Christmas Cranberry & Clementine Trifle

Is this becoming an all-trifle blog? It's certainly looking that way at this point! I've seen a couple of people talking about A Return To Blogging as the newsletter sites and various microblogging sites that shall remain nameless aren't very satisfactory, but I am not willing to commit to any regularity. For one thing, I'm not doing much interesting cooking at the moment, and not really paying enough attention to it to write about it.

This trifle, however, was a grand project and the result was worthy of recording. I took my inspiration from the Cosmopolitan, which is a great drink even if it is out of fashion, and is very Christmassy with the cranberries and lovely winter citrus.

We had a big family Christmas lunch on Christmas Eve (big, for our purposes, is any more than the two of us and in this case was 7 adults and a 2 week old baby) and I muscled my way into bringing the dessert. Not that it took a whole lot of convincing; Paul's family insist he keep me around for my cooking.

It was constructed over 3 days, but that was a very unpressured approach which left me feeling fairly relaxed about everything. Other than the usual worries about whether the jelly would be rubbery, the creme diplomat ropy, the curd curdled, the sponge cracked, the cream split. But no time crunch. I thoroughly recommend only being responsible for one element of Christmas dinner, if you can possibly manage it.

Day 1. 

Groceries arrive. My preferred brand of eggs were unavailable but an alternative high-welfare option was provided, so that was OK. Everything else was supplied in the quantities ordered so I didn't have to risk going to the shops.

First thing was making cranberry and clementine curd. I reserved some of the prettiest cranberries for crystallising. I followed Nigella Lawson's recipe for cranberry curd in How to be a Domestic Goddess (very straightforward, uses whole eggs because I knew I was going to have eggwhites left from other elements and didn't want to have a freezer full of eggwhites) but I reduced the amount of sugar considerably (from 500g to 350g), substituted the juice of a clementine for some of the water and added the finely grated zest of the clementine. I also didn't entirely trust myself to recognise "cook until thickened" but various places around the internet agreed that 77C is about the right point, so I used the thermometer. Gorgeous colour, silky smooth and it set beautifully.

Glorious colour

Next up, I candied the zest of a clementine. I blanched the shreds twice, then made a syrup of 50g each of sugar and water and simmered the zest in that for 5 minutes (by which time they were almost transparent) before lifting them out and spreading them out to dry. When they were almost dry I tossed them in some caster sugar and left them on some baking parchment until they were completely dry and a bit crispy.

Then the jelly. I used a 330ml bottle of unsweetened, 100% cranberry juice and made it up to 450ml with the juice of the clementine I had zested to candy, and some homemade bergamotcello. The bergamotcello is a lot less sugary than bought limoncello, so I added the syrup the zest had candied in and then some sugar to taste - keeping it very tangy to balance the richer, sweeter elements. I heated it gently until the sugar had dissolved and then added 4 bloomed gelatine sheets.

While the jelly was cooling, I zested 2 more clementines and reserved the zest for Day 2, and peeled the membrane from the clementine segments. Usually I would cut citrus into supremes but I think clementines are too delicate for that sort of manhandling, so I blanched them in boiling water, refreshed them and peeled the membranes off. It was a real faff and they broke up into smaller chunks but worth it for the final result of little pops of juicy acidity. I stirred them through the cooling jelly and poured it into the trifle bowl to chill overnight.

This year I have seen a few trifles where the jelly is a bottom layer with the cake either in a layer over it, or, as I ended up doing, a row around the edge of the bowl on top of the jelly - it makes the cake less soggy, which is the biggest complaint among trifle naysayers, but also it keeps the pattern clean, if you use a rolled cake. Now I have decided that this is the way to go for the future, I might even contemplate doing a joconde collar with a stencilled design or some such elaborate nonsense down the track.

Day 2

I planned things around just having a couple of tasks in the afternoon, because I had an optometrist's appointment in the middle of the day.

Creme patissiere, made with the reserved zest from the two clementines, and a splash of vanilla and a splash of fiori di Sicilia, clingfilm pressed directly onto the surface and allowed to cool, then chill. The recipe I use contained 4 eggyolks, so I froze 3 of the whites and the 4th I reserved.

For the cake, I made it to Nicola Lamb's Buche de Noel recipe but with additional flour substituted for the cocoa, and the grated zest of a clementine (reserving the zested fruit for day 3) and a teaspoon of fiori di Sicilia added for flavour. My aunt gave me the fiori di Sicilia as a gift a couple of months ago and it was quite a process to actually get it to me, so I am busting it out wherever possible. When cool, I filled the cake with the cranberry curd, rolled it up, wrapped it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge.

I crystallised the reserved cranberries by lightly beating the reserved eggwhite, tossing the cranberries in the eggwhite then into some caster sugar before spreading out on baking parchment to dry. While they were drying I dusted them very lightly with some edible lustre dust for a bit of extra bling because honestly more is more with a trifle.

Day 3

First thing I sliced the cake, and was very pleased to see pretty defined swirls. Also, I had a piece and it tasted really good, always a bonus.

I put slices of the cake around the edge of the trifle dish, pushing them slightly into the jelly layer for stability, then I warmed some Corsican clementine jam and thinned it with a splash more bergamotcello and brushed it over the top and inside layer of the cake slices, and spread the last spoonful thinly over the surface of the jelly.

I bloomed some more sheets of gelatine and dissolved them in the juice of the reserved clementine from day 2. This was an expensive bag of fruit and I wanted to use every bit of them, OK? Then I whipped cream with the dissolved gelatine and folded it through the creme patissiere to make a creme diplomat. I scraped it into the middle of the cake border and nudged it down to mostly fill the gaps. Then it went back into the fridge to set while I had a shower and got dressed etc. 

Finally, just before we left to go to lunch, I whipped some plain double cream, not too much, because I have some family members who don't love too much cream, and then garnished wantonly, with some ridiculously blingy metallic cachous, the crystallised zest and cranberries, then another sprinkle of the cachous to fill in any bare patches.

It was very well received and I was extremely pleased with it. It tasted as good as it looked! Lots of different textures, different expressions of the cranberry and clementine flavours, all playing very well together. There was only a small quantity leftover for our host to have as her Christmas breakfast.

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate.

Malted Caramel Blondies

This recipe is not photogenic. We're not doing it for the 'Gram. There are no vibrant colours, no chocolate, no oozing, luscious toffee, no artful dribbles of icing. It looks like a plain, brown, utilitarian cake. Maybe a little dry. The last one to go at the bake sale. The piece you take, politely but unenthusiastically, when offered by someone you don't know well enough to be honest to. But behind that unprepossessing, unfrosted facade, it tastes fantastic.

I've been on a pottery summer school - 4 days last week building, back today to glaze the bisque-fired pieces. And on the last day of last week the teacher mentioned it was her birthday so I said I would bake something for today. Now, usually I would do something citrussy, both because I like it and because it's a crowd pleaser. But another person at the arts & crafts centre is very proud of his lemon drizzle cake and I felt that bringing something similar would be needlessly antagonistic.

These have layers of stuff making them taste good - there's browned butter, and wholemeal flour for nuttiness, soft brown sugar and chunks of caramel (which mostly melt) for rich caramellyness, and vanilla and malted milk powder to round things out. These are quite a chewy, rather than gooey blondie. If you really want goo I guess you could reduce the cooking time a bit, but I like them like this. They probably keep well but I didn't get a chance to find out.

Folding in the caramel pieces

Malted Caramel Blondies (makes 18 generous pieces, could be cut bigger or smaller)

250g butter

300g light muscovado sugar

2 eggs

1tbs malted milk powder (I used Ovaltine) dissolved in 2 tsp vanilla extract

250g wholemeal plain flour

1/2 tsp salt (I use Diamond Kosher, adjust quantity for the salt you use)

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

125g soft caramels (I used Werthers with a soft centre, but I think original Werthers might hold their shape more) chopped roughly into pieces

First make the browned butter. Put your butter into a saucepan that's quite a lot bigger than you think you need, because it will foam up. Melt it over a medium heat, swirling gently, and continue to swirl until it is a rich brown colour and smells beautifully nutty. Remove from the heat and pour into a heatproof mixing bowl big enough to hold the rest of your ingredients. Make sure you get all the little toasty bits from the bottom of the pan - we're not clarifying the butter, we want those bits.

Allow the butter to cool.

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan). Line a 7" x 11" baking tin with baking parchment.

Beat the sugar into the butter, then add the eggs, one at a time, then the malt & vanilla mixture. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder, and then mix the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture. Fold in the caramels.

Scrape the batter into the lined baking tin. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes until set but just slightly soft in the the middle. Cool completely in the tin before cutting into pieces. Although it probably wouldn't hurt to serve them warm with ice cream as a dessert.

Florentine Slice

 

What a year. WHAT a year. Honestly, words fail me. As far as these things go, Paul and I have been very fortunate - our housing has been secure, none of our dearest loves has been ill, our time-tested internet shopping habits have served us well. Urchin has found having both of us at home all the time absolutely ideal. 

It's just the confinement. The narrowing of life and experience. The loss of fleeting, casual contact with other people. I am an introvert by nature and had no idea just how much I value those tiny instances of connection until they didn't happen any more. Looking at exhibitions online just can't compare with wandering through a gallery. Having a long chat on the phone isn't the same as attending a reading and then sharing a meal. Somehow spending time with actual people is more nourishing than just messaging or speaking, regardless of how freely you speak.

You wouldn't know from this blog, but I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen over the last year. With restaurants mostly closed and local delivery services unreliable, I have cooked most of what we've eaten, three meals a day and snacks. I am profoundly tired of cooking. But at the same time I'd mostly rather bake a cookie than buy a cookie because doing one fills in a couple of hours as I decide what to bake and then do it, instead of just the gratification of eating it.

I wasn't sure how these were going to go. We'd run out of the previous batch of biscuits (chocolate hobnobs) and had no eggs. I initially thought of a round of shortbread, cut into wedges, with half a glace cherry pressed into each piece, but as I searched for eggless cookies with glace cherries I kept coming up against Florentine recipes. But I really wanted shortbread.

And lo! Unto us a Florentine slice was born. The caramel layer is quite soft, like a Millionaire's Shortbread, instead of being snappy and chewy like a proper Florentine. For something I cludged together and crossed my fingers over, these are very good. Something about this year that is actually worthy of being remembered.

Florentine Slice (Makes about 18 pieces, depending on how you cut it)

Base

175g butter, softened

85g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

200g plain flour

25g rice flour

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla bean paste with electric hand beaters until light and fluffy. Mix in the flours and ginger and fold & smear together with a spatula to a dough. Press into a baking paper-lined 8x11" pan and pat to an even layer. Chill in the fridge for about an hour.

Filling

50g butter

50g double cream

100g soft light brown sugar

50g golden syrup

50g plain flour

50g mixed peel

50g glace cherries, chopped

75g pistachio nuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan)

In a small bowl, combine the flour, mixed peel, glace cherries and nuts. In a small saucepan combine the butter, cream, sugar and golden syrup. Over a low heat bring just to the boil. Remove from heat and stir in the combined flour, fruit and nuts.

Pour the fruity caramel mixture over the chilled base and gently rotate the pan to encourage it into the corners. Bake for 15-18 minutes until evenly browned and bubbling.

Topping

100g dark chocolate

While the slice is baking, finely chop the chocolate. As soon as it comes out, sprinkle the chocolate evenly over the slice. In a few moments it will all have melted, so nudge it to cover the slice completely.

Allow to cool in the tin (which takes much longer than you'd think for the chocolate to set) before cutting into small pieces.

 

Passionfruit Pie

"May you live in interesting times" the apocryphal saying goes. With this coronavirus pandemic business, the times certainly are "interesting". And unsettling and worrying. And weirdly mundane, as laundry still has to get done, kitty litter needs to be scooped and meals still have to be cooked. In fact, even more meals than usual because Paul is working from home so all of a sudden lunch is required.

We were supposed to have Paul's mother staying with us for a month, but the South African government closed the borders a day before she was due to travel. Disappointing, since it was the first time she'd planned to come to the UK in several years, but being effectively in lockdown in a home that is not your own wouldn't be entirely cosy.

I had planned several very good meals for her stay. We wanted to cook some of the things we really enjoy which she may not have been familiar with, and also just take advantage of having an extra body in the house to justify a bit of extra indulgence. There were going to be curries and barbecues and cakes. Lots of vegetables prepared in interesting ways. Many, many cups of tea.

Having expected her to arrive on Wednesday morning, my grocery order for this week still contained a lot of the things I had on the menu for this weekend. We'd invited Paul's niece and her husband and Paul's sister in law to join us to celebrate Mothering Sunday and were going to pull all the stops out on the meal. Despite all the news about panic buying, denuded supermarket shelves and grocery deliveries arriving half empty, almost everything I ordered arrived - fortunately I'd had a chance to edit the order before the site crashed and had removed the very large standing rib roast that was an extravagance for six people and completely absurd for two.

The ingredients for the dessert arrived. Paul has revealed, 20 years into knowing him, that he really, really, really likes passionfruit. He also is quite partial to key lime pie. I concluded that passionfruit would probably be acidic enough to thicken the condensed milk and eggs in the way limes do and lo! Passionfruit pie was born. The crust is crunchy, the filling is fragrant and smooth and it's very, very easy. Although if this rush on eggs continues, it may be a historical artifact.

No filter or food colour, just lovely egg yolks

Passionfruit Pie (makes 8-10 slices. You can decide how many people that feeds)

140g digestive biscuits
70g roasted, salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped in half
80g butter
9 passionfruit
2 limes (you need the juice and the finely grated zest)
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks (I used particularly nice eggs with lovely glowing orange yolks, which gave my pie a gorgeous colour)
150ml double cream (optional) to garnish

Preheat the oven to 160C, fan

Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan. In a food processor, combine the digestives and nuts and process until the biscuits are fine crumbs and the nuts still have some chunky bits (if you don't want to wash up the food processor, crush the biscuits in a plastic bag with a rolling pin and chop the nuts by hand) and mix the crumbs into the melted butter. That's why you melted the butter in a larger saucepan than you needed.

Press the buttery crumb mixture very firmly into the base and sides of a pie plate. I think your hands are the best tool for this, but you can use the back of a spoon if you insist.

Bake the crumb case for 8 minutes.

While the crust is baking, scoop 8 1/2 of the passionfruit out into a mini processor and reserve the last half passionfruit for garnishing later. If your passionfruit don't come in multiples of 3 you can go nuts and use 9 whole passionfruit for the filling and an extra one for the garnish. It's the end of the world! Let your hair down. Whizz in the mini processor until the pulp on the seeds has broken down and the seeds are starting to break up a bit. This maximises the amount of juice you get out of them. Strain the passionfruit into a 1l measuring jug and add the grated lime zest and juice. This should give you about 200ml juice. Whisk in the sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks and stir until smooth. You will feel it thickening almost immediately.

Pour the filling into the baked crumb crust and return to the oven for 15-20 minutes or until set but still with a bit of a jiggle. Allow to cool completely and then chill for a couple of hours before serving.

Whip the double cream to peaks, pipe it on if you can be bothered or just splodge it as I did, then garnish with the pulp from the reserved half passionfruit.

Mars Bar Slice

On Saturday, it was the kids day at the farm where Paul shoots. Last year was the first time he'd been involved - the day before we smoked and wrapped two shoulders of lamb with a lot of harissa, garlic and preserved lemons. They, along with everything else on offer, disappeared as if a plague of locusts had been let loose.

This year, they were determined to out-do themselves. They had four kettle barbecues set up for slow roasting and a gas grill for burgers. Paul acted as pitmaster. Starting at 7am they cooked through until about 4pm, getting through 1.5 sheep (in various cuts), 3 small deer, 160 pheasant, duck and venison burgers and some sausages. All meat either produced or shot on the farm. There was also a bakery full of bread and buns, salads and a vast array of confectionary. He got home sunburnt and too tired to speak and slept for 12 hours.

My small contribution was a tray of Mars Bar Slice. Always a crowd-pleaser. Although given that the locusts left not a single bite of anything, it's hard to adequately assess the popularity with this particular crowd.

Mars Bar Slice (makes lots)

100g butter
2 tbs golden syrup
More-or-less 500g mars bars (they keep changing the size, but anything from 450-550g total weight is absolutely fine). 1/4 of them finely chopped, the rest cut into rough chunks.
120g rice krispies
200g milk chocolate
200g dark chocolate - or you could use 400g milk chocolate, but I like that touch less sweetness from combining the two
30g coconut oil
Pinch of salt
Sprinkles (optional)

Line a tin with non-stick baking parchment. I used a 20 x 30cm pyrex lasagne dish, but an inch either side of those measurements isn't a problem.

Combine the butter, golden syrup and the roughly chopped mars bars in a medium pan, and melt gently over a low heat, stirring constantly until smooth, then remove from heat.

Put the rice krispies in a large bowl with the finely chopped mars bars. With your hands, gently toss the mixture together to separate out the pieces of mars bar, which have a tendency to cling together.

Stir the melted mars bar mixture through the rice krispies. Scrape into the prepared tin and press down well with a spatula. Cool for an hour to set.

Combine the milk and dark chocolate, chopped into chunks, with the coconut oil and a small pinch of salt in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (not letting the water touch the base of the bowl) and stir until the chocolate melts. Pour the melted chocolate over the set slice and tilt the pan around to make the coating even. If you are using sprinkles, allow the chocolate to cool for about 5 minutes before adding them, so they don't just sink straight through. I used some very glamorous bronze crunch sprinkles which I think make everything look classy. They'll probably turn up on cauliflower cheese at some point.

Allow to cool for 30-45 minutes at room temperature before cutting into small squares with a sharp knife. Store in the fridge if it's warm or humid.

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake

We had a house guest staying last weekend. He's a friend of Paul's who comes over 3-4 times a year, but he lives a 3 hour train trip away. So if he comes to visit he stays the night so they can sit in the living room talking shit for hours. I assume - I usually go to bed. I limit my hostessing to washing the spare room sheets, cleaning the bathroom and making a salad.

Any excuse to make a pudding, however. The last time he came over I made Felicity Cloake's perfect pecan pie. Which was SO darn good. Really. Best pecan pie I have ever eaten. I've made it again subsequently and it's actually a bit tricky to think of other desserts to make when that exists in the world. It also makes other pies and tarts feel a bit shy. How can they live up to that?! Paul ended up solving the dilemma, when he asked for a cheesecake with a layer of a tart fruit jam on top.

It's quite a dense, baked cheesecake, and not too sweet (unusually for white chocolate). I used a very nice 70% fruit sour cherry preserve, which was just the thing.

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake (serves 8-10)

120g ginger nut biscuits
50g butter
pinch salt
200g white chocolate
300g sour cherry jam, divided in half
300g cream cheese
300g sour cream
50g caster sugar
2tbs cornflour
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1tbs kirsch (or other booze)

Preheat oven to 180C, with a metal oven tray on the middle shelf.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and set aside to cool.

Melt the butter in a small pan. Using a rolling pin, crush the biscuits in a plastic bag until they are mostly fine crumbs, with the occasional bigger bit. Mix the crumbs into the melted butter, add a pinch of salt and stir well.

Line a deep 20cm round cake tin with a removable base (you don't really have to, especially if you are using a springform tin, but it helps avoid the cheesecake's tendency to crack as it cools because the lining moves with it) and firmly press the buttery crumbs into the base of the tin.

Bake the base on the preheated oven tray for 15 minutes.

Remove the tin from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 110C.

Dollop half the jam over the hot biscuit base, and spread gently around as it melts.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, cornflour, eggs, vanilla and lemon zest until smooth. Fold in the cooled white chocolate and pour into the tin, over the base. It's quite runny, so it should self-level well.

Bake for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours, until set but still slightly wobbly in the middle. If you didn't line your tin, when you pull the tin out of the oven, run a palette knife all the way around the cake to make sure it's loosened from the sides of the tin (again, helps avoid cracking). Allow to cool completely.

In a small pan, warm the remaining half of the sour cherry jam with the kirsch until it's a bit runnier. Spread over the cold cheesecake. Chill before serving.

2018 Christmas Feasting

Merry Christmas, all! Hope you had the best possible day yesterday.

Last year, of course, we ate mostly vegetarian over the festive period - and very nice it was too. This year we were back on the beasts. And it was just us so we pared things back to a few indulgent meals.

Solstice dinner

We started on Friday, to mark the Solstice. A roast rack of cured pork, with roast autumn vegetables (a Diana Henry recipe), steamed kalettes and parsley sauce. We had some gorgeous Somerset cider brandy later on, to toast the turning of the wheel and the return of the sun.

There was loads of pork leftover. The bones and some of the meat made a lovely thick bean stew, and the rest of the meat went into sandwiches.

Stollen buns

I made a big batch of Spiced and Fruity Stollen Buns for our breakfasts this week. I don't think we'll get through them before they go stale, but the last few are going to make a magnificent bread and butter pudding.

Miso-butter double salmon rillettes

For Christmas Eve we had seafood. Mostly a bought seafood platter - which was vast, we have loads of prawns left - but I also made these absolutely gorgeous miso-butter double salmon rillettes. The miso gives the rillettes an extra deep savour. We had some of the leftover for lunch on Christmas Day, on toasted olive bread, and we're very happy to still have some tucked in the fridge.

Salmon rillettes on chicory leaves, garnished with finger lime

Seafood platter

We had our Christmas Dinner in the evening. As people who don't have a carved-in-stone traditional Christmas meal, it's snuck up on me that my most enduring tradition is Diana Henry's persimmon and chicory salad, which has adorned our Christmas table on three of the last four years, only missing Christmas 2015 because I couldn't get persimmons. This year I left out the pomegranate, because they were really expensive for just a bit of garnish. We had a really lovely lightly-smoked venison rack, and sort-of confit potatoes, cooked slowly with loads of garlic and thyme, and white wine, butter and vegetable stock.

Going easy on the main course left us with space for a very boozy almond tiramisu, made with an abundance of amaretto. And I used Paul's decaf coffee, so we both got a good night's sleep afterwards. 

Tiramisu

Christmas Venison Sausage Rolls

The snowflake is optional

I originally thought I would make a batch of Rudolf Rolls for Paul's last shoot before Christmas. But the thought of making my own blue cheese puff pastry in the time I had available felt a bit like a stressful Bake Off challenge. This, then, has similar flavours but is very quick to pull together.

Christmas Venison Sausage Rolls (makes 16 chunky ones, 8 lunch-sized ones)

500g minced venison (I minced cubed venison through a medium screen)
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 tbs butter
6 juniper berries, crushed
50g fresh breadcrumbs
2 tbs cranberry sauce (I used a particularly nice Manfood cranberry, chilli and orange one)
100g strong blue cheese
1 egg
Salt & pepper
1 egg, extra
2 x 320g sheets ready rolled puff pastry

Preheat oven to 200C (fan).

Gently saute the onion in the butter until translucent. Don't rush it, it'll take a solid 10 minutes with an occasional stir. Set aside to cool.

Combine minced venison, cooled onion, juniper berries, breadcrumbs, cranberry sauce, crumbled blue cheese and the egg in a medium bowl. Season well with salt and pepper and mix well.

Unroll the sheets of puff pastry, leaving it on the paper it's rolled in, and brush with the extra egg, beaten (I find this helps the sausage to stick to the pastry).

Divide the venison mixture into 4. Take a portion, pat it into a sausage shape with your hands and place at one end of one of the sheets of pastry and squidge it until it's the same length as the pastry and an even thickness. Repeat with a second portion and place at the other end of the pastry, then repeat twice more with the other sheet of pastry.

You'll have 2 long sheets of pastry with a sausage at each short end. In case you are having trouble visualising.

With the help of the backing paper to keep it tight, roll the sausage over so it's covered by the pastry, then brush that strip of pastry with a bit more egg and roll again. So you have a sausage roll with a tidy top and a double layer of pastry on the bottom. Repeat from the other end, then repeat with the other sausages and sheets of pastry.

You now have 4 sausage rolls, still joined in the middle of the two sheets of pastry. Using a sharp knife, cut between the sausage rolls, then cut each sausage roll in 2 or 4, depending on your plans for them.

Transfer them to baking paper-lined baking sheets, leaving a good space to expand.

Brush them with more of the beaten egg. If I'd had any leftover pastry, I would have cut out Christmassy decorations to put on top, but I didn't. So I pressed a snowflake cookie cutter into the tops, cutting through a couple of layers of the lamination but not all the way through. I should have pressed just a little harder to make the patterns a little more distinct.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a rich gold. You'll probably need to rotate the sheets at half time so they cook evenly. Cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

Flourless chocolate orange cupcakes

I mostly do my grocery shopping online. I like being able to ponder without pressure and other people. I like having various tabs open on my computer with recipes and a weekly meal plan. I like being able to duck down to check what I have in the freezer and being able to consider my budget. Of course, the down side is that there are some things that are less convenient. The smallest pack size for oranges is 4. So if I want to make something that uses the zest and juice of an orange, I have to come up with other things that use the rest of the oranges.

Which is my excuse for making these. They are mostly Claudia Roden's wonderful orange almond cake. Which is also Nigella's wonderful clementine cake. But deeply chocolatey. And small. They aren't particularly pretty - at first sight you might think they were going to be a bit healthy and worthy - but they are moist to the edge of gooeyness, with a voluptuous, rich chocolate orange flavour. Like an R-rated Jaffa cake.

Flourless Chocolate Orange Cupcakes - Makes 18 medium sized

2 large oranges (approx 375g)
6 eggs
250g caster sugar
2 tbs good quality cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate
1tsp baking powder
250g ground almonds
Chocolate decorations and a bit of marmalade if you are feeling extra, but this is not the time for buttercream

Wash the oranges and boil them whole for 1½ hours or until they are very soft, topping up with boiling water from the kettle as necessary.

While the oranges are cooling, preheat oven to 190C (fan) and line medium-sized cupcake tins with paper cases

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and cocoa powder.

Either chop the chocolate into small pieces, or break it up and pulse it to rubble in a food processor (you have the processor out to puree the oranges in a moment, so you might as well. You don't have to wash it up before you do the oranges. But I digress).

Add the baking powder, chocolate rubble and almonds to the egg and sugar mixture and mix well.

When cool enough to handle, cut the oranges open and remove any pips, then puree the oranges, including the peels, in a food processor. Mix the orange puree into the batter and divide between the cupcake cases - about 2 tablespoons in each, which will come up 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the tins at half time. Let cool before decorating with chocolate decorations or segments of chocolate orange or chocolate dipped orange peel or whatever, glued on with a dab of marmalade.

Triple ginger crunch slice

These rather fabulous morsels are what I think Americans call "bar cookies", but in Australia they are just known as slice. When discussing an office morning tea, you might say "I'm making a cake, so could you bring a slice?" and everyone understands that it's going to be a sweet traybake, often with a shortbread sort of base, cut into pieces that take just a bite or two.

Ginger crunch isn't Australian though - it's one of New Zealand's wonderful baked goods. My version isn't very crunchy: it has a tender oaty shortbread base and smooth ginger icing and it just feels like the right thing to eat with a cup of tea as the days get shorter and the weather cools down.

Triple ginger crunch slice (makes 24 pieces, the way I slice it)

Base
125g salted butter, softened
100g caster sugar (I used golden caster sugar with a vanilla bean stored in it, I think it adds to the flavour)
180g self raising flour
30g quick cooking rolled oats
2 tsp ground ginger
40g crystallised ginger, roughly chopped

Icing
125g salted butter
45g golden syrup (I know the Tate & Lyle tins are iconic but it's so much easier to get the squeezy bottles and measure straight into the pan on the scales)
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
180g icing sugar
1 tbs ground ginger

Preheat the oven to 190ºC.
Line a 7" x 11" pan with baking patchment.
In a small food processer, pulse the oats to crumbs, then add the rest of the base ingredients and process until it just comes together as a sandy dough.

Press the dough firmly into the prepared pan, flattening the surface with your hands, then bake until it’s light golden brown - about 20 minutes.

At the 15 minute mark, combine the butter for the icing with the golden syrup and grated ginger in a medium pan and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and sift in the icing sugar and last tablespoon of ground ginger and beat until smooth.

Remove the pan from the oven and pour the warm icing over the base. Tilt it around a bit to cover evenly, but it's fairly self-levelling. Let cool in the tin for about half an hour, then remove from the pan and slice with a sharp knife while still slightly warm.

It'll keep for 4 days in a sealed tin, if it gets a chance.

Nanny's Summertime Squares

Sharing recipes makes you immortal. Every time your recipe is passed on, people say your name. People who never met you know who you are. It's one of the most powerful things about food.

A Canadian pal of mine has a special fondness for these bars, which her Nanny used to make. It took a while for her to get hold of the recipe, but now she has given me permission to share it. They are fudgey and gooey and quite delicious. And oatmeal, so it's clearly health-food.

Nanny's Summertime Squares (makes... depends on the size of the square and the pan. I cut it into 16 pretty substantial bars)

2 cups sugar (Nanny specified white, I used golden caster)
3tbs cocoa
115g butter (Nanny used 1/4lb margarine)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1tsp vanilla
3 cups instant oatmeal

Put the first four ingredients in a saucepan, bring to a boil and boil for a minute. Stir in the peanut butter and vanilla, and mix until the peanut butter melts, then remove from heat and stir in the oatmeal. Mix well and scrape into a tin lined with baking parchment. Chill to set and cut into squares.

Ginger and lemon friands

March 3rd, 2018

As you'll probably know if you have any friends in the UK, over the last few days we've had snow. Snow in places and quantities that don't usually get snow. Yesterday it was bitterly cold and coming down pretty much all day, leaving an even blanket this morning.

Now, our house is magnificently insulated. In our previous house winter was freezing, we'd have to run the heating constantly and still have a sleeping bag piled over the winter duvets, wearing gloves to keep hands flexible enough to type. In this house, unless the wind is howling we sleep with the bedroom window open and we haven't even put the winter duvets on the bed. It's comfy. It means that now when we look at charming character properties in estate agent windows we just give a shudder and think of the energy bill. We're finding the mod cons of insulation and double glazing to be, well, convenient.

Makes 12. One had already been snaffled for science

What I am saying is I didn't really have to bake. It's not like I wanted to run the oven to help heat the kitchen, or that we needed the extra calories for warmth. But I had eggwhites and we weren't leaving the house, so I spent a few quiet minutes pottering in the kitchen.

Ginger and lemon friands (makes 12)

85g plain flour
250g icing sugar
100g ground almonds
1tsp ground ginger
Grated zest of a lemon
45g blanched almonds
85g crystallised ginger
7 eggwhites (210g liquid eggwhite)
190g melted butter

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan). Use a little of the melted butter to grease the friand tins.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a bowl and add the ground almonds, ground ginger and lemon zest. Either finely chop or pulse together in a small processor the blanched almonds and crystallised ginger. Not to a paste, but to a crumb. Mix that through the other dry ingredients. Whip the eggwhites with a fork until frothy and fold in with the melted butter. It takes quite a bit of folding to convince the butter to play nicely.

Divide the mixture between the tins - for 12 friand tins it comes up about 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 160C and bake for another 10 minutes. This initial high heat (in my old oven I did it at 210C but this oven - again a mod con - is much more efficient) gives the characteristic central cracked dome.

Cool for a couple of minutes before turning onto a wire rack. Will keep a week if you let them.

Quince and ginger upside down cake

At Christmas, I bought some quinces. I had several extravagant plans for them, but then we didn't end up doing much in the way of desserts over the festive period. So I peeled, quartered and cored them and baked them in some sugar syrup until they were tender and amber coloured.

Some went into the quince and clementine trifle and the rest, with their syrup, went into the freezer until inspiration struck.

And inspiration has struck.

Quince and ginger upside down cake

75g caster sugar
2tbs water
4-6 quarters of poached quince (only use 4 if you are cooking it just for this recipe because otherwise it is madness)
140g golden caster sugar
140g butter, softened
2 eggs
40g ground almonds
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground ginger
5-6 pieces crystallised ginger, cut into chunky pieces

Preheat oven to 180C.

Line a 1lb loaf tin with a non-stick liner (or baking parchment).

In a small pan, gently melt together the 75g caster sugar and water until the sugar is dissolved, then increase heat and boil to an amber caramel. Pour into the base of the loaf tin and rotate tin to cover evenly.

Arrange the quince pieces on the caramel in a more-or-less pleasing fashion.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, then fold in the dry ingredients and crystallised ginger until combined but don't overwork.

Gently spread the batter over the quince, trying not to disturb it.

Bake for about 45 minutes or until well browned and a skewer tests clean.

Stand for 5 minutes before turning out to cool.

Happy New Year! And festive feasting

New Year's Eve fondue

Happy New Year, all! Hope you've been able to muster some cautious optimism for the year to come.

Bit of an unusual festive season for us. We entertained! And we mostly didn't eat meat!

My aunt came to stay with us for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year. She's been a vegetarian for almost 40 years, and I couldn't face the idea of making two different meals for three people, so we resolved to cook vegetarian at home while she was with us.

In the end there were loads of things I planned to make that I never got around to (the gado gado, cheesy polenta with roast shallots and figs, sage and walnut lasagne and the white bean puree with roast radicchio can all wait until her next visit) but what I did cook went pretty well, I thought.

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's savoury carrot and feta cake

Felicity Cloake's perfect panforte

Nigella's take on pizzocheri - pasta with potato, brussels sprouts and cheese - for Christmas Eve dinner

I started planning what to cook for Christmas Day a couple of months ago. We aren't wedded to any particular traditional Christmas meal, so we weren't trying to fit vegetarian food into a pre-existing format, but we wanted something a bit sumptuous and celebratory. I originally thought that a stuffed pumpkin would be good, but decided that there isn't enough room inside a pumpkin to have a decent amount of stuffing, so I reimagined it as a baked, layered dish.

Sour cherry couronne

We started Christmas day, however, with couronne. It's mostly Paul Hollywood's recipe, but substituting sour cherries for apricots (I didn't bother soaking them) and lovely Italian crystallised citrus peel for the raisins. Instead of plain marzipan I used a new-to-me brandy marzipan, which packed quite a wallop.

Mezze plate

For lunch we just had mezze - bought hummus, felafel, artichoke hearts, olives, dolmades and stuffed peppadews, with some leftover carrot and feta cake, and a few bits of pickled carrot and mooli. Then the layered baked squash for dinner.

November's trial run on the Christmas squash

In my practice runs I had used delica pumpkin, which sliced into neat crescents which cooked evenly and looked like a pretty sunburst.

Unfortunately Ocado let me down on the day and delivered a butternut - good flavour but not as pretty!

The layers of squash were interspersed with sauteed onion, loads of rosemary and sage, crumbled sourdough bread, toasted hazelnuts, crumbled Stilton cheese and garlic. Then I poured cream and white wine over the lot and let it bake slowly.

We had a persimmon and chicory salad with it (Diana Henry's recipe, although for obvious reasons I left out the cheese and nuts). Delicious, if not in any way photogenic.

Final version of baked layered squash

There was no need at all for dessert after all that! Later in the week I made a quince and clementine trifle, but we really didn't go in much for pudding at home.

Quince and clementine trifle

On New Year's Eve we had a fondue for lunch, and then friends came over for tea and cake. I'd been looking for an excuse to make Ottolenghi's walnut and halva cake, and this seemed like just the time. It's a very good cake.

Ottolenghi's walnut & halva cake

The other main home-cooking highlights of the festive period were a rather triumphant take on megadarra (I used siyez bulgar instead of rice, topped it with pomegranate arils and goats curd and served it with runner beans stewed in tomatoes) and pairing Ottolenghi's bulgar with mushrooms, feta and dill with Gizzi Erskine's brussels sprout, pomegranate and pistachio salad. Which end up looking quite similar, so fortunately we didn't have them back to back.

Megadarra and runner beans

Ottolenghi's bulgar and Gizzi Erskine's sprouts

Thanksgiving - green bean casserole and pumpkin pie

Quite often when Paul asks me to cook something for him I ignore him. A decade of him saying he wanted a dish only to be over the craving by the time I made it has taught me better. Like the time recently where he asked me to make a chocolate cake with caramel filling, only to admit that he only wanted a bite of a slice of such a cake. Fortunately I hadn't got beyond considering a recipe with that one.

In the last few weeks though, he's become interested in a couple of the elements of a classic American Thanksgiving dinner - pumpkin pie and green bean casserole. I've always found green bean casserole a baffling proposition, myself, so I was quite happy to go along with him this time and make a cut-down Thanksgiving dinner to give him a chance to try those things.

I've made pumpkin pie before. Although apparently not for about 15 years if I've never made it for Paul. I bought some shortcrust pastry and a can of pumpkin puree and consulted Heather's blog (always good for pie recipes), settling on her Buttermilk Pumpkin Pie. I added 1 tsp of freshly grated ginger and reduced the brown sugar by 1/4 cup, but otherwise followed the recipe.

The green bean casserole is a very strange thing. The idea of beans in cream of mushroom soup with a crunchy topping isn't particularly appealling. I'd always assumed that it was one of those dishes that had gradually been debased with convenience products, but when I started to look for a recipe to inflict on Paul I discovered that in its purest original form it used frozen beans and canned soup. It was, in fact, an invention of the Campbells soup company in 1955. I can't think of any other similar recipe that has had such an impact. In Australia maybe the salad on the side of the Chang's crispy noodle packet, possibly the cheesecake on the Philadelphia packet. But nothing so completely ubiquitous - Campbells estimate that they sell $20 million worth of Cream of Mushroom a year and that 40% of that goes into green bean casserole.

Pure form or not, I just couldn't. So I made this from-scratch version, although I admit I got bored and didn't bother making the fried onion garnish. We had it with a rolled, stuffed turkey breast and roast potatoes (I think mashed potatoes are more traditional but Paul isn't a fan). I didn't bother with the other elements of a Thanksgiving dinner - the gravy, the cranberry sauce, the sweet potatoes - for just the two of us. The casserole was fine, I guess. The mushroom sauce was quite delicious - I'd make that element again, but I just don't think green beans and mushrooms are happy companions - they would have been better off as separate elements on the plate. Maybe the French fried onions really make the difference and pull the dish together, but I won't be finding out.

The pie, however, was excellent. Subtly spiced, not too sweet, perfect ratio of filling to pastry. We had it with a delicious new discovery of mine, Northern Bloc fresh ginger and caramel ice cream.

Even just a turkey breast gives a lot of leftovers. At this time of year there are articles all over the place on what to do with the remnants, but I already had a plan: the Kentucky Hot Brown.  An open-faced sandwich of tomatoes, bacon and/or ham, turkey, finished with cheese sauce and grilled. I used a white bloomer instead of the traditional Texas Toast, which I thought was a few calories too far. It's a particularly good version of the leftover sandwich, because unlike a lot of the others there's no jammy cranberry sauce or chutney, just savoury all the way through. Which is sometimes just what you need.

Apple cider doughnut muffins

Week before last Paul asked me to make muffins for our weekend breakfast. He specifically wanted American-style cakey muffins and he asked if they could be apple. I still don't know where my scales are, so at the moment I am quite happy with American recipes in cup measurements. I found this recipe, for Cider Doughnut Muffins and thought it'd work really well to add some dried apples to the batter.

Unfortunately, there was not a dried apple to be found in all of Bedford. Someone on Twitter pointed out that it was Rosh Hashanah and that may have had an impact. I'm slightly sceptical about that to be honest - but one way or another I couldn't get the dried apples and naturally went into a massive sulk and refused to bake, despite Paul having provided alternatives in the form of dried pears and dried mangoes.

This week, I got the dried apples.

Dried apples soaking in reduced cider

I mostly followed the recipe. I used hard, dry English cider rather than American sweet cider, and when I had reduced it to 1 cup, I added 1 cup of chopped dried apple slices, and let them steep overnight.

Very happy with that fluffy, tender crumb

And rather than rolling the cooked muffins in melted butter and cinnamon sugar for the doughnut effect, I sprinkled each one with a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and demerara sugar before they went in the oven, so the coating cracked a bit as the muffins rose. And, presumably because of the apples, they took quite a lot longer to bake, 25 minutes, not 15-17. Very successful and tasting beautifully autumnal.