Day 13: Bake with herbs from the garden

Day 13 and a quiet day in, other than a brief visit to the supermarket. 

On the way there I spotted a group of house martins swooping over the lake and gathering in the mud on the edge of the water. I presume they're gathering the mud to make nests.

Back home I decided to do some baking with rosemary from the garden. Rosemary is probably more closely associated with savoury cooking. However, I'd kept a recipe for sweet biscuits by Cynthia Noble and thought the 30 Days Wild challenge would be a good time to use it.

I've copied out the recipe here and included my own notes.

225g plain flour
110g caster sugar
55g ground almonds
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary leaves (you'll need about 2x5" sprigs for this amount)
200g soft butter
Chopped or flaked almonds for sprinkling

1. Heat the oven to 190C/Gas 5.
2. Mix the flour, sugar, ground almonds and rosemary together.
3. Mix in the butter. I used a pastry cutter for this which made it a lot easier.
4. Bring the mixture into a dough and put small balls onto a greased baking sheet. They will spread so don't put them too close. Flatten each ball slightly.
5. Sprinkle over the chopped/flaked almonds.
6. Bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly golden.
7. Leave for a couple of minutes to cool before transferring to a wire rack.

The biscuits themselves are crisp and crumbly. I'd definitely make them again but I'd add more rosemary next time as the flavour is very subtle.

Hope you're enjoying your weekend. x

Fifteens for St Patrick

Happy St Patrick's Day! All over the world, people of Irish descent will be celebrating their patron saint. I'm not aware of any Irish blood in either me or my friends but, on Saturday night, we celebrated anyway!

Chickpea and I both wore green and a simple shamrock brooch I'd made out of felt. We listened to Irish drinking songs, watched The Yank (funny for all the wrong reasons) and ate traditional Irish food, like potato cakes.

My contribution to the food was a batch of Fifteens. I first tried these biscuit-like goodies at my quilt group's Christmas party and thought they were delicious. The name Fifteens comes from the fact that there are 15 of most of the ingredients.They're a traditional treat in Northern Ireland and couldn't be simpler to make. In fact you can  probably make them in 15 minutes! If you'd like to make a batch for your own St Patrick's celebrations, or just because, here's how.

Ingredients

15 large marshmallows, halved
15 digestive biscuits, crushed
15 glace cherries, halved
150ml condensed milk
75g desiccated coconut

Mix together the marshmallows, biscuits and cherries.

Gradually stir in the condensed milk until it starts to form a stiff dough.

Then the messy bit: use your hands to pull the ingredients together and then form the dough into a long sausage.

Spread a layer of the coconut on a clean surface and roll over the sausage, pressing lightly until it's well coated. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 2-3 hours. Cut into 15 slices!

Yummy! Very sweet so you probably won't want more than one and even better the next day.

I'll leave you with an Irish blessing:

May your troubles be less
And your blessings be more
And nothing but happiness
Come through your door.

xx

Melting hearts

Back in December, I showed you the cakes and biscuits I'd made for Lancashire night and promised the recipe for jam slice. I've held onto it until now because I'd read* that jam slice is also known as love paste cake. What could be more appropriate with Valentine's Day just around the corner?

Traditional jam slice is just a layer of jam sandwiched between 2 pieces of sweet shortcrust pastry. However, I've played around with the recipe by using melting moments dough on the top. For those who don't know, melting moments are like a very soft shortbread which really does melt in the mouth - you can also buy them as Viennese whirls. If you prefer though, you can make a classic jam slice by simply making the base and using it for the top and bottom layers.

I played around with making individual portions in these heart-shaped tins. They looked good until I tried to get them out - you can see the result in the picture at the end. Chickpea declared them 'rustic' which is a polite way to say a bit of a mess. Save yourself the hassle by making them the traditional way and cutting out hearts with a pastry cutter. Either way they're delicious and there are plenty of trimmings left over for the chef ;-)

Melting hearts

For the base:
100g unsalted butter, softened
100g caster sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
200g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten
Strawberry jam

For the top:
175g unsalted butter
40g icing sugar
150g plain flour
40g cornflour

Make the base:
1. Mix together the butter and sugar.
2. Add the lemon zest.
3. Add the flour and baking powder
4. Stir in the beaten egg
5. Press the mixture together with your hands into a ball.
6. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for about 30 minutes

Make the top:
1. Mix the butter and sugar together with an electric mixer until smooth and pale.
2. Add the flour and cornflour and mix well.
3. Bring together into a ball with your hands.

Assemble your biscuits:
1. Roll out the base in a rough rectangle until the pastry is about 3mm thick.
2. Place on a lined baking sheet.
3. Spread strawberry jam generously (or your choice of flavour) over the base.
4. Roll out the top into a similar size to the base. Place on top of the jammy base.
5. Bake in the oven (170C/Gas 4) until pale gold.
6. Cool on the tray and then cut into heart shapes.

* 'Traditional Food East and West of the Pennines' by C. Anne Wilson

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Hope you've had a good weekend. Yesterday Chickpea and I went into Manchester on a shopping trip. I managed to get 3 shirts for work, 2 of which were bargains in the sale - happy days! We spotted this guy playing a strange harp-like instrument - I'd love to know what it is if any of you know. I suppose I should have asked him!

Today, as well as making biscuits, I've been finishing the mug hug samples I made for the quilt workshop, which went really well. I wanted to write about it today but ran out of light to take photos of the finished items so won't get another opportunity until next weekend. Although the daylight hours are gradually getting longer, it's never quite enough. There have been some beautiful sunrises and sunsets though. Let's hope for more of those this week. x

Festive making & baking

Christmas already seems so long ago that it feels strange to still be looking back. However, I wanted to show you what I'd been up to before continuing to move forward with the new year.

One of the things I most enjoyed over the Christmas break was having time to spend making and baking. The luxury of actually being able to plan to do some crafting and to do it at a leisurely pace, rather than squeezing it into increasingly fewer spare moments. If I was to make another resolution for 2014, it would be to find more of that kind of time rather than trying to cram in as much as possible. I really felt much better for slowing down, resting and feeding my creative side. Luckily, I don't make resolutions though because it would already have been broken.

But anyway, what making and baking did I get up to?

Starry lebkuchen biscuits with some dough I found lurking at the back of the freezer (and it was no worse from having been there since the previous year!).

I also ventured into baking with yeast for the first time with an apricot, chocolate and cardamom panettone. How exciting is it watching bread rise?! Why have I never tried this before? Bread making is definitely something I'll be coming back to when I can plan an 'at home' day.

The panettone should probably have been smaller and taller but I only realised at the last minute that I had the wrong size tin. Not that it made any difference to the taste. We ate it toasted for breakfast on Christmas morning with shop-bought Christmas tree crumpets and starry waffles.

This was a tree of a different kind made from a polystyrene cone. As you can see from the photos, I cut circles of Christmas fabrics with pinking shears and pinned them in layers to cover the cone. The idea came from the free Cloth, Paper, Scissors e-newsletter.

I also worked on my Father Christmas cross stitch which, I'm embarrassed to admit, has been on the go at least 5 years. All that remains to do is the outline stitching and more of the swirly snow. I've been in two minds whether to crack on and finish it or whether to keep it as a project to pull out each Christmas. I have another cross stitch project in mind though and I'm not sure if I have another frame so it looks like it will have to be finished.

No photos for this one but I've been working on my quilt too, transferring rectangles from piles of unsewn to sewn - a slow but therapeutic process.

And I wasn't the only one crafting for Christmas. Chickpea made this beautiful decopatch treasure chest as a gift for a friend. I was so proud of her: she worked so hard and really took time over all the details. Watching her enjoy crafting was one of my highlights of last year and something I love to encourage. This year, therefore, I'm going to continue being a craftlete, trying different crafts and hopefully finding others which she'll enjoy.

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Thanks for the comments about the cookery book challenge. I was ridiculously excited making my first draw this week, quivering with anticipation of which of my lovely books I'd be using. Was I still excited afterwards? Well, you'll have to wait until my first update to find out :)

Cattern cakes

Today is St Catherine's Day, patron saint of spinsters, spinners and lace makers, and also whom the Catherine Wheel firework is named after. 

I hadn't really heard of St Catherine until I read about her in my new favourite book, Cattern Cakes and Lace, which I uncovered in an Oxfam bookshop a few weeks ago. It only took a quick flick through the pages and there was no question that it was coming home with me!

I really can't describe this lovely book better than by quoting the blurb on the back cover: "An enchanting...calendar of traditional festivals and feast days, and the foods [and] folklore...associated with them." 

What makes me love it so much is how it's illustrated. Every page is decorated with objects and images relevant to the custom and the season: lace, buttons, bobbins and beads, seashells, seeds, flowers, fruit and leaves, poems, pictures and postcards.

It's taken me ages to write this post because I have the book at the side of me and can't resist reaching over to leaf through the pages. Sadly it's out of print but there are lots of second hand copies available from your favourite online stores.

As I did with Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, I'm trying to read it bit by bit following the months, which is what brought me to November and the Cattern Cakes of the title. Cattern is a corruption of the name Catherine and the cakes were traditionally eaten by lace makers in Tudor times to celebrate her day.

They're really more of a biscuit than a cake but what drew me in was the inclusion of caraway seeds as I still have lots left over from making the Goosnargh cakes back in March. There are other versions of this recipe which include yeast but I stayed faithful to the version in the book.

If I made them again, I'd make a couple of changes. The mixture was very crumbly and difficult to pull together. Even half an hour in the fridge didn't help so I'd recommend adding a few drops of water to help with rolling out. 

The other change I'd try is not adding the cinnamon to the mixture but saving it for sprinkling on the dough before rolling up. That way you'd get more colour and definition in the spiral. Of course you could add it to the dough too if you really like cinnamon!

They went down a treat with the girls at work and I found they were better the next day when they'd firmed up and the spices had had plenty of time to permeate. I hope you like them. x

Cattern cakes

275g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
25g currants
50g ground almonds
2 tsp caraway seeds
200g caster sugar
100g melted butter
1 egg, beaten
Extra caster sugar and cinnamon for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan 180C/Gas 6

1. Put all of the dry ingredients into a bowl.
2. Add the butter and beaten egg and mix well to give a soft dough. You might need to add a few drops of water at this point to help the mixture come together.
3. Roll out into a rectangle until the dough is about 1cm thick.
4. Brush the dough with water and sprinkle over the cinnamon and sugar.
5. Roll up like a swiss roll and cut into 2cm slices.
6. Place on a baking sheet leaving plenty of space as the biscuits will spread. Bake for about 10 minutes.
7. Leave to cool completely.

Firelighters

I thought I knew all of the cookery books that Mum owns but, when I was there the other day, I came across this very battered little gem. Family Fare was published by The Co-operative Wholesale Society - yes, the good old Co-op - and we think it dates from the late 50s/early 60s as Mum bought it when she worked for them. At that time it sold for the very reasonable price of 1/6 (1 shilling and 6 pence).

Naturally, the first sections I turned to were for cakes, scones and biscuits and it was here that I found Firelighters. The name alone seemed perfect for a recipe to share on Bonfire Night.

As the book was published by the Co-op, the recipes are used to promote their products such as Wheatsheaf evaporated milk, Eskimo frozen cod and Silver Seal margarine. This one though used Cremo oats. Despite a good hunt on the internet I couldn't find out what kind of oats these were but, since firelighters seemed to be a kind of flapjack, I guessed at rolled oats. It was only afterwards that I thought to search for 'firelighters' and came across a traditional recipe called Stanhope Firelighters. The difference is that this one includes coconut and I've added my own twist of glace cherries to represent the glowing embers of the fire.

Firelighters

100g soft brown sugar
100g butter
1 tbsp golden syrup
200g rolled oats
25g dessicated coconut
1 tsp baking powder
75g glace cherries, quartered
pinch of salt

1. Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/160 Fan
2. Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan.
3. Mix together all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, including the cherries.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
5. Press into a 28 x 18 cm tin, or whatever size you have to give a depth of about 1.5cm.
6. Bake for 20 minutes.
7. Leave in the tin but, while still warm, cut or score into pieces and leave to cool.

A sweet treat to enjoy by the bonfire :)

I'm at my yoga class tonight so won't be going to our usual fireworks display. If the weather is still fine when I get home, we might wave a few sparklers around in the garden. Hope you have a lovely evening wherever you are and stay safe. x

Goosnargh cakes

Last time, I teased you with a photo of a spice and asked you to guess what it was. Well, I can now reveal that they're caraway seeds and they're the essential ingredient in a traditional Lancashire treat, Goosnargh Cakes. Tradition has it that they were originally eaten on feast days such as Easter and Whitsun, though they're now available all year round. Goosnargh (pronounced Goozna) is a small town also known for its corn-fed ducks and chickens and much loved by celebrity chefs.

I first came across Goosnargh Cakes at a bakery in Preston, Elsie's Pantry, which sadly closed down several years ago. The cakes are actually a shortbread (shortcake), which is probably my all-time favourite kind of biscuit. It's the caraway seeds which give them their distinctive slightly aniseed flavour. However, don't worry if you don't like aniseed as it's more of a hum in the background unless you add a lot.

The other spice found in Goosnargh Cakes is ground coriander though there are mixed views on whether it should be included or not. However, as it seemed an unusual flavouring for a biscuit, I decided to give it a go. And the result? To be honest, I'm not sure I could taste it but maybe it's one of those background flavours that you'd miss if it wasn't there.

You'll also notice quite a bit of sugar on the top of the cakes. There's only a small amount in the mixture but you make up for it by sprinkling a lot on later! The first sprinkle is added when the cakes are raw as the idea is that the sugar melts and forms a crust as they bake. One of the recipes said to add a 1/4 inch layer! I was much less generous than that. A second sprinkling is then added when they're hot out of the oven. I actually don't remember there being a sugar crust on the cakes I ate from Elsie's so they must have added more sugar to the recipe itself, which is an option if you don't like to see the amount of sugar you're eating!

What I can say is that this recipe gives a gloriously crumbly, melt-in-the mouth texture and I've had to restrain myself from scoffing the lot in one go. Have I tempted you enough yet? OK then, time to make yourself a batch - I'd love to know what you think if you do decide to give the recipe a go.

Goosnargh cakes

110g butter
20g caster sugar
180g plain flour
1tbsp caraway seeds
1tbsp ground coriander
extra caster sugar for sprinkling

1. Cream together the butter and sugar.
2. Combine the flour, caraway seeds and ground coriander and mix with the sugar and butter.
3. Use your hands to pull the mixture into a dough, then roll out to 1/4 inch thick.
4. Cut out rounds using a cutter - mine was a 2 1/4 inch cutter.
5. Put the rounds onto a baking sheet leaving a little space between to allow for spreading during baking.
6. Sprinkle with caster sugar. 
7. Put the tray in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight to firm up.
8. Preheat the oven to 140C/120C Fan/Gas 1.
9. Bake the cakes for about 30 minutes until firm, though don't let them brown.
10. Sprinkle with more sugar and leave to cool on the baking tray.

Naughty black cherry & almond cookies

As I was rummaging in my kitchen cupboards I came across an unopened packet of dried black cherries: no doubt destined for a long-forgotten recipe. How could I use them up?

Cookies sprang to mind as, the weekend before, I'd eaten a very nice cranberry and sunflower seed cookie. Cherries also made me think of cherry bakewells with their almond flavour. I had the beginnings of a recipe.

The next stage was to find a basic cookie recipe to which I could add my flavourings. Eventually I settled on the Rachel Allen recipe for chocolate chip peanut butter cookies as the photo in the book looked like the texture I had in mind. To get the almond flavour, I substituted some of the flour for ground almonds, and replaced the vanilla extract with almond extract. And for even more flavour and a crunchy texture, I added flaked almonds.



So far, so good. And now comes the naughty bit! The dried black cherries seemed very dry and quite firm. I worried that they might become even harder during baking so decided to soak them first to make them plump and juicy. I needed something to enhance the cherry flavour and another rummage in the cupboards produced a bottle of blackberry gin - delicious when added to Cherry Eton Mess - yum!

Armed with my recipe, I headed to the kitchen. 

Look pretty good don't they? Actually, they were disappointing: more cakey than biscuit, the almond flavour was too strong, and they went soft very quickly. I'm sorry to say that most of them ended up in the bin.

Back to the drawing board and fast forward to last weekend.

This time I decided to stick with a tried and tested cookie recipe as the starting point: Felicity Cloake's Perfect Chocolate Chip. As we've made these a couple of times I knew they had exactly the right texture.

It's quite a stiff mixture and hard on the arm muscles when it comes to adding the flour, so I opted to use my friend the food processor and only mixed by hand when it came to adding the cherries and flaked almonds at the end. And the result?

Success! Maybe not quite as firm as the chocolate chip version but nice and chunky and the almonds give a good crunch. What a relief!

Given the right inspiration, I'll have a go at creating a recipe again but, just in case you'd like to try this one for yourself, here it is:

Naughty black cherry & almond cookies

100g dried black cherries
2 tablespoons (30ml) blackberry gin
150g butter, at room temperature
75g light brown sugar
75g granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract

240g plain flour

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

70g flaked almonds

1. A few hours before, chop the cherries. I cut them into quarters with scissors but you can cut them finer if you prefer a less chunky cookie. Put in a small bowl with 2tbsp blackberry gin. You can use any blackberry/cherry liqueur or a cordial if you prefer, though the alcohol will cook off during baking.

2. In a food processor, mix together the butter and sugars.
3. Add the egg and almond extract and mix.
4. Add the flour and bicarbonate of soda a few spoons at a time until just mixed.
5. Transfer to a bowl. Drain any excess liquid from the cherries and add to the mixture with the flaked almonds. Stir with a wooden spoon until evenly mixed.
6. Chill overnight (or for a few hours) in the fridge.
7. On baking day, preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/350F/Gas 5.
8. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
9. Using about a dessert-spoon full, lightly roll the mixture into balls with your hands. It will help if you wet your hands for this bit to prevent the mixture sticking too much. Place on a baking tray and flatten slightly, leaving space in between to allow the cookies to spread while baking. You should get about 15 cookies.
10. Bake for 10-15 minutes until just golden. I had to do 3 batches but you may need to do less if you have larger trays.
11. Leave to cool for a couple of minutes on the tray, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.