Bakewell tarts

Forty years ago when I was a teenager my mum gave me a Woman's Own cook book that was published in 1964.  It has blank pages in the back for your own recipes and that is where I wrote the Tunis Cake recipe and this one for mini Bakewell tarts.  If you've been to Bakewell then you will know that what they make is Bakewell pudding and it is nothing like what has become known as a Bakewell tart, that is a pastry case with jam in the base and an almond flavoured sponge filling with or without icing.  Have you noticed that nowadays the sponge hardly tastes of almond at all?  I made these on Good Friday and ate the last one this morning, everybody loved them.  You can use ready made shortcrust pastry if you wish but if you have a food processor it takes five minutes to whip up your own.  Blend 2oz (50g) butter with 2oz (50g)lard with a pinch of salt and 8oz (250g) plain flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Add 3 tbsp. of cold water and blend to a dough.  Knead lightly till smooth then wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.  Then just roll it out and use it.  This makes 12oz (350g) pastry.

BAKEWELL TARTS

 

 

• 12oz  shortcrust pastry
• jam
• 4oz butter
• 4oz sugar
• 3oz self raising flour
• 1oz ground almonds
• 2 eggs
• almond essence

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/350F/180C

Cream the butter and sugar till pale and fluffy

Beat in the eggs one at a time with a little flour if required to stop the mixture curdling

Fold in the flour and almonds and add essence to your own personal taste

Line jam tart tins with pastry and put a little jam in the base of each one

Top with a heaped teaspoon of sponge mixture

Bake till golden brown and leave to cool

Ice if desired

This recipe makes at least 20 cakes 







Banana and cinnamon loaf

Do you get close to shopping day and have a couple of well ripe bananas sitting in the fruit bowl that the kids won't eat because they're going ever so slightly black?  Well here's a great recipe for a banana loaf that uses them to great effect.  I bet you won't let it get cold before you eat it!

BANANA AND CINAMMON LOAF

 

 

• 140g/5oz softened butter
• 140g/5oz golden caster sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 140g/50z self raising flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/350F
Grease and line a loaf tin (or use a paper liner)
Cream the butter and sugar, remember you're aiming for that mousse like consistency
Slowly add the eggs with a little flour to stabilise them
Fold in the remaining dry ingredients and bananas
Pour into the tin and bake for about an hour or until a skewer comes out clean
Leave to cool in the tin for at least ten minutes before removing to a rack
This can be decorated with drizzled simple icing or melted chocolate on top but I bet you eat it warm.



Packet mix bread

Last week I tried to make bread from a bread mix that was two years out of date and probably grounded half of the Wallington pigeon fleet when they ate it.  Today I tried it again.  The bread mix cost 89p in Tesco, you can't get a loaf like this that cheap and you get the satisfaction of having made it yourself.  Before you accuse me of cheating the mix contains, flour, dried yeast and flavouring.  Hardly cheating, all they've done is weigh it all out for me. 

Here's the packet to look out for in the home baking aisle

And here's the finished product!  It tastes as good as it looks and its proper bread not flavourless cotton wool.

Texas oven roasted beef brisket

Like many people I guess, I like watching 'Man vs food'.  It's not the challenge I enjoy but the restaurants he visits in the first part of the show and all that amazing American barbecued food.  Unlike here in England where barbecue means searing with heat over hot charcoal in the garden in the USA it means cooking long and slow, often with smoke.  One of the meats that is often featured is beef brisket which I have never tried so I went looking for a recipe.  Brisket is not an expensive cut of beef and it is very lean.  It requires long slow cooking to get the best from it.  I picked up a 2lb joint from Tesco that fed four of us four six quid.  That makes it a realistic joint to cook.  I found this recipe on the Food Network and have modified it to suit this size of joint. 

 

TEXAS OVEN-ROASTED BEEF BRISKET

 

 

• 2lb beef brisket
• 1 tbsp. chilli powder
• 1 tbsp. salt
• 1/2 tbsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tbsp. onion powder
• 1/2 tbsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 tbsp. sugar ( I always use brown for the flavour)
• 1 tsp. mustard powder
• 3/4 pint of beef stock (one reviewer had tried beer and recommended it)

 

Make a dry spice rub with all the dry ingredients.  Don't worry if you haven't got them all, experiment.  I'm trying it next weekend with mild chilli powder and substituting cinnamon for the mustard because my daughter in law has a delicate stomach.

Season the brisket on all the exposed sides. 

The original recipe said to cook it straight away but I let it sit overnight to absorb the flavours then let it come back to room temperature to cook

 

 

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/350F/180C

 

Cook in a roasting tray uncovered for an hour then turn the oven down to Gas 2/300F/150C

and add the stock to a depth of about 1/2 an inch.

 

Seal it up tightly with a lid of a couple of layers of foil and return to the oven for three hours or until it is fork tender.  Cut it thinly across the grain with a sharp knife and serve with the juices.  
It makes a lot of juice and it was chilli hot.  Next time I am going to thicken it up in a pan to make a gravy and add some tomato puree to take a little of the bite out of it.

 

And here it is on the plate with lazy rice (out of a packet!)



Henry's chocolate chip cake

Yesterday I made a cake I had made several times before but wanted to try a variation of, a chocolate chip cake.  You have to be careful with chocolate chip cakes that the chips don't all end up as a congealed layer on the bottom of the cake.  This one gets round it by using a higher proportion of flour and also ground almonds.  The thicker density helps prevent the chips from sinking.  I have made this cake many times with no problems but on this occasion I decided to try making it with Cadbury Twirl Bites in place of the chocolate chips.
It didn't work entirely.  The cake was delicious and it has a fine crumb and a lovely texture but Cadbury milk chocolate had too high a sugar content and the Twirl bites caramellised into sticky lumps tasted good but was not the effect I was looking for.  Here's the recipe, I don't know why its called Henry's, the reason is lost in my past somewhere.

 

HENRY'S CHOCOLATE CHIP CAKE

 

• 6oz softened butter
• 6oz caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 8oz self raising flour
• 4oz chocolate chips
• 2oz ground almonds
• 2 tbsp milk

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/350F
Grease and line your cake tin.  I usually make this in a loaf tin because I hate lining tins and I've got some paper loaf tin liners.
Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy.  I saw Mary Berry on tv recently say you shoud cream them till they're so light they have a mousse like texture to stop the mixture curdling when you add the eggs.  She was right so aim for that.
Add the eggs one at a time, adding two tbsp flour with the last two and beating on high speed
Fold in remaining flour, chocolate chips and almonds with a metal spoon.
Fold in the milk to achieve a soft dropping consistency
Place in the tin and bake for just over an hour till it looks like this

Leave it in the tin to cool for an hour or until cold, this is important.  It stops the cake breaking it up when you take it out and also allows the chocolate chips to reconsolidate.
On this occasion I topped it with a thin layer of Cadbury Dairy Milk.  I used a 120g bar but feel free to use more for a thicker layer.  A word of warning though.  I usually melt chocolate in the microwave with no problems but due to that high level of sugar I mentioned the Cadbury chocolate burned.  You can see a couple of little charred spots in the top picture.  It didn't adversely affect the taste though.  Just do it the traditional way over a pan of hot water!



M&S yoghurt

Today was a low day on my diet and having treated myself to one in Marks and Spencer yesterday I was looking forward to a Rhubarb Creme Brulee yogurt from their Count on us range.  The label proudly proclaims 'Fat free', it might as well say 'Flavour free' it was almost tasteless.  Rhubarb is a distinctive flavour so come on lets taste it.  The same goes for lemon, when was the last time you tasted a lemon tart that bit back.  Manufacturers seem to cater only for the bland.

 

Flavour free?

Tunis cake

Now James Martin is one of my favourite chefs and his Chocolate Coca Cola cake is a favourite in our family and at parties and can be found here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/chocolatecolacake_7614

He has a new series on the Food channel called 'United Cakes of America' but having watched the first four I'm a little disappointed.  For the first part of each half of the show he visits an American baker and sees their speciality in action then for the second halves he's back in his kitchen making something similar from his own repertoire.  Yes they're good but I really want to see how to make the American stuff.  I was also really surprised when he didn't seem to know what a bundt tin was.  American bundt cakes are a category of their own but the tins can be a bit expensive. A good source of recipes is the Bundt Cookbook by Nordic Ware who also make the tins.  I've just checked and its currently out of stock on Amazon but worth looking for.

Today however I made a cake from a recipe I wrote by hand in the back of a cookbook about 38 years ago and have never made.  It came out perfectly which proves that a good recipe never ages and so here it is...

 

TUNIS CAKE

 

 

• 3oz ground almonds
• 6oz softened butter
• 6oz sugar
• 3 eggs
• grated rind of one lemon
• 8oz plain flour
• 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder
• milk

 

Preheat the oven to gas 3/170c/325f

Grease and line a cake tin.  My recipe didn't specify so I used an 8" loose bottomed tin.  Use a smaller radius if you want a taller cake.

Cream the butter, sugar and lemon juice till soft and fluffy.

Beat the eggs and add them gradually to the mix.

Fold in the dry ingredients with a metal spoon

Add enough milk to make a dropping consistency

Turn the mixture into the tin then bake in the middle of the oven for about an hour until cooked.

It should look like this...

 

Now the original recipe called for a topping of plain chocolate but experience shows that this will tend to crack when you cut it so I made a simple ganache by melting 200g of plain chocolate with 100ml of double cream and beating them together.  Let it cool and thicken a little then just pile ,it on top and let it ooze down.

The cake has a delicate lemon flavour and the combination with the plain chocolate may not work for everyone.  I think it would be just as good with no topping or maybe just icing.
As you see, its going down well!



Mayonnaise biscuits

I've thought about starting a blog for years but always wondered what to write about.  I've always cooked since my mum taught me in my teens and food seems to be the new rock and roll so I thought I'd have a bash.  Have you noticed though that no matter how blokey and friendly a tv chef appears to be his food always ends up a little pretentious or beyond the skills of the average supermarket shopper?  Tescos in case you're curious, I like to collect the points and the price is right.  I sometimes go to Waitrose or Marks for a treat but I'm certainly not well off enough to shop there full time.  They can wait till I win the lottery.  I eat out very occasionally at ordinary restaurants like Pizza Express and review them on Tripadvisor.  I review under the name Tilerjohn ( a previous occupation).  In my blog I'll try to keep to simple food and if I muck it up or the recipe doesn't work as it should I'll tell you. 

Like most middle aged people I struggle with my weight so I'm trying the alternate day fasting diet, 15lbs lost since New Year and I can cook and eat on the non-fasting days so my interest in baking has been revitalised.

Seven years ago we were fortunate enough to go to Los Angeles and whilst we were there ate at a seafood chain called Red Lobster.  Apart from the wonderful seafood they provide every table with a basket of warm garlic and cheese biscuits and as fast as you eat them they will keep replacing them at no extra charge.  In case you don't know American biscuits are like a cross between a soft roll and a scone.  What we call biscuits they call cookies and they're soft and chewy, you tell me.  Anyway, I love American food and so went looking online for the recipe, here it is.  I don't change American measures into English unnecessarily as cup measures are readily available everywhere nowadays.

 

RED LOBSTER INSPIRED GARLIC AND CHEESE BISCUITS

 

 

• 1 cup of milk
• 1/3 cup of mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon of sugar
• 2 cups od self raising flour
• 1/4 cup of grated cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon of garlic granules
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter



In a mixing bowl combine the milk, mayo, sugar and flour.  beat on high speed with an electric mixer for about a minute until smooth and completely combined.  Using a spatula streak the dough with the cheese.  The batter should NOT be thin enough to pour, if necessary add just enough milk so that it will drop from your spoon.  Drop the batter into ten paper-lined muffin tins.  Add the garlic granules to the melted butter and brush the tops of the muffins.  Shake some grated cheese over the top if you wish.

Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown at Gas mark 6/200C/400F.  Allow to cool in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes and eat fresh.

 

 

 

Okay so I made these for lunch on Mother's Day and everyone loved them but I thought they were a bit heavy.  Delicious but heavy and the damned things stick to the muffin cases.

During the week I found a pack of cheese and onion bread mix in the back of the cupboard so I thought I'd make it today.  Everything went well until I retrieved it from the airing cupboard and it hadn't risen at all.  I checked the sell by date and it was November 2011! Guess the yeast had died, it came out of the oven like a hot brick and went out on the lawn.  Apologies to the pigeons that are trying to fly with that in their guts.  As I intended to pop over to Marks at Banstead to get some Fuller Longer meals for my beautiful but permanently dieting wife I thought I might treat myself to one of their cheese scones.  However before I left I looked up another old recipe I had for Mayonnaise Biscuits and decided to make these instead.  They took about ten minutes to make from scratch and cost about the same as the scone but I got twelve the same size as a scone and they are delicious.  I added cheese and garlic granules to the recipe I had and they are everything the first recipe should have been, mainly light and fluffy.  Here is the recipe:

 

MAYONNAISE BISCUITS

 

• 2 cups of self raising flour
• 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise
• a cup and half of milk
• tablespoon of sugar
• a cup of grated cheese
• teaspoon of garlic granules

Combine the ingredients in a bowl, stir until well mixed and drop off the spoon.  Add a little more milk if necessary to achieve this consistency.  Drop into twelve greased muffin tins (no papers).

bake at Gas 8/230C/450F in the middle of the oven for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

They should come straight out of the pan without sticking and are delicious hot and/or buttered.

 

 

 

I sent this photo to my lovely wife by Whatsapp and she told me to stop winding her up so I followed it with this one!

 

 

 

These are a piece of cake (no pun intended) and very cheap to make.  Give them a go.