peppermint patties - we should cocoa

... I used to work in an office where, for some unknown reason, it became tradition that if you went away anywhere be it through work or just on holiday, you had to bring back some local confectionary... I think part of the challenge was to find the most obscure sweets you could get your hands on... many a time there would be bowls of bizarre Congolese ant-flavoured boiled sweets laying around the office for weeks before the next batch of candy arrived...

... my absolute favourite foreign confection is the York Peppermint Patty... I simply adore anything with a mint and chocolate combination from the simple mint choc-chip ice cream to the creamy soft after-eight mint... and the peppermint patty with it's dark, bitter and crisp chocolate shell, revealing that firm yet yielding minty fresh cream underneath has always been a joy to me... we have similar sweets here in the UK such as the Kendal Mint Cake and Fry's Mint Bars but none of them really compare to those wonderful foil-wrapped coins... ok, i'm not suggesting for one minute that these are a luxury chocolate in any way but as candy goes, they are, for me, perfection...

peppermint patties
i hunted high and low across my cookbooks and the internet for an original recipe but there wasn't a conclusive one I could find so this is a combination of a few including the brilliant Lorraine Pascal... I have also used some green food colouring (can you tell...) because i'm entering these into Chele and Choclette's We Should Cocoa challenge whose theme this month is green... of all things... oh and I think they're appropriate for today for some reason too...

300g icing sugar
125g condensed milk
2 tsp peppermint extract (but do judge for yourself... I like it nice and minty)
green food colouring

100g dark chocolate - melted

- place the sugar, milk, food colouring (if using) and peppermint in a bowl and mix together into a ball

- dust the work surface with icing sugar and roll out the peppermint dough ball to roughly 5mm thick and cut out as many disk shapes as you like using any shape you desire

- place the cut-out patties onto a sugar dusted baking sheet and place it in the fridge for 30 mins

- melt the chocolate and let it cool slightly, take the mint patties out of the fridge and dip them into the chocolate, half a disk at a time and then refrigerate again for 30 mins... you can either leave them like this or dip the non-chocolate side so they are fully covered.

eat and of course, enjoy!

mothers day marmalade cake

I posted this recipe a year or so back but I wanted to dedicate something lovely to my grandma Jennie for mothers day...

My grandma Jennie was not a great cook but she was an excellent baker.  I have many fond memories of spending time in the kitchen, in her house in Hull, the air thick with the aroma of cakes baking in the hot oven. My favourite was her marmalade cake, it’s nothing fancy and it’s so simple to make, all mums and kids can make this together, yet it really is a knock-out cake; light, moist and fluffy and a great way to use up some of those fancy marmalades you may have lurking in the back of the cupboard.

The other thing that I particularly love about this cake is that it was one of the first cakes my grandma taught her daughter, my mum, how to bake and in turn my mum taught me how to bake it, I even have the original, hand-written recipe tucked into one of my cookery books, so for me, it truly is a celebration of the greatness of mothers.

Mother’s Day Marmalade Cake

For the cake

9oz self raising flour

3oz ground almonds

8oz margarine

8oz sugar

4 eggs

2 tablespoons hot water

2 desert spoons (4oz) marmalade


- pre heat the oven to 170c (150c-fan)
- place all the ingredients into a bowl and whisk it up till it’s light and fluffy
- pour it into a loaf tin lined with greased proof paper in a long strip down the middle
- bake for 45 mintes but check after 35 as it turns golden very quickly
- set aside on a wire rack to cool

-        

For the icing

227g cream cheese at room temp

227g mascarpone

1 teaspoon orange extract

115g icing sugar

360ml whipping cream or double cream


- in a large bowl, mix the cream cheeses together until smooth, add the orange extract and
sugar, gently mix again and then add the whipping cream and whip the whole lot together until thick


- smooth it onto the top of the cake and decorate with some candied orange shreds


i'm entering this into the brilliant new AlphaBakes Challenge set alternately by Ros at The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes.  The challenge letter this month is of course 'M'

eat and of course, enjoy!

green vegetable soup

... yesterday it was Spring... you don't have to take my word for it but all the signs were there... the vast bank daffodils at the front of the cottage, generously planted by a previous owner, are opening in all their golden, fried egg glory... the sun (remember him...?) shone all day... it was actually hot... the little birds are just so playful that their cacophony of song is almost too much to bare and The Viking and I finally spent a full eight hours in the garden... lots of tidying... seeding... moving stuff around... all glorious...

... today it was cold and grey and quite dull... but I had an idea to bring back a little taste of that wonderful Spring day... it's a very simple soup that took all of 20 minutes to create but it's that simplicity which makes this soup so phenomenally tasty... I promise that this will not only lift your spirits but it will make you feel a little healthier too...

green vegetable soup
1 medium onion - finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic - finely sliced
a large pinch of fresh thyme
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 bunches of watercress (or one of those salad packs)
a handful of fine green beans - chopped
2 stalks of celery - finely chopped (with leaves if possible)
a quarter savoy cabbage or spring greens - chopped
a cup of frozen garden peas
2 pints of good quality vegetable stock

- melt some butter and a little olive oil in a heavy soup pan

- add the onion, celery, garlic, thyme and fennel seeds and saute gently on a medium heat until the veg are beginning to soften and turn translucent

- add the rest of the veg, cover the pot and sweat the veg for 5 mins

- now add the stock and simmer for 15 mins then serve piping hot!

and here's a little reminder to watch me on TV... this Thursday... Baking Mad with Eric Lanlard - Channel 4 at 12:30pm...

...eat and of course, enjoy!

strawberry champagne jam cake

... The Viking has this ridiculous account with one of the banks here in the UK that's supposed to be 'premium' ... I think it means they're supposed to look after you a little bit better than with just the regular account but what it actually means is that if anything should go wrong they will send you a hamper to say sorry...

... one little bit of fraud later and we've been eating strange chocolates and funny little pots of pickled cheese since January... it also came with a little jar of strawberry and champagne jam and if i'm honest we're not massive jam eaters in the house so I was looking for something I could do with this pot and I recalled all the marmalade cakes i'd seen around recently and thought i'd apply the same principle here...

strawberry champagne jam cake with a seven minute frosting
this is a very easy cake to make, with very little fuss... as long as you don't care about it rising too much... the cake is tooth-achingly sweet however so if you need an instant hit of sweet sugary wonderfulness then this is the cake for you... you may need to eat an apple or even a lemon after eating a slice of this... just a warning!

for the cake
8oz self-raising flour
4oz butter
2oz sugar (although I really feel you could reduce this)
225g jar of strawberry and champagne jam
2 large eggs
a little milk to slacken

for the seven minute frosting
1 cup of white sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla

- pre heat the oven to 160C

- place all the cake ingredients into a bowl and whisk together until light and frothy, use a little milk to slacken the mixture

- pour into a pre-greased cake tin... i used a 10inch round but I should have used a slightly smaller one, or even a loaf tin would work

- bake for 40mins or until golden, remove from oven and let it cool on a wire rack

- to make the frosting, place the sugar, water and cream of tartar in a saucepan and melt over a gentle heat until clear and bubbling

- whisk the egg-whites and vanilla into soft peaks, then slowly pour the hot liquid onto the egg whites... and now whisk continuously for no less than seven minutes until firm peaks are formed

- swirl the icing onto the cake and then eat and of course, enjoy!

the start of a new sourdough journey

... in November last year, not long after my dear Lucretia died, the very lovely Lucy who writes the excellent New Zealand based KitchenMaid blog, sent me a packet of NZ Country Sourdough Culture... it was a beautiful gesture, one that I am ashamed to say left neglected in the envelope it came in, tucked away on a shelf in the new kitchen... in fact i had totally forgotten about it until last week when I started to count my books for this months random recipes challenge...

... it's such a glorious spring day here today in Belleau that I thought the sourdough and I were finally ready to start a new journey... so I sterilised my larger kilner jar, got out the 8 pages of instructions that came with the starter and so begins the journey...

... excuse the pun but i'm afraid it's a bit of a non-starter really... there's not much to say other than I added 240ml of warm water to the dried culture and then topped it up with 120g white flour and stirred ... and now I have to leave it for 24 hours before I can do much else...

... my starter is created by a wonderful chap called Nev who is based in Hutt City in NZ... i've done a bit of an internet search and can't find much about him although he does say in the instructions that he makes all kinds of different sourdough cultures from the classic San Francisco starter to an old world Austrian... but i'm sure you can do some research of your own... i'll keep you abreast of activities and steps and if you want to create a starter of your own without a ready made culture, and I suggest you do... think of the fun we'll have... you can always follow my original journey with Lucretia...

....I should have some lovely bread to show you by next weekend!

the secret food urchin larder - talking italian

as you know, dear reader, I am not one for doing a review but I had such a wonderful evening last night I thought I should share it with you... apologies for the dreadful photo's...

... imagine, if you will, the fusion of two of the worlds best and most handsomest food bloggers... no, not in THAT way... do get your filthy minds out of the gutter... but in a culinary way.... the bringing together of the brain, brawn and beauty of James Ramsden, founder of The Secret Larder supperclub, author of the exquisite Small Adventures In Cooking, extraordinary chef and all-round nice guy... and the shiny domed cranium of ubercool Danny Kingston aka the Food Urchin, pork lover extrodinaire... no, not that kind... again with the smut... and food enthusiast... imagine them then, together in a room... cooking for me...

... well there were perhaps a couple of dozen other people but who cares about them when you have da boys acookin' for me! ...he said in his best fake Italian accent...

... tucked neatly into his surprising capacious, beautifully vintage-styled flat in deepest Holloway we ate our way through the red, green and white wave of Italian theming at its culinary best... everything is done in a very rustic, yet chic way... you know it's home-cooked because of the very nature of the flat you're sitting in the kitchen and can see the masters at work but the quality of the food presented to us was clearly made with passion and love and was rather bloody good...

...we started with two types of Pizzette, one with a cheese and red-onion topping and the other with anchovy and caper, both delicious in their own way with my preference for the anchovy and caper, which was like a culinary slap in the mouth... the pizzete bases were perfect too...

... we were then offered a bowl of Deep Fried Artichoke Hearts with Chilli and Garlic Mayonaise to share and these were really rather wonderful... the crisp batter was enchantingly light and revealed a wonderfully molten heart...

... our main dish was a classic Italian stew, Bollito Misto served with lentils and salsa verde, the stew is a very rustic dish made up of stewed meats which included sausage, beef brisket, tongue and pancetta and as you can imagine it was packed with wonderful flavour... the lentils making an earthy and welcoming accompaniment.

... our meal was rounded off with a stunning Rhubarb zabaglione, its frothy, creamy top yealding to a wonderfully sharp-sweet rhubarb... we ended up picking the glasses up and drinking from them they were so good!

coffee was served with some very naughty chocolate florentines with candied peel and our big bellies were rubbed with glee...

... if you've never been to a supperclub I highly recommend you find one in your neighbourhood... there is something so delightful about being in someones home as they cook for you... and it's nice to be surrounded by people who are all obviously food lovers... we had a beautiful night...

James runs The Secret Larder Supperclub fortnightly and information can be found on his blog.

eat and of course, enjoy!

Lincolnshire Poacher Red Scones - tea time treats

i do love a cheese scone... if you think of the normal, everyday sweet scone as a relatively dull vehicle for fabulous things such as jam and cream... the cheese scone is its tarted up younger sister... oh she's no toasted teacake, don't get me wrong... but she is a little more fancy and allows many a topping to be carried on her lofty cut-side...

the fine and rather handsome chaps at Lincolnshire Poacher live just over a hill from Belleau and it's wonderful to see them doing so well and on such an international scale... their traditional Poacher Cheese, which I think can be described as halfway between a cheddar and a parmesan, is now recognised as a British Classic and the variations available range from a Vintage, which has a proper kick to it, to a Smoked... I am using their Lincolnshire Red which is their only vegetarian cheese and it has a lovely Red Leicester quality to it...

Lincolnshire Red Scones
these scones are made for me to eat but i'm entering them into Karen and Kate's brilliant Tea Time Treats bloggers challenge...

12oz self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp salt
a nice healthy grind of black pepper
2oz butter
6oz cheese - grated
2 large eggs
6 tbsp milk

- pre-heat the oven to 200C

- sieve the flour into a large bowl, add the baking powder, mustard powder and salt, mix it up and then add the butter and work this through with your finger tips until you have a light crumbly texture

- add the cheese and stir it again

- add the eggs to the milk and beat together, then pour this into the flour and cheese mixture and bring it together with a knife until it forms a dough ball.

- flatten the dough out on a floured surface to the thickness of about 3cm (i usually do it to half the depth of the cutter) and then cut the scones out.  I used a smallish cutter and got 10 scones.

- brush the top of each scone with milk and then sprinkle a little more grated cheese on top

- bake for 15-20 mins or until risen and golden

eat and of course, enjoy!

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i suppose I need to tell you that I haven't been paid for writing this post, i'm just very keen, as you know, to promote local producers... however if the fine boys insist on sending me cheese after reading this, who am I to turn them down?