Forgotten Cookies

My grandfather's very generous wedding present to me was a beautiful pistachio coloured Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer, selected by my aunt, who has impeccable taste.  I love it.  It sits in the corner of my kitchen practically demanding to be oggled at and adored.  And it's a pleasure to use.  The first thing I made was a batch of Forgotten Cookies.  Making meringue with a stand mixer is such a breeze and  I don't think I'll ever go back to being without one if I can help it as I am a very lazy cook and normally can't stand beating egg whites.

These meringues are delicious, simple and very cheap to make - for two egg whites you get about 12 - 14 cookies.  The recipe has been formulated to be made at the end of the day, for eating the next day (you'll see what I mean when you read the recipe).  Traditionally this American recipe calls for pistachio nuts and dark chocolate.  I cheat by using half a block of nut chocolate (my favourite is Whitakkers macadamia milk chocolate) which is a lot cheaper than buying nuts and chocolate individually.

Forgotten Cookies

2 egg whites (room temperature)
A large pinch of salt
Half a cup of castor sugar
Dash of vanilla essence or paste
Half a king size block of nut chocolate, cut into chips

• Turn the oven on to bake at a very high temperature
• Put two egg whites and a large pinch of salt into a bowl and beat until frothy
• Add the vanilla paste and a little of the sugar and contine to beat the egg whites, adding the sugar a little at a time.  Beat until the egg white forms very stiff white peaks
• Fold in the nut chocolate chips then put large tablespoons of the mixture onto an oven tray that has been covered in baking paper.  Leave a little gap between mixture blobs to allow for spreading.
• Put the tray in the oven and immediately turn it off.  Leave the mixture in the oven overnight and the meringues will be cooked and ready for nomming the next day.  Just for heaven's sake don't open the oven until morning!

Blueberry Pie

Because I had had such success making pies, I was going about boasting how easy they are to make.  Then I promised to make one for my assistant's farewell party at work, and of course it completely turned to custard... or rather it turned into a great big puddle with syrup dripping through the base of the pie so that the crust resembled paper mache.  After a lot of cussing and slamming of clenched fists on benchtops, and an 11pm visit to my local supermarket, I had another go and ended up with a more presentable pie to take to work, though this time on the slightly too gluggy side.  So - some warning tips for pie filling making:

• Make sure that you cook through the pie filling for a decent amount of time so that the cornflour has cooked, or else it will taste of glue.
• Make sure that you add a sufficient amount of cornflour so that the filling doesn't seep through the base... but don't go overboard (you can add extra cornflour a heaped tablespoon at a time so that you don't make an error one way or the other)
• Make sure you sieve the cornflour in so that it doesn't get too gluggy.

Here are some pictures of my most successful attempt at making blueberry pie.  By golly it was good - especially a la mode with vanilla ice cream.

To make this I essentially followed the same method as the one I use for making my Cheats Cherry Pie, but used frozen blueberries.  There's no need to add any liquid as the juice released from the blueberries as they cook will provide enough fluid to work with for the filling.  As well as cinammon, I also fine-grated in the rind of a lemon.

Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake

The syrup for this guarantees a moist cake.  Depending on your tastes, you can add a little more lemon juice or rind for extra tang.  The trick to any good cake is to cream the butter and sugar until it is no longer gritty, and to not over-mix the dry ingredients.

Ingredients:

4 tbsp poppy seeds
1/4 cup milk
Juice of 1/2 a large lemon
200g butter, softened
1 tbsp finely grated lemon rind
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
21/4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Syrup:
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

• Preheat oven to a medium-high temperature. Grease a 25cm diameter pan and line the base with paper. Soak the poppy seeds in the milk and lemon juice for 10 minutes.
• Beat the butter, lemon rind and sugar in a very large bowl until pale and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
• Sift the flour and baking powder straight into the bowl, in two batches, folding it in between batches, along with the milk and poppy seed mixture. 
• Spoon the cake mixture into the prepared pan. Bake for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
• When the cake is nearly done, make the syrup by combining the juice, sugar and water in a saucepan. Stir over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour the hot syrup over the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven (use a skewer to poke holes for the syrup to soak into). Leave to cool in the pan.

Jafa Chocolate Chip Cookie

My baking doesn't always go to plan and when this happens I end up stomping around the kitchen, cursing like a sailor.  I get looks from my partner when I do this and I'm sure he's thinking "I don't think Martha Stewart talks like that".

We had some extra dark Whitakers chocolate in the house and it inspired me to have a go at making some jaffa cookies. I took a basic cookie recipe from the closest cookbook I had at hand and fooled around with the recipe, adding in cut up chocolate chunks, a bit of vanilla and some finely grated orange peel.  The flavour was pretty much there, but the base biscuit was too soft for my liking and the cookies spread across the baking sheet instead of  holding together as I had hoped.  I never seem to have much luck with chocolate chip cookies.  One day I'll have to have a go at working my way through Martha Stewart's selection of 15 chocolate chip cookie recipes to find one that I actually like.

Cheats Cherry Pie

I made up this lazy recipe last weekend.  It really tastes spectacular.  And I really wish I had a better picture to do it justice.

Ingredients:

Packet of Edmonds short sweet pastry sheets

2 x jars of Delmaine pitted cherries

120 grams caster sugar

3 heaped tablespoons of sieved corn flour

2  heaped teaspoons ground cinnamon

Instructions:

• Turn on oven to 'bake' setting at a fairly high temperature.  Lightly grease a large pie tin (with removable bottom) with butter.  
• Line pie tin with sweet short pastry.  You may need to use a sheet for the bottom and then cut strips to wrap around the inside of the tin, working the pastry like clay with your thumbs to meld the edges with the base.
• Cover pastry with baking paper and weigh down with pastry weights or raw rice then pop  in oven to ‘blind bake’.  Remove from oven when the pastry is starting to look cooked and remove baking paper.
• While pastry is blind baking, drain the cherries (reserving syrup) and put the drained cherries in a large saucepan with caster sugar and cinnamon and about 3/4 cup of the reserved syrup (which is sour).  Alter quantity of sugar and syrup to taste.  Cook until sugar dissolves.
• Add in corn flour, sieving it into the pan to avoid lumps.  Cook for 5 or 10 minutes, stirring.  The liquid should thicken to a jam like consistency. You may need to add more corn flour or syrup to get a happy consistency.
• Pour cherry mixture into pastry case (still in baking tin).  Cut a sheet of pastry into strips and make a cross hatch topping to the pie.
• Bake until golden brown.  Leave to cool before removing from tin.

Am not yet over the novelty of my new pie dish so stay tuned for more pie recipes.

Banana Maple Walnut Cake

Last night I whipped up the above cake for my betrothed to take to work on his birthday.  Iced cakes aren't particularly transportable, so I thought a practical option would be a banana cake.  I started with a basic Edmonds Banana Cake recipe, and for a bit of glamour turned this into a banana maple walnut cake.  Alterations to the Edmonds recipe include using 2 large bananas in the recipe, instead of the 1 cup specified.  I roughly squeeze the bananas still in their skins before peeling them and adding the pulp to the cake mixture, to save mess.  I also halved the amount of sugar specified and supplemented the rest with a good slosh of maple syrup.  Maple syrup is wonderful to bake with as it means the cake comes away from the tin easily when it comes time to turn it out.  Last of all I added a good couple of handfuls of walnuts to the cake mix before combining, and then after filling the cake tin (lined with baking paper - no need to grease the tin thanks to the maple syrup), decorated the top with a few extra walnuts.  I'd suggest using a smaller cake tin so that you get a deep cake, as the recipe makes a fairly small quantity of cake mix.  Bake until golden brown.  The cake should be crispy on the outside and oh so moist inside.

End result - apparently gone by lunchtime.

Pear and Mildly Ginger Muffins

It may look a bit of a wreck, but that's only because the last of the batch got mauled before I had a chance to pap it in all it's muffiny glory.  In actual fact I'm really pleased with how these turned out.  I've joined the revival for seasonal eating, and with autumnal pears, ginger is a brilliant match.  However as far as I'm concerned, ginger in baking needs the lightest of touches so I came up with the idea of poaching peeled pears in a sugar and crushed ginger syrup rather than adding ginger to the actual batter.  It makes for a more delicate flavour.

As a basic muffin recipe base, I tend to use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Lemon Curd Marble Muffin recipe, doubling the quantities of everything as I use a large muffin tin. I like HFW's recipe as I think the addition of yoghurt makes for a moist muffin.  In this case I used honey flavoured greek yoghurt to complement the other flavours.  And of course instead of lemon curd I used small chunks of poached pear.  For this peel 2 large pears, core and cut into large chunks.  Bring a small saucepan of water to boil with 2 cups of sugar and a large teaspoon of crushed ginger (I use the stuff that comes in an easy squeezy tube).  Poach until just cooked, remove from the pot and put aside to cool while you prepare the muffin batter according to HFW's recipe.  Mix in pear at the end before you spoon the mixture into your tin.  It pays to keep an eye on these as they cook so that they don't burn. Things can go all pear shaped all too easily. 

Sorry, but it is an HFW recipe, so I had to have a bad pun in there somewhere.

Strawberry and Almond Crumble

This afternoon I decided to make room in my freezer by using up the last of my homegrown strawberries.  My recipe of choice was one that had firm approval at Christmas (demonstrated through Seconds being consumed, even after a huge Christmas feasting session). 

Nigella's Strawberry and Almond Crumble

It's easy and unbelievably good.  The combination of cooked strawberries, ground almonds and vanilla is a real winner.  The secret to any good crumble is to make sure that the butter and flour are well rubbed so that you get a proper crumble topping rather than chalk.  Also being patient and ensuring that the crumble is properly cooked through for similar reasons.

Nigella is controversial in our household.  Not for the usual issue of contention concerning Nigella, that of her love of calorie laden food.  The controversy derives instead from Nigella's use of the english language.  It makes my other half squirm in his seat.  "Why does she have to say 'tumble the berries into the bowl', why can't she just say 'put'?!"  We once watched her critique a panna cotta on an episode of Top Chef and she remarked that a panna cotta should quiver like the inner thigh of a seventeenth century courtesan.  It was too much for my love and he raged at the television.

I quite like Nigella's expressions, but I think they're best consumed in small doses, like her food.  For the record, Nigella may insist that crumble should be served with lashings of cream, but I instead opted for a more modest strawberry and rhubarb yoghurt.