing) I don't think the fruit benefits from pre-cooking as it will already be soft and juicy from the oven. However, if you're making apple or rhubarb crumble then the fruit is definitely improved by being stewed for a few minutes before having the topping added and being baked.

Scrumping
Every autumn kids in Stirling used to come and 'scrump' our apples. They would knock on the front door and ask if they could come through and have some apples, but it was understood that if you refused then they'd come over the wall and help themselves anyway. The 'scrumpers' came from the top of the town - the working class area at the top of the hill, which corresponds to the old town before it expanded in the late 19th century, while we 'scrumpees' lived in the King's Park, which was the posh area built when the town expanded in the Victorian period. Thinking about it now, it seems that this scrumping was the embodiment of a tense social relationship which combined a mixture of patronage, obligation, resentment and intimidation.

Orange almond couscous cake

Cakes are one of those areas where even quite proficient cooks are reluctant to improvise. I guess this is the result of the mania for measurement which surrounds baking, coupled with the erroneous belief that any movement beyond certain fairly strict parameters will inevitably result in disaster. There is also, to be fair, something inherently mysterious about baking cakes. You fill a tin with some rather unappetising batter, pop it into the oven, and take it out to find that it has been transformed into a delicious cake. The fact that baking is often something of a special event may also make us particularly intolerant of the failures which would inevitably accompany experimentation.



I don't know how many basic types of cake there are in European cuisine. (I wonder if anyone has ever tried to produce a typology of them, a bit like those claims that there are only seven plots in the whole of world literature.) One very simple version involves mixing eggs, sugar and flour, and possibly adding something else for extra flavour (fruit or chocolate, for example). There's no reason why the carbohydrate element has to be provided by flour. I already have a recipe for an orange cake with polenta, and it occurred to me that the polenta could be replaced by couscous. The result was very successful - moist and with a good texture, without being crumbly. The overall flavour is quite intense, as the whole oranges give it an almost marmalade-like bitterness, so probably one to serve to grown-ups. I think it would be good hot with some vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients
3 large oranges
6 eggs
150 g couscous
150 g ground almonds
300 g demerara sugar

Method

1. Place two of the oranges in plenty of water, bring to the boil and simmer for one hour. Drain the oranges, and allow to cool.
   
2. Preheat the oven to 180°C, and line and grease a springform cake tin.
   
3. Halve the oranges and puree in a food processor.
   
4. Transfer the orange puree to a mixing bowl, and beat in the eggs, couscous, almonds and 250 g of the demerara sugar. (Set aside the remaining 50g to make orange syrup with.)
   
5. Pour the mixture into the tin, bake for 1 hour and remove from the oven.
   
6. Meanwhile, juice and zest the remaining orange.
   
7. Make a syrup by gently heating the remaining 50g of sugar, zest and juice for a few minutes until the sugar is dissolved. Strain through a tea strainer to remove the zest.
   
8. While the cake is still in the tin, prick it all over with a toothpick to allow the syrup to soak in, and pour the syrup over it.

Pac-Man
My video game career never really got beyond Pac-Man. The next game I tried was Frogger, but I struggled with its complexity. I don't know how much money I had wasted (and how many electronic frogs I drowned) before I finally realised that although I had to navigate my way across the road by jumping into the gaps between the oncoming vehicles, I had to cross the river by jumping onto the logs and not into the gaps between them. It struck me as a bit arbitrary and I gave up at that point. After all, surely frogs can swim and don't need to hitch rides on logs.

Chocolate biscuits

It's been chucking it down non-stop today (as if someone had turned a shower on over Cadiz), so we've had a pyjama day. We were planning to go out and celebrate the reopening of our local ice cream place after its winter break, but we decided to stay in and have biscuits instead. (Cookies to anyone on the other side of the Atlantic.)

The recipe is incredibly simple - basically, you bung the ingredients into the food processor and whizz them. Of course, with kids things are never that simple, and it took quite a lot of negotiating over whose turn it was to use the blender and one stern lecture before we finally produced these.



Ingredients
75g margarine
125g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50g brown sugar
50g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g plain chocoolate, broken into squares
1 large egg

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180oC, and prepare two baking sheets. (These can be a bit sticky, so oiled baking paper is probably a good idea.)
2. Put all the ingredients apart from the egg into a food processor, and blend for a few seconds.
3. Add the egg, and blend again.
4. Using a teaspoon, put blobs of mixture on the tray. Leave plenty of space between the blobs, as they will spread. With wet hands, shape them to make them round.
5. Bake for 12 minutes, then leave to cool on the baking sheets.

Is there anybody out there?
I sometimes wonder if anyone ever reads this blog (other than those members of my circle of close friends and family who feel more or less obliged to pander to my strange obsession with kitchen craft). But my blog now has its first official follower, the owner of Alley Katz Antiques in Amarillo, Texas. Sounds so exotic to us over here in Europe, obviously the place to go if you want see some really cool cowboy boots.

Mince pies

Now you've made your mincemeat, it's time to make your pies.



You will need:

• a couple of trays of pattie tins (I don't think there's much point of making a batch of less than 24 - once cooked they keep quite well in an airtight container)
• a large fluted cutter and a slightly smaller one (the exact size will depend on the size of your patty tins)
• a good batch of shortcrust pastry.

A lot of people are afraid of making pastry - there is a general belief that it is difficult and delicate, and requires a special touch (and maybe even the right hand temperature). Actually, making shortcrust pastry is very simple, and I suspect that most pastry failures can be traced back to simple problems such as too much water in the dough, or over-working it. As with the mincemeat, the following recipe comes from Delia Smith's Christmas.

Ingredients
500g plain flour
220g butter
a pinch of salt
200 to 220 ml cold water to mix
milk to glaze

Method

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl. Weigh out the butter, cut it into small pieces, and rub into the flour until the mixture has the texture of fine breadcrumbs.
2. Gradually add water, mixing it with a spoon at first then with your hands, until the dough forms a ball.
3. Remove the dough from the bowl, knead just enough to bring the dough together into a smooth dough, then wrap in polythene and leave to rest in the fridge for half an hour.
4. Lightly grease your patty tins. Take the pastry out of the fridge, divide into four balls, and return three of the balls to the fridge.
5. Flatten one of the balls of pastry to form a fat disc then, working on a lightly floured surface, gradually roll it out as thin as possible. (The pastry should be quite resistant at this stage, but even so you need to move it a bit between rolls, otherwise it may stick.) Repeat with the other balls of dough.
6. Cut out 24 large circles and 24 small circles of pastry. Use the large circles to line the patty tins, fill with mincemeat, moisten the edges of the small circles with some water, and place on top, pressing the edges to seal.
7. Glaze with a little milk, and bake at 200oC for 25 to 30 minutes.
8. Eat hot or cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container, reheating before serving.

Shortcrust circles



Filled pies




Still life

Food photography dates very quickly. I'm intrigued by how we instinctively recognise this, without necessarily being able to explain what it is that makes one photo look dated and another contemporary. The photograph below comes from The Carved Angel Cookery Book, by Joycel Molyneux and Sophie Grigson, published in 1990, and the photographer is Martin Brigdale. (He said, feeling slightly guilty about the blatant copyright violation.) When I first looked at it, my initial reaction was 'how ugly'. And then I looked again and realised that I was leaping to conclusions. The photo below is a carefully composed still life, with every element in the picture in focus (or at least it was in the original).



Contemporary food photography tends to have less elements, and these are usually shown with only one area of the shot in focus (achieved by using a very wide aperture), as in the completed mince pie shot above. One advantage of the contemporary approach is that it allows kitchen clutter to disappear into a hazy background, and is also well suited to taking photos in poorly lit spaces, as the wide aperture lets in lots of light. As my kitchen in Cadiz is both messy and dark, this suits me perfectly.

Mincemeat

I love mince pies but have never made them myself, until this year, always relying on shop-bought ones instead (some of which are great, and some of which are not). Before you make the pies, of course, you have to make the mincemeat, and the recipe here comes from Delia Smith's Christmas. It is a two-day affair: the first for preparing the mixture and leaving it to develop, and the second for slow cooking and cooling.

   

  Ingredients

500g of cooking apples

250g of shredded suet

250g of sultanas

250g of currants

250g of whole, mixed candied peel, finely chopped

350g of soft, dark brown sugar

grated zest and juice of 2 lemons

grated zest and juice of 2 oranges

100g of blanched almond slivers

4 teaspoons of mixed ground spice

half teaspoon of ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg 

6 tablespoons of brandy 

  Method

1. Core the apples and chop them into very small pieces - about the size of the raisins (no need to peel them).
2. In a large, ovenproof bowl, combine all the ingredients except for the brandy, cover with foil, and leave overnight for the flavours to develop.
3. Transfer the bowl to an oven preheated to 120 C, and cook for 3 hours.
4. Remove the bowl from the oven, and stir it occasionally as it cools.
5. Once the mincemeat is completely cool, add the brandy. The mincemeat will now keep for up to a year.

 

Mincemeat 

Mincemeat is so called because, back in the 16th century, it was a mixture of meat and dried fruit. Highly spiced dishes which confound our distinctions between sweet and savoury are now seen as being typically North African, and wherever they appear in western European cooking you can be sure that someone will start whittering on about Arab influences. However, such combinations were typical of English food before the modern period. I plan to do a properly meaty version of the mincemeat in the future, but in the meantime I have kept vegetarians at bay by using beef suet (what look like grains of rice in the picture of the uncooked mixture, above).

In praise of Delia

Over the years I have come to appreciate Delia Smith. Her recipes are generally pretty reliable, and I like the way she manages to be both prim and daring, presenting what in the 1980s were quite exotic recipes with a curiously repressed air. She reminds me of one of those Victorian lady travellers who made their way around the world without ever behaving in a way which was less than proper.

 

Gingerbread biscuits

This ginger biscuit recipe comes from The Usborne Big Book of Christmas Things to Make and Do.



Ingredients
350g plain flour
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
100g of butter or margarine
175g soft light brown sugar
1 medium egg
4 tablespoons golden syrup

Method

1. Sift the flour, ground ginger and bicarbonate of soda together. Add the butter or margarine, cut into small chunks.
2. Rub the butter into the flour until it is like fine breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar.
3. Break the egg into a bowl, add the syrup, beat well and stir into the flour.
4. Mix well until it comes together into a ball (add a little more syrup if necessary), then knead thoroughly on a floured surface until you have a smooth dough.
5. Divide the dough into halves, roll out one half until about 5mm thick, cut into shapes with cookie cutters, and place on a baking sheet, lined with greaseproof paper.
6. Bake at 190 C for 12 to 15 minutes, and cool on a wire rack.

If you want to paint them, then simply add some food colouring to a little egg yolk, and paint.