CHEESY BAKED EGGS

Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge this month is to bake the recipe on page 30 of cookbook number 30 on your bookcase.  You can see the details here.  I counted mine out and turned up a recipe for baked eggs in the recent book “John Whaite Bakes”.  This is the charming young man who won the Great British Bake Off last year.

This book is very much in the style of modern cookbooks, each recipe having its own little story as an introduction and with lots of photos of the author, looking very handsome, nibbling a biscuit, holding a mug, walking down an alley of factory buildings holding half a baguette………..somehow I find it all slightly unnecessary.  I blame Nigella – she started it, I seem to remember, and now they all do it.  Except for Delia, who doesn’t seem to need to.  It’s the celebrity thing, I suppose. 

Having said all that, this really is a lovely book.  The photos are beautiful  and there’s one for most of the recipes – something I appreciate as it is helpful to see what the finished dish should look like.  There are lots of fabulous recipes to try and they are clearly written. 

And – at the risk of revealing here another little bee from my bonnet – at least the food isn’t presented on grotty, grubby, chipped and cracked old crockery that I personally would have thrown out long ago.  This is another cookbook fashion that I really don’t understand.  Shabby chic is one thing, well used and well worn favourite crockery is another, but chipped, cracked dishes, rusty tins and tea-stained tea cloths – no thanks !!

Maybe it’s just me or it’s my age.  I’m now at the age where I can conveniently blame all sorts of things on my age and people accept it – turning 60 and gradually becoming a batty old lady is beginning to seem like fun after all !!

The nice thing about this recipe is that it is so simple you hardly need a recipe at all.  My mum used to make these for Sunday tea.  They were exactly the same except that she would never have used herbs and made them in a large Pyrex dish for the four of us.  We would have ours with a slice of toast and a few baked beans on the side. ( John apparently has his with some sourdough or freshly baked foccacia!)

To make cheesy baked eggs:

Preheat the oven to 170°C / 160°fan / gas mk 3.

For each person, butter a large ramekin and drop two eggs into it.  Add a tablespoon of cream or milk, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with a few leaves of thyme.  (I omitted the thyme as it’s growing in the garden and we were in the middle of a thunderstorm, it was chucking it down and I couldn’t be bothered to fetch my mac and wellies.)

Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake for 12-14 minutes if you like your eggs slightly runny, a little longer if you like them hard.  Serve hot with toast, or just on their own.

GLUTEN FREE COFFEE, ALMOND AND BLACKCURRANT CAKE

I was really pleased with the regular version of this cake which I made a few weeks ago.  You can see the post here.  I liked the contrast between the sweetness of the coffee sponge and the sharpness of the blackcurrant jam.  So when I was deciding what kind of cake to make for my friend Elizabeth’s birthday I settled on a gluten free version of the same thing. I adapted a Victoria sponge recipe from “The gluten free baker” by Hannah Miles, replacing the vanilla essence with instant espresso coffee dissolved in a little water.

I filled it with whipped cream flavoured with more coffee and sweetened with icing sugar, plus a layer of blackcurrant jam, then decorated with some water icing and birthday candles.

I used this recipe last year to make the cherry Bakewell cake, which you can read about here.  It produced a lovely moist and light cake and it’s proved to be a very useful, reliable and adaptable recipe.

Anyone who finds the combination of coffee and blackcurrant a strange idea could of course just omit the jam – it’s definitely not to everyone’s taste – but we like it.  And you could easily replace the cream filling with regular coffee buttercream.

This year I was baking in a heatwave so there was no problem with getting the butter to soften – just leaving it out of the fridge for an hour did the trick.  The only problem was in transporting it on bendy roads for 50 minutes – the top layer started to slide off the bottom layer as we rounded a bend but a gentle shove was all that was needed to replace it!

Ingredients

For the cake

185g softened butter

185g caster sugar

4 eggs

200g ground almonds

125g gluten free self raising flour

¼tsp gluten free baking powder

150ml crème fraîche

2tsp instant espresso powder, dissolved in a little boiling water

For the filling and icing

3 tblsp blackcurrant jam

150ml double cream or crème entière

4 tblsp icing sugar

½tsp espresso powder, dissolved in a little of the cream

sugar crystals, sugar flowers and candles to decorate

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°fan/gas mk 4. Grease and base line 2 x 20cm sponge tins.

Put the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat or whisk until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time and beat well with each addition.

Add the other cake ingredients and fold in gently until evenly combined.

Divide between the two tins and bake for 25-30 minutes until the cakes are firm and golden and pass the skewer test. Remove from the oven, turn out and cool on a wire rack.

Whip the cream until firm and spreadable. Add the coffee powder and one tablespoon of icing sugar and blend in.  Spread the jam onto the base of one of the sponges.  Invert the other sponge onto a cake plate or stand and spread the whipped cream onto it.  Invert the jammy one on top.

Sift the rest of the icing sugar into a bowl and add water, a teaspoon at a time, and mix together until a runny icing is formed.

Spoon the icing onto the top of the cake, spread out evenly, allowing to drip down the sides if you like.  Decorate with birthday candles, sugar crystals, sugar flowers and anything else you fancy!

Cuts into 10-12 slices. Keep refrigerated because of the fresh cream.

“F” IS FOR FINANCIERS (OR FRIANDS).

Financiers are lovely little cakes to make when you want to rustle something up in a hurry.  There is no creaming of butter and sugar, just melting of butter and a light whisking of egg whites and they’re done almost as soon as you have finished washing up the baking dishes!

Friands and financiers are pretty much the same cake, just a different shape.  The traditional friand tin produces oval shaped cakes and a financier tin produces oblong cakes.

This time I made strawberry and lemon financiers, using my recipe for blueberry and lemon friands, which you can find on the BBC Good Food website here.  Instead of the blueberries I just placed some sliced strawberries on top and because I was in my little French kitchen I used the financier mould I bought in the cookware section of a French supermarket (I think it was Intermarché).

The little cakes are perfect for this month’s Alphabakes challenge,  an event organised by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The more than occasional baker, which is to bake something including the letter “F”.

They also slip very nicely into this month’s Tea Time Treats challenge, the monthly event run by Kate of What Kate Baked and, this month, by Karen of Lavender and Lovage.  July being the month for fruit we are asked for something baked with fresh fruit.  You can see the details here.

This is one of those very handy, very adaptable recipes which I have used time and again.  You don’t need to use a friand or financier tin - the cakes turn out perfectly alright baked in an ordinary muffin tin.

Strawberry and lemon financiers.

Ingredients

100g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

125g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting

25g plain flour

85g ground almonds

3 medium egg whites

1 unwaxed lemon, grated rind only

4-5 strawberries, sliced

Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC / 180ºfan. Generously butter a friand, financier or muffin tin.

Melt the butter and set aside to cool.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a large bowl.  Add the almonds and, using your fingers, mix everything together.

Whisk the egg whites until they make a light, floppy foam. Make a well in the dry ingredients, tip in the egg whites and lemon rind. Add the melted butter and lightly stir to make a soft batter.

Divide the mixture evenly between the tins and arrange the sliced strawberries on top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until light golden brown and firm to the touch.

Cool in the tins for 5 minutes. Then turn out and allow to cool completely on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Makes 8 financiers (or 6-8 friands, depending on the tin).

SMOKED HADDOCK, PRAWN AND SPINACH TART

We are on a mission to use up the contents of our freezer at the moment.

I’m not sure why this is.  Maybe it’s the time of year when we instinctively want to make space for the glut of home-grown vegetables due to arrive in the next few weeks.  Sadly there is not much sign of that happening at the moment.

Our runner beans didn’t germinate and never came up.  We replaced them with some bought climbing green bean plants but they haven’t grown any more at all, they just sit there sulking, waiting for the sun and warmth to perk them up.

We planted out two rows of peas and days later they were nibbled down to stalks by either rabbits or pigeons.  We replaced them last weekend and in spite of taking reasonable precautions the same thing has happened again.  I think this is the point where I admit defeat and resign myself to buying our peas and beans in Sainsbury’s this year.  At least the broad beans are looking promising and the tomato plants are flowering in the greenhouse.

Anyway, we are gradually working our way through the contents of the freezer and pulling out UFO’s (unidentified frozen objects) on a daily basis.  Yesterday I found a bag containing some smoked haddock, probably not enough to do much with, so I fished out a small pack of frozen raw prawns as well.  In the fridge there was half a bag of spinach, looking slightly past its best, and part of a bag of the highly despised ready grated parmesan cheese (brought back from our last visit to France).  So I went hunting for a recipe to do something with them.

I bought “The Art of the Tart” in a charity shop a few years ago and confess I have barely opened it.  But in it I found a recipe using smoked haddock and watercress that looked interesting – and easily adaptable for the ingredients I wanted to use.

The author describes this as an “everyday tart”.  I presume this is because the filling is made like a white sauce, rather than consisting of lots of eggs and cream.

My piece of smoked haddock had been in the freezer well beyond the time it should normally be kept frozen but it seemed absolutely fine when it was thawed.  The prawns were uncooked, peeled prawns so when they were thawed I cooked them in butter before adding to the tart.

I have to say, there was nothing particularly everyday about the finished tart.  It was absolutely delicious. 

We had ours with new potatoes and an assortment of veg, principally the remainder of the bag of spinach and the other bits and pieces lurking in the fridge.  But it was good enough to serve to guests and would make a lovely starter with some salad, or a nice lunch.  Definitely a recipe I will be using again.

I am entering the recipe into this month’s “No waste food challenge”, organised by Kate from Turquoise Lemons.  This month’s title is “freezer stash” and is presented  by Elizabeth’s Kitchen.  You can see the details here.

Ingredients

For the pastry:

6oz plain flour

2oz Trex or other white fat

1oz butter

For the filling:

250g smoked haddock, dyed or undyed

100g cooked, peeled prawns

300ml milk

1 tblsp plain flour

1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 stick of celery, washed, trimmed and finely chopped

salt, pepper and nutmeg for seasoning

Flora Cuisine, or olive oil, or butter, for frying

a few handfuls of spinach, washed and roughly chopped

2 eggs, beaten

a sprinkling of parmesan cheese

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Grease a 22cm / 9” flan tin or dish.

Make the pastry as usual.  Line the dish, prick the base with a fork, add baking parchment and baking beans and bake blind for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven, remove the beans, brush the base with a little of the beaten egg and return to the oven for 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, put the smoked haddock in a saucepan with the milk, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 10 minutes.  Remove from the heat.  Strain the fish and reserve the milk.  Remove the skin and any bones from the fish and flake into a bowl.  Set aside.

Heat the Flora, oil or butter in another medium saucepan and cook the onion and celery until softened.  Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.  Add the reserved milk and heat gently, stirring, until the sauce has thickened.  Season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg.  Remove from the heat.

Add the eggs, fish, prawns and spinach to the pan and stir until combined.  Spread the mixture into the pastry case, sprinkle with the parmesan cheese and bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown.

Serve warm.

Serves 4-6 good portions.

(Apologies for the mixture of metric and imperial measurements.  I always make my pastry from scratch in ounces but follow recipes in grams.)

GUILT FREE, GLUTEN FREE, BLACK FOREST CAKE

I wanted to make a gluten free cake and decided to have a look in one of my favourite baking books, “Gorgeous Cakes” by Annie Bell.  Although it is not specifically a gluten free recipe book, a lot of the recipes are just that.  I liked the look of this one that is also described as "guilt free".

This is apparently because it has no butter or cream in it. 

As you can see, mine looks nothing at all like the picture in the book.  This is actually because the “cream” topping in the picture is in fact ricotta cheese and mine turned out to be extremely runny.  It ran off the top of the cake, taking the grated chocolate with it !!  The topping also has honey in it instead of icing sugar, which presumably makes it less indulgent and therefore making one feel less guilty about that second or third slice…...

Considering there is no flour or butter in the cake, it rose amazingly well, all the rise coming from the whisking of the eggs to give lift to the ground almonds.

The original guilt free recipe isn’t exactly for a black forest cake.  At the last minute I decided to add some black cherry jam to the filling and put some cherries on top for decoration.  I think it needed the jam.  Without it the cake would have been quite bland I think.

However, I would definitely make this cake again.  The good rise and the moist chocolateyness made it a lovely cake for a gluten free diet.  The ricotta didn't work for me so next time I might just abandon the guilt free concept and fill it with whipped cream!

As this month’s Tea Time Treats challenge is for “layer cakes”, I think this cake just about qualifies and just about sneaks in - in the nick of time !! The challenge is the work of Kate of What Kate Baked and Karen of Lavender and Lovage and you can see the details here.

As the cake was also a random selection and a healthy one (well at least until I added the black cherry jam!), it fits in (hopefully) with Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge at Belleau Kitchen this month, which is for “Healthy and Happy”.  You can see the details here.

Ingredients

4 medium eggs, separated

150g caster sugar

3 tblsp cocoa powder

225g ground almonds

1tsp gluten free baking powder

2 x 250g tubs of ricotta cheese

3 tblsp set honey

approx half a jar of black cherry jam

approx 4 tblsp grated dark chocolate

a few fresh cherries to decorate (optional)

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line the base of a deep 20cm springform cake tin.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg whites stiffly using an electric whisk.  In a larger bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale and creamy.

Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture in three goes until well combined.  Then sift in the cocoa and baking powder.  Add the ground almonds and fold in.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 35 minutes until the cake shrinks back from the sides of the tin slightly and passes the skewer test.

Run a knife round the edge of the cake and leave to cool in the tin.

To make the filling, drain the liquid from the ricotta then blitz in a food processor with the honey until well combined.

Remove the cake from the tin and carefully cut into two layers using a bread knife.  Put one half on a cake stand or plate and spread generously with the jam.  Add about half of the cheese topping and put the second layer on top.

Spread the remaining cheese topping over the cake and sprinkle with grated chocolate.  Add a few fresh cherries to decorate.  Chill in the fridge for an hour or so before serving.

Cuts into 10-12 slices.  Keep in the fridge but leave out of the fridge for at least 30 minutes before serving.

FORGOTTEN COOKIES

I was looking at a couple of spare eggs in the egg basket late one evening and remembered this recipe which I had seen on the Good Food website a while ago.

The “late one evening” bit is the point, as these are essentially little meringues which you whisk up and put in the oven, then you turn the oven off and can leave them or “forget about them” until the next day.

As far as I can remember, this is the first time I have ever made a meringue, other than the sort you would put on top of a lemon meringue pie.  They turned out well, crisp on the outside and chewy inside, with nice little bits of nut and chocolate to surprise you as they melt on the tongue.  I also liked their rather rustic appearance and they are of course gluten free.

Some of them had nice hard, dry bottoms, which is how they should be I think.  Others were a bit gooey on the bottom and more difficult to remove from the baking sheet without falling apart.

I suspect this might be due to the efficiency of my fan oven in my French kitchen, which is newer than the one back home by about ten years.  I wonder if the fan that comes on to cool the oven down when you switch it off was too effective and cooled the oven too quickly.  I believe this oven has an option to turn the fan off so next time I make them I will see if I can find the instruction book (and understand the French text) and give that a try.

And I will definitely make them again.  I used a pack of Sainsbury’s Belgian chocolate chips and pecan nuts but I might try white chocolate and almonds next.  I also fancy making them even smaller so they could be served with an after dinner coffee.  Posh, eh ??!!

Ingredients

2 large egg whites

pinch of salt

120g caster sugar

120g pecan nuts, roughly chopped

150g dark chocolate, roughly chopped, or chocolate chips

1tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160°fan / gas mk 4.  Line two baking sheets with foil.

Whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff. 

Whisk in the sugar a little at a time.

Fold in the nuts, chocolate and vanilla essence.

Drop heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheets, spaced 2-3 cm apart.  Put them into the oven and turn it off.  Forget about them for at least three hours, or until the oven is completely cold, or overnight.

Makes 30-35 cookies and they keep well for a few days in an airtight tin.

SMOKED SAUSAGE, LEEK AND SPINACH TARTS

I make these little tarts every so often and they’re a good way of making something rather tasty from whatever happens to be left over and lurking in the fridge.  I first wrote about them here.

For these I used one leek, a bit of Morteau sausage, some spinach and grated Emmental cheese.

Basically, you cut some ready-made, ready-rolled puff pastry into circles about the right size to line a muffin tin, add some savoury filling in the bottom, pour over an eggy mixture and bake.

These looked great and would have done very well as a starter for a casual lunch or dinner party. It was the first time I had tried the smoked sausage and leek combination and it worked very well – they were very tasty.  The variations are endless: smoked salmon with asparagus, bacon and broccoli – just use your imagination and whatever you have to hand for the filling.

One with some crudités makes a nice starter.  Two with some salad makes a nice lunch.  One or two with chips and coleslaw makes a very indulgent treat.

Ingredients (for six mini tarts or quiches)

1 pack of ready-made, ready-rolled puff pastry (pâte feuilletée)

2-3 thick slices of saucisse de morteau, or other smoked sausage

1 small leek, washed, trimmed and very thinly sliced

butter, oil or Flora Cuisine for frying

a few leaves of spinach

a handful of grated Emmental cheese, or cheddar, Parmesan, or thin slices of Brie or goat’s cheese.

2 eggs

a tablespoon or two of crème fraîche or double cream

about ¼pint milk

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180°fan / gas mk 4.

Unroll the pastry and cut it into circles big enough to line the holes of a 6-hole muffin tin.  I used an empty jam jar as a template and cut around the top of it for each tart.  Press each piece of pastry into the muffin tin.

Cut the slices of sausage into small dice.   Heat some butter, oil or Flora Cuisine in a small frying pan and add the sausage and leek.  Fry gently until the leek is tender, about 5 minutes.

Divide the sausage and leek between the six tarts.  Rip the spinach into small pieces and add to the tarts.  Sprinkle the cheese over the top or put a thin slice of goat’s cheese or brie on top of each one.

Put the eggs into a measuring jug with the cream or crème fraîche.  Beat together then add enough milk to make up to about ½pint.  Mix together and pour gently into the tarts.  Do not overfill.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden and firm.  Allow to cool slightly before serving.  (The filling will be puffed up when you take the tarts out of the oven but will settle back down on cooling.)