Beetroot Brownies

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The internet is not short on brownies containing once-improbable ingredients such as black beans, sweet potato etc. I’ve always avoided them. If I want cake, I used to think, I’ll eat cake. If I want beans or vegetables, I’ll eat those.

Well that was before. Before I was on a medically prescribed diet and before it had been a year since I’d eaten cake. And when that happens, you do look for alternatives because there are only so many times you can look at someone eating cake whilst you eat nuts.

I have a love/hate relationship with Tim Spector and I’m not sure why. I was an early adopter of the Zoe app, but I have an unease now about the whole thing. Nevertheless I bought – and very much like – his book The Food for Life Cookbook because when your diet is pretty restricted you do look for inspiration.

My diet is now pretty plant based which is the most rounded way of saying it, although as you’ll see this recipe does contain eggs. There are couple of recipes in Tim’s book which I have adopted and adapted. This clafoutis is one of them. And now, these brownies are another.

This is probably the most cakey cake I have made and been able to eat in eighteen months. Certainly the most chocolatey. As such I almost wept eating it. I honestly have no idea what it will taste like to the rest of the world as my taste buds are now so altered I can’t tolerate too much sugar. But give it a go and see how you feel.

You’ll need:

90-100g of very dark chocolate. I used 80/85%. Go lower if you want but I wouldn’t go lower than 70%.
250g of cooked beetroot in those vacuum packs (the original recipe asks for 280g but my pack had 250g so that’s what I used)
60g of dark brown sugar (the original recipe asks for 150g, this is way too much I think)
200ml of olive oil. I used extra virgin, thus making this cake worth about £25
3 eggs
One teaspoon of baking powder
200g ground almonds
a pinch of salt – really important
1 heaped tablespoon of good cocoa powder
Flaked almonds

What you do:

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F and line a 23cm square tin with baking parchment. I guess there’s no reason you couldn’t make this in a round cake tin in which case I’d probably go for 20cm/8″. Line it though because no-one wants to be cryin’ trying to get it out of the tin.

Break the chocolate up into the smallest pieces you can manage and melt the chocolate in a metal bowl over simmering water being sure not to let the water touch the bottom of the bowl. Take off just before the chocolate is all melted and stir it. Set it aside for a bit.

Whizz up the beetroot until it’s a puree. I have umpteen gadgets but I use this Ninja Mini Blender a lot and I use it here.

In a large bowl whisk together the olive oil and the sugar, then add the slightly cooled chocolate and the beetroot, then the eggs. Then add the ground almonds, baking powder, salt and cocoa and prepared to get excited.

Pour into the tin, smooth out as best you can and top with many flaked almonds (note: don’t buy those that are ready toasted as they will get plenty toasted). Bake for 45 mins. Mine took exactly that.

It’s impossible to describe how much I loved these. You can serve with yoghurt of your choice but the joy it gave me, having a square of these will stay with me for a long time…I keep mine in the fridge.

Sourdough bagels

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I’ve long made bagels and they are a thing of beauty and deliciousness. I have made sourdough ones but not with any regularity. But recently I started making them again. They take a bit more time, in that they need to be left to rise in their own sweet time, far more than yeasted bagels. I rushed them last week and they were dense – still delicious but not so airy and light.

I tend to shape these into little round rolls first and then puncture a hole with a wood spoon handle. I tend to make these with a smaller hole than my yeasted bagels. Who knows why.

Unlike yeasted bagels these can also be left to prove for 48 hours in the fridge (maybe even longer but I’ve never left them that long), so if there aren’t that many of us, I tend to cook a batch up in two lots so we have fresh bagels for two days running. I can’t do that with yeasted bagels as they really have to be cooked the day after making (after an overnight prove in the fridge, ie they don’t ‘last’ that long in the proving stage).

If you want to make them totally vegan then don’t egg wash them.

You can of course use 500g of just white flour, or mix in a bit of wholemeal. I’m always looking for a more gut-friendly diversity so I add Vanessa Kimbell’s Diversity XXX flour. TBH these days I add 10-15% of it into almost all my bakes but here I use 20% (100g of 500g is 20% isn’t it? I failed maths..)

I think this recipe is, at least in part, from Edd Kimber but I adapted it a while ago. (I love Edd.)

What you need:

185g active sourdough starter
250g warm water
1 tbsp of sugar or barley malt syrup
1 tsp of fine sea salt
400g strong white bread flour
100g Diversity XXX flour

I mix everything together in my Kenwood Chef food mixer with the dough hook. I leave it on low for ten minutes. Then I turn the dough out onto an oiled surface, cover it with a bowl and leave it for an hour. After an hour I give it a gentle knead for ten seconds, leave it for an hour and then knead it again for ten seconds. If your house is very cold you might want to do this one more time. I kinda go on dough-feel (and no I’m not very good at it either).

When you’re ready to shape the bagels, when the dough feels lighter and a little more yielding, then cut it into 6/8/10 depending on how many you want to make (this makes eight regular sized bagels for me). I roll into little balls using my hands, then make a hole with the handle of a wooden spoon, stretching the hole out a little.

Place on a parchment lined tray.

I now leave this out, covered with a tea towel, for about another hour before putting them in the fridge overnight. I also think they benefit from coming up to room temperature after taking them out of the fridge but I never have time to do this so I put them straight away into the boil process. Note these really benefit from two days in the fridge (unlike yeasted bagels) so what I tend to do is cook half of them one day and half the next so we get fresh bagels two days running, the second lot being all the more flavoursome for a two day prove.

Boiling and baking

Bring a pan of water to the boil. Some people put things in the water to make them more of a bagel (I don’t know what but stuff that makes it apparently taste more bagely) I can never be bothered. When the water is boiling I plop two in there – if you can get more in without them hurtling into each other than do. I give them a minute or two until they float and puff up a little, and turn them with a slotted spoon, another minute or two, then take them out and rest them on a tea towel. When all are done put them back on the parchment lined tray, brush with beaten egg if you want and scatter with seeds if you want and cook at 220C for 14/15 minutes. Check after 12.

These are really very good.

No/low alcoholic chocolate mulled wine (a thing of beauty)

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Some years ago I posted about a recipe I’d found for chocolate mulled wine, and indeed I made this for some years. But I stopped drinking about five years ago and life changed and I’d not made it since.

But last week, in preparation for some friends coming round to make wreaths, I decided I’d try to make it again but this time as a no-alcohol version, this was the original plan. This was in part inspired by another girlie-get together a couple of months previously, around the fire pit, where my friend Tracy had brought round some Captain Morgan no-alcohol rum which proved a big hit. I still had some left so I decided to use that as the basis for this no/low alcohol version.

I’m very much not a throw things in a pot kinda girl. I like a recipe and instructions. Sure I sometimes – often – then vary a recipe but I always like a framework to work to. So I was super pleased with how this worked out. I realised, as I started to make it, that I didn’t have the 750ml of liquid the original recipe called for. So I started to panic a bit, looked in the fridge, found some ginger beer, realised that still wasn’t enough to get it to 750ml, panicked some more and added some red wine (hence the low-alcohol title of this post). However you could easily just make this with all no-alcohol rum, or half that and half ginger beer, or what I did. What I did is reproduced below but bear in mind you can, as I did, vary what you use. Add a bit of booze if you like or not.

Chocolate in mulled wine? Don’t knock it til you try it. Don’t be tempted to use anything other than 100% cocoa here. I used Firetree which is the best 100% but you could also use any 100%, most of it is awful on its own but here it could shine. The Fiori di Sicilia essences were, if I say so myself, inspired in this as it adds a wonderfully citrusy note to everything.

Bottled up wouldn’t this make a fabulous present for someone? Shake it up and heat it up before serving. My husband said it was one of the most delicious things he’d ever tasted.

Feeling REALLY pleased with myself over this.

Ingredients:

750ml some sort of liquid, see above. I used 500ml of no-alcohol rum, 150ml of red wine and 100ml of ginger beer. I used this Captain Morgan rum and this gingerbeer.
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon of chilli flakes
1tsp ground mixed spice
5 whole cloves
100g dark muscovado sugar (you can also use just normal caster/granulated)
80g 100% cocoa chocolate of your choice (I used Firetree), broken into pieces.
A good few drops of Fiori di Sicilia. Of course you can make this without this ingredient but I use it a lot in my cooking and I really think it’s worth buying, you can use it in so many things and it lasts for ages.

Put everything together in a sauce pan and heat through gently until the chocolate has melted. Then either serve immediately or cool, put in the fridge and heat up as required. This will happily see you through Christmas!

A super healthy clafoutis

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So, first up this is from Tim Spector’s excellent The Food for Life Cookbook which you should buy.

I have a very restrictive and healthy diet (no dairy or soya, minimal animal products, nightshades and sugar). Regular cakes, biscuits n ting are a thing of the past. I do taste chocolate as that’s my job, but in tiny amounts. So Tim’s book (as well as some of the Deliciously Ella books: the first one was awful but they’ve got really good since) is a Godsend for me. I still make yummy things for my family and friends but I rarely have anything for me to eat that’s desserty. Don’t feel sorry for me! I look great, have lost a ton of weight, feel pretty good most of the time and can, and still do, eat pasta and bread because my nutritionist – Pr Valter Longo – is Italian!

I didn’t have much hope for this but I made it for some girlfriends and I really loved it and my friend Katie went mad for it, but I thought I could improve it (sorry Tim) and so this is my adapted version.

55g light brown sugar
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 egg
200g kefir (I use coconut kefir)
100g oat bran
100g ground almonds
35g toasted hazelnuts (or nuts of your choice, or more seeds), chopped
35g pumpkin seeds
half a teaspoon of baking powder
Pinch of salt
160g frozen berries or fresh ones (I particularly like cherries when they are in season)
Zest of one lemon

Oven to 200C, oil an oval baking dish (the sort you might make a crumble in, Tims says 23cm round one).

Basically put everything together, mix well, spoon into the dish, whack in the oven for 25 mins. Best eaten warm, it also makes a rather nice breakfast. Serve with whatever you want/can eat. I have mine with coconut yoghurt.

Oat Milk Iced Coffee

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I’m always a little embarrassed to post a ‘recipe’ that’s basically just an idea. But tbh I’ve had some of my best tips from people posting mere ideas…

Since I stopped eating sugar and dairy (and soya, nightshades, meat and probably something else I’ve forgotten) to help with my health I’ve felt so much better. But it’d be a lie to say it hasn’t had its challenges. We are a family who loves our coffee and especially in the hot months, our iced coffees.

I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before but actually half a glass of oat milk (or plant milk of your choice), half a glass of ice, and an espresso or two makes an excellent cold drink that’s my new favourite way to drink coffee atm.

However, it seems to challenge baristas when I go out.

“Do you have oat milk?” I ask. “Yes they say”.
“Do you have ice?” I ask. “Yes,” they say.”

“Then could I have half a glass of oatmilk, some ice and an espresso?”

You’d be amazed how often the answer to this is ‘no’. (And listen, my parents ran a cafe for years and I worked there so I know what it’s like to work as a barista.)

Pret can’t seem to handle it and insist on giving me an Americano instead (which alters all the proportions). The coffee bar at my otherwise amazing military club can’t get their heads around it, although just a few feet away the staff at the lounge bar can mak a beautiful drink for me. The waiter at Ottolenghi got it and made it for me himself.

But most of the time I just make it for myself at home, thus saving myself £££.

If you like sweet drinks this isn’t for you. But if you like all the component ingredients you’ll love this. And if you’ve been doing this yourself for years then: good for you. Why didn’t you tell me?

Sourdough (English) muffins

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I’ll get straight to the point. These take time to make but most of that time is resting the dough in some shape or form. You have to cook them slow and low. But they are delicious and they freeze really well. I got the recipe from Facebook, from one of the many sites I follow about sourdough. The original says to use active starter, mine was a few days (in the fridge) old and it did it no harm. But I’ve adapted it slightly. You’ll need to start these the day before you want them. The bulk ferment (the bit where it stays out at room temperature for 10-12 hrs or as long as as possible) takes a long time so best to start these in the morning of the day before you want to eat them. Note you cook these on the hob, not the oven.

Ingredients

250g whole milk
115g water
55g butter (unsalted)
20g honey (or sugar, if using sugar add it with the flour)

75g starter
500g bread flour (I used 50g of Hodmedod’s Sourdough School’s Diversity XXX blend and the rest white but you can also use half wholemeal and half white depends how wholesome you want them to be)
A gently heaped teaspoon of fine grain sea salt

Method

Put the milk, water, butter and honey together in a sauce pan and gently heat til all melted then let it cool for ten minutes. If you’re using sugar then add it to the flour mixture next.

In a large bowl – for this is what you’ll eventually mix everything in, add the starter (sugar if you are using) and then add the milk/honey/water/buttery mixture and mix everything together, now add in the flour and salt. You’ll get a rough dough. Cover it and leave it to rest for 30 mins.

Now over two hours, every thirty minutes, you give it a gentle knead/fold and stretch. When this is done put in a clean bowl (oil with some olive oil) and cover it with a tea towel or a plate if you have one big enough. You leave it out for a looong time for the bulk ferment, or as long as you can. The original recipe says 10-12 hours. But if your kitchen is raging hot then probably half this. I think I left mine out for about 7 hours. Then transfer to the fridge for a day or two. I left mine in for two days.

When you’re ready to make them turn out the dough on a clean surface/board that’s been oiled or lightly floured and roll out to about 1.5cm thick. You don’t want it too thick. Get a biscuit cutter that’s the size you want the muffins to be – mine was about 6-7cm – and cut out as many as you can, transferring them to a baking tray which has either been lined with baking parchment or dusted with polenta. Re shape the dough and roll out again until you’ve used it all up. You’ll have one left that you’ll probably shape by hand. This will be the sacrificial muffin.


Leave out like this, covered with a tea towel, for about an hour. Heat up a cast iron frying pan – big as you got – but make sure you have a lid for it. You can also use a Le Creuset but make sure the heat is low. You can’t rush these babies.

When the pan has warmed up put in the sacrificial one to try out the heat of the pan and how long they take. It’s really worth doing this. Of course I thought I knew best so I ruined four finding out the hard way that my heat was too high.

Eventually I worked out mine took about eight minutes each side, on the lowest gas setting. You want them to be gently brown, when done turn over and do the other side for eight minutes. Keep an eye on them, it’s easy for them to burn but be raw in th middle (this is also why you don’t want them to be too thick to start with). Note they do puff up a bit when cooking.

Cook in batches, put on a cooling rack and then eat. With bacon and egg, sausage, cheese and chilli jam, hummus and carrot, whatever you like. They are SO tasty and freeze beautifully. Of course you can also toast them but I had mine fresh.

Carrot and Cardamom cupcakes

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These are delicious, fresh and light and adapted from a Waitrose recipe which you can find here.

I changed the frosting as I can’t bear an overly sweet one and the addition of the Fiori di Sicilia is, if I say so myself, inspired…

Unfortunately they don’t travel well and need to be kept in the fridge – if you can let them chambré at room temperature for a bit before eating. I guess you could make this into one giant cake but not sure why you’d want to…

Ingredients for the cakes

12 cardamom pods
175g light brown sugar
200g self raising flour
Half a teaspoon of baking powder
Quarter a teaspoon of fine sea salt
2 eggs
150ml of olive oil
200g of carrots, coarsely grated (I hate grating things)
Two oranges, preferably organic as you are using the zest. You’ll only need the zest of one for the actual cakes. So if you’re short you really don’t need two but the zest, grated, as a decoration – see later – does look nice.

Ingredients for the icing/frosting

250g mascarpone
85g Greek yoghurt
55g icing sugar
Optional but wonderful: a good few drops of Fiori di Sicilia essence. You can also add this into the cake mixture if you prefer.

Oven to 180C.

You’ll need a 12-hole muffin tin lined with muffin papers. Open the cardamom seeds, discard the shells and grind up the little seeds as best you can. It’s good if you’re in a bad mood here as you can really bash away with a pestle and mortar.

Whisk together the sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and the ground up cardamom when ready.

In a separate, larger bowl whisk together the eggs and olive oil then pour over the dry ingredients with the grated carrot and zest of one orange. Gently mix until combined well and then pour equally into the muffin cases.

Bake for about 20 mins until a skewer comes out clean and they bounce back when gently pressed (careful not to burn a finger). When done take out and let cool completely (I take them out of the tin, still in their cases of course, about ten minutes out of the oven).

You can make the frosting whilst they are cooking and put it in the fridge for later. Here you just mix the mascarpone, icing sugar and yoghurt together with a few drops of the Fiori di Sicilia. You should have a fairly thick mixture. If it’s not thick enough for you (and sometimes it isn’t due to the water content of the dairy) then add a bit more icing sugar.

When the cakes are cooled you can ice the frosting on – it looks really good if you can be bothered to do this but I admit sometimes I just can’t be so I just spoon/spatula it on thicky and then, if you had another spare orange, grate zest on top. Voilà.

Sourdough sandwich loaf

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I’ve been making sourdough for fifteen years, either in a boule shape or a baguette shape or, sometimes, as little rolls. But the thing I really wanted at times was a soft sandwich loaf, but made with a sourdough starter.

There are lots of recipes for such going round the internet and this is one and it’s lovely. I sometimes add a bit of wholemeal flour, or some seeds, but there’s no doubt this should be predominantly white flour for that full soft sandwich experience. The one pictured here used a wholemeal starter but otherwise 100% white bread flour.

It makes for a very soft loaf that produces great sandwiches and is nothing like its crusty trad-sourdough boule cousin, lovely though that also is. Also fantastic toast. Some recipes I’ve seen use butter, in the dough and to brush the top with, but I don’t eat butter so I use olive oil. This makes two small loaves or one big one. I make mine in my Pullman bread tin which is 33cm x 10cm. I’ve yet to leave the lid on all the way through cooking to make a perfectly square loaf. What I do is leave it on for the first 20 or so mins then take it off for the last 10/15 mins.

Anyway this is what you do:

600g bread flour, white or a mix (see intro)
300g tepid water
150g sourdough starter
30g honey
30g extra virgin olive oil
10g fine sea salt

This is way easier and less hands on than traditional sourdough and you rest it in the tin you will cook it in, so no banneton needed. What I do is put everything in a stand mixer and mix it up with a dough hook for ten minutes. Then I rest it for an hour and give it a gentle knead and fold after one hour, then rest it for another hour, then give it another gentle knead. Then I place it in the tin it will be cooked in (I sort of roll it up like a giant swiss roll but you can also shape it into two boules and place them end to end) and let it rise at room temperature for as long as I have but until it kinda doubles in size.

Then I put the lid on (but if you don’t have just cover it with a tea towel) and put it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning I take it out and leave it at room temperature just for as long as the oven needs to come up to temperature: 250C.

Then I put it in the oven (if you have a Pullman, with the lid on if not do I need to point out you don’t put the tea towel in the oven?) for 15 or so minutes then take the lid off and let it cook for another 15/20 mins at 220C. As soon as it comes out coat the top of it with more olive oil (or melted butter).

It keeps really well for several days and like I said makes great toast.

A deceptively plain but tasty cake. Spiced chai bundt cake.

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This is a Donna Hay recipe, from a few of her books, most notably Modern Baking which is an, I think, under-celebrated baking bible. I’ve made this cake for many years and it’s a firm favourite in our house and needs few ingredients – we keep a stash of chai tea on hand especially for it and the rest are store-cupboard/fridge staples. It’s also a good way of using up too much milk.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon of loose chai tea (if you can only find tea bags just open them up, one tablespoon is about two tea bags’ worth)
Two tablespoons of boiling water
375g of self raising flour
330g of caster sugar
two teaspoons of mixed spice
4 eggs
375ml of milk
250g of butter, melted
two teaspoons of vanilla extract.

What you do

Preheat oven to 180C. I use a 9′ savarin/bundt tin for this – specifically this one. Butter the tin and dust with flour and shake off the excess.

Put the loose tea in the boiling water and let it steep for 5/10 minutes, whilst you melt the butter and let it cool.

Note: you’ll need all the tea mixture for the cake, ie the tea leaves and the water.

Now you can go ahead and put all the ingredients, including the tea mixture, into a freestanding mixer and whisk it until combined, or if you want to do it the old fashioned way then you can do butter and sugar – cream together, then add the vanilla extract, eggs, flour, mixed spice, tea mixture and milk.

Pour the batter into the cake mould and bake for about 35 minutes. Mine usually takes 40 but you can check after 30. Do check it’s done with a skewer inserted – it should come out clean. Leave it in the tin for about ten minutes, I loosen mine around the edge and the middle ring bit with a knife and then turn out.

It’s a really lovely, moist cake that keeps for a good few days and is so much nicer than you think it might be.

Chocolate, ginger and nut pavé

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This is another old timer, heavy lifter of a recipe that I’ve had for ages and never committed to ether. Why? I’m not sure. But it’s such a useful thing to have/make/give at this time of year. I’ve never given it to anyone that hasn’t been anything less than delighted, asked for the recipe and asked me to make it again for them. As long as, of course, that they like all the ingredients.

There’s a possibility that you have all the ingredients at this (Christmas) time of year so you could rustle it up if you need an extra nice thing.

What you need

200g dark chocolate, broken into pieces. I recommend 70%
50g unsalted butter
60g double cream
50g of either crystallised ginger or stem ginger drained of its syrup
100g of nuts of choice: pistachio work well here cos of the colour, as do pine nuts* (pine nuts is what the original recipe called for) or almonds/hazelnuts. If you use the latter I would toast them gently first and let them cool before adding.
*if you use pine nuts use 50g, and 50g of other nuts because what are you, loaded?
25g icing sugar
Cocoa for dusting


What you need to do

You’ll need a tin of approximately 26cm x 8cm. I use the base of a 2lb loaf tin as I like my pave to be a rectangle but you use whatever shape you like just bear in mind the above dimensions. Line it with v. lightly greased baking parchment.

Atop a simmering pan of water put the chocolate, butter and cream making sure that the bowl doesn’t touch the water (or it might seize). Take off heat let cool for a minute or so and then stir in all the other ingredients.

Easy isn’t it?

Then put it in the fridge to set. When ready to eat/serve/give you just turn it out, trim the edges to make it really neat if you want (you can also nibble here to test!) and dust with cocoa powder.

I give mine wrapped in string and parchment.

Wish I had a picture but don’t currently you’ll have to trust me this is lovely.