PEAR AND CHOCOLATE PUDDINGS

I spotted a recipe in a magazine recently that I felt compelled to try.  It was a Rachel Khoo recipe for individual chocolate puddings with a pear in each one.

I bought a bag of those own-brand, basic range pears from the supermarket.  There were only five useable pears in it and the recipe was for six but I soldiered on.  I also had only five ramekin-sized dishes in my new kitchen, under the new regime of minimal possessions including bakeware.  Somewhere there are dozens of other ramekins, probably packed and stored in a mystery warehouse somewhere in darkest Rotherham.  Or maybe I took most of them to the charity shop, I can’t quite remember.

In the recipe Rachel uses a steam oven and makes much of its benefits for baking over other ovens.  If only !!  Luckily instructions for using an ordinary oven are also given.

Although the quantities of the chocolate sponge are for six puddings I made a full batch and divided it between my five dishes.  Predictably there was a little too much mixture in the finished puddings meaning that some pears sank from view and others had a muffin top effect. 

I adapted the recipe slightly, omitting the salt from the pudding mixture as I was to be serving them for Sunday dinner and I was not at all sure salted puddings were to my dad’s taste – or mine either.  The recipe also includes a good measure of black treacle and I was curious to see how that would turn out.  Being short of time I used spreadable butter and made the sponge using an all-in-one method.

Mine turned out rather less neat and tidy than in the picture in the magazine but they were still quite delicious.  The flavour of the treacle came through strongly and I loved it.  I also found that they had an uncooked middle – a kind of chocolate fondant or lava pudding effect.  This was not implied in the recipe or the title but when I looked for it online the puddings were indeed called pear and chocolate fondants – moelleux aux chocolat et poire - although unfortunately, as so often happens, the link for this has disappeared.  After several attempts in the past with unremarkable results I now seem to have made the perfect chocolate fondants by accident!

They were fun to look at and quite delicious.  Next time I think I would make the six puddings, making sure I had six pears and finding another dish!  Either that or not overfill the dishes in my usual waste not, want not fashion.  The ones that turned out with the pears the right way up would be a great dessert for a dinner party!

I am submitting the little puddings to this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, a monthly baking venture presented by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The more than occasional baker.  This month the chosen letter is P and you can see the details here.

Ingredients

6 small pears

500g caster sugar

750ml water

150g spreadable butter

150g light soft brown sugar

3 eggs

1tblsp black treacle

120g self-raising flour

30g cocoa powder

Method

Peel the pears, leaving the stalks in place, and remove as much as you can of the cores from the base.  Put them in a large saucepan with the caster sugar and water and bring to the boil.  Simmer for 10 minutes until the pears are tender.  Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Butter 6 ramekins.

Put the rest of the ingredients into a food processor and process for a couple of minutes until the mixture is smooth.

Divide the mixture between the ramekins and push a pear into each one, with the stalk sticking up.

Bake for 12-15 minutes until a crust has formed on the sponge but the centre will still be liquid.  Serve warm in the ramekins.

Serves 6.

GINGER CAKE

We moved house eight weeks ago and after three weeks abandoned ship and went to France to continue our house hunting adventures there.  Consequently we are not as far forward as we would have been if we had stayed here and continued diligently working our way through the mountain of cardboard boxes.

 

The kitchen is brand new and, although beautiful to look at, its size is a proving to be a challenge.  We have moved stuff from cupboard to cupboard over and again in order to find the sensible places to store things in a way that makes best use of the space.

I like my new larder unit but added a couple of extra shelves to get all my baking stuff in it. The new dining set arrived this week, which makes mealtimes much more comfortable than the old garden chairs.  The “dining area” is simply a space at the end of the kitchen next to the fridge, but it has a nice view over the garden.

The open view at the back of the house is one of the main reasons that we bought it.  Being able to sit outside and look at the view has been a real joy during the stressful process of downsizing and moving – which is exhausting, mentally, emotionally and physically.  Sitting outside with a glass of something nicely chilled at the end of the day has been great therapy!

However, as you can see, we’re not out of the woods yet! 

We are not very thrilled with the new oven.  In fact Nick absolutely hates it, and the hob.  Although brand new they are both very basic models and we have promised ourselves that once the dust settles, if there is enough left in the kitty, we will have new ones of our own choosing.

Anyway, I had been itching to bake a cake, new oven or not.  I had successfully made several crumbles and a rather delicious blackberry and apple sponge – a version of Eve’s pudding made using dessert apples and blackberry jam – so I thought it was time to bite the bullet and just do it.

Nick chose the recipe.  It’s called “preserved ginger cake” and he found it in my copy of “Delia’s Cakes”.  That in itself was another challenge.  Most of my cookbooks were still in cardboard boxes until a few days ago.  We couldn’t empty the boxes until we built some flatpack Ikea furniture to house other stuff that was in other boxes on top of the boxes they were in.  If you see what I mean.

Another challenge was getting all the ingredients ready.  It took me over half an hour to find all the bits and pieces and the right tin, but I have to say it was a tremendous success.  The cake was moist and light with an even crumb and a good ginger flavour.   I am very chuffed to have made my very first cake in my brand new kitchen in my new house. 

You can see the recipe here.  I decided not to put any icing on it as we were to be taking slabs of it as part of a packed lunch for a day out.  It’s a great picnic cake, tasty and easy to pick up and eat.  For that reason I am entering it into this month’s Teatime Treats, organised by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Jane of The Hedgecombers.  Karen is in charge this month, which is all about picnic food, and you can see the details here.

THREE FRUIT COBBLER

It has been a while since I baked anything.  Moving house is an all-consuming, full-on, exhausting activity.  Especially when, even though we had disposed of an awful lot of our belongings and put at least half of our furniture and other stuff into store, we still have too much to fit comfortably into our new house.

The new house has a brand new kitchen.  I managed to stop myself from laughing when the (very) young man who showed us round it said everything was “top of the range”.  Brand new it certainly was, top of the range it most definitely wasn’t.  Good quality but very basic is the way I would describe it.

Nick absolutely hates the hob and oven.  The hob is a very basic induction model, which is, to say the least, taking some getting used to.  The oven is a very basic fan oven.  So basic that the thermostat has very few temperature markings on it.  It goes from 150 – 175 - 200° with nothing in between.  So setting the oven temperature is a bit of a guesstimate.   Consequently I haven’t felt much inclined to bake a cake, although cooking of sorts has been going on.  You can only live on take-aways for so long.

After two weeks and a bit of climbing over cardboard boxes and assembling flat pack furniture we abandoned ship and headed for our little holiday home in France for a break.  And also to begin the next phase of our adventure, house-hunting in France.

(In case anyone needs reminding, we have downsized in the UK in order to upsize in France.  Phase one is complete.)  Within days of being chez nous all the trials and tribulations of moving house and new kitchens had been completely forgotten.  This is good.  We needed to remind ourselves of exactly why we were doing this. 

One of the things I find really touching in our little corner of rural France is how gifts of food are so freely given.  Friends will give us armfuls of home grown fruit and veg when we visit.  We regularly open the front door to find flowers or veg on the doorstep, left there by our neighbour Mme André.

One day last week we went for dinner with some friends to the hotel in the village and with coffee were served tiny red plums instead of chocolates.  A discussion about the plums followed and the manager assured us they were mirabelles, from a tree in the hotel courtyard.  I always thought mirabelles were yellow.

Anyhow, we finished our coffee and headed out into the deserted lobby.  After a few minutes the back door burst open and the manager and the waitress appeared with big grins on their faces and a huge bag of the little plums.  “Surprise – cadeaux !!” they said.

I made a crumble and a clafoutis with some of them and with the remainder I made a three fruit cobbler.  I used about 300g plums, two dessert apples and a handful of strawberries that were slightly past their best.  I also added about 75g marzipan, cut into small cubes.

It was delicious.  My feeling is that the little plums are not quite as sweet as the yellow mirabelles I have had before, more like a cooking plum than a dessert plum.  Whatever they are, they’re very good in a crumble, clafoutis or cobbler !!

 

Ingredients

For the fruit filling

300g small plums, halved and stoned

2 dessert apples, peeled, cored and chopped

a few strawberries, hulled and halved

75g marzipan, cubed

100g granulated sugar

For the topping

80g cold butter, diced

200g self raising flour

100g caster sugar

100ml crème fraîche

50ml milk

a handful of flaked almonds

Method

Put the plums and apples in a medium saucepan with a splash of water and heat gently until softened.  Stir in the sugar.

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.

Put the flour and butter into a food processor and process to breadcrumbs.  Add the sugar and process briefly to combine.  Add the liquids and process to make a soft dough.

Tip the fruit into a suitable greased baking dish or tin.  Distribute the strawberries and marzipan amongst the fruit.

Dollop dessert spoonfuls of the topping mixture on top and sprinkle the flaked almonds over.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the topping is browned and firm and the fruit is bubbling.

Serve warm with cream, ice cream, custard or crème fraîche.

Serves 6-8

CHOCOLATE AND DAMSON MERINGUE PIE

Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge this month is to cook a recipe chosen at random from a book about to be thrown out.  You can read the details here.

As you may know, I’ve been doing a lot of clearing out lately, having taken boxfuls of stuff to the charity shops or the tip, including plenty of books.  I do find cook books very difficult to get rid of though.  There’s always the chance that there might just be that one recipe inside, the one I simply can’t live without…….

 

However, I can definitely say that I won’t miss this little M&S book.  I haven’t used it at all and most of the recipes are replicated in other books on the shelf.

But I flipped the pages to see what would turn up.  A chocolate meringue pie.  Hmmmmmm….

 

As well as sorting out and chucking out we are also in the process of eating up and I happened to have some very nice chocolate for baking in a box in the kitchen cupboard, also plenty of eggs and sugar.  So I thought I might as well have a go.

It was lovely.

I confess I didn’t stick absolutely to the recipe.  I was supposed to make a biscuit crumb base from chocolate digestives and butter, cheesecake style, but I didn’t have any chocolate biscuits in the house.  (Far too dangerous.)

But I did have half a pack of ready made pastry and since I would usually make a lemon meringue pie with pastry, not biscuits, I thought I would do the same this time.

I also had a jar of home made damson jam that needed eating up and it occurred to me that a hint of damson might take the edge off the potential sweetness of the chocolate filling and the meringue.  I was right and it worked a treat.

The pastry was crisp, the meringue was golden and crispy on the outside, soft and fluffy inside, the chocolate filling was thick and velvety and the damson a nice little surprise of sharpness with each mouthful. 

I’m not sure I would rush to make it again, but you never know.

Ingredients

Half a pack of ready made shortcrust pastry (or make your own from 6oz flour and 3oz butter)

Or, make a biscuit crumb base mix from 225g dark chocolate digestives and 52g melted butter.

For the filling **

3 large egg yolks

4 tblsp caster sugar

4 tblsp cornflour

600ml (1 pint) milk

100g plain chocolate

2 tblsp damson jam (blackcurrant or blackberry would also be nice)

For the meringue topping

2 large egg whites

100g caster sugar

¼ tsp vanilla extract

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170° fan / gas mk 5.  Grease a 23 cm (approx) flan dish or tin.

Roll out the pastry and line your flan dish, fill with baking paper and baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes. 

(Or if you are using the biscuit crumb base, press it into the bottom and up the sides of the dish and there’s no need to blind bake.)

While the pasty is cooking, make the chocolate filling.   Melt the chocolate in a microwave, or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water.

Beat the egg yolks, caster sugar and cornflour together in a medium bowl to make a smooth paste.

In a medium saucepan, bring the milk almost to the boil and pour onto the egg paste, whisk together. 

Pour in the melted chocolate and whisk together. 

Return the chocolate mixture to the pan and heat gently, stirring, until it begins to thicken. 

(**I found this made way too much filling for my flan dish and next time would reduce all the ingredients by a third except for the chocolate.)

Spread the damson jam evenly over the pastry or biscuit base, pour in the chocolate mixture and level the top.

To make the meringue, put the egg whites in a large bowl and whisk to soft peak stage.  Whisk in two thirds of the caster sugar, a spoonful at a time, until the mixture is smooth and glossy.  Fold in the rest of the sugar and the vanilla extract.  Pour over the chocolate filling and spread out to cover completely and evenly.

Bake for 30 minutes until the meringue is golden and crisp.  Serve warm or cool.

Serves 6.

PARSNIP AND LEMON CAKE

This could easily be the last cake I ever make in my old oven in my old kitchen.  I spotted the recipe in a blog and it was one of those recipes that I felt compelled to make as soon as I had the opportunity.

My kitchen, spruced up for the estate agent’s photos.

We’re hoping that it won’t be long now before we move.  It’s eleven weeks since we accepted the offer on our house and with any luck we should move in early June.  I have mixed feelings about leaving the house where I have lived for nearly thirty years, especially about leaving my old kitchen.  Apart from anything else, it’s huge. 

The cabinets are old fashioned now but the doors are made of solid oak so we have never had the heart to change or paint them.  They have successfully survived several new worktops, ovens, appliances, revamps and numerous parties, not to mention cooking disasters and triumphs.  But the main issue I have with my kitchen is actually its size.  The space between the two sides is so great that we travel several miles a year just fetching stuff out of the cupboards to cook with!  If we were to stay here we would be thinking about changing it for a more modern design and a tighter layout.

  Our new kitchen.  The smile on Nick’s face gave it his seal of approval on the day we viewed the house.

My new kitchen is tiny by comparison.  There are lots of cabinets, but the space is small.  It has a half size dishwasher and a single bowl sink.

The house is a recently renovated between-the-wars semi and the kitchen, like everything else in the house is brand new.  And I have to say, I’m really looking forward to it.  I was born and brought up in a house like this so it felt like a comfy old slipper as soon as I walked through the front door.  To have that familiarity but with a brand new kitchen, bathroom, electrics, plumbing, carpets and everything else is going to be a total joy.  The people who have renovated it have even managed to squeeze a downstairs loo into what was the broom cupboard under the stairs – they deserve a medal for that!

 

So for my last cake in my old kitchen, I made the parsnip and lemon cake which was delicious.  There are a lot of parsnips in it and, being in a hurry as usual, I made the mistake of grating them in my food processor.  As I tipped them into the cake mixture I realised that they were more shredded than grated.  I looked at the long strands of parsnip in the cake tin and wondered if it would work but it did.

As well as parsnips and lemon the cake contains sultanas, spices and a small amount of cold tea.  That’s something I’m always a bit nervous of putting in a cake but it added a nice slight hint of flavour to this one.

The texture was lovely and it kept well.  If anything it was even better on day two and beyond.  A cake I will definitely be adding to my repertoire and look forward to making again and again.  Even Nick, who doesn’t really like cake that much, enjoyed it so maybe I will make it the first time I bake in my new kitchen!

Thanks go to “The Gentleman Baker” in whose blog I discovered the cake, and you can read all about it and see the recipe here:

Parsnip and lemon cake.

THE ECONOMICAL £1 CHOCOLATE CAKE

The We Should Cocoa Challenge this month is to bake a chocolate cake for £1.  The idea is to raise awareness of the fact that so many people have very little money available to spend on food and have to survive on £1 or less per day.  You can read all about the challenge and the statistics here.

I priced up my standard recipe for an everyday, all-in-one chocolate cake and it worked out at £1.39 if I used the cheapest own brand ingredients and also omitted the icing.  It then occurred to me that if I only had £1 to spend on a chocolate cake, would I bother to make one or just go out and buy a cheap one?

In both the Co-op and Tesco you can buy a chocolate cake for exactly £1 so I did, just to see what it was like.

It was a pathetic offering and looked pretty small on a tea plate, measuring barely 5” in diameter.  According to the information on the box it would serve six! 

So I decided it was worth a try to see if I could do better for my £1.  I was really aiming to bake a “normal” chocolate sponge, with regular cake ingredients so I used own brand versions of the usual things, the main substitution being Co-op Buttery spread instead of butter.  I then scaled down the ingredients in the recipe by a third.

I don’t have any 6” sandwich tins so I simply baked one 8” cake.  When I took it out of the oven it already looked a lot more inviting than the shop bought cake and I still had enough left from the £1 to put some chocolate butter icing on the top.

The bought cake weighed only 215g and mine weighed 500g, so when cut into six pieces the home made cake definitely won on size as well as appearance.

Of course the taste also had to be taken into consideration so Nick and my dad offered to do an unbiased assessment.  The feeling was that the bought cake tasted slightly more chocolatey but overall the home made cake was best because of its texture, appearance and the size of the slice.

Of course even if the ingredients only cost £1, you still have the cost of baking it in the oven, which I worked out to be 40-50p.  You need a cake tin or mould and, as you can’t buy just 100g of flour or sugar, if you have to invest in full packs of all the ingredients, that would be a total cost of £7.98.

But if I only had £1 and wanted to treat the family to something that looks nice on the table, it would definitely be worth going to the effort of baking, rather than just picking up a cheap version in the supermarket.

Anyway, luckily my economical chocolate cake also fits in with this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, which is to cook something which has the letter “E” in it.  The challenge is run by Caroline of Caroline Makes and Ros of The  more than occasional baker and you can see the details here.

Ingredients (prices are given for own brand basic ingredients)

For the cake

100g self raising flour, 4p

100g caster sugar, 14p

100g Co-op Buttery spread, 20p

2 large eggs, 33p (I buy mine from the local farm, six free range for £1)

1tbslp (13g) cocoa powder, 10p

1tsp (5g) baking powder, 1p

Total for the cake 82p

For the icing

20g Co-op Buttery, 4p

40g icing sugar, 8p

½tblsp cocoa powder, 5p

Total for the buttercream icing 17p

Grand total for the whole cake …… 99p

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line the base of a 20cm (8”) round cake tin.

Mix the cocoa powder with 1 tblsp warm water until smooth then put into a large bowl with all the other cake ingredients and beat well until smooth.

Transfer to the prepared tin and level the top.  Bake for 20 – 25 minutes until firm and springy. 

Leave in the tin for a few minutes then turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely before applying the icing.

To make the icing, beat the Buttery and icing sugar together in a small bowl until smooth and creamy. 

Mix the cocoa powder with barely a teaspoon of water until it becomes a smooth paste.  Beat this into the icing and mix well.  Spread on top of the cake.

Cuts into six generous slices !!

CUSTARD TART

The milk round on our road changed hands about ten years ago.  The old milk man was a genial kind of chap with a fascinating squint and a quirky sense of humour.  He would call on a Friday evening to suggest we might like to contribute to the ageing milk person’s retirement fund and was grovellingly apologetic if he had to put the price up.  The new one was grumpy and careless.  I had to cajole him into collecting his money and empty bottles.  I fell out with him a couple of times and then sacked him after he left nine empty bottles on our doorstep for a fortnight while we were away on holiday.

For five years or more we were obliged to buy milk from the supermarkets, something that I hated and regretted having to do.  Now our milk and eggs come from the local farm.  The eggs are free range and £1 for a box of six.  In that box there can be a variety of different sizes, the largest often being twice the size of the smallest, but generally averaging out at “large”.

The milk is from the cows in the fields that surround us and is pasteurised on the farm.  The farmer began pasteurising his own milk a few years ago and started selling it from a fridge in a shed, with an honesty box, by the farm gate.  Sales took off (it’s lovely milk) and he put up a solid building with vending machines.  As well as the eggs and milk he now sells his own cream and butter, bread, cakes and pastries from a local bakery, and potatoes.  In the summer there is also home made ice cream and local strawberries.  It’s a marvellous resource for the local people, especially as the goods on sale are far better quality and cheaper than the recently built huge supermarket not far away.

Then a neighbour offered to deliver the milk from the farm to residents in our road so we kind of got our milk round back.  However, it’s not quite like that.  He fetches the milk from the farm and delegates the delivery of it to his teenage kids, which is a great way to teach them that money doesn’t grow on trees but, kids being kids, deliveries are sometimes a little………irregular.

If we’re lucky it arrives at 8am before they go to school.  If we’re unlucky it arrives at 11pm when they remember that they’ve forgotten to bring it and if we’re very unlucky it doesn’t arrive at all.  But it’s tons better than having no milk round and I’m very happy with the service.

The upshot of all this is that sometimes I run out of milk and have to go to the farm to fetch some.  Other times the fridge is full of it, as happened one day last week when the non-delivery resulted in me fetching some then an 11pm delivery and a subsequent glut of milk.

I also had plenty of eggs and half a pack of ready-made pastry (my current weakness) so I looked at them and the idea of a custard tart suddenly became irresistible.  I made it the way my mum always made it, using just milk and eggs, no cream.  As a child the only cream we ever had was that from the top of the full-cream milk, or from a tin on Sundays.  So I made my custard tart using the Be-Ro book recipe and it was positively lovely, just like my mum used to make.

I am entering my custard tart into this month’s Tea Time Treats Challenge, a monthly baking challenge run by Karen of Lavender and Lovage and Jane of The Hedge Combers.  This month the theme is “open top tarts, pies and quiches” and you can see the details here.

Ingredients

½ pack of ready-made shortcrust pastry (or make your own with 100g flour)

2 large eggs

300ml (½ pint) milk

2 tblsp sugar

nutmeg (I used ready grated from a jar, just like my mum used to)

Method

Preheat the oven to 190°C / 170°fan / gas mk 5.  Grease a 20cm flan dish or tin.

Roll out the pastry and bake blind for 15-20 minutes until golden. 

While the pastry is baking, whisk the eggs in a jug or bowl.  Put the milk and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to the boil.  Pour onto the eggs and mix thoroughly.   Allow to cool.

Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4. 

Pour the milk carefully through a sieve into the pastry case, sprinkle with nutmeg and bake for 20 minutes until set.  (When you take it out of the oven it might have a very slight wobble but will firm up as it cools.)

Serve warm or cold.  It slips down perfectly with no additions on the plate.

Serves up to six people.  Four would be more like it, or in our house, only two.