Apple sauce flapjack

This recipe marks a milestone for me – the first time I have been sought out by a stranger to congratulate me on my baking! In the playground, the day after a school bake sale, nonetheless! Anyway, it’s a simple but effective recipe – normal chewy flapjack with a layer of apple sauce through the middle. One of our five a day, surely??

Ingredients:
8 large dessertspoons golden syrup
200g / 8oz butter
330g / 12oz rolled oats
6 dessertspoons apple sauce

Method:
Melt the syrup and butter together in a large pan then stir in the rolled oats. If it looks too runny, add more oats – it should be soft and glistening but stay on the spoon when lifted. Press half of the mix into an eight inch square tin. Spoon the apple sauce over the mix and spread (the back of a spoon is effective) to give a thin, even layer. Carefully spoon the rest of the flapjack mix on top, ensuring all the apple is covered and the mix goes right to the ends. Bake at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cut into 16 squares then leave to cool a little. Carefully remove the pieces and cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Orange recovery cake

I made this for a friend who is recovering from major abdominal surgery and requested a fruity cake when I went to visit. I had never made it before, but it will definitely feature at Cricket Teas next season, and would surely help speed anyone on their way to recovery. It is moist and zesty, but not too overpowering, and really easy to make. Just go easy on stirring in the ingredients. The original recipe is here http://almostbourdain.blogspot.com/2009/08/sicilian-orange-cake.html.NI made the icing more of a drench than proper glace icing, but only because I ran out of icing sugar… The photo really doesn’t do the cake justice.

Ingredients:
250g butter
250g caster sugar
4 medium eggs
250g self raising flour
Juice of a medium orange
Zest of a whole medium orange
125g icing sugar

Method:
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and smooth. Carefully beat in the eggs one at a time, with a pinch of flour if the mixture threatens to curdle. Fold in the rest of the flour and the zest then add half of the juice. Stir until well mixed, but be careful not to over beat. Tip into a greased and lined cake tin and bake at 170 degrees for about 45 minutes (put a sheet of brown paper over the top if it is browning too quickly). Carefully remove from the tin and leave to cool on a wire rack. Make up the icing by mixing the icing sugar with the rest of the orange juice then spread over the top of the cake and leave to set.

Enjoy!

Almond plumble

One of my mum’s all time favourites is plum crumble – or “plumble”, as we call it – but this recipe has a slight twist with the addition of almond flavour as well. Make it now while plums are in season and cheap. Best served hot with really cold double cream.

Ingredients:
5-6 plums
200g / 7oz butter, cubed
300g / 10oz flour
Almond essence
3 dssp ground almonds
4 tbsp rolled oats

Method:
Quarter and stone the plums, place in a heavy bottomed pan and stew gently over a low heat until the fruit is soft. Allow to cool then add one teaspoon of almond essence and stir gently. Taste and add sugar if necessary. The almond taste should be very subtle at this point. Place in an ovenproof dish. Make the crumble by rubbing together the flour and butter until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the oats and ground almonds then tip over the stewed fruit. Bake at 180 degrees until the fruit bubbles up – about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Apple crumble

Known as “Gruffalo Crumble” in our house, this is a real favourite at this time of the year. I like it with a grating of nutmeg, but my son likes it plain and simple with lots of double cream. Either way, the key is to stew the fruit first and add sugar (if needed) at that stage, not later on. I like to add oats and a little sugar to the crumble topping to add a semblance of healthiness (the oats) and some crunch (the sugar). If you are being very organised, save a few tablespoons of the cooked apple for homemade sauce with roast pork etc.

Ingredients:
3 large Bramley apples
Sugar (to taste)
300g / 10oz flour
200g / 7oz butter, cubed
3 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp oats

Method:
Peel, core and roughly chop the apples and place in a heavy bottomed saucepan with a sprinkle of sugar and a tablespoon of water. Leave on a low heat, stirring occasionally, until the fruit is soft and about half is mushy. Taste and add more sugar if needed then tip into an ovenproof dish.

Put the flour into a large bowl, add the butter and rub together until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. Add more flour if needed. Stir in the oats. The sugar can either be stirred in too or sprinkled over the top at the end. Carefully tip the crumble mix over the fruit, ensuring an even coverage, especially at the sides. Bake at 180 degrees until the fruit is bubbling up and the top is golden brown – about 45 minutes.

Enjoy!

Squillionaires shortbread

I got two lucky stars on the Euromillions this week…but none of the other numbers. So I will have to console myself that someone else won £101m by eating lots of this delicious baking! A tarted up version of the popular millionaires shortbread, the key thing is to make sure that the proportions of base to middle to topping are right. Ie the base is just to hold it together, the other two layers should be generous and roughly the same depth. There’s nothing more disappointing than a meagre layer of caramel. The quantities below make about 16 small but deep (and rich) portions, using a loaf tin rather than a square tin, as is more conventional.

Ingredients:
6 oz / 150g chocolate chip cookies, crushed
2 oz / 50g butter, melted
3 oz / 75g butter
3 oz / 75g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
200ml condensed milk
8 oz / 200g milk chocolate
Hundreds and thousands

Method:
Combine the melted butter and crushed biscuits and press into a tin. Refrigerate well until set (at least 30 mins). Put the rest of the butter, sugar, condensed milk and syrup into a heavy pan and heat gently until the butter has melted into a smooth goo. Bring to the boil and heat until the liquid has thickened and darkened. Keep stirring, or it will burn! It is ready when a small amount on a spoon sets to a fudgy consistency in a few seconds. Take off the heat and pour carefully onto the biscuit base. Leave to set for 30 mins then refrigerate until needed. Melt the chocolate in a Bain Marie (a bowl above a pan of boiling water) and pour onto the caramel. Sprinkle on the hundreds and thousands. Leave to set – when the chocolate is nearly hard, cut into pieces as big or small as you wish.

Enjoy!

The best biscuits

These are simply the best biscuits ever. Really easy to make, really tasty and chewy, and very versatile. Add chocolate chunks, nuts, cherries etc as desired after the flour. The dough can sit in the fridge for a week, or freeze it and cook them from frozen as needed. The only downside to them is that they are best eaten on the day they are made… Shame…

Ingredients:
225g / 8oz butter, softened (NB always use butter, not margarine)
225g / 8oz caster sugar
170g condensed milk
350g / 12oz self raising flour

Method:
Cream the butter and sugar together until pale then stir in the condensed milk then the flour. Split the dough into batches and roll in cling film to make sausages. Chill or freeze as needed. Cut into thick slices and place on a baking tray lined with parchment – space the dough out, as it spreads a lot when it cooks. Bake at 180 degrees for about 15 minutes or until the edges start to brown. Leave to cool on the tray for a couple of minutes (if the biscuits have run into each other, separate them with a knife stroke now) then lift with a fish slice onto a wire rack to cool some more.

Enjoy!

Ginger and lemon syrup cake

Somewhere between a sponge cake and a pudding, this moist light dessert can be eaten in a bowl with custard or on a plate on its own. The original recipe (by Phil Vickery) used an orange, but I replaced this with lemon to help my family’s colds and sore throats last night. It is really easy to make, it just takes a little time to prepare all the ingredients. The chopped stem ginger in the syrup could be left out, for a milder taste if required, or increase the ginger in the cake to make it hotter. I don’t know how well it keeps – we’ve never had leftovers to find out! If anyone finds out, let me know! The quantities below serve between six and ten, depending on how you serve it (and how hungry everyone is).

Ingredients:
175g / 6 oz butter, softened
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 397g tin of condensed milk
225g / 8oz self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
75g / 3oz stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped
100g / 4 oz icing sugar
200ml / 7fl oz water
50g / 2oz stem ginger, roughly chopped
2 tbsp stem ginger syrup
Juice and grated zest of 2 lemons

Method:
Cream together the butter, eggs, condensed milk, flour and baking powder until pale. Don’t worry if it doesn’t go completely smooth. Fold in the finely chopped stem ginger. Pour mix into a large greased ovenproof dish (big enough to hold about 1.5 litres / 2.5 pints). Place dish in a roasting tin and fill the tin with enough boiling water to come about two thirds up the side of the dish. Bake in the centre of the oven at 180 degrees for about 35 minutes or until the top is risen and browned and the sides have come away from the dish. Meanwhile place the other ingredients bar the zest in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes until slightly thickened. Remove from the heat and add the zest. Take the dish out of the oven and the roasting tin and stand on a heatproof mat. Carefully pour the syrup over the top of the cake. Don’t worry if it seems too much – though you can pour it on in a couple of batches if you like. Let the cake stand for about five minutes to absorb the syrup then serve as desired.

Enjoy!

Easy fruit cake

This really is an easy recipe: almost impossible to get wrong, the only time it didn’t work (and I’ve made it dozens of times) is when I baked it during a raging hang-over… It produces a rich, moist and dark fruit cake that also keeps very well. It does need a little preparation time, though, as the fruit is best if left to soak overnight. The fruit can be varied according to what you have in the cupboard / what you fancy, as can the liquid you soak the fruit in (I used apple juice today, but normally use whisky).

Ingredients:
4oz / 100g margarine
6oz / 150g sugar (any sort)
4oz / 100g dried fruit
8 fl oz water
1 tssp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tssp mixed spice
Whole nutmeg (grate to taste)
2 beaten eggs
8oz / 200g self-raising flour

Method:
Boil the margarine, sugar, fruit, water, bicarb and spices for about 10 minutes (until the marg is melted, the bicarb has stopped bubbling and the mix dark and glistening). Allow to cool for about an hour. Stir in the eggs and flour and mix well. The mix will be quite runny and lumpy – don’t worry! Pour into a prepared / silicone tin (I prefer a loaf tin for this recipe). Bake in the oven at 180 degrees for about 90 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean (after about 30 minutes place some greaseproof or brown paper over the top of the cake to prevent burning before it is cooked). Turn onto a wire cooling rack until cold, slice thickly and serve with a good cup of tea.

Enjoy!

Chicken and veg broth

This is simply gorgeous: frugal (it ekes another meal out of a roast chicken), healthy and really tasty. A favourite in our house! The ingredients below are approximate and most of the veggies can be substituted for whatever Is festering in the fridge asking to be used up. These quantities give four good helpings. It keeps for a few days, and tastes even better the next day.

Ingredients:
One medium leek, halved lengthways and sliced
Half a medium courgette, grated
One stick of celery, washed well and sliced
One litre of chicken stock (preferably home made)
One good bowlful of cold roast chicken (use the brown meat from the carcass for best flavour)
Two good handfuls of pearl barley, cooked according to instructions
Quarter of a savoy cabbage, shredded
Olive oil
Seasoning

Method:
Heat the oil in a deep pan on a gentle heat and gently cook the leeks. Add a little salt to stop it burning and stir occasionally to stop it sticking. After about five minutes add the courgette then the celery and cook gently for a further five to ten minutes until all the vegetables are soft but not brown. Add the stock and turn the heat up until it is bubbling. Add the chicken and pearl barley and season well. Finally, add the cabbage and cook for at least five minutes, or leave until needed. Serve with hunks of bread.

Enjoy!

Pear & chocolate upside down pudding

My husband had been mumbling about preferring pear and chocolate to the pineapple upside down cake I made last week, then my mum turned up yesterday with a few very ripe pears that needed eating. Obviously fate.

This recipe (more or less) came from the goodtoknow.co.uk website, and is definitely more a pudding than a cake. It is deliciously moist – I omitted the suggested ground almonds, as anything with ripe pears is always going to tend to be wet and I didn’t want to detract from the pear / choc taste combination. It kept OK but it really better eaten on the day it is made. The quantities below made about eight servings.

Ingredients:
2oz / 50g caster sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tssp vanilla extract
1 pint / 600ml cold water
4 pears, peeled, cored and quartered
5oz / 150g dark chocolate
2 tbsp milk
3oz / 90g butter
3oz / 90g golden granulated sugar
2 medium eggs
4oz / 120g self-raising flour

Method:
Put the sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and water into a large heavy bottomed pan and heat gently until sugar has dissolved (swirl the pan from time to time, but avoid stirring). Bring to the boil, pop the pears in and poach gently for 10-15 minutes, until beginning to turn golden. Either melt the chocolate and milk in a microwave or – much easier – put in a bowl on top of the poaching pears, taking care that the bowl doesn’t touch the water, and stir until combined and smooth then set aside tom cool slightly. Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little flour. Using a metal spoon, fold in the chocolate milk then the rest of the flour to make a light, bubbly batter mix. Arrange the pears over the bottom of a prepared / silicone cake tin then gently pour the batter over, trying to cover the pears. Bake for about 40 minutes at 190 degrees until a skewer comes out clean. Don’t worry if the top is uneven (it will eventually be the bottom!). Rest in the tin for 15 minutes.

Reduce the poaching liquid down to about 3 fl oz / 100ml syrup by boiling rapidly, swirling the LAN from time to time. Make holes across the top of the pudding and gently pour the syrup over. You may need to tip the tin around to make sure that there are no puddles. Leave for a further five minutes to soak up, then invert the pudding onto a serving plate. Best accompanied by some double cream or vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy!