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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!

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.

Chocolate Chestnut Rum Roulade

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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)

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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!