Salad Days

Our garden is lush and green right now, we have two patches of cut and come again salad and a pot of pea shoots (we just planted some dried peas, the kind you make mushy peas with, and cut them when we want  a salad or stir fry.  So good!) so on a warm day like today when you want a lunch idea salad is a real no brainer.  Our vegbox came complete with little gems, cherry tomatoes and juicy red peppers so I topped these with some Quorn pieces, added some mustard and honey to some mayonnaise and poured it over the top.  Delicious!

Cupcake experiments - flat or domed?

I've been reading a lot of blogs and watching a fair few YouTube videos as I plan some of the upcoming baking projects that I have in mind and in one, which I do not know, I came across the suggestion that if you wanted flat tops to your cupcakes you should cream the butter and sugar first, if you wanted domes then you used the all in one method.  Intrigued (and still bored from being house bound!) my little boy and I set out to devise an experiment to see if this was true.  We made a 2 ounce mixture each (that is 2 ounces each of butter, sugar and self raising flour with 1 egg and a splash of vanilla), he used the all in one method and I creamed.  We used different colour cake cases to ensure we knew which was which and put them in the oven with high expectations!

The result?  You really couldn't see any difference between the two methods.  The creamed is on the left and the blue on the right in the above picture.  They all tasted good though :)

Poorly party cakes

My little boy has had chicken pox this week, so we've been housebound and entertaining each other with lots of painting, crafts and of course baking.  On Friday some friends were due to come over with their 1 year old in the hopes of infecting him, so I decided we'd make some cakes for the 'poorly party'.  My boy decided he wanted vanilla cakes, and I had some orange buttercream in the freezer that I got out for the occasion.  We covered each cake with a little layer of the buttercream and then coloured some blue and some green for decoration.  We used spotty cake cases, and our plan was to decorate the cakes in spots too however artistic license and 3 year old enthusiasm took over when we were actually icing them - piping bags are FUN!

Aubergines in honey and almond sauce

The photo really doesn't do this one justice!  We had a couple of aubergines to use up, and I really fancied making it with the Al'fez Honey and Almond Tagine Sauce that I adore but the cupboard was bare.  Doh!  Not to be deterred, I thought back to the vegan carbonara sauce that I'd tried a while back and though that I could probably do something similar here.  The result was just what I was looking for.  Almondy with hints of honey, cinammon and nutmeg.  We had it with quinoa for a low carb, high protein feast for the senses!  Here's how I did it...

Heat some sunflower oil in a pan and add a cinammon stick, fry until the flavour is released and then add a chopped onion and the aubergine, cook until soft adding water if necessary.  Meanwhile in the blender whizz up 1 cup of almonds with 1 tbsp of peanut butter, a clove or two of garlic and a couple of tablespoons of honey. Take 300ml of stock and add just enough to get the nuts blended, then when its houmousy in texture add the rest of the stock.  Pourt this onto the cooked aubergine and onion, cook through (it will thicken up when heated) and then add grated nutmeg.  Enjoy!

Banana and peanut butter muffins

I watched a few more of SeriousCakes videos on YouTube this morning. That woman can do things with buttercream that just leave me in awe, truly. If you have a few minutes take a look at the Carousel cake or the Hydrangea cupcakes (going to be trying that technique sometime this week, time permitting). I made the mistake of watching before breakfast, and of watching her decorate a peanut butter cake; and that was it. The craving for peanut butter began.

Google turned up quite a few peanut butter muffin recipes, but The Goddess's Kitchen had a nice recipe from Rachel Allen for Banana and Peanut Butter muffins. They looked great in the picture and so I set about making them. They were quick to put together, I made a half a batch which should theoretically have been 6 muffins but ended up making 12! I added in some chocolate chips for additional nomminess (my new word for the day) and subbed vegetable oil for melted butter because, after a week of constant colds and headaches I'm behind with my washing up and didn't have a spare pan just to melt butter *insert blushing smiley here*

I'd expected them to be quite heavy between the peanut butter, the oats and the banana but actually they were incredibly light! The flavour was a great balance between the peanuts and the banana, and the chocolate was a good addition. We had two each for brekkie. Delicious!

Maypole Cake

It's Beltane!  As a (neo-)pagan, I like to celebrate the sabbats with food.  We usually have a special meal, with incorporates themes for the season, but I also like to make a cake.  As Beltane approached and I pondered what to make for the season, a thought kept popping into my head - a maypole cake.  I mentally planned it and started scouring YouTube for howto videos to help me with the techniques I'd need to learn.

I started off yesterday by making my first ever bactch of Swiss meringue buttercream, which came together really well (although I used a butter substitute so the flavour wasn't great).  I used this recipe, and made half the quantity.

This morning I started the day by baking Delia's Squidgy Chocolate Log, not least because its a flour and dairy free recipe and so friendly to my dietry foibles!  Once it was cooled, I filled it with about 1/3 of the buttercream mixture and, with a prayer to the Gods of the kitchen, I rolled it.  Success!

I split the remaining buttercream into two large portions and one tiny which I coloured red, white and green with paste colours.  Then I went to work with the techniques I'd picked up on YouTube!  I used a 'basket weave' technique to represent the ribbons coming down the cake.  Piped a mess of green around the top for a  garland and then, with more prayers to the Gods of the hearth, I tried my hand at buttercream roses.  I have to thank SeriousCakes for their YouTube Video 'Buttercream Roses, 3 methods' which was an immense help!

Nothing went horrendously wrong, and I was really pleased and proud of the cake once it was done.

If you're interested in Maypole cakes, then HomeBaked blogged their take on the idea yesterday!

Stuffed Mushrooms

We got our weekly vegbox from Riverford Organic today.  It's always good and packed full of things to inspire me in the kitchen during the week and today was no exception.  There they were, three beautiful, perfectly fresh and delicious looking chestnut mushrooms just asking to be stuffed.  I took the stalks out and peeled them, then popped them under the grill to start cooking down as I made the stuffing.  Onions, the stalks, peppers, and tomatoes were fried until cooked and the liquid was gone then mixed with a chopped ball of mozarella and a tablespoon of wild garlic pesto that my SO made a few weeks ago.  The mushrooms were topped and popped back under the grill until the cheese was golden and then we enjoyed them with some rocket and cherry tomatoes.  Excellent!

Not quite Naan Bread

Naan bread is one of the things I miss about being gluten free.  There's something very special about dipping chunks of warm, flavourful, buttery bread into curries and delivering it to your tastebuds.  Wonderful!  Now this recipe is a very happy accident.  It came about when I was trying to make my frying pan corn bread and wanted to go lower carb so tried using gram flour in the place of the polenta.  It came out great and slightly naan bready in flavour, so the next time around I tried it with just gram flour.  It's not quite a naan bread, but if you're on a gluten free diet, or just going low carb, this is a great way to almost get a naan bread.

Not quite naan bread
1/2 cup of gram flour
1/4 cup of milk
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1tsp ghee or ground nut oil

Heat a small frying pan and add the ghee or oil.  In a bowl mix the other ingredients together to make a smooth batter.  Pour into the pan and cook on a medium heat until the bottom is golden, then turn and cook the other side.

We've had this plain and we've had this Peshwari style, by adding dessicated coconut, raisins and flaked almonds to the pan once the bottom has started to cook and patting them down into the mixture.

Cauliflower 'rice'

I'm still experimenting with a low(er) carb diet.  Not Atkins or South Beach or anything like that, just trying to eat lower GI foods than I generally would, and increase the protein content.  Whilst looking for recipes I came across one for cauliflower rice which sounded intriguing.  Now, cauliflower and I used to be best friends.  It was my favourite vegetable.  I loved it with white sauce particularly, and a good buttery cauliflower soup was a real treat.  Then I got pregnant.  For some reason cauliflower became my nemesis.  At one point if someone even said the word to me, I was sick!  Even now I just don't enjoy the flavour any more, so when I read that this cauliflower rice didn't really taste of cauliflower I wondered whether this would be a good way to wean myself back on to the stuff that I used to adore, both cooked and raw.

To make cauliflower rice, you just cut a head of cauliflower into pieces and grate it in the food processor.  The result is a rice-like mixture that just needs a little cooking.  Most of the recipes I found used a microwave but not being a fan of the thing that goes beep, I decided I'd try a fried rice approach instead.  I sauteed an onion in some vegetable oil, then added the cauliflower and cooked over a medium heat, turning regularly, until the texture was rice like.

The result was very light and tasty, like the fluffiest of rice.  You really weren't aware you were eating cauliflower, and it was a great partner to the vegetable curry I had made to go with it.  I have to say, I'm a convert!  I'm really looking forward now to trying this 'rice' in some of my favourite recipes, including Paella.

Wild Garlic and Soft Cheese Gnocchi

Home Baked blogged about wild garlic and ricotta gnocchi a few days ago, I mentioned this to my SO and said it sounded good and so the next time he came across a patch of the stuff he brought it home for me. Wild garlic is wonderful stuff. All the aroma of the 'real' thing with none of the heat, it has a subtle flavour and wilts like spinach into any dish you care to put it in. Soup, stew, stir fries, curries; you name it, it tastes good in it.

We didn't have any ricotta in the fridge, but we did have a tub of soft cheese, so I checked out a few ricotta gnocchi recipes and adapted to come up with this:

Wild Garlic and Soft Cheese Gnocchi (serves 3-4)
1 1/4 cups of plain flour
8 ounces of soft cheese
1 egg
A bunch of wild garlic, finely chopped

Mix the ingredients together to form a dough, adding extra flour as needed until you can work it into small balls.  Make your sauce.  Boil some water and add the gnocchi, cooking for 2-3 minutes.  They will rise to the top during cooking but leave the in for the full time to ensure they are cooked in the centre.  Eat with the sauce!

Coconut Lime Cake with Lime Cream Cheese Frosting

I've become a regular reader of Home Baked, a blog about baking and home educating.  Whilst I don't plan to home educate my son, I'm not ruling out the possibility that we might end up doing it; and in any case there are some great examples of activities to do with bright and active kids which are always handy to have.

Each month the blog has a competition, I entered last months on fantasy food with a bath of my Pop Biscuits, though sadly for me I missed the deadline!  I was determined not to repeat the mistake this time, although when I first read the theme of 'Spring Greens' I didn't have the slightest bit of inspiration.

And then it came to me.  Coconut Lime cake.  I've been wanting to have a crack at this Delia recipe for a while, and this seemed the perfect opportunity.  We had a fresh coconut in the fridge so I grated that up to go in, but unfortunately didn't have the coconut milk powder (or any Malibu to add coconutty-ness). It smelt heavenly as it baked, and my three year old was tempted to steal a piece as it cooled.  Cheeky!  I thought it might go well with a cream cheese frosting, so googled until I came across this Key Lime Frosting recipe, and made that with my rather mundane bottle of lime juice.  I tossed a little dessicated coconut in Apple Green food colouring and scattered it over the top.  Voila!  A spring meadow that only wanted for a few sugar flowers to make it perfect.

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 ;)