In The Mood For Entertaining

1.Spanish Nuts - just the thing fo a glass of sherry!
2. Raspberry and Elderflower Creams

3. Maple Glazed Gammon with warm Pineapple Salse and Crispy Potatoes

4. St Clements Drizzle Cake, a wow cake!

Well my latest cook book obsession arrived ten days ago, and I absolutely love it! The new one is In The Mood For Entertaining by Jo Pratt, a follow up to her In The Mood For Food in 2007. I liked her first book a lot – so pink and girly and fabulous recipes, but I like this new one even more! The recipes, layout, text, photography and the pretty hand drawings of foodie bits and pieces make for a stunning book. It’s divided into four chapters for when you might be in the mood for entertaining, I think I’ve marked more than half the book! Her recipes look so good (and the ones I’ve cooked taste lovely too), they are really do-able and as an added bonus, usually they are reasonably healthy too, result on all fronts.

5& 6. Pork Stroganoff with Red Pepper Rice

7. Pecan and Pear Tarts
I’ve decided to do another blog cooking project from this one, as I feel it’ll be the book of the moment for some time to come. I’ll number the recipes, just to keep track of what I’ve done. There will be othr books, as always. Hope you enjoy the posts.

8. Blue Cheese Macaroni Gratin

9. Chocolate Crunch Bites
Here is the recipe for her paella at UKTV Food, which is served cold in cupcake cakes in the book, I served it hot one night and then cold for lunch the next day, both were lovely.

10. Paella

Cookie Magic!

Jammy Splodgers

There have been so many good new cookbooks coming out lately, I’m trying hard to work my way through my to-read pile. Don’t get me wrong, I love cookbooks (no surprise there then…), but of late my pile is so high and I just can’t seem to get to the bottom of it. Please tell me it’s not just me!

Mildon Flapjacks

Anyhow a few weeks ago after some internet bookshop surfing I came across and bought Cookie Magic by Kate Shirazi, a follow up to her Cupcake Magic. It’s a lovely little book, with a donation going to the Battery Hen Welfare Trust, and I do think that if I can donate to them by buying the book and have a gorgeous cookie book it’s got to be a good thing. Don’t let its size fool you, it’s a treasure trove to be sure. I have a number of cookie cookbooks, and this one falls into the use-me type. I would absolutely have bought this for the children chapter alone. It contains a number of home-made versions of bought biscuits such as jammy spoldgers and party rings the pictures just look so fabulous! Though if you don’t have little ones to feed there is a lot more in there for adults and children alike. My only irk with this book is the recipes all say "makes one batch" maybe it’s just me but I like to know a rough guide of how many delectable cookies I am likely to end up with. That aside it’s a prefect little cookie book.

Oo-oo Biscuits

Anyhow, normally I make chocolate biscuits first from cookie books, but I gave up cooking with chocolate during lent, so had to look at other first-bakes, and what a first bake they were. The Jammy Splodgers were delicious, and very pretty indeed. I followed this up with Mildon Flapjacks, which I’ve baked again since, we have a flapjack monster in our house (you know who you are sweetie!) and these had just the right crispy edges and slightly chewy insides. Then there was Oo-oo Biscuits, cinnamon, pecan swirls, crisp and yummy, then once lent had ended Chocolate Orange Biscuits a la Terry, these when they have been just baked, and let cook a little (say half an hour), but still squidgy inside were a chocoholics delight. When they are cold they are hard-ish cookies, still good but good in a different way.

Chocolate Orange Biscuits a la Terry

Next I have my sights set on cheddar and thyme savoury cookies and white chocolate and cardamon cookies, watch this space!

Chocolate Orange Biscuits a la Terry
From Cookie Magic by Kate Shirazi published by Pavillion in 2009
Makes 1 batch

125g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
1 free range egg
finely grated zest 1 large orange
225g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 table spoons cocoa powder
175g Terry’s Chocolate Orange, in gravel sized chunks

Preheat the oven to 190/375/gas mark 5 and line 2 baking sheets with silicone liners
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add egg and orange zest and beat well. Sift over the flour, baking powder and cocoa and mix well. Lastly mix in the chocolate orange chunks. Form into balls and bake for about 15 minutes.

My note: my balls were like large walnuts in size.

Rita's Scottish Tablet

I score the tablet and then break of the squares to give a smooth top half and natural bottom half to the pieces

When I was little I have fond memories of my Mum making tablet. Ooooh scraping the pan when the tray was setting! Now for anyone who has not heard of tablet, it has nothing to do with anything a chemist might sell or dispense. It’s a sort of hard-ish fudge, totally addictive. I have heard and seen it sold at cake stalls as Swiss Milk Tablet as well just tablet, I can only think this is due to the condensed milk in the recipe.

Newly on to boil
Now I started making tablet, fudge, toffee, boiling sweets and all manner of confectionery about 22 years ago. My maternal Grandfather made tablet for my Mum, she in turn made it for me, and now I make it for my family. It is something much like bread making – you get a feel for doing it, and learn to know what it should look like, at its various stages. The end result should be solid, but not rock hard, sugar-y but absolutely not gritty and a good fudge colour.

Half way through, getting darker
Last weekend one of my cyber cooking friends Sal, tried another friend Rita’s recipe for tablet. I had not made it for a few years, and it only took one look at Sal’s pictures to instil in me the burning desire to make tablet again, an hour later it was made.

Perfect
I tried Rita’s recipe – thank you very much Rita, and it is a first class recipe. The vanilla extract is added at the beginning, and this gives it a fudgy taste with a fully rounded vanilla flavour coming through. This is not good for you teeth, but still I give it to you here highly recommended!

Sweet joy -a trayful!

Rita’s Tablet

2lbs Granulated Sugar.

1 cup (8 fl oz) Milk

2 oz Butter. (Cut in to small chunks)

1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

1x 397g tin Nestles Condensed Milk

(1)First, grease an 8 inch by 10 inch Swiss Roll tray with butter. Have a glass of cold water waiting in the fridge.
(2)Put all the ingredients (except the condensed milk) in to a heavy based pan (I use my biggest Le Crueset), and melt really slowly until there are no grains of sugar left. Avoid stirring vigorously as you will push grains of sugar up the sides of your pan and end up with a gritty tablet.
(3)Once it has melted, add the tinned condensed milk, and take to a rolling boil. Boil for around 20 minutes, being very careful not to burn and / or boil over. Test a drop of the mixture in a glass of cold water. It should ball, not dissolve. If it dissolves, boil another few (3 to 5) minutes and test again. Once the soft ball stage has been achieved, take it off the heat.
(4) Now beat the mixture with a wooden spoon until it starts to thicken - you will feel it thicken as you beat. This takes a few minutes. Once thickened, pour in to your prepared tray, than leave to set. Mark it before it is totally set and cold. Will make for easier breaking / cutting later.
My Note: If you have never made this kind of thing before, please be warned that boiling sugar is extremely hot, and can give you a nasty burn. Due care and attention is needed at all stages!

Baked Blueberry Cheesecake

Here is another lovely cheesecake to mark my second Blogiversarry, it's a month overdue, but we won't dwell on that bit =) This time with a fruity theme, from Rachel Allen’s Bake. It’s a creamy, fruity little number and very pretty too. You have to use first class blueberries here as the flavour really comes through. I seem to be having a cheesecake time just now!

Here is a link for the recipe.

I’m actively linking recipes at the moment, as I’m not sure where I’d stand with copyright posting unaltered recipes from books on my blog, even when I do credit them. Since it has come to my attention I’m not too keen to do it. Having said that I’m planning to contact some publishers to see if I can get permission to post recipes from some of the books I’ve been cooking recently. Watch this space.

Orkney Fudge Cheesecake

Orkney Fudge Cheesecake

Sue Lawrence has long been one of my favourite food writers, she is a woman of great taste when it comes to good food. This recipe comes from her A Cooks Tour of Scotland cookbook, a book close to my heart, and one that I’ve found very interesting to read, a sort of short history of parts of eating in Scotland.

In 2006 when this book came out, it was clear to me that no diet or healthy eating regime was going to stop me trying this cheesecake. Sue says she would crawl oven broken glass for a slice, and that is definitely good enough recommendation for me! I’ve made it several times since 2006, once or twice a year, although not too often considering it’s calories and my Hubby’s penchant for it! I make it the day before to get the molten fudge bits. If you can’t lay your hands on Orkney fudge I’m sure any full flavoured fudge would be lovely. I do hope to get to Orkney one of these days, but in the meantime I’ll make their gorgeous, toffee, creamy, local speciality cheesecake.

You’ll find the recipe here at UKTV Food.

When It’s Snowing Outside

Panforte
Well, I am a Nigella fan, and although I (obviously) have many other cookery writers that I much admire and enjoy their recipes, it is first and foremost Nigella books that it feels comfortable to come back to read and cook from. Although I’m so looking forward to new ones from Bill Granger’s Feed Me Now and David Lebowitz’s Paris book and Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes in April, May and June respectively.
I’m far from done with Nigella Christmas, so much of it is just perfectly suited to the Winter and colder Spring months that it wouldn’t feel right to confine it to the bookshelf just because it’s not December anymore. So here are a few more bits and pieces that I’ve cooked recently from Nigella Christmas by Nigella Lawson.

Chocolate Pudding for Christmas Pudding Haters with Hot Chocolate Sauce
A deeply comforting pudding with lots of good chocolate sauce. I made this as our pudding on Christmas Eve.

Chargrilled Peppers with Pomegranate
Fast to put together, especailly if you get your peppers from a jar or deli counter. I liked this one a lot, and it’s colours are gorgeously Bollywood and pretty. I think this would be a lovely buffet salad or even BBQ if you can get the pomagranate seeds then.

Triple Cheese and Onion Strata
A baked savoury sort of bread pudding. I think I put in too much baguette as mine was a bit dry I thought. I’ll need to play about with it; it was still all eaten though!

Spruced Up Vanilla Cake
I think of this one as fir tree cake, for obvious reasons. It was very cold and snowy last weekend when I made this, and it’s shape and the icing sugar snow was just beautiful. A sort of dense, but light cake with the strong aroma and taste of vanilla.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote
This is an unusual recipe, but very worth trying. It’s basically forced rhubarb simmered in strawberry jam. It works so well, there is still a faint tartness from the fruit, but the jam offsets it beautifully. It makes a lot of compote, so I used the rest for a rhubarb fool, which was so good. I make a fool of rhubarb that has fresh strawberries sliced into it in the Summertime, if you think the two together are a bit odd; give it a go – match made in Heaven.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Fool

Choc Chip Chilli & Loaded Potato Skins
This is a good chilli. I halved the recipe, but it would be good for a party, the chunks of beef and chorizo makes a bit more of it. It’s spicy enough, but not too much for a chilli shy girl like me! It went really really well with the loaded potato skins suggested, I didn’t bother with the bacon, I have made them with the bacon, but I prefer them without. Great supper anyhow =)

Chocolate Convered Clementines as used in

Panforte
I’ve had it in mind to make my own panforte for a number of years now. Really since I saw one of the River Café ladies making it on TV. I have that book, but haven’t gotten around to trying their one yet, but I hope to eventually. You know the problem, so many recipes and not enough time / energy. Anyhow Nigella’s is wonderful, many of the bought ones I’ve tried would nearly break your teeth, but not this one – fortunately! It’s chewy, nutty, fruity a little chocolatey and a lot spicy. I put in a very small pinch of white pepper as I was a little scared to use more. I also used some pistachios, as didn't have quite enough of one of the other nuts - I forget which one now. It would be beautiful at Christmas time on a platter, I’m not sure why it looks so good, but it does!

I made the Christmas Spiced Chocolate cake this morning, looking forward to dinner tonight =) More about that next time.

Bake

Regulars to my blog will know that I’m a Rachel Allen fan. In the Autumn of last year a new book by Irish cook Rachel came out titled simply Bake. I’ve been cooking from it since it plopped onto my doormat, and here is a bumper post of baking from Bake to make your tastebuds happy, well if you are sweet toothed that is! Bake was one of the books (along with Nigella Chrsitmas) that I gave as Christmas presents this year, and they both seem to have been well received.

Poppy Seed Cake
This was a cake I made for my birthday last year, and I was so looking forward to it. It was really moist and the icing was lovely, but apparently neither my family or myself are very keen on poppy seeds! The birds thought they had a very tasty treat though.

Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies
This was the first recipe I made from bake, lovely bars.

St Stephen’s Day Muffins
A recipe to be made on Boxing Day, which I did, made with some leftover Christmas Pudding. These were surprisingly good, a dash of whisky making them feel quite treat like, they kept well too.

Chocolate Lave Cakes
I made these for a Hogamny (New Years Eve) dinner. The molten bit in the middle was gorgeous, and they turned out fine. I’m going to add a bit more sugar next time as they were not sweet enough for us.
Coconut Roulade with Lemon Curd Cream and Raspberries
Absolutley stunningly good dessert. There are a couple of variations on this recipe – coffee and cherry-rosewater that I’m keen to try as well.

Quiche Lorraine
I’ve made a number of quiche Lorraine’s and had settled on Tamasin Day-Lewis’s one. I’m not really sure why I tried this one, but I did and it now reigns supreme in the quiche Lorraine stakes – the best!

Date Bread and Butter Pudding with Boozy Toffee Sauce
Different and good. A warning though the boozy toffee sauce packs a real punch and isn’t at all suitable for kiddie winks! She also has a white chocolate and apple bread and butter pudding that I’d like to try this Winter.

Oven Pasta Bake
This is a pasta bake where the pasta is actually cooked in the oven. A deeply savoury supper. My friend has also made this and gives it the thumbs up.

Lemon Cupcakes
A sweet little cupcake, these were good, but my favourite remains Nigella’s ones from Forever Summer.

Baked Rice Pudding
This was just exactly the nursery pudding that you’d want it to be, rich (though not really as no cream) and so comforting, actually I’ve wanted to make this again almost constantly since I made it in early December!

Dutch Apple Cake
A really fabulous Apple cake! It’s not a looker per se, but a must make recipe! I used Pink Lady apples, as cooking apples give me an awfully sore tummy. I’m sure any apple would be lovely.

Dutch Apple Cake
From Bake by Rachel Allen 2008
2 eggs
175g caster sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla essence
75g butter
75ml milk
125g plain flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2¼ teaspoons baking powder
Two small or one medium cooking apple
75ml cream, to serve
15g caster sugar, for sprinkling
(1)Preheat the oven to 200ºC, Gas Mark 6. Grease, and line with parchment paper, an 8"x 8" square tin.
(2)Whisk the eggs with the 175g caster sugar until the mixture is thick and mousse-like and the whisk leaves a figure '8'.
(3)Melt the butter with the milk and pour onto the eggs, whisking all the time. Sieve in the flour and baking powder and fold carefully into the batter so that there are no lumps of flour. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.
(4)Peel and core the apples and slice into thin slices. Arrange them over the batter. Sprinkle with the remaining 15g of sugar. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 180ºC, Gas Mark 4, for a further 20 to 25 minutes, or until well risen and golden brown.
Cool in the tin and serve warm.