muesli flapjacks

I wanted to make a cereal bar - something that Pete could take with him cycling, and I could eat after swimming, for an energy hit.  They’re so ridiculous expensive to buy, and we have muesli sitting in the cupboard uneaten.

I googled a bit, and came up with this:

I soaked the contents of a 250g bag of dried tropical fruit in about 5 tablespoons of apple juice for about half an hour.  Then I whizzed them up in the food processor.

Put 330g of muesli in a bowl, and melted 225g of marg in the microwave.  Added marg and fruit to the muesli and stirred it well.

Put it in a 7″ square silicon cake pan, and baked at gas 5 for about 40 minutes.  Cooled in the pan, scoring it into bars when it was warm.

They are very nice but not quite the right texture - they need to be a bit stickier, but I don’t want to add syrup, so I shall have a mull.

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pineapple upside down cake

This always seems to me like a very 80s thing, and indeed I got the recipe from a cookbook printed in 1977 (The Dairy Book of Home Cooking).

We had half a pineapple left from making pork and pineapple, and decided an upside down cake would be a good thing to do with it.  It was already chopped up, and I decided against the glace cherries too, but it was jolly nice nonetheless.

Take 2oz of soft brown sugar and 2oz butter, and melt together in a pan.  Tip the resultant gloop into the bottom of a greased, 20cm round cake tin.  Put the pineapple on top.

Put 8oz self raising flour, 1 tsp of vanilla essence, 2 eggs, 4oz butter and 4oz caster sugar into the food processor and blitz.  I guess you could use a food mixer - cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla essence, fold in flour.

Transfer it to the cake tin, bake at 180/gas 4 for about 1hr 10 minutes.

Very retro :)

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breakfast today

We were bored with porridge, we had four black bananas, and some milk that needed using up, and so …

I whipped up a double batch of my tried and trusty banana muffin recipe - I was a bit lazy, and put everything in the Magimix rather than do it separately.  Also I left out the sugar, and put in a couple of dessert spoons of honey, because the bananas were very ripe and I thought they’d be quite sweet enough.

They were.  They were gorgeous.  I’m ashamed to say that we ate four each for breakfast [oink].  There are four left, and I put the remaining batter in two tubs in the freezer, so we can have fresh muffins for breakfast again, *providing* I remember to take the batter out the night before.

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making good use …

… of the oven. I’m trying to cook in a different style - more on the hob, and less lighting of the big oven unless I can use it for more than one thing. I have a decent oven in the microwave, so I use that more now as well.

We were supposed to be going out last night, but one of the cats is unwell, and we didn’t want to leave her. Of course, we had nothing planned for supper, so we pulled the last tub of chilli from the freezer (must make some more!), and as it was frozen solid, I set it in a small cast iron casserole in a low oven to thaw.

I took advantage of the time needed to do this to make brown rice to accompany it - brown takes a lot longer than basmati, and we are rarely organised enough, or unhungry enough, to wait for it! I cooked it with shallot and cumin seeds, and it was very nice, although a little crunchier than I’d have liked.

As the oven was on, I took the black bananas and turned them into a couple of banana cakes - this time with chocolate buttons, rather than sultanas. Then Pete rolled out the last of the pastry from our impulse mince pie frenzy earlier this week (I didn’t tell you about that - I took the organic mincemeat from the jar and mixed it up with some bourbon :) … and we made jam tarts! I don’t think I’ve ever made jam tarts before. We used lingonberry jam, and gooseberry - sadly, and shamefully, the morello cherry, and greengage and almond, had gone furry. I shan’t let that happen again, particularly as the jam tarts were so yummy. Not, I’ll grant, the most elegant of presentations, but still delicious.

So that was a good haul for the oven. It’s going on again today to roast and glaze a lump of cooked gammon that came out of the freezer - that’ll do for lunch this week - and a slow roast belly pork with sweet potato mash and poached fennel for tonight’s dinner.

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duck soup

photo by Eberman @ Flickr

I boiled up the duck carcass - Pete was a hero and stripped it down afterwards; it’s a job I hate. A surprising amount of meat came off it.  And there was, of course, a lot of duck stock.

I had deliberately cooked extra veg with the duck on Monday (carrot and leek in vegetable bouillon, since you ask) and had saved that in a box in the fridge.  I put that, the rest of the fresh carrots (they needed using up) and a leek in the Magimix and whizzed them up.  I sautéd this veg mix gently in my big soup pot for about 15 minutes, then poured the stock on top and left it overnight.  I added a little of the remaining duck meat, shredded very fine.

Put some butter beans to soak in water overnight, and then put them in the stock pot this morning, set it over a very low light, and it was ready for lunch.

We had it with some rye bread, which was utterly gorgeous. Just as well, as the stuff took three days to make … (not full time, obviously, but toing and froing with starters and stuff).

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a brace of banana cakes

Using up: bananas

We had a lot of bananas, so I decided to make some banana cake.  And then I realised we had even more bananas than that, so I thought I’d make two, and freeze one.  Better than letting the bananas go to waste, I thought.

So I duly made two - it really is no more work than making one, except you have to peel more bananas.  And as I took them out of the oven (they smelled heavenly) I thought of my new next door neighbour, who has had about as bad a year as one can have.  So when they’d cooled a little, I wrapped one in a tea towel, and took it round for her and her two boys (she has a baby daughter too, but she might be a bit small for banana cake!)

Recipe (for one cake):

4oz butter or margarine
8oz self raising flour
6oz golden caster sugar, plus a little more if you like
2 eggs
1 generous tsp vanilla extract
2 medium, or 3 small bananas

Peel the bananas, and mash them with a fork.  An old plate is best for this, I find.

Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla extract.  Add the banana gloop and stir in.  Add the flour and stir in.  This is the most ridiculously easy cake recipe I ever saw!

Put into a greased* 2lb loaf tin.  Sprinkle, if you like, with some golden caster sugar, to give a nice glaze.

Bake for 40 minutes at gas 4, then turn the oven down to gas 2 for 30 minutes.

It probably does freeze well, but I can’t say for sure, as I gave away the spare :)

*I always use the precut liners from Lakeland - I’m a lousy baker, so I like every little bit of help going.

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let them eat cake

Using up: half a lemon, dried cherries

I fancied a cake - both making one, and consuming it.  We don’t have them often, but last night I decided I would.  And it would use up the half a lemon that was in the fridge :)

This is based on a Nigella recipe, and works really well.

Cream 250g marge or butter, then beat in 200g golden caster sugar.  You really do need a food mixer for this - or a very strong arm.

Sift 210g of self raising flour, and 90g of plain (or just use plain with 3tsp baking powder - less faff).

Add three eggs to the butter/sugar mix, one at a time, following each with a tablespoon of flour (does that make sense?).  Then fold in the rest of the flour.  Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

The recipe says 4 tablespoons of milk at this stage, but I don’t bother measuring - just pour it in slowly until you get a soft, dropping consistency.  Then I added a handful of dried sour cherries (I bought a big bag full in Costco, and forgot about them), and the juice of the aforementioned half lemon.

Put in a loaf tin, and ust the top with more caster sugar if you like - it gives a nice shiny sugary finish. Bake at gas 3 / 170° for an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Tip: I buy loaf tin liners from Lakeland - I’m not very good at cake, and this means the beasts emerge from the tin with no hassle.  Well worth it, IMV.

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carrot muffins

Using up: some extremely tired carrots.

This recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, and I will type it up for you when I get a moment (ho ho).  She adds a frosting made of Phildelphia cream cheese, icing sugar and lime juice, but we never bother - far too sweet for us.

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nutty brown bread

Soda type breads are a great way to use up old milk, and don’t need yeast.

This recipe comes from an old book of mine entitled the Irish Baking Book - no sign of it on Amazon or anywhere else, but it has a lot of recipes from my childhood in it. I have no idea why this is called “nutty”, but it is gorgeous nonetheless.

We had it with scrambled eggs, the last of the mushrooms, and bacon for Sunday brunch, and then used what was left for lunch today - I had it with egg mayo, and Pete did something with cheese and a kabanos sossidge. Lets not go there.

50g oats
175g wholewheat flour
75g strong white (bread) flour
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 heaped tsp baking powder
250ml buttermilk (if you don’t have it, just use half and half milk/yogurt)

Put the oatmeal, flours, sugar and baking powder into a bowl and mix together.  Add the buttermilk.  Mix everything with a wooden spoon, and knead slightly (or do what I do - Kitchenaid with a dough hook!)

Place the dough in a small greased loaf tin, and bake at 200C/gas 6 for 30-35 minutes.

The recipe says “eat withiin 24 hours” - you’ll have trouble keeping it that long!

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pan gallego

This is a Spanish bread from Galicia.  I made it to use up an ounce of fresh yeast left over from the weekend’s foccacia …

350g strong white bread flour
115g wholemeal bread flour
2 tsp salt (I think this was a bit too much myself)
2 tbsp olive oil
20g fresh yeast
275ml lukewarm water
2 tbsp each of pumpkin and sunflower seeds
1 tbsp polenta

Sprinkle a baking sheet with the polenta.

Combine flours and salt in a large bowl.

Mix the yeast with the water, add to the flours with the yeast liquid and the olive oil, mix to a firm dough, then turn out onto a floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.  (hint: food mixer with dough hook.  You know it makes sense).

Place in an oiled bowl, cover with oiled clingfilm, leave to rise for a couple of hours.

Knock back, turn out onto a floured surface, knead in the seeds, and rest the dough (and yourself) for five minutes.

Form it into a round ball, make a twist in the top to form a cap, and place it on the baking tray.  Cover with a large bowl ( I presume this is to constrain the shape) and leave to rise for 45 minutes or so.

Then, in a pre-heated gas 7 oven, place a roasting tray with about 1/2″ of warm water in it, on the bottom of the oven.  Put the bread in above it, cook for ten minutes and then remove the water.  Cook for a further 20-30 minutes (I found 20 was fine). Cool on a wire rack.

The polenta gives it a really nice crunchiness.

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