Category Archives: Parties

Sourdough bagels

Leave a reply

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.

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 bagel-y) 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)

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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.

Carrot and Cardamom cupcakes

Leave a reply

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.

Chocolate Chestnut Rum Roulade

Leave a reply

I’ve made this every Christmas for over twenty years. Last year, I went to look up the recipe on line (it was a Waitrose recipe from Iceland) and it had gone. It was a ‘404’. I panicked. Despite an extensive internet search nothing came up for it.

More panic. This is my pièce de resistance every Christmas, and my children love it so much they have, on occasion, requested it for birthdays.

But luckily – amazingly – I had made a note of it in my Travelling Cookbook which I started up years and years ago to commit my favourite recipes to paper. But if that goes…so finally I’m going to commit it to technology for me, and all, to enjoy.

I won’t say this is difficult. It’s not. But it’s not always perfect and it is a roulade and involves rolling, like a Swiss roll. It’s not super easy but just go with it and don’t worry. It’s delicious and look, no flour.

Ingredients

For the roulade

170g 70% chocolate, broken into pieces
170g caster sugar
Five eggs separated
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Three tablespoons of hot water (see note later)
Icing sugar for dusting

For the filling

Three tablespoons of icing sugar
115g unsweetened chestnut purée
Four tablespoons of sour cream
100g cooked, peeled chestnuts chopped
Two tablespoons of rum (or liqueur of choice but then it’s not rum roulade!)
285ml of double cream

Method

Now, those are the ingredients above. I admit what I now do is buy some vacuum packed chestnuts, whizz some up and use the rest chopped. Because otherwise I tended to get left with lots of left over chestnut purée. But you do what works.

Preheat oven to 180C. Lightly oil a shallow baking tray of approx 34cm by 24cm and then line with baking paper and very lightly, again, oil. TBH you’re probably fine with just the baking parchment/paper but this recipe is from like 25 years ago so just reproducing what they said at the time..

Now melt the chocolate in a bowl, on top of some simmering water and as ever, do not let the bowl touch the surface of the water.

In a separate, large bowl, beat the caster sugar with the egg yolks until thick and pale and creamy. Add the vanilla extract to that.

Once the chocolate has melted and cooled a little, stir in the hot water until smooth then gradually add into the egg/caster sugar mix. Now again, I’m not sure what the hot water does. I’m quite skilled and fearless with adding hot water to chocolate but chocolate can and will seize if the water you’re adding is too hot or cold, so you might want to leave it out. Gently stir the chocolate until smooth and then gradually stir this into the egg and sugar mix.

Now again separately, whisk the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Quickly and gently fold them into the chocolate mixture and pour the whole lot onto the lined tray, spread evening and put in the oven for fifteen minutes.

Remove and immediately cover with a sheet of baking parchment and a clean tea towel and leave until cold. Don’t leave it too long though or it will crack when rolling it.

Whilst that’s happening, mix the icing sugar into the chestnut purée, followed by the sour cream and chopped chestnuts. Pour the rum/liqueur and double cream and whisk until peaks, then partially fold the rum/cream into the chestnut cream so you have a marbled mixture. You could technically do this in advance and keep it in the fridge but it’s a perfectly good thing to do whilst the roulade is cooling.

Now the originally recipe asks for you to spread out a large sheet of baking parchment on a clean work surface, liberally dust with icing sugar and then gently turn out the roulade onto it, peeling off the baking parchment.

I don’t do this. To me this is adding too much faff and precariousness. So what I do is I take the sponge off the baking sheet – already on baking parchment – and I use that as the base. If you want, trim the roulade of any rough edges but I don’t – it’s all good. Spread the marbled cream on the roulade and then carefully roll up the roulade from the long end. It may crack – do not panic. What I do is I then sort of mould it/hold it together with cling film (just on top using your hands to do this you don’t take the roulade off the plate to do it it just helps keep it together if that’s what it needs) and put it in the fridge until it’s time to serve it. Then I peel off the cling film and then I sprinkle with icing sugar and decorate it. I’ve made this so many times and sometimes it cracks, sometimes it doesn’t and there seems to be little rhyme or reason. It’s always delicious and it reminds us that, even cracked, things are still beautiful.



The best flapjacks you will ever make (a bold claim)

Leave a reply

Many years ago, I co-founded a parenting website called I Want My Mum (so named because I said this a lot when I was pregnant and after I had my first born). It was a small but wonderful little site and many of us are still friends today. Aside from mothering tips we also shared recipes.

From somewhere I got this recipe for flapjacks and they were amazing. I shared it on the board and then lost it and then over the years wondered how I’d ever find it when anyone ever talked about flapjacks…. But a wonderful woman called Sarah Green saved it and started making them.

Recently I asked on Facebook if anyone (I’m friends with lots of ex-IWMMers) just happened to have it. “No,” a few said “but Sarah Green makes the best flapjacks”. Sarah was at choir but when she came back she said “the recipe I use is the one YOU posted all those years ago.” The fact she had kept the recipe (and was so generous, she could so easily have just said it was her recipe, after all it wasn’t actually mine, I got it from somewhere) made me unfeasibly happy.

So to avoid having to hunt for it again, here is the original recipe with Sarah’s additions.

250 unsalted butter
Grated ring of one unwaxed orange
325g golden syrup
325g rolled oats (Sarah sometimes replaces 50g of oats for 50g of oat bran which is a great idea)
75g light muscovado sugar

Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4. You need a tin of about 28cm x 20cm which you line with baking parchment.

Put the butter, orange rind, golden syrup and brown sugar in a pan set over a low heat and stir until the butter has melted and everything is coated. The add the oats to the pan and mix it together. Tip the whole lot into the tin and spread evenly.

Bake for 15-20 mins. Don’t overcook or you’ll lose the lovely chewy texture. You know it’s done when it’s just beginning to go golden brown around the edges but don’t panic cos the mixture will be really soft still.

Leave in the tin to cool completely and it will set. Don’t be tempted to take it out before it’s cool. When it is, take the whole thing out of the tin, holding the edges of the baking parchment and cut into slices as desired.

I will make these again and post a picture but in the meantime enjoy them!

Tamsin’s Houmous

1 Reply

I’ll have to add a picture anon and also I can never really decide how you spell houmous so I hope that will do.

Here’s the thing with me and houmous. I’ve never really liked home made, or at least I have never made any at home which pleases me.

But all this has changed. I went to my friend Tamsin’s house; Tamsin is an inaugural member of my Suffolk Chocolate Club and it was her turn to host, and she made this amazing houmous which now I make and it’s, amazingly, still amazing when I make it.

The key is a really whizzy blender. I make mine in my Sage Super Blender, which is not its real name. I find if I make it in my Magimix it needs far longer to make it smooth.

You need (I’m so sorry about the formatting, not sure what’s going on with WordPress atm)

A 400g tin of chickpeas drain the liquid and keep it separate
50ml of the chickpea liquid (but you might need a bit more, I never do though, you can keep it though for aqua faba if that’s your thing – it is mine)
60ml lemon juice, this seems to be about 2/3 of my little organic lemons. Don’t forget you can grate the peel and keep it in the freezer, for something else.
60ml extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
Half a teaspoons of paprika
1 tablespoon of tahini
1 teaspoon of sea salt

Blend it all up til smooth, serve with a drizzle of very good olive oil.
It’s really good. The recipe says you can add 100g roasted red peppers to make it into red pepper houmous.

What I also do now is halve the houmous (how many ways are there to spell houmous?) when it’s done and then, to one half I add a small cooked beetroot and briefly whizz it up again and it makes for something even yummier.

Yorkshire Eclairs

Leave a reply

These were a beautiful accident.

We had guests coming, and I had planned to make normal eclairs, stuffed full of white chocolate cream. But as I went to get the mixture out of my Kenwood mixer, I noticed the whisk attachment, which I’d had for about twenty years, had splintered and broken. There were really sharp filaments of metal sticking out, and I couldn’t risk the possibility that some had got into the mixture (and you can’t really sieve eclair mixture). So I had to start all over again.

However, my Magimix food processor whisk wasn’t strong enough to give me that really ribbony eclair texture, so I knew the dough would be too soft to pipe. But I wasn’t about to waste a whole other mixture so I thought sod it, I’m going to pour it into my Yorkshire Pudding tins – which are like shallow four circle shapes per tin – that’ll contain the mixture. And it worked beautifully. You could treat these like a normal eclair, by splitting them and coating the top with chocolate and injecting the insides with cream. But I didn’t want the faff after such a relatively stressful baking morning. So I just placed the cream on top, put some berries on and as an homage to the usual chocolate topping I poured on some Bare Bones Chocolate Syrup (seasonal produce) but you don’t need this latter.

Just to bring everything up to date here are the recipes for the eclairs and the white chocolate cream.

Eclairs (makes eight in my Yorkshire tins)

125ml water
50g butter
75g plain flour
3 medium eggs (at room temperature, this is important)
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 180C.

Put the water in a sauce pan with the butter and salt and heat until the butter has melted. With the heat still on, beat in with a wooden spoon, the flour. Mix around vigorously until it forms a dough and doesn’t stick to the sides of the pan.

You can let the mixture cool here, you’re meant to, I never do.

Put the dough in a stand alone mixer with the whisk attachment on, then add the first egg. When fully incorporated add the other egg and then the third. Strictly speaking you only add enough egg til it comes together to form a thick, ribbon-y dough, that is to say that when you lift the whisk out of the mixture it leaves trails of visible ribbons behind for a few seconds. But I just add three eggs in and if you’re making Yorkshire eclairs the consistency of the dough should be thick, but it doesn’t matter if it’s not super thick because you’re not piping it.

When the dough has some substance to it, pour it into your Yorkshire tins (you do not need to grease them in anyway). Bake for about 25-35 mins. Longer will give you a dryer, crisper eclair if that’s what you want. For this recipe, ie in this shape, I like them a bit fluffier and softer so I check after 25 mins.

When cool, dollop on the white chocolate cream and top with berries and you are good to go. Once assembled eat immediately.

The eclairs can be kept in a tin for a day or two but they will soften. I rather like them like this but you may not.

White chocolate cream

Ideally make this just before you do the eclairs (even the day before) so it can set in the fridge.

You need 300ml of double cream and about 100-125g of white chocolate.

Heat half the cream in a saucepan, break up the chocolate, as small as you can, and then pour the heated cream over the top of the chocolate and stir until melted. (You can of course just put both together in a bowl and melt over hot water but I find that’s more of a faff.) When it’s all melted, put this chocolate/cream mixture in the fridge until it’s cool. When it is, mix in the other half of the double cream and whisk until stiff. It’s now ready to serve when you are.

Pretzel Rolls

2 Replies

The food writer Nicola Miller introduced me to what I think is the best bacon roll, from 5 Angel Hill in Bury St Edmunds. Their soft pretzel rolls, filled with salty bacon slices can see me going pretty much all day. Few breakfasts do this.

So when I saw this recipe for soft pretzel rolls in BBC Good Food magazine a while ago, by Edd Kimber (who I think is a genius and the only person I pay for on Substack) I had to make them.

I gave up hope of making them so they looked like pretzels, mine just look like in the picture. They make great rolls for sandwiches, sweet – but not too sweet – and soft. And of course with bacon for breakfast, and maybe an egg. I also really like them on their own.

The baked bicarb bit is a pain but you only need to do it once to yield a jar of baked bicarb which lasts for a good few batches, and it is worth it (I’ve done it without and they are fine but the baked bicarb does add something). I’ve reproduced the recipe here, eversoslightly tweaked, largely to help me as the way it’s laid on in BBC Good Food I always found confusing.

For the pretzel rolls (makes eight)

500g strong white bread flour

7g dried yeast (I use Dove’s Farm)

25g dark brown muscovado sugar

300ml of luke warm water

50g unsalted butter
(I sometimes put 50g of fridge-cold butter into a jug of 300ml of just boiled water and wait til the butter melts, thus cooling the water, and then wait until the water is at the sort of temperature that when you dip your finger in it feels neither hot or cold)

1 teaspoon of salt

For when ready to bake

2tbsp baked bicarb (see later)

An egg for egg wash

Sea salt for sprinkling if you want.

I put all the ingredients for the pretzel rolls (not the ‘for when ready to bake’ bits) into a food mixer with dough attachment and mix for ten minutes. Then I take out the dough hook and leave at room temperature for an hour (less if it’s really hot).

When ready, take the dough out and divide into eight. You roll each piece out into a long sausage and then shape into a U then cross the ends up and over. If you get stuck just YouTube How to shape a pretzel but don’t get fixated on making large holes or gaps. You can also just shape these into little normal buns. Place on parchment covered tray.

Then you can either set these aside for – as the original says – 20 mins (covered with a cloth) or do as I do which is put them in a fridge which is at 4C (on a parchment covered tray, covered with a tea towel). I bake them the next day. Note these won’t keep for ever in the fridge so if you want them the next day, make them late afternoon/evening.

When you are ready to cook, preheat the oven to 200C and bring a large pan of water to the boil put in the two tablespoons of baked bicarb (I will tell you how to do this at the end). Take your tray of pretzel rolls out of the fridge. Depending on how big your saucepan is you put in, say, two pretzel rolls and a time and boil for 20 seconds each side (flip over using the slotted spoon). Take out the pretzel rolls with a slotted spoon and place back on the parchment covered baking tray.

When all are done like this you brush the rolls with beaten egg, sprinkle with sea salt if you so desire and bake them at the 200C for 20 mins. They will be a rich golden brown. As soon as you are able to place them on a cooling rack, off the parchment (otherwise they can go soggy). Wait as long as you can to start enjoying them.

Once cooled these also freeze beautifully, I defrost them in the microwave on the defrost function for about 2 minutes.

Baked bicarbonate

Preheat oven to 120C. Foil line a baking tray and pour a whole tub of bicarbonate of soda (the sort of size you get in the supermarket) . Spread out so it’s all even and bake for one hour. When cool put in a specially marked container so you have it for next time.

Iced coffee, perfected

1 Reply

I first wrote about iced coffee, made using an ice cream base, nearly ten years ago. Since then I’ve (I think) perfected it.

This is ludicrously easy to make if you have an espresso maker, a bit more laborious if it’s only a stove top. The mixture keeps in the fridge for about a week (or at the very least the life of the cream you add but you can also add the cream, if you like, at the mixing stage, or leave it out altogether if you absolutely must). All you do when you want to drink it is add ice cubes to a glass, milk of choice and then a good dollop of the iced coffee mixture. You will need to taste it to make sure it’s right for you.

I make the base mixture quite strong so it goes further and isn’t so tooth-achingly sweet.

This is what you need and just mix all together and store in the fridge until needed.

397g Waitrose Condensed Milk (for those, like me, who boycott Nestle, it’s great to know that Waitrose now makes its own condensed milk and it’s cheaper than Nestle’s)

400 ml of espresso, you can go higher if you want.

80ml or so of double of single cream, see what you have in.

A pinch of ground coffee