Category Archives: Children

Pate de fruit

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Fruit pastilles or pate de fruit. Not chewy, just soft set jellied sweets. Mmmm.
Each Christmas my eldest and I make Christmas cards that you can eat, or use. You know the sort of thing: gingerbread men, bath bombs etc. To give out to her school friends. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from making cards with my daughter. And it’s very useful deadline-avoiding fodder. Please don’t let this make you tense, it’s not everyone’s idea of fun, but it is mine. (Even as a child Id make cakes to avoid doing homework. Then I’d flog them to my dad who had a café.) 
So anyway. This year I had the fanciful idea of making a sheet of fruit pastilles, then cutting them into Christmas tree shapes and putting them in clear front photo bags (I got them in bulk some years ago, which was in part what started this Christmas card project thing as I was determined to find a use for them). 
This was the idea anyway, making Christmas tree shaped red fruit jellies. In the end, I realised that you’d need an enormous amount of fruit to make the number of fruity Christmas trees we’d need, to enable her to give one to each of her school friends. I’m keen, but not that keen. 
But I made the fruit pastilles anyway and cut them into cubes. If you fancy whiling away half an hour, these make a pretty present (although they don’t really last long) and are intensely fruity (don’t expect Haribo chewiness, these are like fruit jellies, or pate de fruits). I haven’t yet experimented with other fruit but I know people who make them with all sorts: rhubarb, apple, blackberry, mango etc. The only thing I will suggest is that you think of the final colour and use the fruit accordingly. You want something that looks appealing so if you use a wishy washy coloured fruit (apple, say) don’t let it dominate. Personally I think berries are ideal as the main ingredient.
This is what you need:
Some fruit – you really need to start with about 300g of it to make this worth your while. I used raspberries and apple for the ones here. About 90% raspberries to 10% apple.
Preserving or jam sugar (the one with pectin in it)
Put the fruit into a saucepan – chop up if necessary. Obviously that doesn’t apply to berries and if you’re interested I used frozen berries.  Squeeze some lemon on them, I squeezed a wedge on my 300g of fruit. It doesn’t have to be precise, as you can probably tell.
Cook over a gentle heat until sludgy. If you’re using a mixture of fruit (say, like I did apple and raspberry) you may want to start the harder fruit off first. Cook until mushed up. Towards the end, I help break everything up with a stick blender.
Now, take off the heat and sieve into a bowl or other saucepan. Be aware you’ll need to weigh the resulting puree. If you have chickens, you can feed them the sludge left in the sieve.
Whatever you’re left with, weigh it and add the same amount of sugar. I think I was left with about 150g of fruit puree so I added 150g of the preserving sugar.
Put the puree and sugar in a saucepan, and heat gently. Stir until al the sugar is dissolved, then keep heating gently for about 30mins. Stir occasionally. You know it’s done when it’s thickened and if you take a spoonful out it will dangle off the spoon as you drip it off (this will make sense when you do it) instead of just falling off. You want it to be glutinous.
Line a suitable tin/tray with baking parchment. I used the bottom of a loaf tin. It’s easier if you have nice straight sides as they’ll be less to cut off and straighten up later.
Put in the fridge and let it cool. Mine were done after about three hours. You can leave it overnight.
Turn out onto a chopping board. It should be one solid mass. Tidy up the sides but cutting (I use them as fruit snakes), and cut into cubes or whatever damn hell shape you want. Roll in caster sugar and let them air dry for about an hour to set. Personally I store them in the fridge as they can go a bit sludgy (gosh, I’ve overused that word today).

Big pants for a small child

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As soon as a child is out of nappies, the question of what to put them in next arises. And let me tell you, finding pants, knickers, for a small girl-child that are not

frilly
fluffy
have stupid logos on
or writing on saying things like ‘love’ or ‘princess’
pink
or tiny

is not easy. I loathe logo-ed knickers.  Really, passionately hate them. And I believe, have always believed, that pants should be big and cover your kidneys because I have a Napolitan mother who told me these things (still tells me these things).

I’m also really fernickety about good quality stuff. This is why my house is full of Miele kitchen appliances. I searched very high and very low for simple, plain, not small, white knickers. I’m not stranger to finding things, having once been Dear Annie and having written a few consumer/shopping columns. But it was an impossible ask.

John Lewis did not let me down with plain white childrens’ knickers. But they weren’t BIG enough and after a few washes, I’m afraid to say, they just looked crap.

Then I remembered.

As a child, my French uncle, who was (is) impossibly glamorous and designed plane engines, and his wife, my Parisian aunt and Godmother, Josette, had bought me a pair of knickers once, when I was a child, that were my absolute favourite pants. And I remembered they had a little boat as a symbol, on the label.

Petit Bateau.

So I went in search of them here in the UK and lo, here was a company that made simple, big, white pants.

Let me tell you a few things about Petit Bateau childrens’ underwear:

  • the quality is superb. After two years of daily wear and 60 degree washes, they still look like new.
  • the fit is superb
  • they are beautifully plain, although you can also get coloured ones (which I do buy occasionally) and this year they’ve introduced ones with writing on which is a big, big no-no for me.
  • they are expensive
  • PB also makes thermal underwear for children which is unsurpassed in looks, comfort and quality. It’s made of wool and silk/cotton but constructed so that only cotton fibres are next to the skin.

The last time I made a purchase of PB pants and vests was when my eldest was six. Since then I’ve thought “can I really justify paying £4 for a pair of pants when for that price you can get at four pairs  (and, I know, in some places even cheaper). So last time we were in Johnny Loulous being measured for shoes, I bought a pack of four for £6.

And the quality is crap. After a few washes (40 degrees as they’re coloured, but at least just stripes and stuff and no logos).

So back I went to PB, braving the nearly always surly staff to stock up. I really can’t recommend the make highly enough and if you’ve got more than one child, such as I have, to pass down to, it makes them even better value and in price per wear, they can’t be beaten because they last so long.

The plain white ones are code 66637 00110 and called Lot de 2 Culottes (be careful cos the ones with writing on are packaged so you can’t see the writing) and cost £8.50 for two. Matching vests (thin straps) are 6663100110 and called 2 Chemises a Bretelles and cost £10 for two.

I’ll put a photo up later.

The Tangle Teezer

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Probably loads of you have already heard of this. It was a ‘Dragon’s Den’ reject a few years ago. But I hadn’t heard of it, or seen one, or noticed them hanging there in haircare aisle. One of the juniors at my hairdressers used one on my head two weeks ago and I said “what’s that?”

And what it was was a Tangle Teezer or a hairbrush that looks like a dog/horse’s grooming brush (I actually think the addition of a strap around the back of it would be no bad thing).

They come in three permutations. This one which is the original, and you can pick them up from £9 to about £13 depending on where you shop and what colour you go for (I actually choose black but I got this flourescent pink, that’s Amazon for you). Purple glitter, for example, costs the most as it’s ‘limited edition’. There’s a child’s version which is round and comes in a flower pot and then there’s a mini version. I think this is the best – read easiest to use.

Anyway, children love it – it sails through dry or wet hair with ease and every one fought to use my daughter’s at swimming (because of its design, it’s really easy to clean so that didn’t freak me out like it normally would). The the point of it is that it’s a tangle destroyer that works without pulling the hair. I love it, it’s kinda massaging. You can’t style with it, it’s really for just combing knots out. Not 100% sure how it’d cope with really thick hair, it struggled with the thicker bits of mine.

You might be able to see here that the ‘teeth’ are in two lengths – that’s apparently the secret of its success. And they’re bendy.

Anyway, you can buy them on line or in Boots/just about anywhere.

Revolutionary new treatment for verrucas!

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Bet you’re glad you discovered this blog. It’s so full of useful, glamorous things. Don’t worry. I’m sure I’ll sneak a designer bag in next week.

Maybe.

In the meantime, something more useful. How to treat a verruca without spending very much money at all.

Despite growing up next to a swimming pool (and using it regularly) I have never had a verruca. But my eldest caught/grew/developed one a few months ago. Now for those that don’t know, a verruca is simply a wart that grows inwards (because the weight of walking on your foot means it can’t grow outwards), and those black bits you see are the blood vessels.

So we did the usual and bought Bazooka that Verruca and nothing really happened. Then another verruca grew and I started to worry that my child would become like one of those freaks that has a verruca farm on her feet (this happened to my cousin, she had about eighteen of them). So after a few months of painting on Bazooka and nothing happening I texted my friend Mary, who is a GP, and asked her if I should take my daughter to the docs to have the verruca frozen off with liquid nitrogen. “Yes, you can,” she texted back, “or you can try something else that seems to be having lots of success.” I bit my fingers whilst I waited to hear what that something else was. Perhaps something illegal. That would be exciting.

“Electrical tape” she texted.  She said it would take a few months, but the Bazooka had done nothing in a few months so thought it was worth a try. So I bought some, from the market stall. It was 35p (yellow, if it matters) and I swear in less than a fortnight, all the verrucas had gone.

This is, of course, ground breaking news because it could bring down the fortunes of various over the counter remedies. I don’t know, perhaps it was fluke, but try it. I’m guessing electrical tape works the best as it’s very sticky and watertight, but all you do is cut a little piece, stick it over the verruca and replace every day/few days.

Let me know how you get on.

A 2014 update: we only use this now for verruca treatment and it’s amazing, especially if you can catch them early. For us it’s effective in less than a week.

Home made Nutella

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Not the most amazing pic but it’s real life home made Nutella-type spread in a jar, look!

I know this doesn’t look good; two consecutive posts concerning chocolate.  There is tons of other stuff I could be writing about, I’m just not very fired up about them though. And as this is a blog, and I’m not being paid, it has to be a bit enjoyable for me.

In Italy Nutella comes in glass jars you can use, when you’ve scoffed the lot, as glasses to drink out of. They come in pretty patterns. I think you could get them here at one point too, but I don’t see them anymore.

I used to eat Nutella out of the jar, on a spoon. I can’t believe this now as I find it quite disgustingly sweet. The ads sell it to you as having slow release energy thanks to the 1.5 hazelnut you get in every serving…we have Nutella in our house but I loathe it now. It’s laden with sugar.

So when I saw Annie Rigg’s book about Edible Presents and saw there was a recipe for Chocolate and Hazelnut spread in it, I jumped.

You probably can do this without a food processor, but I don’t.

Makes 1x 450g jar

75g blanched hazelnuts
100g 70% cocoa chocolate
100ml condensed milk
1-2 tablespoons of hazelnut oil
a pinch of salt
3-4 tablespoons of hot water (if you even need this much)

The recipe asks for you to use sterilised jars. I use them straight out of the dishwasher, if it’s good enough for Nigella, it’s good enough for me.

Toast the hazelnuts; you can do this in an oven or in a dry frying pan. Until they’re golden. Cool slightly and then  grind to as smooth a paste as you can get in your food processor.

Melt the chocolate, condensed milk and hazelnut oil, very gently, in a saucepan. When the chocolate has melted and it’s all mixed up nicely, pour this into the food processor, add the pinch of salt (I always use ground up rock salt in sweet things) and blend. Add as much hot water as you need to give it a thick, spreadable consistency. Don’t panic if, like me, you see it has gone really runny. It firms up in the fridge. That said, you shouldn’t overdo it, I’m just saying don’t go into a tizz if you have (you can always use it as super luxurious ice cream topping if it does go wrong).

Spoon into a jar and keep in the fridge. Rigg says it keeps for up to two weeks. I doubt it will last that long.

Now, I didn’t want to interrupt the recipe further up, with my tales of hazelnut essence, but I bought some from Bakery Bits.  I was wary because, unlike the excellent other ‘essences’ I have from there (Aroma Panettone and Aroma Veneziana are exceptional) which have natural oils in them, the ingredients listed seemed decidedly un-natural. Stupidly I thought it was like extract of hazelnut or something (this is probably impossible to do). Anyway, the jury’s out on whether it’s nice or not but my verdict is: disappointing. Its aroma is rather synthetic and artificial. I liked it at first, but you need to go really easy on it as it can become very overpowering; and I’m not sure I’d use it again. My partner’s nose is far more sensitive and he found it overwhelming.

This recipe doesn’t call for essence of any kind, but because I had it I added a few drops – about four. My seven year old loves this spread but says it’s too ‘hazelnutty’ which is probably accurate. I think this essence is good for when you really need to convey ‘this is made of hazelnuts’ without actually adding that many real nuts and that isn’t the case for this spread, or anything I’m likely to make.

This spread is, anyway, delicious and whilst still not a health food, is a damn sight healthier than shop-bought.

Mmmmm. Eat on toast, or on a croissant or straight out of the jar with your fingers.

Pete’s pizza dough

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This isn’t sourdough, and it’s a bread machine recipe. But it’s a lovely pizza dough, and one which Pete, my partner, has perfected over the years.

I don’t understand people who ooh-ahh over the fact that we make our own pizzas. It’s simplicity itself and you can make them in advance.

I make these in two Mermaid trays – but I like them thin. If you like your pizzas thick well, I’m not sure I have much to say to you really. Pizzas shouldn’t be thick.

From start to finish you can have pizzas on the table in about fifty-five minutes. The pizza-dough cycle on my bread machine takes 40 mins, then you just roll out, put toppings on and they’re cooked in 8-10 mins. And for those of you who have children, this is a lovely thing to get them involved in.

Here’s what you need (Pete works in ounces, I work in grams, I’ve kept true to his recipe here):

8floz hand hot water
2tablespoons olive oil
12oz of plain white, soft flour (note: not bread flour)
1teaspoon caster sugar
1teaspoon salt
2teaspoons yeast

You put all the ingredients in your bread machine in the order the manufacturer recommends, above is the order I put mine in as that’s what Panasonic recommends. The pizza dough cycle is, as I said, 40 mins long on my machine. (The regular dough cycle is 2.20mins so that should give you an idea, you don’t want a long cycle.)

The pizza dough before rolling

When it’s done, oil a suitable surface (I use a very large chopping board so that I can move it about if need be) and your hands, and take the dough out. Sometimes this dough is really sticky, other times more manageable. It makes for a better dough when it’s stickier (higher hydration) so there is a compensation.

Because I use the dough across two baking trays, I cut mine in half; but if you’re making – say – four round pizzas, cut into four..etc. I’m sure you can work it out..

Roll out the dough, as thin as you can, to fit your tray/tin. If you can do that thing of throwing the dough up in the air to make it thin, great: do teach me how to do it too!

When it’s rolled out to an approximate size, I lay it on the tray (note: I oil the tray and coat it with polenta/cornmeal), rest if for five mins and then stretch it into the corners/sides.

Now you can, at this stage, go straight into doing the toppings and either cook it or put it in the fridge (naked or with all the toppings on, I put mine in naked). You can also freeze it (in which case cook straight from frozen, just give it a few more mins). I cover mine with cling film place one tray on top of another (if no toppings on) to save space in the fridge.

When you’re ready to cook, if you haven’t already, put on whatever toppings you want. For the tomato bit on the top, I use Waitrose Sundried Tomato paste – a tiny amount spread on the pizza base (it’s quite salty so go carefully). Then I put on artichoke hearts, salami slices, olives, ham, mushrooms, mozzarella, asparagus if in season etc. Or just the tomato paste and some mozzarella for those who like it really simple (boring..) Just before it goes into the oven, splash some olive oil on it and cook it for 7-10 mins. My oven is very hot and has a pizza setting, yours might too. You can tell when it’s done as it will have bubbled up and be golden.

Take out and slide onto a chopping board, slice up, eat and feel very virtuous. Pizza doesn’t have to be unhealthy..or at least whilst not pretending this is a health food, it’s as healthy as pizza can be.

La pizza, I put the rocket on after it came out of the oven

The best chocolate ice cream in the world.

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There is no easy way – unless you’re a professional food photographer in which case you’d be using anything other than actual ice cream – to photograph chocolate ice cream without  making it look like…something else…
See? Here is the same ice cream but photographed at night, by artificial light after we’d had some. See how glorious moussey it looks? That’s how it tastes if you eat it not long after making it. Even a few days’ later it’s still delicious.

I hesitate not in saying this is the best chocolate ice cream you can get. I mean, very probably my dad’s chocolate ice cream was better. And his chocolate chestnut ice cream was damn brilliant. But aside from that, you can search high, you can search deep but you won’t find a better, simpler, chocolate ice cream recipe.

I know because believe me – credemi – I’ve tried.

And, how sweet that this recipe didn’t come from some vast volume of ice cream recipes. I didn’t steal it from a gelateria, or my dad’s shop. It was in the fold out pamphlet of recipes that came from my Panasonic ice cream maker.

I’ve doubled the quantities, because the original made about two portions’ worth (how is it that doubling it seems to make more than double if you see what I mean?). If you can, make this in the morning for eating in the evening. That way it will have had a chance to set a bit, but not go rock solid. It will never be that good again although of course, like all ice cream, it will keep in the freezer for weeks/months.

This last batch I made was using eggs from our own chickens. Coincidence or not it was the best I’ve ever made. So tasty I wanted to eat the whole lot.

You will need:

4 egg yolks – freeze the whites to make madeleines or macaroons or friands another time
100g granulated sugar
160ml of milk – I use semi skimmed and it’s always been fine
2tbsp cocoa powder – I always use Green and Black’s
100g good plain chocolate – I always use Waitrose Continental  (70%), the packet looks unassuming (black with a vanilla coloured banner across the middle) but don’t be fooled, it’s superb chocolate
240ml of double cream, although I have just chucked the entire 300ml tub in there as this is what Waitrose’s comes in and 60ml of cream left in a tub is of no use to anyone.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until pale. Do this in a heat proof bowl or a bain marie. You can do this by hand using a little whisk. Don’t be a cissy. You don’t need an electric whisk.

Mix the milk and cocoa powder together to make what looks like a birruva mess. Add this mixture to the egg mix. Place the heat proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (or put the bain marie on the stove if you’re posh and have one, a bain marie that is). Stir until it thickens.

When it’s done, take off the heat and chuck the chocolate in and stir gently but firmly. You will have at the very least broken this into pieces, or if you can be bothered, cut it into smaller pieces. I never can be bothered and it goes in in big, chunky, pieces and it’s fine. You get the occasional shard that doesn’t melt but I quite like that as it’s a bit choc chippy in the final ice cream.

Put it aside to allow to cool – whilst it’s doing this cover the actual surface with a layer of baking parchment. Because I’m posh, I have ready cut circles for just this purpose. Whisk the cream until it’s thick and stir into the chocolate mixture. Refrigerate for a couple of hours before placing in your ice cream maker.

This is no time to be wailing that you don’t have an ice cream maker. YOu’re not taking this seriously enough. You need one. When it’s done decant into a suitable freezer container and freeze.

Eat with abandon and try to forget about the fact that you don’t have a pension. If you eat enough of this ice cream, anyway, you probably won’t live that long.

Bagels – not sourdough

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These bagels are not just not sourdough, they’re made in a breadmaker. Nevertheless, here they are, all blousey and almost industrial compared to my artisan sourdough.

But look: they’re delicious. Nothing at all like bought bagels which may look surgically enhanced but are as interesting as dust to eat (although if you remember that fantastic sketch from Little Britain, dust is a valuable diet food…). The only memorable bagel I ever had out was at the Geffrye museum cafe, I had it with smoked salmon and a very fine cappuccino. A memorable little lunch that shows food doesn’t have to be fancy to be remembered.

So, my bagels. I’ve been making them for years and the recipe is from some bread machine book I had but adapted slightly (in what way I can’t remember now but anyway it works which is what matters). They don’t look pretty – ignore that and just enjoy the taste.

These are excellent for children – they just love them. In which case I make them smaller and end up with 12-16.

For eight large bagels you need:

2 teaspoons of dried yeast
450g strong white bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt – I grind up Maldon sea salt
1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar – I use caster
230ml water, whatever temperature it comes out of the cold tap.

egg or malt wash – see later

baking tray
clean tea towels
saucepan and slotted spoon

I put it into my bread machine, which is a Panasonic bread machine and the only sort I recommend. Your bread machine may ask for the ingredients to go in in a different order but mine asks for the yeast first. You then select the dough cycle. Mine is 2hrs 20mins long. Be careful not to put it on a short dough cycle (mine also has one for pizza which is 45 mins long) as it won’t work.

In the meantime, get a baking tray

When the dough is ready, you divide it up into how many bagels you want. This mixture makes eight regular sized bagels, but I have made more mini ones. I roll each piece of dough between my palms to make a ball. I rest them for a few minutes (in reality you can start on the first one by the time you’ve done the last one if you follow), then roll them into sausage shapes and loop the ends around. This isn’t a regular bagel shape – none of that perfect roundness – but honestly once baked you won’t care. It’s the best way, I’ve found, of keeping the hole intact.

As you shape them, place each one on a lightly oiled baking tray or one with baking parchment on it – make sure they’re not touching or you’ll have a hard job separating them and they might collapse as you manhandle them. When they’re all shaped, leave them to rise, covered with a dry, clean [why do they always say this, does anyone use a dirty one?] tea-towel ** for about 10-30 mins (30mins if your kitchen is cold, 10mins if it’s warm or you put them in a warm place). There’s a lot of yeast in them so don’t overprove.

**Note here: you can – and I regularly do – also put them, at this stage, into a refrigerator overnight for their rise, and then go straight to boiling them. I think this gives them a nicer flavour and chewier texture and it also means you can have freshly baked bagels for breakfast.

Whilst they’re resting and puffing up, put a big saucepan of water onto boil and preheat the oven to 220C/Gas 7. I use a casserole dish pan which is shallow, but wide. You don’t need the water to be deep deep, as the bagels will float, but if you have a wide aperture then you can get more in at once.

When they’re done and the water is on a rolling boil, put the bagels in to the pan. Unless your pan is a huge paella pan, you will have to do them in batches – that’s fine. You boil them for about 30 secs each side (so turn them over with the slotty spoon). Watch them puff up more. Take them out one at a time with the slotted spoon and place on a clean tea towel to drain them and do the next batch til they’re all done.

Either get a clean baking tray and oil it lightly, or wipe off the last one you used and re-oil it. OR if you’re like me and have one of those reusable baking sheets that you used to prove the bagels on, you just now put them back on them. But either way, place the boiled bagels onto the tray. It’s fine if they touch, because once cooked they’re more stable than at the proof stage, so you can tear them apart. But if you can do them so they don’t touch all the better. Mine are always crammed together as that’s the only way you can get them cooked all in one go and at this stage – i.e. proved and boiled – you don’t really want them hanging round waiting to be baked for longer than necessary.

Once the bagels are on the tray, you’re on the home run. Either make an egg wash of beaten egg, or use this fabulous dried malt extract which I mix up with some water and brush on. You can then either cook the bagels plain or scatter on some sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower, linseeds etc.

Cook for 12-15 mins (this is in my oven, yours may differ). They’ll be a lovely dark golden brown when they’re done.
These keep for a day or two but are best eaten on the day of being made and toasted thereafter. They freeze really well – just freeze when cooked to have lovely fresh bagels another day!

The shaping is getting better..

Chocolate Ganache Hot Chocolate

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I was going to write about Fruit Leathers aka Fruit Roll ups. But I just can’t be bothered. It’s too cold (at least where I am, which is in Suffolk) to write about blackberries and fruit stuff.

Instead I want to write about hot chocolate.

I’ve never been satisfied with commercially available hot chocolate mixes. My dad, in his coffee shop that he used to have, used to make the most exquisite hot chocolate – made with Cadbury’s Hot Chocolate syrup which you couldn’t buy it in the shops.  Cadbury’s has stopped making it now anyway. My dad would make me a cup of half hot milk with the syrup and half ‘schiuma’ – what you English call ‘foam’. It was the best ever hot chocolate and has never, really, been beaten. I’m guessing that if I tasted it now I’d think it was really sweet. But memories, and all that..

For a long time, in the absence of Mr Cadbury’s syrup, the way I’d make hot chocolate was by heating up some milk with some 70% cocoa content chocolate in it, then whisking it all up. It would be dark, rich and not too sweet.

When I was out and I could get it (and you can’t here in Suffolk, please could you open up a branch Antonio), I’d drink Carluccio’s Cioccolata Fiorentina, which is served in espresso cups and is dark and custard-thick. It’s delicious – I urge you to try it if you are ever in a Carluccio’s. You can buy the powder to recreate this drink at home, but it’s hard to replicate what they do in the shop and to have any hope of success you need to make it in large quantities. Also, don’t look at the ingredients as it will put you off.

But the idea of a small cup of something that really hits the spot appeals. I’ve never been a fan of large, mediocre drinks: small and potent is what I’m after.

Last year my youngest daughter was baptised. For the cake part of the party, I made lots of chocolate cupcakes using Nigella Lawson’s recipe (Nigella Domestic Goddess p.168). The icing was chocolate ganache – chocolate melted with cream (I don’t really do sugar or buttercream icing, I mean, it’s nice, for the first mouthful but then it leaves you in a diabetic coma). Nigella’s recipe always makes more ganache icing than you could possibly ever pour onto the cupcakes (as it is, the  icing is a good centimetre thick), but I always make the amount she recommends because I live in fear of my cupcakes one day going naked cos I skimped. On this occasion I had plenty left over, so I kept the rest in the fridge.

(For those interested, I topped the cupcakes with an orange wafer rose from Jane Asher. The effect – orange on a glossy dark brown cupcake in brown paper holders – was smart and sleek which is just what I wanted).

As the party wore on, some die-hards remained. It was October and the evening air was fairly fresh and I fancied hot chocolate. I looked at my now set-solid chocolate ganache in the fridge. I wondered what would happen if I melted it again, added some hot milk and whizzed it up with my Aerolatte frother wand-thing.

It made hot chocolate that was so superb that everyone commented on it, even though by that stage they were fairly tipsy and deep in conversation. Everyone said it was the best hot chocolate they’d ever tasted, even those I didn’t get in an arm lock.

I served it in little ceramic cups so you got just a few mouthfuls, which is all you’d want as it’s imaginably rich…

Chocolate Ganache Hot Chocolate

I’ve adapted this from Nigella’s original recipe as otherwise you’d be drinking it for a week…

90g 70% cocoa chocolate (I use Waitrose Continental – which comes in a black, rather unassuming wrapper – it’s very good)
40g milk chocolate (I use Green and Black’s as it’s a higher percentage cocoa than most milk chocolates, but I don’t use its plain chocolate as I don’t like it as much as Waitrose’s)
100ml double cream
a few drops of vanilla extract (about quarter of a teaspoon).
Milk to suit

Melt the milk and dark chocolate with the cream. You can do it straight in a pan but you may feel safer doing it in a bowl, above a pan of boiling water. Stir until melted.

You should have a very thick mixture. Warm up some milk separately, then carefully and slowly add it to the chocolate/cream mixture. What you’re aiming to do is loosen up the ganache, but you don’t want to add so much milk that you change it into a really runny mixture. You want to end up with something that’s thick: so thick you could eat it off a spoon, but is still drinkable.

Look, no-one said this was going to be easy. If you want a normal, easy to make hot chocolate drink, get any old shit from the supermarket. This is proper stuff that will warm your body and your soul because it requires a bit of care in the making.

It will be worth it.

If you need to homogenise the mixture, you can whisk it up. I use my Aerolatte whizzer thing.

Serve in small espresso cups. If you don’t want to use all the mixture, just refrigerate it before you add the milk; and if you don’t end up eating it straight out of the fridge with a spoon, just melt it down and add warm  milk and whisk it up like that. This way you can actually make just one cup at a time.

Enjoy it. It’s good.

Mint choc chip ice cream

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 Mint choc chip ice cream. I know this isn’t the best picture in the world but it was hard to get a six year old to keep still. It’s presented in a mini cone. 

Here’s the gelato in a bowl. See how delicate the colour is? You can also see I have a LOT of stainless steel in my kitchen!

This is my current favourite ice cream. I would never buy mint choc chip ice cream, because it’s just not my thing, but this home made version is, I promise you, delicious. Unless you really hate the taste of mint, but even then I’d urge you to give it a try.

You can easily leave the chocolate out, but together this makes for a near perfect ice cream in my blog. Which this is.

I tend to make my ice cream in small quantities as the fresher it is, the nicer it is. By all means double or treble the amounts, it’s easy to do. This makes about half a litre, which I find is ample for four greedy people.

375ml of cream and milk. You need cream AND milk. Don’t be tempted to use one or t’other because to make ice cream you need both (i.e. not just this flavour). This has something to do with the way the fats mix up and interact. Don’t ask me cos I never listen properly when my dad tries to explain it to me in the same way that I still don’t really understand about what that white powder is he’s given me to put into sorbets. Because I never have whole milk in the house, but I nearly always have double cream, I tend to use 250ml of double cream and 125ml of semi skimmed milk. If you have more or less of one or t’other don’t worry. I’ve also done it with 300ml double cream and 75ml semi-skimmed milk. You get the idea.
15g mint leaves. Don’t be tempted to use anything else, such as mint flavour. Urgh, forget it.
70g caster sugar
1 egg
50g 70% cocoa chocolate if using

In a blender or food processor (I use the little chopper attachment on my Braun MultiStick thing), blend together the milk, cream and mint leaves. The mint leaves should go down to tiny pieces, but don’t over do it or the cream will curdle (however, you’d have to be really stupid to go this far). Pour the whole lot into a sauce pan, and bring to just below boiling point. Turn down the heat and simmer for 5-10 mins. Don’t let it boil, stir it a bit. You’ll see the cream/milk mixture become infused with the mint colour and it will go to a lovely green colour. However, it won’t be that lurid dark green pretend-mint-colour you get in shop bought ice cream. Think Farrow and Ball hues instead.

Turn off the heat and let it cool for a bit. Now you can either strain it so that the leafy minty bits stay out or leave them in. Try both and see how you prefer it. Obviously one will give you ice cream speckled with tiny green bits, one won’t. Perhaps if you’re adding the chocolate then having the mint in as well might be overkill.

Whilst that’s cooling, get a heat-proof bowl (important) that will fit over the sauce pan (important) and take the whole egg (not just the yolk, which is usual in custard-base ice cream) and whisk up with the sugar until it’s light and thick. Then slowly mix in the (sieved if you’re going to) milk/cream/mint mixture into the egg/sugar mixture. Pour some water into the pan which just had the milk/cream/mint mixture in (doesn’t matter that it’s dirty you’re not drinking it) and place the bowl containing the ice cream mixture on top. The idea is to make custard, so stir as the water underneath boils, and keep stirring until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon, which it will do pretty quickly really. Whole process should take about 5-10 mins. Now you’re done, so take the bowl off the sauce pan, let it cool for a few minutes then cover the actual surface with cling film/baking parchment. The reason you need it to touch the actual surface is so a skin doesn’t form.

Let it cool for about an hour, then put it in the fridge. You can keep it for up to 24 hours before making ice cream but once it’s cooled right down in the fridge (say a few hours) then you can whack it in the ice cream maker.

Once that’s churning, chop the chocolate really small. I sort of semi shave it. When the ice cream has finished, you can just stir through the chocolate. The ice cream will be pretty soft still as all ice cream out of an ice cream maker is soft-ish. Either eat it now or put it in a freezer container and let it harden up more for later.

If you want to read about ice cream makers you can do so here.