CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE gluten free

I recently needed a gluten free dessert recipe and none of the ones I had used before seemed to be just right.  So I did a bit of internet research and stumbled across this recipe for a flourless chocolate cake.  It had all the usual ingredients you would expect but also mascarpone cheese and as it happened I had a tub of it in the fridge.  (A random purchase from when I thought "let's have tiramisu this weekend" but never got around to it.)

It was very easy to make but not so easy to get out of the tin!  The instructions suggest it can be served warm or cold and to leave in the tin to cool for 30-40 minutes.  I misinterpreted this and tried to remove it from the tin at this point when the cake was still slightly warm.  It nearly disintegrated but luckily I managed to stick it back together on the cake stand with just an ever so slightly wonky appearance!

 Lesson learned!  If I wanted to serve it warm as a dessert I would bake it in something that it can be served in at the table and slice it straight from the dish.  To get it onto a cake stand I would let it go completely cold before I tried to move it, which is clearly what I was supposed to do!!

It was however, delicious, very brownie-like and extremely rich, which is what you would expect with all that chocolate, butter and cream cheese in it!  I served it in small slices with a poached pear alongside (see recipe here).  It went down very well with our guests and I would definitely make it again. 

Other similar cakes I have written about before include the chocolate amaretti cake, the flourless chocolate torte,  chocolate and chestnut fondant and the gluten free black forest cake .  Take your pick, they are all worth the effort (but not all of them are gluten free, check the recipe).

Ingredients

200g dark cooking chocolate (It doesn't need to have a high percentage of cocoa.  I used SuperU own brand cooking chocolate.  Cadbury's Bournville would work well.)

200g butter

3 eggs

175g golden caster sugar

100g mascarpone cheese (or soft cheese)

¼ tsp vanilla extract

100g ground almonds

30g cocoa powder

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Line the base of a 20cm springform tin with baking paper.

Chop the chocolate and butter into cubes and melt using a bowl over a pan of simmering water.  Leave to cool slightly.

Put the eggs and sugar into a large bowl and, using an electric hand whisk or stand mixer, whisk for several minutes until thick and creamy.  Whisk in the mascarpone and vanilla until evenly combined.

Fold in the melted chocolate mixture until everything is an even colour.  Fold in the ground almonds then sift in the cocoa powder and a pinch of salt and fold in.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.  Place it on a baking tray and bake for 30-40 minutes.  The top will crack and the cake will puff up, but bake until there is not too much of a wobble in the middle.  (Mine took an extra five minutes.)  It will sink back down but the cracks will remain.

Remove from the oven an allow to cool.  Serve warm as a pudding or cold as a cake (see my notes in text).

You can, if you wish, dust it with more sifted cocoa powder before serving which would hide the cracks a bit.  I found it chocolatey enough without this and nobody seemed to mind the cracks!

Cuts into 10 slices at least as it is very rich.

BRAISED RED CABBAGE

It's years since I cooked a red cabbage.  Nick is not keen because he sometimes finds them too vinegary so I don't bother just for myself.   However, it was by now December, Christmas is not that far around the corner so I thought "why not" and decided to give it a go.  Then I started looking for recipes.

A lot of recipes had apple in the ingredients.  I didn't have any apples so carried on looking and found this recipe which didn't include apple and also looked very straightforward.  You simply put everything into a large saucepan and cook it on the hob for a very long time.  No need for sweating the onions separately.  

The recipe uses cider vinegar which  I didn't have so I used the sweetened vinegar called Melfor which I thought might do instead.  Also, in a nod to all those recipes that do include apple I added a couple of tablespoons of the apple compote that contains chunks of apple for the last few minutes of cooking.  (We have it on our cereals and porridge so get through a lot of it.)  Both added to the sweetness I think and it was very tasty.  Everyone had seconds including Nick so it will definitely be on the menu this Christmas.

Ingredients

1 small or ½ a large red cabbage (roughly 900g)

1 large red onion

70g soft light brown sugar

70m cider vinegar or similar

150ml red wine

1 large knob of butter

1 cinnamon stick

2 tblsp apple compote or apple sauce (optional)

Method

Trim the cabbage, remove the core and shred finely.

Peel and thinly slice the onion.

Put all of the ingredients (except for the apple compote) into a very large saucepan and season with salt and pepper.

Heat gently until simmering, stirring often.  Turn the heat right down, cover and simmer gently for 1 hour and 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't stick or burn on the bottom of the pan.  Remove the lid and simmer for another 30 minutes or until the cabbage is nice and tender.  

If using the apple, stir in just before serving and leave on the hob for a few minutes to make sure it's warmed through.  Remove the cinnamon stick before serving.  Serve hot.

This can be made one or two days before needed.  Keep in the fridge and reheat either on the hob or in the microwave until piping hot.

Serves 6-8, depending on how much you like red cabbage!

LEMON TART or tarte au citron

Having friends round for dinner in November is a different kettle of fish from earlier in the year.  There is definitely a need for something comforting and warming.  On the actual day the fog never lifted and the temperature outside did not reach double figures.  I was tempted to make a crumble for pudding but with a soup for starters and a casserole for mains settled on lemon tart instead, thinking it would be lighter.

I had made one before but instead of leafing through numerous cook books for the recipe I looked online.  I somehow ended up using this recipe for Classic Lemon Tart on Mary Berry's own website.  It comes from her Complete Cookbook.

The recipe uses nine eggs and six large lemons!  When I looked again I saw that I needed a 28cm tart tin with a loose bottom, which I don't have.  I used my 25cm tin and scaled down the ingredients accordingly.  I also used ready made sweet pastry to save time, draping it over the edge of the tin as per the instructions.  Somehow the side of the tart broke away from the overlap in a couple of places and shrank back a bit.  This meant that the tart couldn't be filled right to the top because it would have overflowed.  I ended up with filling left over so simply poured this into a small dish and baked it separately.  Something to enjoy later!

It was absolutely divine, very sharp and lemony, and would serve probably about twelve people as it's very rich and you really only need a very small slice!  It kept really well in the fridge and was still delicious several days later so I would definitely make it ahead next time.  This would give me time to make my own pastry as I suspect the ready made one I used was a bit too thin and that might be why it split at the edge.

Since then I have found other Mary Berry recipes for lemon tart with more manageable quantities of ingredients!  One is on the BBC Food website here and was a technical challenge in an early series of the Great British Bake Off.  It appears in the book from the series called "How to Bake".   A very similar version of it also appears on the current edition of Mary's Baking Bible (although not the original edition).  I would use either of those next time although they both specify a 23 cm tin and at the current time of writing I only have a 20cm or 25cm!  A reason to pay a visit to our lovely nearby cookware shop perhaps!  (Or maybe I'll wait until our next visit to the UK where our local DIY/ironmonger's shop sells everything like that for much more reasonable prices!)

A tip for zesting lemons: always zest before you cut it in half to squeeze out the juice.  Zesting this many lemons is time consuming but much more fiddly if you try to zest afterwards!  Also: if you use a microplane zester the best way to get all the zest out of the groove is to use the rounded end of a teaspoon handle - not your fingernail as I once saw done in an episode of Celebrity Bake Off.  Someone (I forget who) used her hideously long false nail to scoop out the zest before putting it in the cake and if you have ever noticed how grubby those nails can be underneath..........YUK !!

Ingredients

1 ready made, ready rolled pack of sweet pastry

7 eggs

240ml double cream

280g caster sugar

zest and juice of 5 lemons

Icing sugar to dust before serving.

Method

If your pastry is in the fridge bring it out about 15 minutes before you want to use it otherwise it may crack when you unroll it.

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Butter a 25cm loose based fluted tart tin.

Unroll the pastry and line the tin with it, tucking the pastry into the sides and draping the excess over the edge.  Place on a baking sheet, line with baking paper and fill with baking beans.  

Blind bake the pastry for 15 minutes or until the edges are just golden.  Remove the paper and beans and carefully trim away the excess pastry.  Return to the oven for 10-12 minutes until dry.  Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.  

Reduce the oven temperature to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

To make the filling, put all the ingredients into a large bowl and with an electric whisk beat until well combined.  The mixture will still be very liquid.

Pour the mixture carefully into the cool pastry case but do not overfill, only close to the top if there are no gaps where it might leak.

Transfer carefully to the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.  The filling should be set but with a slight wobble in the middle.

Serve cool or completely cold.  Give a generous dusting of icing sugar just before serving.

Serves 10-12.

CARROT CAKE with or without icing

I’ve tried various recipes for carrot cake from my collection of cookbooks over the years but was never completely ecstatic about any of them.  In fact one of them turned out so awful that I actually wrote "horrible and inedible" at the top of the page because that’s what it was - soggy, oily, dull and unpleasant and I hadn’t made another one since!

So, with a surfeit of carrots in the veg drawer and a carrot soup already gurgling away in the soup maker, I decided to have another go.  This time I used a recipe from Mary Berry's Baking Bible, the latest edition thereof.  There were no spices or dried fruit in this recipe, unlike some of the others I had tried.

It turned out really well, delicious in fact.  I then discovered that the same recipe appears in some  of Mary's previous books with one principle difference; this most recent recipe says to use one teaspoon of baking powder and all the others say two!  How odd!  However, it rose well so one is clearly enough!  Also, the instructions say to bake for 50-60 minutes.  Mine was done in 50 minutes and if anything was slightly over.  I would check after 40 minutes next time.  

It's a pity I hadn't spotted this Mary Berry recipe before as I would have made dozens of them by now, especially as they are immensely popular at cake sales, especially it seems with the French.

I made this one as an uniced traybake for ease of cutting and handing round.  I decided that the next time I would try adding a little mixed spice, and for a cake sale I would definitely ice it, but it was really good just as per the recipe.  Very simple to make and delicious.

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I have a tip for grating carrots.  Weigh slightly more than you want and grate as far down as you dare until you have a short stump which you can do something else with (such as chomp on it while you grate the next carrot). That way you get the amount of grated carrot you want with your fingers intact!

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As is the way of things here, the opportunity arose to make the cake again for a cake sale at an event in the next village a few weeks later.  This time I added a teaspoon of mixed spice and iced it as per Mary's recipe, decorating it with chopped walnuts and banana chips.  It looked the business and sold out early in the day.

I would happily have used the little marzipan carrot decorations that identify it immediately as a carrot cake but the only place I could find them in France was online and the price worked out at 1€ per carrot!  I resisted, as the cost of a pack of decorations would have been more than the cost of making the whole cake!

As an aside, it’s amazing how much the French seem to love English cakes, considering their reputation for fine patisserie.  On the cake stall this time we were asked by a French couple if we ran a course on how to make them!  Now there’s an idea……..

This is the recipe for the iced version with a little added spice.

Ingredients

For the cake

225g self raising flour, sifted

1 level tsp baking powder

1 tsp mixed spice (optional)

150g light muscovado sugar

50g chopped walnuts

115g carrots, peeled and coarsely grated

2 ripe bananas, mashed

2 eggs

150ml sunflower or vegetable oil

For the icing  (if using)

175g full fat cream cheese

55g softened butter

115g icing sugar, sifted

To decorate

banana chips 

2 tblsp chopped walnuts

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter a 20cm square or round springform cake tin and line the base with baking paper. 

Put all the cake into a large bowl and beat until smooth.

Spoon into the tin and level the top.  Tap a couple of times on the worktop to dispel any air bubbles.

Bake for 50-60 minutes but check after 40 minutes as mine was well done by 50 minutes and a square cake may also be done sooner.

Cool in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out, remove the baking paper and leave to cool on a wire rack.  Once cool it can be frozen by wrapping tightly in foil.

To make the icing, put all the ingredients into a bowl or food processor and beat well until smooth.  Make sure the cake is completely cold (or thawed if it's been frozen) and spread the icing over the top.  Decorate with the chopped walnuts and banana chips (or any decoration of your choice such as purchased sugar paste carrots).

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

BOEUF BOURGUIGNON (beef in red wine)

This is one of those dishes that I always fall back on when I need something tasty that I know will go down well with everyone.  

Some years ago I gave Nick a book for Christmas called "Classic French Cooking for Today".  In it the recipe for boeuf bourguignon is very complicated and begins with the words "three days before serving".  I think he did follow the recipe to the letter just once!

There are a couple of tips that are worth the effort though; to marinade the beef in wine overnight before the day of cooking and to stud the onions in the marinade with cloves.  Long, slow cooking in the oven, up to four hours, makes the beef meltingly tender and flavourful.  

With so many recipes out there in cook books and on the internet nobody needs another one but I'm writing this mainly for myself so that I remember how I made one that turned out really well.  It's a combination of tips from various recipes.

I used a cut of beef which in France is called "paleron" and in the UK would be called chuck steak, but any stewing beef would be fine.

Ingredients

1 kg chuck steak (or similar)

2-3 tblsp sunflower oil

1 pack (200g) smoked lardons (or similar)

500g (approx) large shallots or small white onions

a small handful of whole cloves

2 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 tblsp tomato purée

1 bottle red wine (Merlot or similar)

150ml beef stock (made using a stock pot or cube)

1 tblsp brown sugar

50g plain flour

4 bay leaves

500g white or chestnut mushrooms

Method

The day before cooking, remove any excess fat or gristle from the meat, cut into large bite-sized chunks and put into a glass or porcelain bowl.

Peel the shallots or onions and press whole cloves into each one, roughly 3 or 4 per onion.  Add to the bowl and pour over enough red wine to cover the whole lot.   (You may not need the whole bottle.)

Cover with clingfilm and put into a cool place or the fridge to marinade overnight.

On the day of serving, preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

If you have a flameproof casserole dish (such as Le Creuset) you can use it for frying.  Otherwise, use a frying pan and transfer to an ovenproof casserole dish for the oven stage of the cooking.

Put the oil into your frying pan and turn the heat to high.  Using a slotted spoon, lift the chunks of meat out of the marinade and dry on sheets of kitchen roll.  Brown the meat in the hot oil in batches so as not to overcrowd the pan and transfer the browned meat to a plate.  Add the lardons to the pan and fry until browned, adding a little more oil if needed.  Set aside with the beef.

Lift the marinaded shallots or onion out of the bowl and remove all the cloves.  Put them into the hot pan, adding a little more oil if necessary and fry until just golden.  Add the garlic and tomato purée and cook for a few seconds.

Put the flour into a small bowl or jug and use some of the marinading liquid to mix it to a paste.  Whisk in the rest of the marinading liquid and add this to the pan along with the carrots. 

Return the meat to the pan with the sugar, bay leaves and stock.  Bring to the boil then cover and put into the preheated oven for about 2 hours until the meat is tender.  (This is the stage at which you should transfer from the pan to an ovenproof casserole dish if using.)

Add the mushrooms to the dish and cook for another 20 minutes until they too are tender.

After removing from the oven adjust for seasoning by adding salt and pepper to taste.  

(To thicken if necessary use a little more flour (or cornflour) mixed to a thin paste with a little water.  Stir this into the dish and return to the oven for a few minutes or cook on the hob if you are using a flameproof casserole dish.)

Makes 6 generous portions. 

PARKIN (can be gluten free)

 

Years ago I made Parkin using oatmeal for a Bonfire Night party and was disappointed with the result.  There was something slightly too gritty and serious about it - that's the best way I can describe it - not sweet or sticky enough.  I can't remember which recipe I used but do remember thinking that I probably wouldn't bother making any again!

The Parkin that my mum used to make every year for Bonfire Night wasn't really Parkin at all, it was just a plain but utterly delicious tray of ginger cake made to the Be-Ro book recipe.  You can read about that here.

Anyway, having been asked to make some for another Bonfire Night gathering I wondered what to do.  I have no idea if you can buy oatmeal as such in France so I set about finding an alternative recipe that was almost authentic but also like the sticky ginger cake we all love.  I came across one on the Sainsbury's Magazine website.

It was stunningly good.  Just like proper Parkin without the grit and with all the stickiness of a perfect ginger cake.  You can (for now) see the recipe here.  (These links do have a habit of disappearing.)

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A friend recently made some using Dove's Farm gluten free plain flour but it somehow went very wrong.  The mixture exploded over the edge of the tin and onto the oven floor.

So, I borrowed her bag of the same flour and tried it myself.  I didn't use my last two balls of preserved ginger as I didn't want to waste them if the mixture exploded for me too.  Instead I used an extra teaspoon of dried ginger and added half a teaspoon of mixed spice.

It came out perfectly!  I didn't get to taste it as I donated it back to my friend.  She has since reported back to say it was delicious and is keen to have another go.  I don't know what went wrong before but fingers crossed for her this time!

Ingredients

175g plain flour (gluten free flour also works)

125g porridge oats

200g caster sugar

1 tsp ground ginger

2 balls preserved ginger, finely chopped (said to be optional in the original website but it's well worth it)

200ml semi-skimmed milk

110g butter

2 tbslp golden syrup

Method

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 130° fan / gas mk 2.  Grease and line a 20cm square cake tin.

In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.

Put the milk, butter and golden syrup into a small pan and heat gently until the butter has melted.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and beat with a whisk.  Add and whisk in the preserved ginger.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 45 minutes.

Cool in the tin and then cut into 16 squares.  It keeps well for several days and if anything improves with keeping.  Remember to line your tin or box for storing it with baking paper not foil as apparently (according to the website) it will stick to foil.

Cuts into 16 generous portions.

BOEUF CARBONNADE (beef in beer or Iron Maiden stew)

Many years ago I frequently used to make beef cooked in Guinness, to a Delia Smith recipe using braising steak, and delicious it was too.  I had long forgotten about it but with guests coming for dinner and it being very much casserole weather, I wondered about revisiting the old favourite.  Guinness is not for the faint hearted and not to everyone’s taste so I looked around for other "beef in beer" recipes.

In France beef in beer is a stew called "boeuf carbonnade" and eventually I found a recipe I could adapt by Mary Berry in her book "Everyday".  I decided to use a fairly light local Touraine beer.

The ingredients are simple, pretty much what you would expect in a beef stew, and the end result was utterly delicious! A really tasty, satisfying dish with a thick, glossy sauce and tender, melt in the mouth chunks of beef.  A perfect supper for what had been a disappointingly grey, cold and miserable day.  

The grotty weather continued so I made it again using something with a bit more punch, more like a stout.  It was called Iron Maiden, purchased from our local branch of Noz.  

Noz is a chain of shops in France that look like a jumble sale and sell end of line or unsold items of just about anything and everything.  It’s a good place to find and try foods that you may have never heard of, the downside being that you will probably never find it for sale anywhere again.  Once it's gone, it's gone!

Ingredients

750g braising or stewing steak, cut into bite sized pieces

2 tblsp oil

6-8 small shallots, peeled and cut in half 

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

150g button mushrooms

2 tblsp plain flour

330ml pale ale (or Iron Maiden or other stout for the darker version)

15ml beef stock (I used an Oxo cube)

2 tblsp caramelised onion chutney

1 tblsp Worcestershire sauce

2 bay leaves

Method

If you have a flameproof or cast iron casserole dish you can use it for frying as well as in the oven.  Otherwise use a frying pan and transfer the ingredients to a regular heatproof casserole dish for the oven stage of the cooking.

Preheat the oven to 160°C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

Heat the oil in your pan and brown the meat in batches so as not to crowd the pan.  Remove each batch and set aside.

Add the mushrooms, shallots and carrots to the pan and fry for 4-5 minutes, adding a little more oil if the pan seems dry.

Put the flour into a bowl and stir in a little of the ale to make a smooth paste.  Then gradually whisk in the rest of it, making sure there are no lumps.

Return the meat to your frying pan and stir in the flour mixture and stock.  Heat until it thickens, stirring all the time.  Add the chutney, Worcester sauce and bay leaves and bring to the boil.  (Add more stock if it looks a little too thick. or a little flour mixed with stock or water if it looks too thin.)  At this stage transfer to a casserole dish if using.

Cover and cook in the oven for 2-2½ hours until the meat is tender.

Makes 6 generous servings.

STUFFED MARROW SOUP (soup maker recipe)

I have made several soups in the soup maker using one leftover portion of casserole or similar and they have always turned out well.  This time, I looked at the one remaining portion of stuffed marrow (actually an overgrown courgette) and thought "why not".

I added a few extra bits and pieces (although I left out the small "courgette" as once I'd trimmed it I realised it was our last cucumber from the veg plot so added an extra potato instead!).

It made a really tasty soup, one of the best ever, and you can see the recipe for stuffed marrow (courgette) here.

Ingredients

1 portion of stuffed marrow, cut into chunks

3 small potatoes

2 medium carrots

1 onion

1 tomato

1 vegetable stock pot

Method

Peel, wash and roughly chop enough veg so that when the leftover meat dish is added last it will all fill the machine to the bottom line.  I have occasionally found that leftover meat dishes stick to the bottom of the machine and adding them last seems to prevent this from happening.  Top up with another chopped carrot or potato if there's room, or maybe some celery if you have some.

Add the stock pot and water to fill to the top line.  Cook on smooth.

Test for seasoning before serving as the leftover meat dish will already have been well seasoned.

Makes 4 generous portions.

STUFFED MARROW (or the courgette that nearly got away!)

We have had some rum old weather here in France and autumn gardening has not been easy.  When Nick finally was able to clear the overgrown vegetable patch he discovered a surprise.  A courgette that had grown to the size of a marrow!  It was about 70cm (28") long!

We are fans of stuffed marrow in this house but haven't made one for years.

You can see my previous post about it here.

 

The dish is essentially a marrow cooked then stuffed with a bolognaise-style meat sauce and baked in the oven.  My mum always made hers by peeling the marrow and cooking it in boiling water before stuffing it and baking it.  According to the internet an overgrown courgette is not the same as a marrow, the latter being more watery when cooked.  So, this time instead of peeling and cutting it into rings we cut it lengthwise, unpeeled, and roasted it in the oven to make sure it was cooked before stuffing.

It was however rather huge so we only used half of it and we still have the other half to work out what to do with it next!  In actual fact we didn't manage to eat all of the one half either so I turned the leftover portion into stuffed marrow soup!  You can see that here.

Ingredients

1 large marrow or courgette, or two or three smaller ones

350g lean minced beef

1 tblsp sunflower oil

1 large onion, peeled and chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 beef stock pot or cube

a good splash of red wine or sherry

1 large can of chopped tomatoes

a little hot water

a sprinkling of mixed herbs (optional)

a good sprinkling of grated cheese (cheddar or emmental)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.

Wash or wipe the marrow and cut it in half lengthways.  Scoop out and discard the seeds using a tablespoon.  Lay it cut side upwards in a large baking tray and put into the oven to cook while you make the filling.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan, add the onion and fry gently until soft.  Add the meat and garlic and fry until the meat is browned.

Add the tomatoes, herbs and stock pot/cube and stir well.  Add the wine or sherry and stir in.  Continue to cook until the meat is cooked, adding a little hot water to get a thick sauce.

Remove the cooked marrow halves from the oven and check that they are cooked using the point of a knife or skewer.  Return to the oven for a few more minutes if they’re not tender.  Then place them in a suitable baking dish that they fit into neatly.  Spoon the meat filling into the cavities and sprinkle the grated cheese over.

(At this point you could leave the dish as it is and finish cooking later if convenient.)

Return to the oven and bake for around 30 minutes until the cheese has melted and forms a slight crust.  

The whole dish is a meal in itself for two or three people with some crusty bread on the side.  Would serve 4-5 with a few extra veg.

SCARY SAUSAGE ROLLS FOR HALLOWEEN

A variation on my usual sausage roll recipe for Halloween.

Add onion, green pepper and a teaspoon of spice such as garam masala to the sausage mixture.

See the full recipe here.

BROCCOLI, CAULIFLOWER AND SPRING ONION SOUP (soup maker recipe)

Autumn is most definitely well established here in France and it's soup weather again.

Vegetables are not cheap here.  When we go back to the UK I am always amazed to find that you can still get a bag of parsnips or carrots for less than £1 or a cauliflower for less than £2.  In France we now use a lot of frozen veg; onions, mushrooms, leeks, cauliflower, broccoli, green beans.  It can be a cheaper way to buy them and helps to avoid waste.

Cauliflowers here can vary enormously in price from one week to the next.  They can be 1.90€ one week and 5.50€ the next in the same shop.  And often they are huge and already look past their best.  When they look nice and fresh and are a sensible price we buy them and they can be a challenge to use up before they go off.  With about one third of a cauliflower and a whole head of broccoli looking almost past it in the veg drawer I decided to make soup.

I have never found spring onions as we know them in the UK here; those slender, sweet and not at all sharp ones that are delicious in dips and salads.  Here I have found bunches of larger round white onions and much chunkier ones that look like British spring onions' big brothers and they are both stronger in flavour.  With half a bunch of those also needing to be used up I included them in this soup.

It was delicious!  Smoother than a home made soup often turns out which I wonder might be due to the variety of potato.  Who knows, but it's definitely a combination I will use again.

I made it ahead of using it and kept it in the fridge so when reheating it I added a good slurp of Pineau des Charentes (the nearest thing to dry sherry that you can readily buy here) and a swirl of cream when it was in the bowl.

Ingredients

4 small potatoes

2 medium carrots

a large chunk of cauliflower

a large chunk of broccoli, including (discarding the woody bits) the stalk

3 large "spring" onions, or a small bunch of small spring onions (or an ordinary white onion)

2 vegetable stock pots (I used the last of my Tesco garlic and thyme stockpots)

Salt and pepper to taste (or add this at the end of cooking or when reheating) 

A splash of dry sherry and a swirl of cream (optional) to add after cooking

Method

Peel, wash and roughly chop as appropriate enough veg to fill the soup maker to the bottom line.

Add the stock pots and water to fill to the top line.

Cook on smooth.

Makes 4 generous lunch servings, or 6 for first course servings.

COFFEE AND WALNUT CAKE (version two)

A few months ago I made a coffee and walnut cake for an event in the village, to a recipe I had not used before.  Usually I go for the Hairy Bikers recipe from their book "Mums know best" which I wrote about here.  I have also made a lovely coffee cake without walnuts to a recipe from the W.I. book "Cakes" which I wrote about here.

This time I fancied using one from the latest (41st) edition of the BeRo book, which in the end I adapted quite a bit.  Anyway, the cake I made on that day was surplus to requirements and never made it out of the event kitchen, a fellow volunteer buying the whole cake instead.  Which is fine except that I didn't get to find out whether it was any good or not!

As was bound to happen, another event came along recently and I made the cake again.  It's more or less a combination of my two regular recipes; includes walnuts in the cake, has a buttercream filling and a glacé icing top.  It was not the only coffee and walnut cake there and both sold out early in the day, confirming my theory that the old fashioned, traditional cakes, especially if they are well covered in icing, are always the most popular at cake sales.  There was just one small sliver of mine left, looking lonely by itself, so I was able to taste it.

It was light and moist with a strong coffee flavour and just the right amount of walnuts.  This will be my favourite recipe to use..........for now anyway!  I've actually given it two stars in the fiddle factor as chopping walnuts is not my favourite pastime and making two different icings (one for the filling and one for the top) is a bit more time consuming, but it was worth it! 

Ingredients

For the cake

175g self raising flour

1½ level tsp baking powder

100g white caster sugar

75g golden caster sugar (or use all white)

175g baking spread or spreadable butter

3 eggs, beaten

65g walnuts, finely chopped

1 tblsp Camp coffee essence

For the buttercream filling

40g softened butter

80g icing sugar

1 tsp Camp coffee essence

For the glacé icing

110g icing sugar

1½ tsp Camp coffee essence

To decorate

5-6 walnut halves roughly chopped plus 4 whole halves

Method

Preheat the oven to 180° C / 160° fan / gas mk4.  Grease a pair of 7½" or 8" (20cm) sandwich tins and line the bottoms with baking paper circles.

In a large bowl mix together using an electric whisk (or use a stand mixer) the flour, baking powder, sugars, butter, eggs and coffee essence until creamy and well blended.  Mix in the nuts.

Divide the mixture evenly between the two tins and level the tops.  Bake for 25-30 minutes until done (see side bar for tips).

Remove from the oven, leave in the tins for 5 minutes then turn out carefully, removing the baking paper, and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

To make the buttercream, beat the butter in a medium bowl until soft.  Sift in the icing sugar, add the coffee essence and beat until smooth and well combined.

To make the glacé icing, sift the icing sugar into a small bowl and beat in just enough of the coffee essence to get a spreadable icing.  If you want to get the drip effect as in the second picture, add a little more essence or water a drop at a time until it is slightly more runny.

When the cakes are completely cold, sandwich the two together with the buttercream then spread the glacé icing evenly over the top.  

Decorate with whole and chopped walnuts to your taste.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

GOOSEBERRY AND ORANGE DRIZZLE CAKE*

Our gooseberry bush in France is doing well but was a bit slow to get going this year owing to the peculiar weather.  When I braved the thorns to pick the first gooseberries there were not quite enough to make into a crumble.  

With little more than a handful of gooseberries to use my thoughts turned to cake and I remembered seeing a recipe for gooseberry and orange cake somewhere.  Having looked it up I decided that it was really a lemon drizzle cake, made with orange not lemon, and with a few gooseberries added.  So that's what I did.

I used a BBC Good Food recipe which you can see here. It was simple to make using the "all in one" method for cakes, just stirring in the gooseberries at the end of the beating.  It was lovely and we ate it for dessert outdoors on a disappointingly dull summer's day.  The weather in France this year has been rather English (although I hear that the actual English weather has been even worse than usual).  It seemed fitting that with the English weather we should have a traditional cheese and bacon quiche (my mum would have called it a flan) served with what I call English salad - lettuce, tomato and cucumber (with a small tin of sweetcorn sprinkled over for added crunch and interest) followed by a gooseberry cake.

There seemed to be a lot of mixture so rather than overfill the tin I made a few little buns.

They were done in about 20 minutes.

Ingredients

For the cake

225g each of :

    self raising flour 

    caster sugar 

    softened butter or baking spread (I used something called Le Fleurier which is a spread   containing  butter and various oils but no palm oil)

4 eggs

3/4 tsp baking powder (this is not in the GF recipe but when using French self raising flour I usually add a little baking powder as without it the rise is sometimes disappointing.)

zest of 1 large orange

a handful or two of gooseberries, rinsed, topped and tailed

For the topping/drizzle

most of the juice of the orange

2 tblsp granulated sugar

Method

Put a long strip of baking paper along the inside of a 2lb, 900g loaf tin then put a paper liner on top.  (The strip helps to lift the cake out of the tin before it has completely cooled and is still quite fragile.)  Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan / gas mk 4.  

Put all the cake ingredients except for the fruit into a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth with a hand held electric whisk.  (Or use a wooden spoon and keep beating until smooth.)

Stir in the gooseberries and spoon into the tin.  Bake for 40-45 minutes until golden brown and done.

(This recipe produced a lot of mixture so rather than overfill the tin I used it for a few buns.  They went into the oven when the cake came out and were done in 20 minutes.)

Poke a few holes in the top with a skewer, toothpick or cake tester.

To make the drizzle, mix the sugar with the orange juice and pour over the cake while it is still warm.

After 10 minutes lift the cake out of the tin using the paper strips (still in its liner) and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.

*Eagle eyed readers may realise that this is different from the first time I posted this recipe.  The essential difference is that the new version uses a larger quantity of all the ingredients but the end results would be the same.  

SALMON, PEA AND POTATO QUICHE

"Here she goes again" I can hear myself saying! Yes, another blog post about leftovers!

I've been "off the lead" for a couple of weeks while Nick is back in the UK for one of our scheduled visits, which usually revolve around seeing friends and family, and mending things.  The MOT for the car we leave in the UK falls due at this time of year and when I was last there it had a dashboard warning which declared "ENGINE FAULT. REPAIR NEEDED".  Naturally I ignored it and it ran perfectly well except for the annoying audible warning!  However it needed to go to the garage anyway for its test so we allowed a bit longer for the visit in case parts needed to be ordered.  It was a simple fix so all is well.

So, with Nick out of the picture I decided to host a "ladies that lunch" for some other singletons at home.  For starters I served the little vegetable tarts which you can see here.  For main course I made roast salmon on a bed of courgette and tomatoes which you can see here.  For dessert I made five pana cottas with a strawberry topping.  I made these the day before so that I just had to add the topping last minute.  Only three other ladies had replied to my invitation so I had "quality tested" the spare one for my dinner.  When a fourth guest accepted last minute and having eaten one of the puddings I rustled up a second dessert of apple and gooseberry crumble using fruit and topping from the freezer, to Mary Berry's recipe which you can see here.

Naturally there were leftovers!  A few unused cooked peas, beans and broccoli from the starter, plus nearly half a pint of the egg mix.  I have found it best not to over fill the tarts, as the leftover mix can be used later.  (Usually I just pour it over a few savoury bits and pieces to bake a kind of "crustless quiche".)

There was also one salmon fillet with a few bits of courgette and tomato left and a few potatoes. I had a pack of shortcrust pastry in the freezer which I thawed out and then just piled everything into it including ripped up flakes of salmon.  I used my general method for making a quiche which  you can see here, adding a few slices of a rather past it noggle end of goat's cheese and some tomato to decorate the top.  Three quarters of the way through the cooking I pressed the filling down a bit using the back of a fish slice as it looked like some bits were going to be browned too much.  This made sure everything was submerged in the custard and resulted in a well filled quiche.

It was absolutely yummy!  Another "free lunch"!  It took me three days to eat my way through it on my own but was so delicious I would most definitely make it again from scratch!  In fact it would have made the ideal lunch dish for the ladies.

Ingredients 

a pack of ready made, ready rolled shortcrust pastry

2 tblsp caramelised onion chutney (or any other suitable chutney made with onions)

a handful of cooked peas, green beans and broccoli florets

1 cooked salmon fillet

a few chunks of cooked courgettes and tomatoes from the roasted salmon recipe (or fry some)

2 small cooked potatoes, sliced

2 eggs

2 tblsp of crème fraiche

approx 100ml milk

a few slices of goat's cheese, or any other cheese, grated or sliced

a few slices of tomato

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C / 160 fan.  Line a loose bottomed 20cm tart tin with the pastry.  Use the baking paper that comes in the pack to line the pastry case, add a layer of baking beans and blind bake for 15 minutes.  (I find it a good idea to put the tin on a baking sheet, which removes the risk of accidentally pushing the loose bottom up when lifting the pastry case in and out of the oven.)

Remove from the oven, remove the baking beans and paper and, if the pastry still looks a bit damp, return to the oven for another 5 minutes.

Spread the onion chutney over the pastry case.  Add the cooked greens in an even layer and distribute the sliced potatoes evenly over the top.  Tear the salmon fillet into strips and arrange them evenly over the veg.

Beat the cream and eggs together in a jug and add enough milk to make up to 250ml.  Mix well, add salt and pepper and pour evenly over the filling.  Add the cheese slices (or some grated cheese) and tomato slices.

Return to the oven, reducing the temperature to 160C / 140 fan.  Bake for 20 minutes then press any bits of filling that are above the surface of the custard back down so that they are submerged.  

Bake for another 10-20 minutes until the filling is set and slightly browned.

Allow to settle and cool for 10 minutes before serving.  Serve warm or cold with salad or anything else you fancy.  Chips and baked beans would be nice!  Equally a simply "English" salad or something more exotic.

Cuts into 6 regular or 4 generous servings.

GIFFLAR ROLL PUDDING (AND/OR TART)

 

Considering the nature of my last two posts, and now this one, you would be forgiven for thinking that I now spend my whole life dreaming up how to use leftovers in a way that avoids waste but is still edible.  I have to say that lately it does often feel like that but I can assure you, there has been proper cooking going on and when I get time to sort through photos and concentrate on things normal service will be resumed.

Just in case you were also wondering what on earth a Gifflar is, well, it's these things.  They are kind of bready rolls flavoured either with cinnamon or vanilla like small cinnamon buns but a bit firmer.  The only place I have ever seen them is in Ikea.  They are very tasty, not too sweet, and very filling with either a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

In one of our mad panic visits to Ikea earlier in the year (in an attempt to finish DIY projects and make the house ready for visitors) I picked up a bag of each and they did indeed come in very handy for keeping said visitors' hunger at bay on the occasions when the catering had gone awry.  

As mentioned in my previous post, there were inevitably leftovers when all the visitors had gone home and I spotted in the cupboard an opened packet of vanilla Gifflar which was only missing one or two rolls.  So, thinking that you can make a bread and butter pudding out of many things other than bread, I came up with a way of using them for a dessert.  I also used a few apricots that were lurking in the fridge drawer but you could use plums, apples, or virtually any other fruit.  My mum used to put raisins or sultanas in her bread and butter pudding and they would also work well here.

I sliced each one in half and arranged them in a pie dish, tucking the sliced apricots in between. 

I then poured over my usual custard mixture for a bread and butter pudding which you can see here.

It worked really well.  It puffed up in the oven and sank back down when it had cooled and was, truthfully, a lot firmer than say the brioche pudding that I usually make, but was still delicious.

The next day it had firmed up rather more and, as dipped my spoon into the dish, I realised that in actual fact it was now very much like a tart and could be sliced.

So that's how we had the rest of it, sliced just like a tart and served with a drizzle of cream!  Which made me wonder if I had once again invented a new kind of dessert, after the fashion of the tarte tatin or the Bakewell pudding?!

If so I think I would have to think of a different name for it.  Gifflar tart somehow doesn't sound quite as appealing!!

Ingredients

8-10 Gifflar rolls (either cinnamon or vanilla flavour)

a handful of apricots, stoned and quartered

1 tblsp demerara sugar 

2 eggs

2 tblsp double cream (or any kind of cream or crème fraiche)

about 150ml milk

2 tblsp caster sugar

Method

Preheat the oven to 160C / 140 fan.

Cut the rolls into half and arrange in a suitable, buttered baking dish.  Slip the slices of apricot in between and sprinkle over the demerara sugar.

Put the eggs into a measuring jug and beat.  Add the cream and enough milk to make up to 400ml.  Beat in the caster sugar.

Pour the egg mixture evenly over the contents of the dish and press down lightly with the back of a tablespoon or fish slice.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until the custard is set.

Whilst still warm serve in spoonfuls with cream, custard or ice cream.  Serve in slices like a tart when cold.

SPINACH, SMOKED CHICKEN AND ROAST TOMATO PASTA

 

It is over two months since I last posted anything!  That does not mean I have fallen off my perch, stopped baking or decided to give up blogging.  It's simply because the year has turned out to be a bit manic.

Not least of all is that earlier in the year we had virtually a whole month of visitors, one lot after the other, plus a couple of hasty visits back to the UK for various crisis management issues.  The thing about visitors that I find most difficult is the catering.  Thinking of, shopping for and providing three meals a day at normal times, including impromptu meals out, requires brain effort that no longer comes easily and our usual eating pattern is generally much more ad hoc.  Hence there tends to be over purchasing, a freezer crammed with unused items and a scramble to use up perishables when the visitors have all gone home.

So, this dish is a result of realising it's lunchtime, looking in the fridge to see what there is and coming up with something edible.  It was surprisingly good and I would even do it again on purpose rather than by accident.

One of the ingredients was some home roasted tomatoes.  As always home grown veg are ready all at once and earlier in the year we lost most of our broad beans simply because we were so busy that we didn't get round to picking them.  When my tomatoes began to ripen I was determined not to waste those so found the time to roast and bottle them.  You can see how I did it here.

I confess that the idea for this pasta actually came from a ready meal we had not long ago.  I spotted a couple of packs of something called creamy salmon pasta in the "anti gaspi" or yellow sticker section in the nearby branch of Aldi.  They were remarkably good and I thought I would make something similar when we needed a light meal and I had spinach in the house, although obviously I used chicken, not salmon.

Ingredients

About 3/4 of a pint of pasta.  I used penne and usually measure pasta using my old Pyrex one pint jug.  I find that a full jug or about a pint is a generous serving for two people.

2-3 slices of cooked chicken, torn into small pieces.  I happened to use smoked chicken because we had the remains of a ready cooked smoked chicken in the fridge.

2 tblsp crème fraiche 

About 1/3 of a bag of fresh spinach, washed

6-8 roasted tomatoes in olive oil (or you could use sundried tomatoes or cherry tomatoes)

Method

Cook the pasta in a large pan of boiling water according to the packet instructions.  When cooked to your liking (either soft or al dente) drain off most of the water and put the spinach in a single layer on top.  Put the lid on and return to the heat for a couple of minutes until the spinach is wilted.

Remove from the heat, stir in the chicken, crème fraiche and tomatoes.  Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately, sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese if you like.

Serves 2.