Lavender Cupcakes

With Ostara coming up my thoughts turned to what I could bake that would really encapsulate the essence of spring.  Now when I think spring, I think that warm sunshine on your face, the emergence of the first green and spring flowers.  But how to put that into a cake?  Well, a few months ago I was reading Sweet Sugar Sixpence's blog that they had been making rose and lavender cupcakes.  The idea stuck in my mind and popped out again for this baking conundrum, and so I did some googling until I found a recipe that looked like a good contender on the Homes and Property website.  I have a huge bag of lavender seeds in my craft room that have been hanging around for a while, bought for making fragranced wheat bags and now sitting waiting for something else so that wasn't a problem to find.

The recipe was an easy one to follow, so long as you remember to put your flowers into the milk to infuse in plenty of time the rest is child's play.  The mixture smelled divine, the aroma as they cooked was a warm meadow and once they were frosted and ready to eat?  Moist, fragrant, heaven.  My SO, not really the sort to resort to purple prose dubbed them 'like eating part of spring'.  The lavender flavour was perfectly balanced, it wasn't subtle, there was no doubt that you were eating a lavender cake but it also wasn't overpowering.  They were, in a word, wonderful.

Thoughts of rose cakes were abandoned for now (perhaps for one of the summer sabbats!) and the lavender has been declared the official cupcake of spring.

Just a note, the recipe made 12 cupcakes, not the muffin size cakes, and the frosting volume could probably be halved unless you want a really thick layer.  They looked so pretty topped with a sugar flower (even if the frosting split because I used dairy free spread!).

Banana Muffins

Bananas.  We love them, and yet there always seems to be that few that go brown and don't get eaten (especially as I myself like my nana's barely ripe, there's like a 24 hour window in which I will actually eat one before the flavour gets too ester-y for me and I give up on them.  However brown bananas give us opportunities for bakery, and necessity is the mother of invention.  So when I have a few brown nanas I either bake up some sugar free banana bread (I will blog this one day, it so good you'd never know it was sugar free), make banana pancakes or banana muffins.

Scouting around for a new nana muffin recipe to try I came across this one on the BBC Good Food site.  It looked simple and tasty, and didn't have a high sugar frosting to it so was more suitable for the bevy of under 5's I was planning on feeding them to!  A simple walnut adorned the top.

They rose beautifully, the recipe says it makes 10 but it easily made 12.  Their surprisingly light and the banana isn't overpowering.  I'm sure they would taste awesome with a cream cheese frosting, or served with creme freche as the recipe suggests, but they were also really, really good plain!

Garlic spiked aubergine

I love aubergines. I love moussaka, Imam Bayildi (the Imam fainted, who can't love a dish that's so good it makes a holy man swoon!), I love it stuffed in a veggie curry or chilli, or just grilled in great slices until its soft and flavoursome. I'm always looking for new ways to cook them though, and when I came across a recipe for Garlic Spiked Aubergine I just couldn't resist. Its from Catherine Mason and Elda Abraham's Vegetable Heaven cookbook, although in that they top it with a breadcrumb crust which I ignored for the sake of my gluten free needs (Orgran make gluten free breadcrumbs and whilst theses are great for bulking out burgers etc. they are far too dry for a crust of any kind). This recipe basically called for halving the aubergine, making deep scores in it into which you put thin slices of garlic (a clove per half), brushing with olive oil and then baking in a medium oven in an oiled dish for about an hour. The top was toasty, the flesh was soft and the flavour was wonderful! So simple and so good.

To partner this, I made up a quick chick pea and tomato dish, frying onions and garlic before adding a tin of each of the main ingredients and letting it simmer for a while. I served this with a side of corn bread, not the muffins that I have previously blogged about, but my pancake style recipe which is so quick and easy its untrue.

Pancake style corn bread
1/4 cup of polenta
1/4 cup of plain flour (works great with Dove's Farm Gluten free!)
1/4 cup of milk (works great with Rice milk)
1 egg
1tsp Baking powder
2 tbs oil

Heat a pan over medium heat, and warm up 1 tbs of the oil. Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl. Add to the pan and cook until the bottom is brown (in my omelette pan the top is still liquidy at this point but it depends on the circumference of your pan!) Flip over and cook until both sides are brown. Serve!

Sweetcorn Fritters

I love El Piano in York. It's a vegan, gluten and nut free restaurant and is the one place in the world (other than their branch in Spain) where I can eat everything on the menu without thinking about it twice. Which would be great in itself, but when you add in that the food is tapas style, spans the world in its influences and the setting is a funky, upbeat and casual restaurant you have a recipe for a very happy me. On a recent visit with non-veggie, non-coeliac friends who love the place too, my SO bought me the El Piano cookbook. Glee! It's a great book for cooks (it assumes you know how to make basic food already) packed full of simple recipes for some of the tastiest food on the planet. Since I've had it, I've made dinner from it multiple times but its been so good I haven't paused to take pictures or blog about it! We ate butternut squash curry and coconuty dhal, we've had aubergine bake (with tomato, pepper and fennel sauce) and today for lunch we had sweetcorn fritters.

Like the other recipes, this one is nice and simple. You whizz up a tin of sweetcorn, in its juice, in a food processor then add chilli, chopped onion, sugar (which I think you could probably cut down on the recipe quantity) and polenta to make patties which are deep fried til golden. We ate them with a salad and some sweet chilli dipping sauce which was a great combo. I was scaling down the recipe and guestimated the amount of sugar, but think I would probably drop it a little lower next time around as they were a bit too 'cakey' in their sweetness for my taste. Made in less than 20 minutes though!

The book itself is bright and colourful, and written in a casual style. Each page is a recipe which is written in a step format rather than the usual ingredients then method style. Most recipes are 4 or 5 steps. One thing I love about El Piano is how packed with flavour all their dishes are, and looking at the recipes has taught me a few new techniques that I've already taken elsewhere.

The recipe book is available from their website or the restaurant itself.

Cute bread rolls

On Saturday we set off for a return visit to the excellent Imbolc Fire Festival in Marsden, West Yorkshire.  Although it celebrates the pagan festival of Imbolc, its actually a civil event that's put on by the local council.  They arrange activities over a couple of weeks including a lantern making workshop, singing and more besides.  It's a great even to attend with a torchlight procession through the village that culminates in a fire circus, fireworks and an epic battle between Jack Frost and Jack o'the Green to ensure we've seen the last of winter!

This year we decided that we'd head over to Marsden early, grab a couple of geocaches and something to eat, and then do the lantern walk.  Unfortunately we didn't manage the caches, but we did find The New Inn and had a really excellent meal.  They had some really nice ideas that I hadn't seen before, one of which was a 'kiddicino'; a cappucino without the coffee for the kids!  My three year old was thrilled to be able to have one.  But the thing that I am blatantly stealing for my meal tonight is: bread rolls baked in a muffin tin!

Such a simple idea, but so cute!  One batch of fresh bread dough was enough for 12 of these delightful little bready morsels.  The perfect size for a dinner rolls with a beautiful domed top.  Who could resist?  I'm serving them tonight with a vegetarian moussaka which I will blog, if I remember to take a picture before we eat it - unlike last time!

Pop Biscuits

I was an avid reader as a child, particularly enjoying fantasy stories like CS Lewis' Narnia series, and Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series.  Those of you familiar with Blyton will likely remember as fondly as I do that every story involved food.  Whether it was fresh bread, warm milk, cakes or lashings of ginger beer, the characters always indulged themselves in something that really tempted the senses.  One tidbit that always stayed with me were the 'Pop Biscuits' that Silky the fairy made in the Faraway Tree books.  Biscuits that popped when you bit them, and oozed a liquid honey centre.  They sounded fantastic.

So when it came to planning the Imbolc baking this year, I knew that the milk and honey oriented temptation I would offer to guests had to be pop biscuits.  Had to be!  My first port of call was of course, google.  Someone had to have done this before, right?  Right.  I came across a blogger who had used Brooke McLay's recipe over on Tongue-N-Cheeky to make some little shortbread biscuits with a hollow centre that went pop when you bit into them.  So 50% there.  Had the pop but not the delicious honey centre.  I tried a batch but didn't get the hollows; what I did get however was a particularly hard but tasty little shortbread button.  Which got me thinking.

What about making shortbread, rolling it, and using it to line a little tart tin?  Mince pies, but with shortbread in place of the pastry and honey in place of the mincemeat?  If you baked the shortbread low enough and for a short enough time then that might work, I thought.  So I tried it.

Pop Biscuits Recipe
175g of plain flour (I used Dove's Farm gluten free)
100g of butter
50g of sugar
Set honey

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 3.  Cream the butter and sugar until soft, slowly add the flour until you have a stiff dough.  Knead until its sticking together well, then roll out as thin as you can without it tearing and use to line a yorkshire pudding tray.  Add about 3/4 of a teaspoon of set honey to each, then top with a shortbread lid.  Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, leave to cool before removing from the tin!

I had one still warm from the oven and ooooooh my goodness.  Heaven.  That warm honey centre is such a treat.  When they were cooled they were almost as good though, a crisp shortbread biscuit with a gooey honey centre.  A real treat.  They went down very well with the guests who stopped by soon after!

I think with a little experimentation the biscuit could be improved though, perhaps adapting the Tongue-N-Cheeky recipe a little to get a real 'pop' when the biscuit was opened.  Watching the cooking time and perhaps chilling the honey first could all help contain it (it had leaked in places from this batch).  But honestly? That's just being pernickety.  These were gooooooooood.

Marzipan and Hazlenut Cookies

Remember back in December I was looking for my Marzipan and Hazlenut Cookie recipe and I found a Cherry and Marzipan one instead?  Well, a little post festive sort out had me reunited with my recipe folder, which I sorted into a new expanding file and amongst the mess was the original Waitrose recipe card.  Hurrah!

The perfect excuse to make them was to go visiting a friend who is expecting a baby very soon.  I made a batch and found them as excellent as I remembered - but unfortunately forgot to get any photographs before they were delivered and eaten!  Here is the recipe though:

Marzipan and Hazlenut Cookies
175g of butter at room temperature
175g of caster sugar
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
75g of hazlenuts, chopped and lightly toasted
100g of plain flour
100g of self-raising flour
75g of Marzipan, roughly chopped
75g of dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5.  Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy.  Add the flour to the bowl, then add the other ingredients before you mix it all in together.  Shape the dough into 16 balls, place on a greased baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes.

These are an incredibly indulgent cookie, beautifully chewy with crunchy hazlenuts acting as a counterpoint to little pockets of marzipanny delight and the warm, chocolately goodness.  I will bake some more, soon, and will do my best to take some pictures before they're all gone this time!

Red Onion Tarte Tatin

A friend of my SO's sent him a message to ask for French vegetarian dishes.  He asked me.  I thought about it for a moment or two and suggested a red onion tarte tatin, and then flipped through the nearest cookbook to come up with a gratin recipe.  But the idea of a red onion tarte had worked its way into my brain, and I wanted to make it.  So I looked through a few online recipes and found one on Delia Smith's website which looked like what I wanted.  Except...well I sort of had a feeling that some goats cheese melted on the top would be divine.  The next recipe I looked up was a Jean-Christophe Novelli that was more complicated, but had goats cheese added at the end!  So I decided to marry the two things up.

I halved enough red onions to cover the bottom of my Le Creuset omelette pan, melted some butter and added a little sugar to it, then lay the onions in cut side down and cooked them for a few minutes.  I added a dash of balsamic vinegar and cooked them a little longer, then popped them in the over at Gas Mark 4 for about half an hour (they were small onions, larger ones will take longer!).  Back on to the hob to reduce any onion juices, and I topped them with some gluten free shortcrust pastry I had found in the freezer and baked them for another half an hour until that was golden.  I flipped the whole tarte onto a baking sheet, dotted with goats cheese and popped it back into the oven to melt.  Delicious!

Low carb pancakes

So I am working on losing the half a stone that I somehow (I have no idea how!  It can't have been all the rich food and chocolate, surely?) during the festive season.  One way I've found effective in the past is to eat a high protein, lowish carb diet.  I'm not talking Atkins, as I think that approach is too extreme, but upping the protein content significantly and substituting other things for rice and potatoes.  I lost a reasonable amount of weight doing this last year, so I'm hoping I can do the same again this.  Plus of course, it brings with it a whole range of cooking challenges!

Now, I am not really a breakfast person.  It tends to take me at least an hour after I've woken up before I can face food, and when I can it needs to be something sweetish.  Danish Pastries, pancakes, muffins...and yes, you will see the pattern there that they are all carbs!  So this is my variation on a low carb, gluten free pancake.  You know what?  They're surprisingly good and very filling!

Low carb pancakes
1 tbsp yoghurt (I use Sojade Soy yoghurt)
1 egg
3/4 cup of mixed nuts and seeds (my mix today was linseed, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, almonds and cashews.

Blitz the ingredients together in a blender until they're as smooth as they'll get.  Add to a frying pan that's been greased and cook over a moderate heat, flipping when one side gets brown.  Enjoy!

And yes, I know the maple syrup isn't low carb.  So sue me ;)

Chickpea fritters with tikka sauce

I love chickpeas.  They're substantial and comforting, warming and filling and go well with the other flavours I like to eat.  Tomatoes, aubergines, garlic, harissa paste.  Mmmm.  So when I was leafing through the New Cranks Cookbook this was one that popped out at me for trying.  Now chickpeas aren't a problem, because I love them they are ever present in my store cupboard in both dried and tinned forms however I didn't have any soy yoghurt for the tikka sauce.  I did however have a jar of Meridian Dairy and Gluten Free Tikka Massala sauce so I decided to use that instead.

The basic recipe was for 6 so I halved quantities but it still made enough patties for 4 (unless you're a very big eater!) served with pilau rice.  It was a good meal but would I think have been better paired with some pitta bread and a green salad.  I soaked 4 ounces of dried chickpeas overnight in water, then blitzed them in the food processor for about 15 seconds until they were grainy, then transferred them into another bowl.  I then put a (drained and rinsed) tin of chickpease into the processor with the juice of a lime and a tablespoon of the tikka cause and whizzed them until they were mostly mushed.  That went into the bowl with the dried chickpeas, some diced red onion and it was mixed together and left to stand for 20  minutes to let the flavours mingle. I then formed patties (it made about 10) which I shallow fried on a mediumish heat for a few minutes a side until they were golden brown.

Oh but these were good!  Deliciously crisp and nutty on the outside, and temptingly soft on the inside.  The tikka sauce was a great match (though home made would be a million times better!) and with the rice it was a filling meal.  They were also great cold the next day!  Not so dry as a falafel but not quite a veggie burger either.  They're a part of my repertoire now!

Roast Salmon, Braised Fennel and Wild Rice Pilaf

We're a mostly vegetarian household, but every once in a while we like to eat a bit of fish.  My 3 year old is particularly fond of salmon.  We had some steaks that needed using up tonight, and some 'mini-fennel' that I wanted to braise.  I knew I wanted to make rice the accompaniement, and remembered reading a nice pilaf recipe on Cafe Karma, so refreshed my memory with it and rustled that up too.

I didn't have a wild rice mix, or any spinach, and used a combo of chestnut and oyster mushrooms but otherwise I stuck pretty true to the recipe as it appeared on Cafe Karma.  The fennel was browned in olive oil then popped in a medium oven for about half an hour until soft.  The salmon was topped with freshly ground pepper and a bay leaf and roasted in a hot oven for about 15 minutes.  It was a really great combination!  The rice was nutty and the cranberries added a real burst of flavour, and the whole thing worked together really nicely.

Fresh Bread

You really can't beat the smell, taste or texture of fresh bread, straight from the oven. It's something I really miss about not being able to eat wheat. However my SO and my son are both good with wheat, and if they're going to eat it then I'd rather they were eating good quality ingredients made with care so, when I have the time, I bake bread for them.

I've heard a lot of talk over the years about baking bread being hard, or time consuming or generally too much trouble. I don't agree. The result that you get is so far removed from a loaf of supermarket polystyrene pap that you can't really compare the two things at all! Real bread is crusty on the outside, soft in the middle and packed with flavour. Yes it takes a couple of hours from starting the loaf to finishing it, but you don't need to stand over it all the time! You can just set it to rise and go do something else.

My basic loaf recipe, for a 2lb loaf tin is:

8 ounces of flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 pint warm water

Put the dry ingredients into the bowl then add the water gradually, depending on the flour you're using you may need more or less than the 1/2 pint. Stir some of the water in and mix with a knife until you have a craggy dough, then add the oil, mix some more and start trying to work it into a ball. Stop adding water when the dough comes together into a ball. Knead in the bowl for a while, then transfer to a well floured worksurface and knead for a few minutes before returning to the bowl and leaving in a warm place to rise for an hour.

Take the risen dough (it should have about doubled in size) out of the bowl and knead it well again, then shape it or pop it into the tin and leave it to rise again for about another half an hour. When that's done, it goes in the oven at Gas mark 7 until its brown and crusty (about 45 minutes). To test if its done, turn it upside down and tap the bottom, if it doesn't sound hollow them pop it back in the oven upside down for a few minutes until it does.

Mushroom and Goats Cheese Risotto

Risotto is one of my standby, last minute lunch or dinner ideas.  I admit I don't make it 'properly'.  I usually don't have time to stand there stirring in a little stock at a time, so I tend to bung it all in at once and let the rice cook.  It tastes good, but I will make it the proper way one day just to see if there's a difference :)  Today I was still revelling in the delicious goodies that had come from Ocado, and wanted to use the chestnut and oyster mushrooms I had in the fridge.  Had I been more organised I'd have pre-soaked some dried porchini for that extra mushroomy flavour but...I didn't.

Mushroom and Goats Cheese Risotto
1 red onion
2 cloves of garlic, crushed.
About 250g of mushrooms, best if a couple of varieties are used
1 cup of risotto rice
Vegetable stock
Soft goats cheese
A little olive oil

Add oil to pan and heat, then gently cook the onions until transluscent before adding the mushrooms and garlic and cooking for a while.  Then add the rice, stirring well before pouring in the stock (you need to have about a thumb nails height above the level of the rice in the pan).  Cook until all the water is absorbed then stir in the goats cheese and serve!

Potatoes with Red Onions & Tomatoes and Filled Aubergine Rolls

Last year for Christmas I asked for a copy of The New Cranks Recipe Book by Nadine Abensur.  Cranks was a chain of wholefood restaurants that pioneered veggie cuisine, but sadly closed in 2001.  I can't remember where I came across the book to ask for it, but Santa bought it for me in 2008 and it has sat unopened on my kitchen bookshelf ever since.  We get a vegbox delivery, so can't order in specific things for recipes usually, and when I do want to try something different I usually google for a main ingredient and pick something from the list.  My recipe books are therefore sadly neglected but I wanted 2010 to be a year of experimentation and so, as we were having to order from the wonder Ocado this week, I chose a few recipes I wanted to try from Cranks.

I picked two dishes that were recommended to go together; Potatoes with Red Onions and Tomatoes, and Filled Aubergine Rolls.  The potatoes were tossed in olive oil with crushed garlic, salt and pepper, had slices of tomato and red onion nestled between and popped into a low oven for an hour.

Whilst they baked away nicely, the aubergines were halved and the flesh taken out, then the shells were baked at gas mark 6 for half an hour until they were soft.  Meantime the centres were sauteed with garlic, tomatoes and a touch of balsamic until soft.  Fennel and peppers were quick fried next (the recipe called for courgettes which I didn't have).  The recipe also called for a can of kidney beans, but I could see I was going to have way too much filling anyway so just tossed in some edamame and mixed all the veggies together.  The aubergines came out of the oven, were spread with pesto, topped with thin slices of smoked cheese and topped with the veggie mix before rolling and securing with toothpicks.

Then back in the oven surrounded by the rest of the filling, this time with the potato dish now with the lid off.  A quick blast of heat to get it all crisped and melty.  The aromas wafting from the oven were incredible.

Unfortunately as it was getting late the potatoes were a little less cooked than I would have liked, but it was still a really flavoursome meal and a nice change of pace in the midst of winter and its roots and squashes.  Mmmmm!

Corn Bread and lentil pate

Ah Christmas.  Lovely gifts for using in my kitchen.  This year I got a pretty Ciroa Miniamo Cupcake Stand and some of their silicone cupcake cases too.  Unfortunately I also got on Wii Fit Plus and found out I'd piled on 1/2 a stone in the last few months between comfort eating and celebrating, so making cupcakes was out of the question.  Doh!

I've been inspired lately by reading Cafe Karma which is the blog of the wife of an online friend of mine.  She makes some incredible vegan food and has recently posted about cornbread which reminded me how easy and delicious it is to make and suitable for my gluten free diet!  I sorted out my printed out recipes yesterday and found a few cornbread recipes I meant to try, and some of the lentil pate recipes I used to make quite often for lunch so when my SO asked me today "What's for lunch?" I had an immediate answer!  But more exciting was the prospect of using my cupcake cases to bake the cornbread.  Yay!

Cornbread muffins
2 cups of cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups of milk (I used rice milk)
2 tbsp of vegetable oil.

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 8.  Combine dry ingredients in one bowl and wet in another, then mix together.  Pour into muffin cases and bake for 10-15 minutes until they're golden and pulling away from the tin slightly.  Makes 12 muffins.  You can also bake this in a 9inch cake tin and cut into slices.

Lentil Dip
1 tin of lentils
1 onion
Butter or margerine
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp tomato puree
Balsamic Vinegar
Mushroom Ketchup

Fry the onions and garlic gently in a little butter or margerine until caremallised.  Add to the blender with the lentils (drained and rinsed) and the tomato puree and blend until smooth.  Add dashes of vinegar and mushroom ketchup until you have the taste you want.

The cornbread popped out of those muffin tins leaving them squeaky clean, wonderful!  The lunch was enjoyed by all of us, especially my 3 year old who had great fun working the food processer with me and 'tasting' the dip!  I am sad to report the loss of my Global mini-cleaver though, which broke into two pieces on being dropped today.  It was a great knife, but at least I now have an excuse to go knife shopping for the first time in a decade - those Global Knives are sheer awesome.

Cherry and Marzipan Cookies

About 5 or 6 years ago I picked up a recipe card from my local Waitrose for Hazlenut and Marzipan cookies, which were divine.  They've been a favourite ever since, so when I was looking for something baked to put in our Christmas Hampers this year (along with lots of jams and chutneys including the bramble and apple jam I wrote about a few months ago) they were the natural choice.   Except...my recipe file has gone missing!  Somewhere in the move from downstairs to up our filing cabinet has lost that one, oft used drop file full of my favourite recipes.  Oh no!  I tried searching on Waitrose's website but the recipe isn't up any more.  So the search was on for another cookie, which had to have Marzipan in it and after a few searches I came across Gastronomy Domine's Cherry and Marzipan Christmas Cookies.  Perfect!  Not only was it marzipan but I'd bought a pack of sour cherries having seen them in a few interesting recipes lately and could use those too.

One of the best things about cookie baking, for me, is that they can usually be made with gluten free flour without too many problems, so I altered the recipe only so far as to use Dove's Farm Gluten Free Plain Flour Blend in the place of regular flour.  I didn't have any trouble getting the dough to come together as the recipe suggests, in fact it was rather buttery, but I put this down to the difference in flours and put it in the fridge to cool. It had a good texture when it came out of the fridge, so I rolled it into balls and popped them on baking sheets.  Having read the comments on the original recipe post I kept a close eye in case they cooked quicker in my oven, and the first batch definitely did!  In about 10 minutes they were slightly overdone and very spread out.  Hmmmm.  The next batch went in on a lower shelf - better.  I turned the oven down and that improved things too.  Unfortunately I was a little distracted during the baking, so some batches got a bit overdone and were very difficult to get off the baking sheet.  The last batch however came out perfectly!

Gingerbread House

This weekend we worked on our Yule gingerbread house, I wanted it to be ready for the Yule Feast we're hosting on the 18th.  Looking forward to sharing the delights of that night with you all!  I still had gingerbread dough in the freezer from the Haunted Gingerbread House I made at Halloween, so got that out of the freezer to defrost in plenty of time.

My SO decided that this was the day to give me an early Christmas present, and handed over a silicone baking mat for rolling out pastry etc. on.  It was perfect timing.  I was able to roll the dough out on the mat, cut out the shapes and then just flip the mat upside down to get the pieces onto the tray without any distortion from trying to lift them.

With the pieces baked, I took a chance on a new technique and used some meringue powder to make the royal icing which I coloured with paste colours in Christmas red and green.  The icing was a completely different texture to regular royal icing but it certainly did the job!

Our big innovation this year was the addition of boiled sugar windows, and a light inside.  You can make windows by putting boiled sweets in when you bake the gingerbread, but as I'm a fan of playing with sugar at high temperature I made my own.  I dissolved a cup of sugar in 1/2 a cup of water over a low heat, added a pinch of cream of tartar and then boiled it to 300 fahrenheit, added a little yellow food colour and poured the mixture into the good gingerbread pieces which I had laid down on a greased granite slab.  20 minutes later we had glazing!

The assembly went smoothly, it takes time but that's really just waiting time to let the icing dry between stages.  I do wish I'd had a smaller nozzle for my piping bag though, it was just a bit too big.  Ah well, it'll soon be Christmas and I have just such a thing on my list!

We added a few pre-bought decorations, and boiled up a bit more sugar to make a pond, stuck them all on and tada.  Very pleased with the result!  Full photos are here.

Snowmen cookies!

Another bake for the Tree Festival, this one for the kids.  Snowmen cookies!  Basic sugar cookies (I use this recipe, its a good one and makes a good quantity, cut out with a combination of my usual cutters and my fabulous Ikea Drommar set.  One larger circle, one smaller and a square put together to bake.  They're frosted with a royal icing type frosting and some basic black fondant for the hats, with chocolate chips for eyes.

Christmas Pudding Cupcakes

Wow, where did November go?  I may have to go and retro-blog some of Novembers cooking, although a few weeks were spent so full of cold I didn't have the desire to eat, let alone cook!  But here we are in December which of course means festive baking.  Each year at Haxby Memorial Hall, the fundraising team put on a Christmas Tree Festival.  Local businesses and organisations sponsor and decorate trees with prizes being awarded to the best, there is a Christmas Fayre and Father Christmas is in his grotto for the kids to visit.  Last year our business (www.netfysh.com) sponsored a tree as usual, and I decorated it entirely in edibles; candy cane cookies, popcorn garlands, gingerbread (of course!) and topped it with a boiled sugar topper.  I had some leftover mix from the cookies and made little Santa's hat cookies which went down a storm with the kids.  This year the tree is being decorated by my SO, leaving me to bake things for sale at the festival and I knew I wanted to make some cute bakes, as last years cookies went down so well.  I also knew I wanted to make cupcakes, because I had some nice Christmas muffin cases to use.  So the search began...but was rather disappointing.  Other than one recipe that suggested stirring some mincemeat into regular cupcake mix, most of the recipes were just for cupcakes decorated to be Christmassy.  Not what I was after.  But then I came across a recipe at BBC Good Food - Christmas Pudding Cupcakes.  Looked great and had that christmassy flavour I was looking for.  BUT, I didn't have all the ingredients needed in the cupboard, and no time to get to the shops to buy them so I made a few substitutions; soft cheese for sour cream and sweetened cranberries for sour cherries.  I had no custard powder, so added vanilla and yellow food colouring to the icing.

The cakes rose really well when baked, I could have made 18 with the mixture and still had good sized cakes; as it was I had to trim a bit off the top of each cake so it would stand straight when I turned them upside down.  The icing poured nicely over them, and I topped them with a rice paper holly leaf (painted with food colouring to get the green) and a piece of glace cherry for that holly sprig effect.

Breadstick Bones

I surfed a lot for ideas for Halloween food, and somewhere came across a picture of breadstick bones.  I think it was an american site and they used a pack of Pilsbury breadstick dough to make them with.  Well, that simply wasn't good enough, was it?  No!  So I surfed until I found a nice looking breadstick recipe on recipe-ideas.com.  I followed the instructions pretty much, though I skipped the middle proofing as it seemed a bit excessive to have 3 proofings!  To actually make the bones, I rolled each piece of dough (recipe divided into 32) into a string about 8" long, then tied a knot in both ends to achieve the boney shape.

It was only when I was almost finished that I realised I'd missed an opportunity to make some skull shaped ones as well, and stick olives in for eyes and mouth.  Oh well....next year!