Clootie Dumpling

Clootie dumpling is a traditional Scottish dish, something similar to how you'd probably imagine an old traditional Christmas pudding to be. It gets its name from the cloth or 'cloot' that it's boiled in. I say it's similar to Christmas pudding, but actually it's a bit lighter - not quite so packed with fruit, and no alcohol in it.
In my family at least (and from the web searches I've done, we're not the only ones), this dish is customarily served at birthday celebrations. I remember as a child, wrapping up 20p pieces (and the occasional £1 coin) in tinfoil, to be added to the mixture before it went in the cloth. As we all got older, the coins were no longer added, but we still had the dumpling.
D had never encountered a dumpling before he met my family, and has never had one of his own. So this year, for his birthday, I thought I'd make him one.
I have my Gran's recipe for it, but it seems to be quite different from the other ones I found while doing the web searches, in that it doesn't contain the suet that almost all of the other recipes do.

So how did my first attempt at making a dumpling on my own turn out? Well, the comments from D were very favourable, and I thought it tasted OK. Will I make it again? Definitely.

Recipe
The measurements here are given in cups. The cup I use for this isn't the standard American cup, but an actual teacup. They're almost the same, but the teacup is a little bit smaller. You could probably get away with using the American cup.

2 cups plain flour, plus extra for the cloth.
1 cup breadcrumbs
3oz (85g) sugar
3oz (85g) block margarine (I used butter and it didn't seem to do any harm)
1 tsp mixed spice
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp treacle
1 cup sultanas
1 cup currants (I didn't have any, so I used raisins instead)
1 apple, grated
Pinch of salt
1 cup milk
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 clean largish cotton/linen cloth, fairly tight weave.
String.
A helper is also useful.

Rub the margarine into the flour.
Add the breadcrumbs, sugar, spices and salt. Mix thoroughly.
Add the dried fruit, and stir through.
At this point, get a large pan of water boiling. Put a heatproof plate upside down in the bottom of the pan. Also boil a kettle of water.
Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the milk. Pour this over the dry ingredients, then add the treacle and the grated apple. mix thoroughly until well combined.
Now you need to scald the cloth - I did this by putting it in the sink and pouring the boiling water from the kettle over it. It then needs to be wrung out so that it's wet/damp but not soaking. Be careful, it's still full of boiling water. Wear at least one pair of rubber gloves - two if they'll fit.
Spread the cloth out on a surface (if the mixture isn't too runny) or in a bowl (if it is). Sprinkle the cloth with flour.
Now, spoon the dumpling mixture into the middle of the floured cloth. Here comes the bit where a helper might be useful. You need to gather up the cloth and tie it with string. Leave a bit of room for the mixture to expand, but make sure that the string is tied tightly.
Now, place the dumpling into your large pan of boiling water. Let it simmer/boil for three hours.
Before the three hours are up, preheat your oven to about 150C. It needs to be heated by the time the dumpling is ready. You'll also need to have an ovenproof plate ready, preferably slightly warmed up.
When the 3 hours are up, remove the dumpling from the pot. I dipped it in cold water at this point, but I'm not sure if you need to do this. Untie the string and start to peel the cloth away. when you have enough of the top (which will become the bottom) exposed, put the plate on top and turn the whole lot upside down. Peel away the rest of the cloth.
It doesn't look very appetizing at this point. Now, put the plate and dumpling into the oven an leave it for anything between 15 and 30 minutes. This is when the skin dries off and darkens.

Serve with custard, cream, or both.

Pumpkin Lemon and Poppy Seed Muffins

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. I have been cooking, it's just that I just never seemed to manage to post it.
With Hallowe'en just passed, I realised that I've never cooked with pumpkin. I haven't even used one to make a pumpkin lantern. Well, here is Scotland, when i was a girl, we didn't use pumpking for lanterns, we used turnips. Anyway, in the supermarked last week, when I saw a lonely little edible pumpkin, I thought I should take it home and make something out of it.
So I did. I browsed my cookbooks, a number of blogs, and a couple of fod magazine sites, before settling on this recipe for a pumpkin, poppy seed and lemon loaf from Delicious magazine.

I didn't actually bake it as a loaf, I made individual muffins. The full recipe made 12. I cut down the sugar a tiny bit - 125g instead of 150g, and they were still sweet enough for me. I didn't need all of the milk - only 2 tablespoons instead of the 4 called for. This may have been because the pumpkin was quite watery. If I do this again (and as there's three-quarters of the pumpkin left, there will be at least one more sweet and one savoury recipe made) I'd probably cook the pureed pumpkin down a bit to get rid of the liquid.

Bere Bannocks

After my two attempts at making beer bread with my stash of beremeal, I thought it time to try something more traditional. When I picked up the flour, it came with a bunch of recipes, so I picked out one of the ones for bannocks, and went with that.
The recipe calls for the bannocks to be baked on a girdle, or griddle. I remember my gran having one of these. This is not the same as the ridged grill pan which is more normally meant by a griddle. A girdle is large, heavy, round or square, and completely flat. However, not having one of these, I substituted a non-stick frying pan. It seemed to work.

Recipe:
70 grams bere meal
70 grams self-raising flour
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 rounded teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Water, approximately 150ml

Mix the beremeal, flour, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and salt in a large bowl.
Lightly oil the griddle or frying pan and place over a lowish heat. You want it to be hot by the time the dough is ready to be baked.
Make a well in the middle and add the oil.
Gradually add enough water to make into a soft dough - you may need less or more depending on your flour.
Turn onto a floured surface and shape into a round, approximately 3/4 inch thick.
Place on the griddle and bake for between 5 and 10 minutes a side over a medium heat.

Beer Bere Bread

When I was in Orkney on holiday this summer, I finally managed to pay a visit to Barony Mills. This is the only remaining working water mill in Orkney. The grain ground at this mill is a very old variety of barley, called bere. It's usually used to make bannocks - there'll usually be one in the breadbasket in Orcadian restaurants.
Anyway, while at the mill I picked up the recipe leaflet and a bag of beremeal. The leaflet contains recipes for everything from the traditional bannocks (multiple variations) to beremeal chapatis. However, I never really got round to trying anything.
Until I came across a recipe for beer bread on Farmgirl Fare. Now, bere also used to be used to brew ale, so what could be more appropriate? I believe there are some beers still being brewed from bere (one for sure on Shetland, and one possibly on Orkney), but being unable to get hold of any, I had to make do with what I could get get. On my partner's recommendation, I used Hoegaarden.
So how did the bread turn out? Well, not too bad, but I'm not entirely happy with it. I think it'll take a few more tries before I come up with something I'm happy with. But I've got most of a bag of bere left to play with.

Recipe:
Although it didn't turn out quite right for me, I'll still include the recipe I used this time.

250 grams plain white flour
120 grams beremeal
50 grams white bread flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
330 ml beer
30 ml water

Preheat the oven to 190C.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
Slowly stir in the beer and water, and mix until just combined.
Spread the dough in a 1 pound (8 inch by 4 inch) loaf pan.
Bake for around 60 minutes.

Double Chocolate Day

There's a guy that Duncan works with, P, who's allergic to eggs. I used to feel guilty every time Duncan took some of my baking to work - it all had eggs in it, and P couldn't have any of it. So, Amazon to the rescue. I found a book on baking wthout eggs (Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro), and started baking a few things from it, which seemed to be fairly well received. But then I sort of stopped baking as often, and things didn't go to work with Duncan.

However, P recently helped me out with sourcing a good price on my Dad's birthday present. He's good at that kind of thing, among all the other stuff he does to help people out, and I figured he deserved a little thank you. So I dug out the egg-free baking book, and whipped up a batch of the chocolate muffins that had gone down so well before. Apparently they went down pretty well this time too - not just with P, but with everybody else there too. So well, that I'm making another batch this weekend. Although, for variety, I plan on using Green & Black's Maya Gold cocoa, instead of their plain cocoa powder. Hopefully that should give a slight orange spice taste to them.

As the chocolate muffins were going to work, I thought we might need something else chocolatey to stay behind. This time, it was out with the not-quite-so-bad-for-you baking book (One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal), and into the chapter on brownies, where I picked a simple plain chocolate brownie.

Recipes:

Chocolate Sour Cream Cupcakes
(Adapted from Bakin' Without Eggs by Rosemarie Emro)
225 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
225 grams sugar
250 ml sour cream
125 ml vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
125 ml soda water

Preheat oven to 350F/180C Placu muffin cases in muffin tin.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add the sugar and mix through.
In a jug, beat together the sour cream, vegetable oil, vanilla and soda water.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and stir until completely mixed.
Divide between muffin cases.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.


Easy Cocoa Brownies
(Adapted from One Smart Cookie by Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter -- melted
200 grams caster sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules -- dissolved in 1 teaspoon water
140 grams plain flour
50 grams cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8x8 inch pan with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar until well combined.
Add the egg, egg whites, vanilla and coffee. Stir until thoroughly blended and smooth.
In another bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
Add the dry ingredients, together with any optional additions, to the egg mixture and stir until just combined. Do not overmix.
Spread the batter in the pan. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until the edge is starting to pull away but the middle is still slightly soft. Do not overbake.
Cool in the pan. Cuts into 16 pieces.

Lemon Ice Cream & Blueberry Sauce

You know those kitchen gadgets that you get, thinking you'll use but which end up just taking up space? I've had two of those. The bread maker, which did get used a few times but ended up acting as a shelf, got passed on to Duncan's mum. Who uses it a lot. The other gadget is, of course, an ice-cream maker. This was given to me by my brother for Christmas a year or so ago. I made one batch of ice cream from the recipes that came with it, then the bowl got put into storage in the freezer, the motor went into a cupboard, and I never used it again.

Well, until now. I don't remember which blog I got the link from, but this recipe for Cornstarch Ice Cream from the New York Times seemed like a good reason to get the machine out.

I pretty much followed the basic recipe, making the honey-jam variation, but using lemon curd in place of the jam. To be honest, this was so good that I would have been quite happy to pour the hot custard straight into a bowl and eat it. But I had to make do with sharing the scraping of the pan and jug with Duncan, after the bulk of it had gone into the machine to freeze.

The machine makes a very soft ice-cream, so one it had done its work, the ice-cream was transferred to a tub and into the freezer to firm up some more. And I started trying to think of what to put with it. I had some blueberries left in the fridge (from last week's non-blogged blueberry muffins), so made a warm blueberry sauce to spoon over.

And yes, I do have a number of other variations of this recipe I'd like to try. But maybe I should finish the tub of this that's still in the freezer first.

Recipes:

Lemon Ice Cream
1 carton double cream (284ml size) made up to 475ml with whole milk
Pinch salt
60g caster sugar
60ml honey
100ml whole milk
3 tablespoons cornflour/cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80ml, I didn't weigh it) lemon curd

Mix cream/milk mixture, salt, sugar and honey in a pan. Heat until it begins to steam.
Meanwhile, mix remaining milk with the cornflour until smooth.
Once the mixture in the pan is steaming, add the milk/cornflour mixture.
Cook, stirring, until it starts to thicken.
reduce heat to low and stir for about 5 minutes until thick.
Stir in vanilla.
Remove from heat and leave to cool slightly. When still slightly warm, stir in lemon curd.
When cold, transfer to an ice-cream machine and follow manufacturer's instructions.


Blueberry Sauce
100g blueberries
5g caster sugar
2 teaspoons water

Combine all ingredients in a pan. Cover and cook over a low heat until the blueberries have burst and you have a thick sauce.

Venison with Red Onion & Cherry 'Chutney'

Yes, I did bake this week. I made these Carrot, Apple & Honey Muffins from Baking Bites. But I didn't make many modifications to the recipe (except for my usual conversion to metric), so I'm not going to repeat it here. They're very good. Although I might up the amount of carrots next time.
So, what goodies did I make that I consider worth sharing? Well, tonight's dinner was venison steaks with new potatoes, baby corn and a red onion and cherry chutney. Now, normally I make this recipe with cranberries (so it's normally a red onion and cranberry chutney), but this week I couldn't get any. So I had to improvise, and instead of the frozen cranberries I got frozen cherries. I was a bit worried about whether it would turn out, but I needn't have been. It seemed to meet with approval, so here it is. While I served it with venison, it would probably go quite well with duck.

Recipe:
150g frozen cranberries or cherries
1/2 green chilli, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 red onion, chopped
50 ml red wine
100 ml vegetable stock
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons orange juice
1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander

Place all ingredients in a pan. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and the liquid reduced.

Chocolate Gingerbread

No entries for a couple of weeks. Well, I did make some biscotti a few weeks ago, but I've been on holiday, so no baking got done since then. I was in Orkney, where I picked up some interesting flour, bere meal. There was a recipe leaflet to go with it, but I plan on using it a bit differently to the usual savoury scones and bannocks; hopefully I'll talk about that in a week or so.
Anyway, this week I was in the mood for cake. Thinking of Nigella's chocolate gingerbread, I thought I'd try a chocolate variation of the buttermilk gingerbread in my last post. Very simply, it's the same recipe, with the addition of some melted good quality dark chocolate. The method's also a bit different, more akin to a brownie. How did it turn out? Well, I think I had my oven a bit hot or left in it a little too long because the crumb's a little bit loose, but it tastes delicious.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams dark chocolate (Green & Black's, 70%)
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, melt together the butter and chocolate.
In a bowl or jug, beat together the sugar and egg.
Once the butter and chocolate are melted, allow to cool slightly then beat in the egg and sugar.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 20 minutes.

Buttermilk Gingerbread

Another recipe from a blog Baking Bites this time. It sounded delicious, and I haven't made gingerbread for a while, so I thought I'd give it a try. It does call for one ingredient I don't normally have in my cupboard: molasses. I suppose I could have substituted black treacle, but I decided it would probably be better to just hunt some down. I think it was probably worth it. I did make one main change to the recipe, substituting some of the plain flour with wholemeal. I'm going to make this again, but I want to try a chocolate version.

Recipe:
150 grams plain flour
60 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
50 grams unsalted butter
80 grams sugar
1 egg
100 grams molasses
110 millilitres skim milk

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line an 8 inch square cake pan with non stick baking parchment.
Mix together the flours, spices and bicarbonate of soda in a medium bowl
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
Add the molasses and milk. Mix well.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Mix until smooth.
Pour into the batter into the pan.
Bake for about 25 minutes.

Chunky Peanut & Raisin Cookies

I came across this recipe on Julie van Rosendaal's blog. It reminded me of a recipe of Nigella Lawson's which I'd made a few times and really liked. So I had to try this one. With a few changes. Did it work? Well, there's no picture on this post becuse I can't take one - no cookies left!

Recipe:
125 grams dry roasted peanuts
125 grams sugar
3 tablespoons peanut butter
1 egg white
2 tablespoons skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
70 grams plain flour
70 grams plain wholemeal flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
55 grams seedless raisins

Preheat oven to 325F/170C. Line baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
Place the peanuts in a food processor with a few spoonfuls of sugar. Pulse until the nuts are coarsely chopped.
In a large bowl, beat together the remaining sugar with the peanut butter, egg white, milk and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda.
Add the remaining ingredients gradually, a bit of each at a time, stirring between each addition until combined.
Roll the dough into balls and place on the baking trays. Flatten the balls quite well into discs.
Bake for about 15 minutes until pale gold in color.
Makes about 18.

Strawberry Chocolate Cupcakes

Not quite sure what I thought I was doing with these. I came across a reference to Crazy Cake, which is basically an eggless chocolate cake which I think uses the reaction between vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to give the raising effect. Anyway, I can't leave good enough alone, so I made a number of changes to the recipe, throwing in mashed banana as a replacement for some of the vegetable oil, and strawberry jam because, well, it was in the fridge (see Marmalade Cookies), and I thought it might give a hint of something to the cupcakes.
So, how did all this experimentation turn out? Quite well actually. Very soft and fluffy cupcakes, rich enough but not too heavy.

Recipe:
200 grams plain flour
150 grams sugar
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
25 grams cocoa powder (Green & Blacks)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon vinegar
250 millilitres water
50 grams mashed banana
50 grams strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line muffin tin with muffin cases.
Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Mix wet ingredients in a jug.
Add wet ingredients to dry, mixing until smooth.
Divide between muffin cases.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.

Marmalade Cookies

I found a jar of marmalade lurking in the back of the fridge. As toast is a rarity in the house these days, I figured it was a case of either use it up in baking, or throw it away. Luckily, I had this recipe from One Smart Cookie marked as one to try, so this seemed like a good reason to do it.
As usual, I've modified the recipe from volume to metric measurements. How did they turn out? Very well. They have a slightly crisp edge, with a chewy middle. The marmalade is a definite part of the taste, so use one that you like. It might be worth experimenting with different kinds of marmalade too - I may be trying this with a lemon and lime one at some point in the future, although I'll need to change the spicing if I do that.

Recipe:
125 grams porage oats
125 grams plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams demerara sugar
75 grams light muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
125 grams seedless raisins
100 grams orange marmalade

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugars until well combined. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until smooth.
Add the marmalade and mix until combined. Mix in the raisins.
Add the oats and flour alternately, mixing well between each addition.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto the baking sheets. Flatten fairly well.
Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden.
Makes 24.

Apple & Sultana Muffins

These muffins came about as a combination of a couple of things. A while back I was in Starbucks, standing in the queue looking at the muffins, and I had decided on the apple and whatever it was muffin. Unfortunately, someone in front of me got the last one. Then about a week ago I was watching Bill's Food, and he was making a very interesting looking apple, cherry and almond loaf. My original thought was just to make the loaf as muffins. But then I remembered those muffins, and having some sultanas in the cupboard, started making changes to the starting recipe. The almonds went immediately, and the cherries were replaced with the sultanas. I wanted to use part wholemeal flour, but not having self-raising wholemeal, I used a combination of self-raising white and plain wholemeal, adding a little extra baking powder. Not sure I added enough though. I also think I may have either added too much wholemeal flour, or not enough liquid, as the muffins turned out a touch on the dry side. Overall though, the flavour was good. I may tinker with the recipe and try these again.

Recipe:
50 grams porage oats
300 millilitres skim milk
140 grams self-raising flour
100 grams wholemeal flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons honey
1 egg
75 grams light brown sugar
75 grams dried apple
75 grams sultanas

In a large bowl, soak the oats in the milk for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Put 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Sift the flours, baking powder and cinnamon into a medium bowl.
Beat the honey and egg into the soaked oats. Add the sugar and mix well.
Add the flour and dried fruit to the wet ingredients, a few spoonfuls at a time, mixing between each addition until only just combined.
Divide between the muffin cases.
Bake for about 20 minutes, until risen, golden and springy to the touch.

Rhubarb Jelly

No baking this week. There's only room for a certain amount of 'junk food', and we've still got two chocolate eggs to get through. There's also some of the last two batches of cookies (the banana oatmeal raisin and carrot cake ones) in the freezer. for reference, both seem to freeze fairly well. Defrost for an hour or so at room temperature. They may benefit from a short time in a lowish oven, but I haven't tried that.
So, I didn't bake, but I still wanted to make something. So what should I do instead? Our garden contains three clumps of rhubarb. Two are pretty small, but the third is producing quite a lot. So obviously something with that. Some kind of dessert, but something fairly light. I still have some gelatine in my cupboard from the first time I ever tried to use it. That attempt was a success, so why not try again? Rhubarb jelly it was. I went looking for recipes as a starting point, and settled on this one from BBC Good Food. I left out the alcohol, as I don't have any, and reduced the amount of sugar. I have a bottle of rosehip syrup in the cupboard, and thought that might go quite well, so a teaspoon of that made its way in. I don't think it really came through in the finished jelly, but I'd have to make another batch without it in order to find out. Which I just might do.

Recipe (makes 2):
250 grams rhubarb, sliced
200 millilitres water
35 grams caster sugar (40g if not using the syrup)
1 teaspoon rosehip syrup (optional)
2 sheets leaf gelatin (enough to set 300ml liquid)

Soak gelatine in water while rhubarb is cooking.
Put rhubarb, sugar and water in a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. The rhubarb should completely disintegrate.
Remove from the heat.
Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug, gently pressing on the solids to extract most of the juice. You can either discard the solids left in the sieve, or put a couple of teaspoonfuls into the bottom of the jelly glasses and discard the rest. Taste and see.
Pour the liquid back into the pan. Add the rosehip syrup and the gelatine to the pan and stir until the gelatine is fully dissolved.
Pour the jelly into glasses and chill until set.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Bit of an upside-down day today. We went out for lunch to a very nice place just down the road, from us Windlestraw Lodge. The occasion was Dunk celebrating the 'end' of his diet, and the food there was certainly a fit way to mark it. I'm not going to attempt to review it, but if you are in the area and get the chance to eat there, take it.
Since I knew we'd be eating a richer than usual meal, and as we're still eating through the three Easter eggs (and will be for a few weeks yet), I fancied making more healthy-feeling 'hidden fruit or veg' baking. So this week, it's something picked up from Julie van Rosendaal's blog. It's a recipe for Carrot Cake Cookies, for the new edition of One Smart Cookie - which yes, I'll probably be buying, and donating my current copy to someone else (no idea who yet).
Anyway, as usual I made one or two minor changes. First thing, I've started converting recipes to metric measurements. I brought down the amount of sugar slightly, and used hazelnuts instead of walnuts, because I had them in the cupboard and wanted to use them up. The result? Little drops of carrot cake. These are not firm like you'd expect a cookie to be, but more cakey in texture. The nuts I used give just a hint of nuttiness - using more, or using different nuts would still be fine. The overall verdict? Definitely a recipe to keep.

Recipe:
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams caster sugar
75 grams dark muscovado sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100 grams plain flour
100 grams plain wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
150 grams grated carrot
75 grams raisins
25 grams chopped hazelnuts

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars together. Once combined, beat in the egg and vanilla extract.
Add the flour, carrots, raisins and hazelnuts a bit at a time to the wet ingredients, mixing between each addition until just combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheets, flattening each cookie slightly.
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until golden on the edges and just cooked in the middle.

Banana Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

After last week's muffins, I felt like cookies this week. Well, actually my first thought was chocolate, but I figured since it was Easter last week, maybe I should leave the chocolate alone, and go with something else. Something that I could convince myself was vaguely healthy, or at least not totally devoid of any nutritional benefit. So flicking through One Smart Cookie, I found a recipe that fitted the bill: banana oatmeal raisin cookies.
Now, I'm not sure these turned out for me as they're supposed to. Oh, they're definitely delicious, but, as you can see from the picture, not exactly a cookie. To me, a cookie is fairly flat. Maybe with some bumps, but definitely a disc of a fairly even thickness across its area. These did not turn out like that; they pretty much stayed in whatever shape they were when they went into the oven. From the directions in the original recipe, I think they are supposed to spread. So maybe I missed something, maybe my modifications changed things a bit. Whatever happened, I certainly enjoyed the results.

Recipe:
175 grams porage oats
100 grams plain flour
25 grams plain wholemeal flour
125 grams raisins
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50 grams unsalted butter
75 grams caster sugar
75 grams dark muscovado sugar
150 grams mashed banana (about 2 medium bananas)
1 egg white
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350F/175C. Line some baking trays with non-stick baking parchment.
In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flours, raisins, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until combined.
Add the bananas, egg white and vanilla to the butter and sugar. Beat until well blended.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet a couple of tablespoonfuls at a time, mixing each until only just combined.
Drop generous spoonfuls of the dough onto the prepared trays. Flatten the cookies slightly.
Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until the edges are golden and the cookies are just set.

Date & Orange Muffins

I've modified recipes slightly before, but this week was a lot more than I've done in the past. It all started with a recipe from the WeightWatchers magazine, for date and orange muffins. However, that recipe called for use of one of their toffee yogurts, and I wasn't going to use that. They're probably full of artificial sweeteners and thickeners and all sorts of stuff, which may have its place, but that place is not in my baking. Normally I'd just substitute an equivalent, but I figured any other fat-free toffee yogurt would suffer from the same issues. So, I started looking round for other recipes. Why not just pick something different to bake? Well, I don't recall using dates before, so I wanted to try something with them.
Anyway, after a bit of looking around and not coming up with anything, I figured why not just try some more extensive modification than usual? So I did. And here's what I came up with. There isn't quite as much flavour to them as I'd like, but they're certainly acceptable. I'm sure that upping the maple syrup (I didn't actually have the full tablespoonful left in my bottle, and if making them again I'd probably double the amount), and the orange would help matters.

Recipe:
200 grams plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50 grams dark muscovado sugar
50 grams pitted dates, chopped
100 millilitres skim milk
120 grams yoghurt (use a toffee one if you like)
1 egg
30 millilitres sunflower oil
Zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon orange juice

Preheat oven to 180C. Put 10 (8 if you want them bigger) muffin cases into a muffin tray.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
Mix in the sugar.
Whisk together the milk, yoghurt, egg, sunflower oil, maple syrup, orange juice and orange zest.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir very briefly.
Sprinkle the chopped dates into the mixture. Stir very lightly and briefly until ingredients are combined.
Spoon into the muffin cases.
Bake for about 20 minutes until the muffins are risen, golden and firm to the touch.

Chocolate Cake

I was in the mood for chocolate this week, so chocolate cake of some description had to be made. These started out with a recipe for low-fat brownies that I got off the SparkRecipes website. I made quite a few changes to the recipe, either because I wasn't quite sure what was meant, or just because it felt right. I mean, when a recipe of American origination calls for apple sauce, what exactly do they mean? I'm not sure - will things turn out OK if I use that jar of stuff I normally eat with my roast pork? I decided not to risk it, and instead of using the applesauce, I used mashed banana instead. I'm fairly certain that in most baking cases the two things can be interchanged; in a low-fat recipe like this, hey are both intended to do the same job - act as a replacemet for some of the fat. It certainly didn't seem to cause any harm here.
The next substitution I made was the use of self-raising flour instead of the plain plus raising agent. Why? Well, I wasn't sure exactly which agent the original writer meant - does baking soda equal bicarbonate of soda, or baking powder? Normally I'd use bicarbinate of soda. However, with the use of banana instead of apple I also wasn't sure about how dense the mixture would be, so decided to skip the whole problem and just use the self-raising flour.
The result? Not quite a classic brownie, which is supposed to be very dense. This is more of a cake, but a very moist one. Completely delicious.

Recipe:
75 grams self-raising flour,
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used Green & Blacks)
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams dark chocolate (again, Green & Black's, 70%)
20 grams unsalted butter
145 grams light brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg white
6 tablespoons mashed banana
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line an 8 inch square baking tin with non-stick baking parchment.
In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt.
In a large bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt together the chocolate and butter.
In another small bowl, whisk together the egg, egg white, brown sugar and vanilla extract.
When the butter and chocolate have melted, remove from the heat and leave for a minute or so to cool slightly.
Pour the egg and sugar mixture into the melted chocolate, stirring constantly. Add the banana, and mix until well combined.
Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing each addition until combined.
Pour into the baking tin and bake for 20 minutes.

Choca Mocha Mousse

Another dessert recipe this week, from the same magazine as the last one (OK, it's the Weight Watchers magazine). Yes, I made a few changes to it - artificial sweeteners are one of the things I absolutely will not use, and this recipe called for them. So of course I replaced that ingredient with good old sugar.
One of the other things used in this recipe is something I've never used before, so I was a little worried about it - gelatine. For some reason, I have the idea that it's a tricky thing to work with, and if you don't get it exactly right things are going to turn out inedible. Well, I followed the instructions and things worked out just fine. In fact, it looked just like the picture. This was reassuring - when I was pouring the mousse into the glasses, it was quite worrying to see that some of it was nicely foamy, but that there was a good quantity of liquid too. Pouring the liquid in, it settled to the bottom, with the 'foam' sitting on top. I really didn't think it was going to set, but it did, in two distinct and complementary layers - a denser mousse on the bottom, with a lighter one on the top. Very nice, and one to make again. I'm tempted to try variations, but there's that fear of it all going so wrong...

Recipe:
3 grams leaf gelatin (2 sheets)
40 grams dark chocolate (I use Green & Black's)
75 millilitres strong black coffee
25 millilitres skim milk
2 egg whites
2 teaspoons caster sugar

Cut the gelatine into strips and soak in cold water for 10 minutes to soften.
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl.
In a small pan, heat together the coffee and milk. Do not allow to boil.
Squeeze the excess water from the gelatine. Add to the hot coffee and stir to dissolve.
Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the sugar and whisk to combine.
Gently fold the egg whites into the chocolate.
Drizzle the coffee into the mixture, and fold in gently, keeping as much volume as possible.
Divide between two 150ml glasses or ramekins.
Cover and chill for about 2 hours until set.

Rhubarb & Custard

I was supposed to be too busy with work this weekend to do much baking. Luckily, two weeks ago I started a small experiment for just this kind of situation. When I made the last batch of chocolate chip cookies, I froze half of them unbaked. So today, it was time to see how they would bake.
Rather than waste the whole batch, I thought it best to try just a few. The unfrozen batch were originally baked at 175C, but with these being frozen, I figured a lower temperature might be better - to allow the dough to thaw all the way through before the outside baked. So the oven was preheated to 160C, and the cookies went in for a few minutes longer than they would have done unfrozen - 15 minutes rather than the original 12. The result? Well, they didn't spread as much as the unfrozen batch, but I still ended up with 4 perfectly yummy cookies. With another 5 still in the freezer for later.
What's this got to do with Rhubarb & Custard? Well nothing much, except that while I knew I wouldn't have time for actual baking today, I didn't want to do absolutely nothing. In a magazine, I'd seen a recipe for a baked custard. Since it didn't look like it would take too long, I though I'd try it. And with some stewed rhubarb (with just enough sugar to sweeten it, but not so much that it takes away all the sharpness), it was exactly the comforting dessert I needed. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this again. It seems like it would lend itself to variation too - different flavourings in the custard, maybe something baked into the custard. Or even a simple brulee topping.

Recipe:
200 millilitres skim milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160C
Put the milk in a pan and heat gently until fairly warm. Meanwhile, whisk together the egg, sugar and vanilla extract in a jug.
When the milk is warm, pour it slowly into the mixture in the jug, whisking as you do so.
Put 2 150ml capacity ramekins into a roasting tray or other deep sided baking tray. Divide the custard between the two ramekins.
Pour hot water into the tray, to come about half way up the side of the ramekins.
Put the tray into the oven and bake for 40 minutes, until the custard is set but still with a slight wobble.
Serve with some stewed rhubarb on top.

Ginger Carrot Muffins

How much do you trust a recipe that you get from a web site? I suppose the answer to that depends on the site you got it from. Something from a food magazine, or a TV programme, or a well-know chef/cook can probably be considered to be fairly robust. The reputation of the source depends on the recipes, and we assume that those recipes are at least tested a few times, to make sure the kinks are worked out. Food blogs? Well, the authors seem to let you know when something was an experiment, or didn't particularly turn out as expected, so we can make a reasonable guess at how things might turn out for us. What about community sites, where anybody can submit any recipe, and make it available? Well, you're probably taking pot luck with those. And that's where the recipe I tried this week came from.
I like carrot cake and carrot muffins (Nigella Lawson has a wonderful recipe for carrot cupcakes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess), so when I came across this recipe for Carrot Ginger Muffins, I really wanted to give it a try.
Reading the recipe, it seems to use a method I'm not familiar with for muffins or cupcakes - that's more what I'd expect for a scone. So I decided to completely ignore that method, and go with my own feelings, based on my (OK, limited) previous experience with muffins. That means rather than rubbing the butter into the flour, the wet and dry ingredients get mixed separately, and then combined. I suppose that's one of the good things with 'community' rather than 'pro' recipes - you really get nervous about not following the pro recipe to the letter, whereas with the community one, there's less pressure.
The end result? Moist, fairly light carroty little muffins. Not really enough ginger for me, so when I do these again, I may add a little more. I think they could also have risen a little more - other recipes seem to have a little more raising agent than these did, so I may add a touch of bicarbonate of soda along with the baking powder next time. I mean, what's the worst that can happen?

Recipe:
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cup plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (about 30g)
1 egg
1/4 cup skim milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 carrot, grated (about 150g)
1 teaspoon ginger root, finely grated
1/2 cup sultanas

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line a muffin tin with muffin cases.
Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly.
In a bowl, mix together the flours, baking powder and spices.
Combine the sugars in a large bowl.
In a jug, whisk together the egg, milk and vanilla extract. Add the melted butter and mix.
Pour the liquid into the sugars and whisk together. Add the ginger root and sultanas, and stir through.
Alternately add the flour and carrot, mixing between each addition to ensure the ingredients are just combined.
Divide the mixture between the muffin cases. Bake for 25 minutes.

Corn Muffins/Chocolate Chip Cookies

Two lots of baking done this week, one savoury and one sweet. Both of them seem to have turned out well; they certainly met with approval.
The corn muffins first. This is corn as in cornmeal - polenta. Now, I've made cornbread before, a long time ago, and I no longer have the recipe I used. So when I came across a recipe for these (fairly low calorie) cornmeal muffins in a book, I wanted to give them a go. Of course, the recipe called for one thing I've never been able to find - buttermilk. Normally, I'd substitute yogurt, but here I thought I'd try a tip I came across, and use the same quantity of milk mixed with a bit of lemon juice (1 tablespoon lemon juice made up to 1 cup with milk is, I believe, the suggested mix). It seemed to work, although I didn't use exactly that mix.
The mix seemed OK, although the muffins didn't rise quite as much as I'd hoped - maybe I did overwork it. They also stuck to the muffin cases a bit, so if (when) I do this again, I think I'll bake it in a cake pan lined with non-stick parchment, and cut it into pieces. They certainly went very well, still warm out of the oven, with the lunchtime soup.

This isn't the first time I've made these chocolate chip cookies, and if my experience with them so far is anything to go by, it's a very forgiving recipe. Cookie recipes that make more than can be fitted on a single tray need to get baked in multiple batches in my oven. Last time, the first batch turned out pretty perfectly. Luckily, as they were destined for my Dad. However, the second trayful weren't so lucky. After taking the first lot out, I'd done my usual thing of turning the oven up to a higher temperature than is required for the baking, so that when I open the door to put the tray in, it falls down to the correct temperature. I must have been distracted, because I turned it up more than usual. And forgot to turn it down again when the cookies went in. Oh dear. Well, they got whipped out of the oven a bit before their time was up, a bit browner that they should have been. And they still tasted OK. Some of them were on the verge of being singed, but nothing too bad. These went to a different set of recipients, who were apparently quite happy with them.
Nothing so dramatic with this lot. I made another change to the original recipe, besides my original substitution of golden syrup for corn syrup; the use of part wholemeal and part plain flour. I thought it might give an extra bit of texture and flavour to the cookes. It seemed to work. Another thing I'm trying with this recipe is freezing half the mix to be baked later. No idea if it will work or not, but I wanted to give it a go.

Recipes:
Corn Muffins (from 'The 1200 Calorie a Day Menu Cookbook, Nancy Hughes)
2/3 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cornmeal (I used quick-cook polenta)
2 teaspoons caster sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup skim milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 egg white
2 teaspoons vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 450F/230C. Put 8 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Place the milk and lemon juice together in a bowl. Note: you can use 3/4 cup plus one tablespoon fat-free buttermilk instead of the milk and lemon juice.
In a mixing bowl combine the flour, polenta, sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt.
Whisk the egg white and oil into the milk.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients and mix until just combined.
Divide the mixture between the 8 muffin cases.
Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from the tray immediately.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (based on one from One Smart Cookie, Julie van Rosendaal)
50 grams unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons golden syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
70 grams dark chocolate, chopped (I used Green & Black's)

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line two baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl beat butter and sugar together until well combined - the mixture will end up with the consistency of wet sand.
Add the vanilla, syrup, and egg. Beat together until smooth.
In another bowl combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Add the flour mixture and chocolate chips, a third at a time, to the sugar mixture, stirring after each addition until well combined.
Drop spoonfuls of the dough, well spaced, onto the baking sheets. Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, until golden and the outside is set but the middle is still slightly soft.

Greek Honey & Lemon Cake

After last week's experiment with complete unfamiliarity, I wanted to retreat to safer ground this week. Browsing through one of my books, I came across a cake described as 'moist and tangy, a delicious afternoon snack'. Well, how can you resist an attempt at something like that? Although it does share one similarity with last week's - the use of beaten egg whites.
The first thing to try to trip me up was the listing of semolina in the ingredients. I'm thinking the dry semolina flour you can buy, and I'm going to substitute polenta. OK, not quite the same thing, but I figure close enough in texture, and might give it a nice colour. So I start getting all my ingredients prepared, and then I'm reading through the recipe more closely. The instructions for the semolina? Beat it in to the dry ingredients. Oops, so it's obviously not a dry ingredient then. OK, a quick trip round to the local shop is called for, and just hope they have a can of the stuff. They do, so that's alright.
The next stumbling point is that the recipe tells you to mix some of the wet ingredients together, but then fails to mention them again. What am I supposed to do with them? They obviously belong in the mix, but when and how? I figure I'll add them when the semolina goes in.
Anyway, in the end it seems to have turned out just fine. Maybe not quite honey and lemon-y enough, but there's certainly a distinct hint of both. A nice soft texture, actually almost like a cross between bread and cake. Definitely one to be made again.

Recipe:
1 1/4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons honey
1 lemon, juice and finely grated zest
2/3 cup skim milk
1/4 cup semolina
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon sesame seeds

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C. Line an 8 inch square cake tin with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and nutmeg.
Place the butter and honey in a pan and heat gently until melted. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks.
When the butter and honey have melted, remove from the heat. Stir in the lemon zest ad juice, and the semolina. Add the milk.
Gradually beat the liquid into the flour mixture, until fully combined.
Fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture, until fully combined.
Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Sprinkle the top with the sesame seeds.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until golden brown.

Chocolate Chip Angel Cupcakes

I decided to try something I've never tried before today. I've seen recipes for angel cake before, but they all seem to need to be baked in special pans. So when I came across a recipe for Chocolate Chip Angel Cupcakes on the Cooking Light website, I thought I'd give it a go.
Well, the recipe says it makes 24, but I thought I'd just make a half quantity - as it is, that made 10 cakes.
I suppose they turned out OK. They certainly taste fine. It's just, well, I guess I'm not sure quite what I was expecting. I think I may have left them in the oven too long. I certainly wasn't expecting the shrinkage and slight misshapenness of the resulting cakelets. I hadn't intended to ice them, but I changed my mind once I saw them. The icing used isn't the one in the original recipe, but a simple one made by melting butter and chocolate together (twice as much chocolate as butter) and adding icing sugar to give the desired consistency.

Recipe:
1/2 cup plain flour
3/4 cup caster sugar
6 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon lemon juice
50 grams dark chocolate, Green & Black's, 70%

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Line a muffin tin with muffin cases.
Lightly spoon sifted flour into a dry measuring cup, and level with a knife. Combine the flour and 6 tablespoons sugar in a bowl.
Put egg whites in a large bowl. Beat until foamy.
Add the cream of tartar and salt. Beat until soft peaks form.
Add 6 tablespoons of sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, beating until stiff peaks form.
Beat in vanilla extract and lemon juice.
Sift 1/4 cup flour mixture over egg white mixture; fold in. Repeat procedure with remaining flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time.
Fold in the chopped chocolate.
Spoon 3 heaped tablespoons batter into each muffin cup. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cupcakes spring back when lightly touched.
Remove from pans and cool on a wire rack.

Dark Chocolate & Ginger Biscotti

Well, last weeks's honey rhubarb muffins went down well. Can't say the same for the rock buns - I'm really not impressed with them. Any of them left at the end of this week are going out.
So, another biscotti variation this week (again, based on One Smart Cookie). In the mood for some dark chocolate, and having some crystallized ginger in the cupboard, it seemed natural to put the two together. I wasn't quite brave enough to play around too much with the basic biscotti dough, so I settled for just chopping up the chocolate and ginger and adding it as chunks. I think it works quite well. You get something different with each bite - sometimes a bit of chocolate, sometimes a chewy hit of ginger, sometimes a bit of both. Maybe if I make these again, I'll try a chocolate dough, but all in all I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Recipe:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter -- softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams crystallised ginger, chopped finely
75 grams dark chocolate (I used Green & Black's, 70%), chopped

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the ginger and chocolate to this mixture.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Stir until just combined. If it seems dry, use your hands to complete the mixing until the dough comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Divide in half. Shape each piece into an 8 inch by 3 inch rectangle.
Place the logs fairly far apart on the lined baking sheet.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until firm and starting to crack on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 275F/135C
Cut each log into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices (12 slices per log) with a sharp knife. Place slices cut side down on the baking sheet.
Return to the oven for 15 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 15 minutes.

Rock Buns/Honey Rhubarb Muffins

Well, last weeks lemon biscotti seemed to go down well. Duncan took them to work, not realising I had plans for some of them. Luckily, he managed to rescue the half dozen I wanted to take to my dad.
A double baking session this week. I picked up some rhubarb on Saturday, and found an interesting sounding recipe for honey rhubarb muffins in one of my cookbooks; A Cook's Tour of Scotland by Sue Lawrence. However, since they contain fresh fruit, they won't last more than a couple of days. So I needed to make something else that would last a bit longer.
Browsing through one of my other books (Low-Fat Baking by Linda Fraser), I found something which I thought might turn out either pretty good, or absolutely awful: rock buns. Not something I remember having made before, so I had to have a go.
Both recipes seem to have turned out not too badly for the first try. I'm a bit disappointed with the muffins; they taste great, but seem to have fallen a bit flat. I did notice that the baking temperature was a bit higher than I'd normally expect for a muffin. Might try changing it next time. With the rock buns, I used different fruit; the recipe called for prunes and mixed peel, but I used dried apricots and cherries instead. The amount of liquid called for in the recipe also seems to make too dry a dough; I think I'll add a bit more milk next time.

Recipe: Honey Rhubarb Muffins
200 grams flour, self-raising
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
50 grams hazelnuts -- chopped and toasted
50 grams sugar, light muscovado
4 tablespoons honey
100 millilitres sunflower oil
100 millilitres yoghurt, skim milk
100 grams rhubarb -- finely diced

Preheat the oven to 200C. Put 10 muffin cases in a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together into a large bowl. Stir in the hazelnuts.
In a jug, whisk together the yogurt, oil, honey and sugar.
Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet ingredients, and stir briefly. Add the rhubarb and stir until combined.
Divide between the muffin cases. Bake for around 20 minutes until risen and golden.
Best eaten warm.


Recipe: Rock Buns
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup caster sugar
2 ounces dried cherries -- chopped
2 ounces dried apricots -- chopped
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup sunflower oil
5 tablespoons skim milk

Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
Sift together the flour and baking powder.
Stir in the fruit and lemon zest.
Mix together the milk and oil. Stir into the flour mixture to make a dough - it should just bind together.
Place spoonfuls of the mixture onto the baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden.

Lemon & White Chocolate Biscotti

Another recipe from One Smart Cookie. I've still got brownies left from last week (although very few), and biscuits from the week before, so I thought I'd better make something that will last for a while. Having baked dark and rich things for the past couple of weeks (chocolaty brownies, treacly biscuits) I also wanted something a bit lighter. I've tried making biscotti in the past, but wasn't too happy with the results. I think these have turned out a bit better.
The book gives a basic biscotti recipe, and suggestions for a number of variations. Having a lemon in the fruit bowl, and a bar of Green & Black's white chocolate in the cupboard, that's the one I went for.
Forgive the mixture of measurements in the recipe; some are from the book, some are my measured additions.

Recipe:
30 grams unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
100 grams white chocolate (Green & Black's)

Preheat oven to 350f/175C. Line a baking sheet with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest.
Add a few tablespoons of the flour mixture to the wet ingredients. Stir until combined. Add the chopped chocolate and mix well. Continue adding the flour mixture, a few tablespoons at a time, stirring until just combined. If it seems dry, use your hands to complete the mixing until the dough comes together.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Divide in half. Shape each piece into an 8 inch by 3 inch rectangle.
Place the logs, well spaced on the lined baking sheet. They will spread slightly.
Bake for 20 - 25 minutes until firm and starting to crack on top. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for about 15 minutes.
Reduce the oven temperature to 275F/135C
Trim the ends and cut each log into 1/2 - 3/4 inch slices (12 slices per log) with a sharp serrated knife. Place slices cut side down on the baking sheet.
Return to the oven for 15 minutes, then flip over and bake for another 15 minutes.

Chocolate Cherry Brownies

No clear verdict on the cookies from last week. I've decided I'm not keen on them; the treacle in my opinion just overpowers everything else. Duncan, on the other hand, thinks they're really good. If I do make them again, I'll definitely reduce the amount of treacle used.

I got this recipe from the SparkPeople website. It's an American website, so the recipe is in cups. I think I'm getting used to working in them now. The basic recipe is just for plain chocolate brownies, with nothing in them. Naturally I couldn't leave it like that, so after a bit of thought I decided that the bag of dried cherries I had in the cupboard would be a good addition.
The recipe says that the batter will be a bit thick. It's not kidding. I'm used to a brownie batter you can pour out of the bowl; this one you have to dollop spoonfuls of into the pan, and then attempt to spread them out to a single even layer.
Just like there's an absolute commandment for muffins (do NOT overmix), there's one for brownies. What is it? Do NOT overbake. What did I do with these? Overbake. Not by much, according to the timing given in the recipe, but enough so that the brownies were drier than I'd have ideally liked. I'll know better next time. I also didn't use the full quantity of cherries, but I think I should have.

Recipe:
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tablespoon water
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plain flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 grams dried cherries, chopped if large

Preheat oven to 325F/160C. Line an 8 inch square baking pan with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy.
Add the dissolved coffee, melted butter and vanilla to the egg mixture. Whisk gently until combined.
In another bowl, mix the flour, cocoa and salt.
Gradually add the dry ingredients and cherries to the egg mixture. The batter will be very thick.
Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
Cool in the pan. cuts into 16 pieces.

Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Cookies

This is the first recipe tried from a new book - One Smart Cookie. It's a low-fat baking book, but not one full of strange ingredients, or recipes you wouldn't want to eat. It also doesn't use artificial replacements for normal ingredients; if you want sugar, you have sugar, not some chemical replacement. My only problem with the book - and it's not a big one - is that being an American/Canadian book, all of the measurements are in cups. Being British, I'm more used to grams/ounces.
Anyway, the recipe I tried was Fruit & Nut Double Ginger Chews. I made a small change to it - not having molasses, I used a mixture of golden syrup and black treacle. Not sure if I got the proportions quite right; I'll have to wait until I get comments from others who try the cookies.

Recipe:
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 cup golden syrup
1/2 cup black treacle
1 large egg
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175C. Line some baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg, then the the golden syrup and treacle. Mix thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.
Gradually add the dry ingredient mixture, a couple of tablespoons at a time, to the wet ingredients. Stir between each addition to ensure everything is well combined.
Drop large spoonfuls (level tablespoons/heaped dessertspoons) of the mixture onto the baking sheets, making sure they have room to spread. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until set.
Unless you have a large oven, you'll probably have to bake these in multiple batches.

Chocolate Pear Muffins

First baking of this year. Getting a bit fed up of Christmas cake. It's very nice (Nigella's Easy Action Christmas cake from Feast, with a few variations of my own in it), but you can have too much of a good thing. I fancied something chocolatey, and had some dried pears left over from the cake, so I thought I'd make some muffins. I've adapted the Blueberry Muffin recipe from the WI Healthy Fast Food book successfully before, so I used that as my base again. This time, I added some cocoa powder and the dried pears, chopped up. They turned out OK - maybe not quite chocolatey enough, and a touch drier than I'd have ideally liked, but then, I'm picky. If I do them again, I'll probably remove a couple of tablespoons of flour, and find some way of upping the chocolate - maybe adding a little coffee?

Recipe:
80 grams unsalted butter
225 grams plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (I use Green & Blacks)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
115 grams caster sugar
225 ml low-fat yoghurt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
90 grams dried pears, chopped

Preheat oven to 180C / Gas 4. Put 12 muffin cases into a muffin tin.
Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda into a large bowl.
Stir in the sugar
Melt the butter and allow to cool slightly
Beat the egg into the yogurt
Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients
Add the butter and the egg/yogurt mixture to the dry ingredients. Stir to just combine. The mixture will look lumpy. This is fine - overmixing will make the muffins tough.
Add the pears. Gently mix through until evenly combined.
Divide between the 12 muffin cases. Bake for about 30 minutes until the muffins are risen and cooked.