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Recipe for Simnel Cake

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Today is Mother’s Day and what a glorious sunny, Spring day it has been.  We gave Sophie a gorgeous bouquet of flowers – white roses, lilies and greenery – and went to church for a Mothers’ Day Service, a bit of a rarity for me.  I liked the sentiment which was that mother’s always have time for a smile for their children however exasperating, painful and annoying we can all be.  So thank you Mothers and Mums everywhere for being so tolerant, caring and loving.

Traditionally in Britain, today the fourth Sunday on Lent was the first day that girls in service at the big, posh houses of the gentry were allowed to go home and see their Mothers – this is back in the 17th and 18th centuries.  As such, they would bring home a demonstration of their skills learnt at their place of work – a rich and delicious fruit cake that became known as Simnel Cake. 

So today used to be called Simnel Sunday and then morphed into Mothering Sunday.  Originally, the cakes were decorated with 11 small paste balls, symbolising the 11 faithful disciples of Jesus Christ.  These cakes improved with eating and were best enjoyed at the end of the Lenten Fast or Lent and so they became associated with Easter to become the traditional Easter Cake.  Simnel Cakes are less often baked than a Christmas Cake but I feel they should be made as much of a tradition as the classic Christmas Cake.

Here’s how we made ours today:

Ingredients For Simnel Cake

Ingredients For Simnel Cake

Ingredients for the cake:

125g / 4oz butter
125g/ 4oz  dark brown muscovado sugar
3 free range organic eggs, beaten (they were discounted in Spar – bargain at 50p a half dozen)
150g / 5oz organic plain flour
¼ tsp salt
½ tsp organic Fairtarde mixed spice
350g / 12oz mixed organic raisins and sultanas (about 200g: 150g respectively)
50g / 2oz mixed chopped peel
Grated rind of lemon (I used orange today as I had no lemon and I am sure it will be fine)

For the marzipan or almond paste:

225g / 80z Fairtrade organic caster sugar
225g / 8oz organic ground almonds
2 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon Steenbergs Natural Almond Extract

To glaze the cake

A little apricot jam
A little beaten egg (just cadge some from making the marzipan as you don’t need much)

Prepare an 18cm (7 inch) deep circular cake tin by greasing and lining the base and the sides. 

To make the marzipan, mix together the caster sugar, ground almonds, Steenbergs natural almond essence and beaten egg and knead with your hands to a smooth pliable mix.  If it feels too gooey, just add a bit more almond and knead some more.  Roll out a third of the marzipan  – almond paste - into a circle and set aside.  Reserve the remainder for topping the cooked cake.

Mixing Up The Marzipan Or Almond Paste

Mixing Up The Marzipan Or Almond Paste

Now put the oven on and preheat to 140oC / 275oF.

To make the cake, cream the butter and muscovado sugar until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs a little at a time.  Sieve together the plain flour, sea salt and Steenbergs mixed spice together and add to the mixture alternately with the dried fruit, mixed peel and grated rind, mixing all the ingredients together.

Put half the mixture into the cake tin, then smooth the top and cover with the circle of almond paste.  Add the rest of the cake mixture and smooth the top, hollowing out a small hole in the centre.  Bake in the oven for 1½ hours.

When the cake has cooled, brush the top with apricot jam.  Now put the oven on and preheat to 180oC / 350oF.  Then with the reserved marzipan, roll 11 small balls (for the good disciples and definitely smaller than the massive balls that I made) and then roll out the rest of the almond paste over the top of the cake.  Now place the almond paste balls evenly around the edge of the cake.  Return the cake to the oven and bake for 10 minutes until the paste has gone slightly brown.

Simnel Cake

Simnel Cake

We then put some coloured speckled Easter eggs in the centre.  leave for a couple of weeks to mature and then eat and enjoy.

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Recipe for Vanilla Fudge and Coconut Ice

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

Fudge and coconut ice

I know this is really quite pathetic but I have only just cracked how to make fudge in the last year.  It always seemed to burn every time I tried to make it – the problem is that most recipes don’t give the mixture long enough for the sugar to be transformed into fudge.  I would then always turn the heat up too high and it would stick to the bottom and start burning, or turning the sugar to toffee and then burn.

Vanilla fudge 

450g    Caster sugar (organic & Fairtrade)
50g      Unsalted butter, diced
170g    Can evapourated milk
150ml   Full fat milk
½ tsp    Organic Fairtrade vanilla extract (Steenbergs is of course the best!?)

  1. Lightly oil a shallow non-stick baking tray – about 18cm.
  2. Gently heat the sugar, butter and milks in a metal saucepan, stirring with a wooden spoon until all the sugar has dissolved.
  3. Bring to the boil and bubble away gently, stirring continuously (and I mean all the time with no breaks) for 25 – 30 minutes.
  4. When the mixture reaches the soft ball stage or 116oC, remove from the heat and add the vanilla extract.
  5. Beat until the mixture becomes thick and pale in colour, then pour into the baking tray and leave to cool.  When cold cut into 2.5cm squares.
  6. For a variation, you could stir in 150g of organic chocolate rather than the vanilla extract, for a rich dark chocolate fudge.   

Coconut ice

397g    Can of sweetened condensed milk
500g    Icing sugar, sieved
350g    Desiccated coconut (organic if possible)
Few drops of red/pink food colouring (optional)

  1. Line a 20cm cake tin with baking paper.
  2. In a bowl, mix together the condensed milk and the sieved icing sugar, then stir in the desiccated coconut.
  3. Now divide the mixture into 2.  Put the first half into the prepared cake tin and press it into all the edges.
  4. Add the food colouring to the second half of coconut mixture and knead until the colour is evenly through.  Put this into the tin on top of the white layer and spread out. 
  5. Leave to set in a cool place, then cut it out into 1-2 cm squares.

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Classic Pancake Recipe

Sunday, February 14th, 2010
Shrove Tuesday is the traditional start of Lent.  It has become associated with pancakes in Britain and so everyone spends the day making pancakes.  We regularly make pancakes for breakfast which the kids then top with cinnamon sugar or lemon and sugar, so I have decided instead to try a savoury pancake recipe, but more of that later.

First, let’s start with a classic pancake recipe.  This is the type of recipe that everyone needs to be able to bang out without really thinking about; it’s a staple, basic meal.  We make it without measuring anything – a bit of flour, a couple of eggs, some salt and add milk until the consistency is about right.  So while the recipe is a simple pan cake recipe, it was actually pretty difficult to work back to a workable recipe.

Ingredients – for 8 – 10

110g / 4oz plain flour
1 free range egg
1 free range egg yolk
Pinch of salt
275ml / 10fl oz full fat milk (traditionally you should use 50:50 water-milk mixture, but I like to give it a good, rich flavour)
1tbsp sunflower oil
1tsp sunflower oil or butter or lard – for the frying

Eggs and Flour For Pancake Batter

Eggs and Flour For Pancake Batter

Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl.  Mix in the salt.  Make a dent in the flour and drop the egg into this.  Add a small amount of milk, roughly 2 tablespoons and with a metal hand whisk, thoroughly mix the egg and milk into the flour.  Now add some more milk and whisk thoroughly again.  Carry on doing this a little bit at a time until the batter is becoming runny.  Now add the rest of the milk, the 1tbsp of sunflower oil and whisk again.

Whisking Pancake Batter

Whisking Pancake Batter

 
You need to slowly add the milk at the beginning as this ensures that the pancake batter is thoroughly mixed through and there are no lumps.  Now leave the pancake batter to prove for about 30 minutes; it really is worth leaving the pancake batter to prove as this makes the final pancake rise to a fuller height.

We often tweak the recipe in the morning by adding a pinch of cinnamon powder as this really makes for a nice, warming and homely flavour.

To make the pancakes, add a teaspoon of sunflower oil and spread it evenly over the skillet using perhaps a piece of kitchen paper.  You can use a similar amount of either butter or lard, but we like sunflower oil.

Leave it to heat through throughly until sizzling hot – be a bit patient as the reason why many people say that the first pancake just doesn’t work is that they don’t wait for the pan to get hot enough.  Add about half a soup spoon (2 tablespoons) full of pancake batter to the frying pan and spread it over the pan. 

Heat through until the top is just dried through and then flip over using a spatula and heat the other side.  You can lift the edge up to check that it is getting a nice light brown if you are worried that it is going to burn.

Frying Pancakes

Frying Pancake

Serve straight away or keep warm in an oven at about 125oC/ 300oF.

You can then top it with a teaspoon of sugar or flavoured sugar, or sugar and lemon, or (for the kids) spread with Nutella or another chocolate spread.

How do you like yours?

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Recipe For French Macarons

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

I came across this recipe on the truly amazing food blog of the Californian pastry chef living in Paris – David Lebovitz – which can be found at http://www.davidlebovitz.com/.  And I have been meaning to have a crack at making his chocolate macarons for well over 6 months but strangely I never had the courage as the photography on his blog is really quite daunting; I suppose I just thought I would fail and so why try – the fear of failure always tries to hold us back.

Anyway this Sunday, I plucked up courage and printed out his recipe for Chocolate Macarons and then tweaked it to a more English style of ingredient list and had to go.  They came out quite well really, although not as beautiful looking as his, but the taste was heavenly.

Chocolate Macarons

Chocolate Macarons

Here’s my slightly changed recipe (the process itself is the same as David Lebovitz’s so that’s been cribbed):

For the batter:
100g / 3½ oz icing sugar, sieved
50g  / 2 oz ground almonds
25g /3tbsp  cocoa powder, sieved
2 large egg whites (keep the yolks and make pancakes the next morning with these)
65g / 5tbsp caster sugar

Chocolate filling:
125ml / ½ cup double cream
2tsp golden syrup
120g / 4oz chocolate (either dark or not too milky chocolate – I used El Rey chocolate couverture discs)
1tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven 180oC / 350oF.  Line two baking trays or sheets with baking parchment paper and have a pastry bag with 2cm plain tip.

In a food processor, grind together the icing sugar, ground almonds and cocoa powder until quite fine. 

In a bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until they start to rise, then add the caster sugar in two parts and continue to whisk until the egg whites become very stiff and firm and slightly glossy on the surface.

Carefully fold the dry ingredients in two parts into the beaten egg whites with a metal spoon or rubber spatula.  When the mixture is just smooth and just as the last streaks of white disappear, stop mixing and scrape the mixture into the pastry bag.

Pipe the batter into the lined baking try as in 3cm circles evenly spaced every 3cm apart.  I struggled with getting this stage to look pretty, but I guess practise would make me much better.  Rap the baking try three times firmly on the counter top to flatten the macarons, then bake for 15 – 18 minutes.  When baked, let them cool completely.

Heat the cream and golden syrup in a small saucepan and when the cream is just starting to boil at the edges, remove from the heat and add the chocolate.  Let this heat through for about one minute, then stir until smooth and add the pieces of butter.  Let cool completely before use – I bunged it in the fridge.

To make the macarons, spread the chocolate mix on the inside of the macarons and sandwich together.

David Lebovitz then says let them stand for at least one day before serving to let the flavour settle.  This just is not practical in our house where 8 chocolate macarons could not be kept away from hungry gannets and were wolfed down in short order, which is the way good cooking should go. 

What other macarons recipes should I dare to try?

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Recipe for Traditional Pudding: Queen of Puddings

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

I was listening to Radio 4 the other day and they were talking about steam puddings and how it is a truly English traditional that is not found anywhere else.  One of the puds they were talking about was Queen of Puddings which was being made  at Riverford Farm Shop (I think). 

This is one of our firm family favourites and used to be my grandfather’s favourite pudding, as well.  I made it the other weekend for my parents as my dad says he never gets it cooked for him.  Here’s how we did it:

Ingredients

290ml / ½ pint full fat milk, ideally organic
15g / ½ oz butter, ideally organic
30g / 1 oz organic Fairtrade caster sugar
60ml / 4 tablespoons white breadcrumbs
Grated rind of 1 lemon
2 free range eggs, separated into whites and yolks
1tsp Steenbergs organic Fairtrade vanilla extract
30ml / 2tbps raspberry jam or raspberries in a sauce, warmed to make runny
110g / 4 oz organic Fairtrade caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180oC /350oF.

Warm the milk then add the butter and sugar.  Stir it all with a wooden spoon until the sugar has all dissolved, then add the breadcrumbs and lemon rind.

Seperate the eggs.  Whisk the eggs gently by hand and add the Steenbergs organic Fairtrade vanilla extract into this.  When the breadcrumbs mixture has cooled down a bit, stir in this egg yolk mixture thoroughly.  Pour the breadcrumb custard mix into a pie dish and leave to stand for 30 minutes somewhere cool.

Put into the preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes, or until set.  This can be done in a bain marie for even more exacting results, but it doesn’t need it if you watch over it.  Remove and allow to cool.

Reduce the oven to 150oC /300oF.

Using the warmed jam, spread this over the top of the set breadcrumb-custard base.  At my parents, we used some frozen raspberries from the garden which we warmed through and then added some sugar to; this was less sweet than using raspberry jam and had a better mouth feel or texture, but maybe are less close to hand.

Whip the egg whites until stiff and then whisk into this about 2 teaspoons of the caster sugar.  Whisk again until very stiff and then fold in all but ½ teaspoon of caster sugar.  Pour this over the top of the base, then sprinkle over the remaining caster sugar.

Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until the meringue is set and lightly brown at the edges.

You could serve this alone, as we do, or with a luxurious clotted cream or even vanilla infused whipped cream.

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Vanilla, Gorgeous Heady Vanilla

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

I love vanilla.  I really do.  I blogged about it as a spice back in May 2009 under Vanilla – the temperamental diva.

At Steenbergs, we have had such a good run with our organic Fairtrade vanilla extract that we are nearly down to our last few drops.  So last week, we got delivery of a new batch of organic Fairtrade vanilla beans and after Lee did the initial prep work he said that these Madagascan beans are of the most superior quality, and Lee’s hard to please! 

Gorgeous organic vanilla

Gorgeous organic vanilla

Well, I suppose that’s what you would expect from our new suppliers from the Antsirabe Nord region of Northern Eastern Madagascar; these beans have much more luxuriant richness and depth of the character than our last batch of beans, which hailed from Kerala in India.  Think of it as the difference between a New World wine and a Premier Cru from France; everything’s the same but the terroir in France just creates more character.

I am really excited by our vanilla at the moment.  We’re getting a better quality extraction at present than before.  Also, we have a great range of classic gourmet vanilla products – Steenbergs organic Madagascan gourmet vanilla beans (vanilla pods), organic vanilla powder (that’s gorgeous beans from Mananara that have been ground to a rich black powder, that looks like gunpowder in the old Western films but smells like heaven), organic vanilla extract powder (that’s the extract dried onto a dextrin base to remove the alcohol). 

The gourmet beans are actually from a Fairtrade source and we trade these into Crazy Jack’s and Essential Trading who pack them off as organic and Fairtrade, so we need to get our act together and actually launch them as Fairtrade!  It’s a bit ridiculous as we have had the product approved by Fairtrade and done the design work for them but never actually pushed the go button; soon, I assure you.

Mountain gorilla from Virunga Mountains

Mountain gorilla from Virunga Mountains

I (that’s me Axel Steenberg) have also sourced a wonderful organic vanilla from the Democratic Republic of Congo from the foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains in the Virunga National Park and near Lake Edouard, which is one of the two strongholds for the rare mountain gorilla (the other is Bwindi Inpenetrable Forest in Uganda). 

I came across them whilst reading Tim Butcher’s book  (Blood River – A Journey To Africa’s Broken Heart) about following in the footsteps of Stanley down the River Congo, like a latter day Kurtz, dodging the insurgents on the back of a motorbike or travelling down the lazy, languid Congo River on a pirogue; hence finding them was really poignant. 

These Congolese organic vanilla pods have a different character to those from Madagascar and will be in short supply as getting them is really, really hard – these organic vanilla beans have a rawer, earthier flavour, full of chocolatey aromas but also an underlying sweet leathery intensity.

Now, I’ve added mysterious tonka beans to this flavour package.  This is banned in the USA because it contains coumarin, an anticoagulant, but banning it almost makes it more exciting.  And the top world chefs like Gordon Ramsay at Petrus-Gordon Ramsay or Alex Stupak at wd-50 or Ferran Adrià at El Bulli use it, so let’s try it I say.

Tonka beans (memories of Tonka toys and that takes me a long way back) are the seeds of Dipteryx oderata, which originates from Venezuela in the Orinoco river basin.  The main sources of tonka beans are Nigeria and Venezuela. 

Tonka beans

Tonka beans

It looks like a flat, wrinkled deep black bean/nut with a shape that’s reminiscent of an almond and a look that’s a cross between a prune and date.  They have a flavour and aroma that is full of volatiles and immediately remiscent of vanilla but with more esters coming through like pear drops or furniture polish, with hints of magnolia and other warming, sweet spices notes like cinnamon, cloves and allspice.  It is used in French cuisine and sometimes for perfumes, and even flavouring tobacco.

Anyway, Steenbergs tonka beans come from Venezuela and a little goes a long way as they are very specialist and very strong – completely decadent and slightly naughty.  You use them like a nutmeg and grate them, so you could cook with them as a garnish over coffee or into cream or over stewed rhubarb.  I’ll conjur up some recipes in a future blog, so hang fire on asking for a recipe.

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Recipe: Baking Chocolate Brownies For Haiti

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Our children’s school council have decided to run a cake stall tomorrow to raise money for Haiti.  I feel especially moved by Haiti as my grandmother was born next door in the Dominican Republic, which has escaped the horrors of their neighbours.  This recipe is something my daughter and I cooked up this afternoon.

Ingredients

220g / 7oz butter, organic where possible
450g / 16oz caster sugar, organic & Fairtrade where possible
90g / 3oz cocoa powder, organic & Fairtrade where possible (Suma do a great one)
270g / 9.5oz self raising flour (we used an organic flour by Sunflours)
4 eggs (ideally organic & free-range please)
4TBSP milk, organic if possible
1tsp Steenbergs organic Fairtrade vanilla extract
100g / 3.5oz chocolate, ideally organic & Fairtrade – we used Green & Blacks cooking chocolate, which we bashed into small chunks with a rolling pin

Lightly grease a metal baking tray and line the base with baking parchment.  Heat the oven to 180oC /350oF.

Sift the organic self-raising flour and organic Fairtrade cocoa powder together into a large mixing bowl.  Add the caster sugar, butter, free range eggs, milk and Steenbergs vanilla extract to a food processor.  Whizz it all up together.  Add the flour-cocoa mix and process once again until you have got a sloppy, dark brown mixture.

Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and then add the chocolate chunks.  We then gave it a gentle stir with a knife to mix in the chocolate bits, then smoothed over the top to give a roughly even covering.

Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until just set in the middle – a wooden skewer into the centre should come out with just a few moist crumbs on it.  Don’t overbake.

Leave to cool completely in the pan before cutting into squares and serving, or in this case boxing up to take to school tomorrow.

[Sorry no photos today as I have left the camera at work!]

Update 29/1/2010: the school raised £142 for the Haiti appeal which for 100 children is truly brilliant.

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Winter Baking – Recipes for Bread Rolls and Jelly

Sunday, January 10th, 2010
An igloo in North Yorkshire

An igloo in North Yorkshire

Three weeks into the snow and whilst the children are still playing out a bit in terms of walks, sledging and igloo building – I kid you not someone in the village organised a team of five (including my son) to build a very impressive igloo - à la Ray Mears (or should it be au Ray Mears?).

However, the novelty is slightly waring off and I was greeted today with the recipe books, jars of spices, jelly crystals and a determined look in my daughter’s eye. Meanwhile, I was juggling childcare with cooking up a very traditional winter fare of vegetable soup and casserole.

Delicious white bread rolls

Delicious white bread rolls

So what did we create together à deux – delicious seeded rolls – we used sesame seeds, white poppy seeds, onion granules and nigella on the top – they worked really well and just needed time to rise near the radiator.  The kids favourite was the onion granules and the nigella ones which is really weird because they claim to hate onions (except that we hide it in nearly all their food - aren’t parents just so mean!).

Ingredients

  • 450g organic strong white flour
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • 7g quick yeast (we used Doves)
    Organic seeded rolls fresh from the oven

    Organic seeded rolls fresh from the oven

  • 1 tbsp organic sunflower oil
  • 350ml warm flour
  • flour (plain or self-raising will work) for dusting
  • 1 egg, beaten for glazing

Instructions

  1. Mix the flour, salt and yeast into a bowl. Add the oil and water. Stir to form dough
  2. Knead dough on a floured surface for 5-7 minutes until smooth and elastic. We used a lot of additional flour at this point to make it smooth as it was too wet. Place in a bowl, cover with cligfilm and leave in a warm place to rise (we used just beside the radiator)
  3. When the dough has doubled in size (roughly takes an hour) knead on a floured surface until smooth. Divide into 8 equal pieces
  4. Either shape the dough into round balls or alternatively make into cottage rolls by making a small round shape on top of a flat round. Place onto a baking sheet.
  5. Cover rolls with a tea towel. Leave to rise for 30 minutes until it’s doubled in size again. Preheat the oven to 220 C or gas mark 7.
  6. Glaze the rolls with egg and the toppings. Bake inthe oven for 10-15 minutes until golden brown ( when cooked if you tap the base of each roll, it should sound hollow!)

These rolls are ideal for adding ingredients to them as well such as tomato flakes, caraway seeds, cumin, onion, cheese etc. Experiment at will.

The ingredients

The ingredients

We also decided to experiment with the Just Wholefoods vegetarian jelly crystals that we sell at Steenbergs and some of our edible flowers – namely the Marigold petals and cornflower flowers. We layered different coloured jellies - raspberry at the bottom, lemon in the middle and strawberry at the top and flowers in the middle layer.

Having had a few slight hiccups in terms of moulds and jellies (the traditional Chivers cubes) recently, we put in a little less water than recommended and melted all the crystals with boiling water rather than some boiling water and then cool. We left them to cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge – they had already set by then.

These jelly crystals are less sweet than the sickly sweet jellies that you normally get and work really well with the layers and the flowers – we were  all delighted with the results…

Multicoloured multilayered jelly with flowers

Multicoloured multilayered jelly with flowers

Staving off winter blues with summer flowers and baking – cannot think of a better day to spend snowed in with the kids…

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Recipes – Oranges And Lemons For Really Great Homemade Biscuits

Friday, January 8th, 2010

While snowed in in the cold countryside of Northumberland, we enjoyed some warming chai as well as delicious mulled wine using our organic Fairtrade mulling wine spices.  I also concocted a couple of citrus based biscuits, with one of them coming from the Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall’s great cook book for Granny’s.

Snow covered Northumberland - New Year's Day 2010

Snow covered Northumberland - New Year's Day 2010

Here they are:

Classic lemon biscuits

Carefully measure out your biscuit ingredients

Carefully measure out your biscuit ingredients

75g/ 3oz softened butter
75g/ 3oz Fairtrade caster sugar
150g/ 6oz Sunflours plain flour
¼ tsp sea salt
Grated peel from 1 unwaxed lemon
1 egg yolk from a free range hen
Some cold water (this may be needed)
1 tbsp Fairtrade icing sugar

Pre-heat the oven to  165oC/ 330oF and lightly oil 2 – 3 baking trays.

Cream butter and sugar together, then add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl and stir together with a wooden spoon.  It will be slightly crumbly, but with a bit of kneading and perhaps a teaspoon or two of cold water, you will get a light paste.

Rolling out the biscuit pastry

Rolling out the biscuit pastry

Lightly flour a surface and roll out to about ½ cm thick and cut into shapes.  We used all sorts of shapes including using some oval shapes from my great grandmother.

Cutting out Christmassy biscuit shapes

Cutting out Christmassy biscuit shapes

Put the shapes on the baking trays and bake for 7 – 10 minutes, but watch them carefully as they will suddenly be cooked.  We used an Aga and found that the back of the tray cooked very quickly and some got burnt the first time around.

Remove from oven when just turning golden, then leave to cool a bit before carefully transferring to a wire cooking rack.  Sprinkle with icing sugar in a tea strainer.

Snowy lemon biscuits

Snowy lemon biscuits

Orange biscuits

Grating an orange

Grating an orange

115g/ 4oz  sliced almonds
115g/ 4oz Fairtrade caster sugar
85g/ 3oz softened butter
55g/ 2oz self-raising flour
Grated peel and juice from 2 oranges (you may only need 1½ of these)

Pre-heat the oven to 165oC/ 330oF and lightly oil 2 – 3 baking trays.

Mix all the ingredients together except the orange juice.  Now add juice from 1½ oranges and stir together.  Check the consistency which should be like a sticky batter.

Drop a teaspoon dollop onto the baking trays and set them apart as they will spread out very thinly.

Cook for 7 – 10 minutes and remove when just turning golden brown at the edges. Then leave to cool a bit before carefully transferring to a wire cooking rack.

Orange jumbles

Orange jumbles

The lemon biscuits are classic firm biscuits like a harder shortbread, while the orange biscuits are wonderfully chewy and moreish.  All-in-all they lasted about 20 minutes.

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Recipe For Snowy White Mince Pies

Sunday, December 20th, 2009
Winter time 2009

Winter time 2009

It did not snow last night in spite of predictions, but it was so, so very cold.  The snow outside is now crunchy under foot as the top has frozen solid; as you potter along, there’s that lovely crunchy sound.  Our windows were all covered with those beautiful fern-like frost patterns as if Jack Frost himself had painted the windows with his paint brush.

A day to hunker down and enjoy some mince pies.  We made the mincemeat back in our 29 October blog, but you can use any recipe or a good shop-bought mincemeat.  If you use another recipe, Mrs Beeton’s is a classic but I find it a little too sweet for my tooth.  But I implore you to make your own pastry.

Here’s a classic recipe:

350g/ 12 oz organic plain flour (we use Sunflours flour)
75g/ 3oz lard, chopped into cubes (lard makes the pastry softer, but you could replace this with more butter)
75g/ 3oz organic butter, chopped into cubes
Pinch of sea salt
A little milk
Organic icing sugar

Making pastry: rubbing fats into flour

Making pastry: rubbing fats into flour

To make the pastry, sift the plain flour and sea salt into a mixing bowl.  Rub the fats into the plain flour until it starts to resemble fine breadcrumbs.  Add just a smidgeon of cold water in small amounts until the dough just leaves the mixing bowl clean.  Leave the pastry to rest in a poly bag in refrigerator for half an hour (30 minutes).

After it’s settling time, put the oven on to 200oC/400oF.  Cover a board with a small amount of flour and roll out half of the pastry as thin as possible and cut into 7½ cm (3 inch) circles; afterwards, roll out the other half a thin as possible and make smaller rounds of 6cm (2½ inch) in diameter.

Lightly butter or oil a tray of 6cm (2½ inch) moulds.  Line the moulds with the larger rounds and then fill these with mincemeat to the level of the edges of the pastry.   With a little bit of cold water, gently dampen the edges of the pastry and cover them with the smaller pastry rounds and press them together with your fingers to seal the pies shut.  Brush the tops lightly with the milk and cut 2 or 3 holes into the tops with the end of a sharp knife.

Bake in the oven for 25 – 30 minutes until lightly brown.  Cool slightly in a tray and sprinkle with icing sugar.  I love eating them straight from the cooling tin.

Homemade mince pies

Homemade mince pies

Supposedly my grandfather would take the tops off and put in some more whisky to liven them up a bit more, while Sophie loves to eat hers with brandy butter.

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