Summery strawberry and white chocolate cupcakes
As I sit here, simmering in my sun-baked conservatory and squinting at the dusty screen, I’m really beginning to believe that summer’s in full swing. Here and there at farmers’ markets and farm shops, the glossy punnets of British strawberries are stacked up high, making it the perfect time to treat your loved ones to some pretty strawberry cupcakes.
I like this recipe as it perfectly demonstrates how easy it is to fling together your own recipes. Don’t listen to those people who say that baking is a science and everything needs to be exact. Fancy adding something to a recipe? Whop it in. If it turns out wrong, well, as my good friend Coastal Aussie said after her recent Kiwi Meringue Pie disaster, ‘it wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t experiment’.
Here, then, is the result of my own experimentation: a strawberry sponge as light and fluffy as a cloud, topped with a swirl of creamy white chocolate ganache. Pandering both to my sweet tooth and my eye for the pink and pretty.
For the cupcakes:
170g butter
170g caster sugar
6 or 7 fresh strawberries, washed and hulled (about 100g)
Squeeze of lemon
3 free range eggs
170g self raising flour
For the ganache:
200g white chocolate
Small tub double cream
First then, beat the butter and sugar together until it’s really pale and fluffy. Next you need to purée the strawberries with a squeeze of lemon. If you’re using a large blender (my stick blender with the handy little cup attachment blew up quite recently), it’s easier to blend the strawberries together with the three eggs as the volume is larger and you’ll get a smoother finish, but if you don’t mind the odd lump, you can just as easily mash them with a fork.
Add the strawberry/egg mixture to the butter and sugar fluff little by little, beating all the time. Don’t worry if it curdles – you can usually get it back by adding a tablespoon of the flour and beating it again. Keep adding until all the strawberry mixture is combined into the batter. Now just gently fold in the flour. The result is so deliciously light and fluffy, and smells so scrumptious, that you might have to give yourself a stern talking to in order to avoid eating it all right now. However, if you’re one of those strange people who are repulsed by raw cake mixture you should be fine. Weirdo.
And now, by some mystical baking magic, (and if you haven’t eaten it all) it will transpire that there is exactly enough mixture to fill 12 cupcake papers with exactly a tablespoon of mixture. Pop them in your preheated oven (oh I forgot that bit – gas 4/180 degrees. Sorry) and bake for a scant 20 minutes until the tops just spring up when pushed. Better to be slightly underdone than over, though, you want these sponges light and airy.
While the cupcakes are baking, make your white chocolate ganache. Melt a 200g bar of white chocolate in a bowl over some barely simmering water (turn the heat off when it’s bubbling). When it’s melted, allow to cool a little then whisk in a few tablespoons of double cream (every time I do this I curse the fact that I never remember to measure it). It will thicken up, then loosen again. You just want it the consistency of softened butter, I guess. Whisk it up to incorporate loads of air, then either pipe into thick swirls, or just speak generously over the cupcakes
and top with a strawberry.
Pink perfection in a paper case. Try saying that after you’ve been at the cooking sherry.
English Mum’s Big Bakeoff: baking on the edge.
So we did the Cupcake Challenge a while back and it was just the biggest fun ever. I was thinking of doing another one, and I mulled over biscuits, or maybe whoopie pies (the NBT*), but then I thought no, it’s too limiting. What we need is a big, mahoosive baking competition where there are no limits – baking on the edge, as it were.
And then the lovely chaps at Green and Black’s said: ‘baking competition? But we LOVE baking!’ and offered to put up a rather stonkingly good prize in the shape of a lovely Green and Black’s hamper!
So seeing as we’re all baking rebels who embrace a challenge and laugh in the face of danger, I think we should go for it.
Rules? Ha, we snigger at them
There are no rules. Well, apart from the fact that you’ve actually got to bake something. You must travel henceforth from this place, bake me something (anything) beautiful. Be it brownie or bun, teacake or tart, take a picture and email it to me by the end of July (there are NO extra brownie points for using Green and Black’s so you can wipe all those sneaky ‘product placement’ thoughts out of your mind too, you little devils) at contactenglishmum [at] gmail [dot] com.
I’m giving you loads of time so there’s no excuse not to join. All photos must be in my inbox before the end of July. If you’re a blogger, please link back to this post.
Entries will be displayed in one enormous blog post and the winner will be hurled from the very top of the Empire State Building. No, that was a joke. The winner will be the recipient of one fantastic and utterly fabulous hamper of gorgeousness from Green and Black’s.
There will also be a special Kids’ Prize, so encourage your little ones to get baking!
While you’re at it, Green and Black’s would like to know a little about your sneaky chocolate habits. They’d especially love to hear from parents with kids aged 4-12, so if you’d be so kind as to fill in their little survey here:
… they’d be very grateful. So are you up for it, then? Who’s going to knock the last competition’s winner, and this time’s judge: food blogger Eggs, Cream and Honey off the top spot?
*NBT = Next Big Thing
Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns…
So this is slightly cheating as after I’d finished my lovely hot cross buns, I realised I’d forgotten to take any pictures. So here, then, in a bit of a ‘mash-oop’, as De Brevren would say is a new recipe, with pics from last year.
This recipe takes a bit of time, but is one of those recipes that’s just so much better home-made than bought. So set aside a chilly Easter weekend (I can definitely remember sunny Easters – what’s happened to our weather?) for an afternoon of kneading and baking. Nom.
450g strong white bread flour
1 tbsp mixed spice
1 tsp salt
75g sugar
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
100g sultanas (or mixed peel if you must – bleurgh)
150ml milk
150ml water
Zest of 1 orange
50g butter
First, then, sieve the flour and ground mixed spice together into a large bowl. Next, stir in the salt, sugar, dried yeast and sultanas.
In a small saucepan (or jug if you’re doing it in the microwave) warm the milk, water, orange zest and butter until the butter is just melted, then turn off the heat. Let it cool so that when you stick your finger in, it feels like blood temperature. If your BFF happens to have bought you the most fantastically gorgeous Kitchenaid, like me, then set it on low and slowly pour in the milky mixture until the dough comes together (you might not need all of it so go steady), then plug in the dough hook and set it to knead for a good five minutes.
If you’re old-fashionedy or a still waiting to meet the mixer of your dreams (they do actually come out nicer and lighter if you knead them by hand), you’ll have to get to it for at least ten minutes. Yes, I know, sorry, but it’s true. Knead away, then, getting a good kitchen workout into the bargain. The sultanas keep trying to escape, but grab any of the little blighters trying to make a quick getaway and poke them back in. Keep going until the dough is nice and springy and firm (apparently, good dough should be the texture of a woman’s breast).
Erm anyway, moving swiftly on… when your dough is sufficiently boob-like, leave it covered in a warm place until it’s doubled in size. Then, just knock it back with your fist (imagine it’s someone you can’t stand – nice bit of culinary therapy there), and cut it in half, then half again and half again. Form each of your 8 pieces into a ball and place them on a baking tray. Cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.
If you want to add the cross, then mix about 2 tbsp flour, a tsp of caster sugar and enough water to make into a paste and either just dribble it with a teaspoon, or pipe it onto your buns (ooer Missus). Or, you can cut a cross in the top of the buns, like so:
…and pipe the cross into the little lines like so:
But whatever you think. Let’s not obsess here, they’re just buns.
One thing which is rather fund to do is to place your little buns, well spread out, inside a large, springform tin, which produces a little circle of buns that you have to tear off – good for novelty value:
Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180/gas 6 until they sound hollow when patted on the bottom (sorry, I seem to be filling this recipe with comedy references). Finally, when they’re just out of the oven, glaze with a tbsp of sugar to which a drop or two of boiling water has been added, or warm up some apricot conserve and brush it on for extra glossy stickiness.
Now, to the important business of face stuffing: if you’re eating them straight out of the oven (a move I heartily recommend), slather them in butter and be done with it. But if you’re eating them maybe the next day, split and toast them first. If you’re going to freeze them, slice them in half first so they can go straight in the toaster.
However you like your buns (there I go again), I wish you a wonderfully HAPPY EASTER with your nearest and dearest. Save me an egg.
The Great Cupcake Challenge
So I’m a bit bleurgh about blogging at the moment.
I have no inspiration.
I’ve lost my mojo, as it were.
So I thought ‘ooh, I know, I need a little bit of reader interaction’. And so I went in the bath (mango and lime bubbles, if you must know) and had a think. And here’s the plan. I’m setting you a challenge.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to make me some cupcakes (well, not me exactly, I don’t want you to post them to me or anything). Seeing as Valentine’s Day is coming up and it’s always a huge anticlimax, I thought you could make Valentine’s Day cupcakes. I want real effort here, now – none of this watery icing and sprinkles nonsense - proper, beeyootiful cupcakes.
If you’re a blogger, then you can post a picture on your blog, or if you’re not a nerd you can just email me a picture to be posted, proudly, on englishmum.com on Valentine’s Day.
What do you think, then? You up for it?
Oh and while you’re at it, if you’re truly proud of your pic, you can enter it in this month’s Home Baked Challenge, the theme of which is ‘love’ and of which I happen to be a judge. I won’t be biased. Honest.
Memory Monday: fabulous foodie memories
The lovely Jennifer, Lifestyle Editor of the Times Online and writer of The TimesOnline’s fabulous blog AlphaMummy has challenged me to reveal a deep, dark memory from my past.
Ooer.
Of course, most of my earliest memories are food-related: baking with my Mum in our shiny, lime green melamine kitchen (it’s probably come back into fashion now!): pushing the buttons on the Kenwood Chef, butterfly fairy cakes with fluffy buttercream icing, bubbly honeycomb (fabulous, fizzy magic!), real custard, the ginger biscuit and cream cake, whisking thick creamy batter for toad in the hole, fabulous frittata stuffed with sliced potatoes, crispy bacon and topped with golden, bubbling cheese…
I also remember spending happy hours helping her with the cricket teas: spreading butter (real butter, mind, none of that margarine stuff) on malt loaf and mashing up boiled eggs with salad cream for egg and cress sandwiches - being picked to take the orange squash out to the players on a hot day (what an honour!)….
It looks like I loved the kitchen so much I didn’t ever want to leave:
Happily, all my memories are pretty good. So sorry, Jennifer, I haven’t got any really deep dark ones. Unless, of course, you count…
Working that handbag, though, girl.
Easy Christmas Stollen
So if you’re snowed in, or just fancy a nice afternoon of Christmassy cooking in the kitchen, I can think of nothing finer than stollen. Not only is it yummy, but the smell of it cooking is just the finest thang ever.
As you can see from the picture, I actually made mine when I was back at English Towers in Ireland (it was for a magazine article, so they were unseasonably made in October), but they freeze really well (if you slice them first, you can grill the individual slices which makes the marzipan all lubly and bubbly).
Anyhoo, you’ll need:
500g plain white flour, sieved
½ tsp salt
125g butter, softened
3 tsp baking powder
200g caster sugar
1 large lemon, finely zested
1 tsp ground mixed spice
50g suet
125g sultanas
125g raisins
125g raw almonds, roughly chopped
40g chopped mixed candied peel (or if, like me, you think peel is the spawn of the devil, use dried cranberries instead)
250g crème fraîche, or thick Greek-style yoghurt
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp almond extract (or almond liqueur)
30ml spiced or dark rum
Pack of marzipan, (or to make your own, see below)
Homemade marzipan:
50g caster sugar
100g ground almonds
150g icing sugar
1 egg, beaten
Mix the dry ingredients and then add the egg, mixing well and pushing together with your hands. Form into a sausage shape and refrigerate, wrapped in cling film.
To finish:
25g melted butter
Icing sugar, sieved
So preheat your oven to 180ºC/gas mark 4 and generously butter a large baking sheet. Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl and rub in the butter, then add in the baking powder, sugar, lemon zest, mixed spice, suet, dried fruits, almonds and peel (if using) and mix well.
Now, stir in the crème fraîche or yoghurt, eggs, almond extract and rum. Bring together to form a firm dough, adding more flour if necessary. Divide the dough into two.
Put the dough on a floured surface and roll out into a rough rectangle about 2cm thick. Roll the marzipan into a sausage shape and place in the centre of the dough. Fold the dough over the marzipan, tucking under the ends. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
Place on the baking sheet and bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until golden brown. Brush with the melted butter and dust generously with icing sugar. This keeps really well, so if it’s wrapped in greaseproof paper and then in foil, it will probably last about two weeks. Unlikely, as it’s yummy, but just in case…
And there you have it. Christmas on a plate. Nom.
English Grandma’s special spiced rum and raisin brownies
So English Grandma was visiting last week. It was her birthday and as usual here at English Towers, this meant that the birthday person had the honour of choosing their own cake. Except of course English Grandma didn’t really want a cake, in fact, didn’t really want to be reminded that she was 70 at all. It’s a great age, though, I reckon. It’s the same age as Raquel Welch (about whom the term ‘looks good for her age’ equates to calling the north pole ‘a bit nippy’) and Ralph Lauren, for goodness sake, who’s classier than Ralph?
Plus, there are so many bonuses to being 70: you can be as outspoken as you like, wear odd socks, shave your dog’s hair into weird patterns, use beer towels for curtains (Hubby actually had an aunt that did that) or walk around with your hair sticking up like Fr Jack out of Father Ted, because, let’s face it, who’s going to say anything to you about it? And even if they do, you can club them with your handbag and get away with it. Bonus.
Anyhoo, digressing. So I had to think of a nice dessert which would please the chisellers, who insist on cake at birthdays (what child doesn’t) and be unbirthdaycakey enough to please the mother. I know she likes rum and raisin and I toyed with the idea of rum and raisin ice cream, but then the cake-ish issue reared its ugly head again. ‘I know!’, said #2,’ birthday brownies!’. Fabulous. And for an added twist, I thought I’d get the rum and raisins in there too. Here goes, then:
3 tbsp rum (I used Morgan’s Spiced Rum)
Couple of handfuls (about 50g) raisins or sultanas
200g dark chocolate (this one was from Lidl and had a very pleasing ‘snap’ to it)
170g butter (salted is best with chocolate, or add a pinch of salt)
3 eggs
225g caster sugar
110g plain flour
1/2 tsp ground mixed spice
So first preheat the oven to 180/gas4 and plop the raisins into the rum to soak. Melt the butter and the chocolate in a bain-marie (yes, I know you know, but some people don’t, so I still have to point out that we’re talking about a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, not touching the bottom of the bowl):
When the butter and chocolate start to melt, turn the heat off and let it melt gently using the residual heat. When it’s all melted together, put it to one side to cool slightly.
Meanwhile, take out your Very Special Anniversary KitchenAid (or a whisk and a bowl, if you’re not as lucky as me). Crack in the eggs (if you don’t have a small red chicken with an attitude problem who lays eggs that are approximately half her body weight, don’t worry, they sell eggs in Tesco too)…
…and whizz them together with the sugar until they’re nice and fluffy:
I’d just like to point out that this is a complete excuse to use the KitchenAid as I’ve actually just mixed the eggs and sugar with a fork before now, and it comes out exactly the same. Still…
Fold the flour and mixed spice in to the eggy sugary mixture - nice and gently because (altogether now): working the gluten in the flour too much will make the end result tough:
…and finally, stir in the melted chocolate and butter and the rum and raisins:
Put some bake-o-glide or greaseproof paper in the bottom of a lasagne tin, pour the mixture in:
… and bake for about 35 minutes until the top is all cracky and shiny, but the inside is still retaining a hint of gooeyness.
Leave to cool slightly.
Fight off children, reminding them that this recipe contains alcohol and is therefore for the over 18s only, and serve with a flourish, or some vanilla ice cream, to 70 (shhh) year old birthday girl.
Oh, and absolutely no singing of ‘happy birthday’, okay? She might hit you with her handbag.
Happy (belated) birthday, Mum!
In which the YTPR comes to tea and talks me into being sociable
I am miserable.
I am also baking.
This is a bad mixture. At the best of times, I am the most spectacularly messy baker in the history of messy baking so I’m crashing stuff around, I have flour on my nose, every surface in the kitchen is covered in packets, bowls, utensils, half-chopped almonds and blobs of cookie dough… the mixer is going full pelt…
The doorbell rings and I yell at #2 to get the door.
It’s the YTPR, Craig. He obviously has the same amazing ability as Mr Lovely for sniffing out baking the moment it goes into the oven.
‘Hello!’, says the Rev, ‘I’m stalking you’.
‘Come in’, says I, ‘…and two emails and one blog comment don’t technically count as stalking. Cup of tea?’
‘Oh go on, then’, he says, ‘ooh, are you baking?’
We chat and drink tea as I continue to hurl things into the Very Special Anniversary KitchenAid. He threatens to tell Jen that I moaned that the whisk doesn’t get right to the edges.
He’s noticed, via my blog posts (that’s the way my life works) that I seem a bit down. We chat some more. He mentions that several of his female parisioners get together on a Tuesday for a few nibbles and a chat – nothing heavy or religious, just a bit of mutual support and a few cookies…
‘Whoah…’
[Cue sound of needle screeching across record]
‘I’m not very good at socialising’, says I. It’s true. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, really, as I’m quite friendly – but there’s something about socialising that scares the living crap out of me. I envisage a group of women all chatting and having fun. I walk in, and it goes all quiet like that scene in the pub in American Werewolf. I then continue to compound my awkward situation by uttering a string of increasingly absurd things. Eventually, they all throw their cookies at me and leave. Stupid, I know, but I can’t help it.
He reassures me that they’re all really friendly. His wife goes (I like his wife). One lady is a real foodie and does catering and makes chutneys and stuff…
‘What, like chutneys and chilli jam and stuff?’
‘Yeah, stuff like that’
‘Okay then, I’ll think about it. Biscuit?’
‘Oh go on, then.’
1970s ginger cake – the newer, stickier, betterer…er version
So ginger cake, then. Regular, eagle-eyed viewers amongst you will remember that I found my original, childishly scrawled version of this little beauty tucked inside one of my Ma’s old cookery books a while back and recreated it with some success. Since then, though, I’ve been feverishly working on it after being stung by a comment of Hubby’s that it wasn’t ‘sticky enough’. Several hundred attempts later, then, plus a quick lull where we were all bloody sick of the stuff - I was even taking them round to Mrs Lovely’s house and it’s unheard of for anything baked to leave the house normally – and here’s my new, extra sticky version:
75g butter
75g brown sugar
1/4 pint of milk
2 teaspoons ground ginger (make sure it’s in-date though – ginger tends to fester, unused in the cupboard and tastes like ground cardboard)
2 tablespoons treacle
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
225g self raising flour (sifted)
So preheat your oven to 180/gas 4, then butter a small loaf tin or use a non-stick one, and set it aside. Measure out the butter, sugar, milk, ginger, treacle and golden syrup and melt them all together over a low heat in a saucepan.
When it’s all melted together, turn off the heat and stir in the bicarbonate of soda. Stir it while it goes all weird and fizzy, then add in the flour, continuing to go ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ as it bubbles and burbles. Carry on mixing it until it’s magically transforms into a lovely smooth batter.
Bung it in the loaf tin, cover loosely with foil to avoid crustiness (we’re after sticky here, people) and bake for about 45 minutes. Tip out onto a wire tray to cool, or, in my case, marvel at the fact that Mr Lovely seems to be able to smell it from his house which is at least five minutes’ walk away and turns up just as it comes out of the oven, slice and serve with hot tea and lots of chat with good friends.
Weirdly, this is an excellent standby recipe, as it’s one of few cakes that don’t need any eggs (I’m always running out of eggs – yup, even now I’ve got chickens). Just thought I’d mention it.
Fetch the defibrillator! Double chocolate cookie dough brownies
So my lovely friend, fellow Disney 7 adventurer and blogger, Laura, kind of acts like my chocolate pimp – any sign of any chocolate action anywhere on the web and she’s all over it – it’s gatherered up and sent to me before I can blink. I like this. Which is why Laura is my friend.
Here, then, is Laura’s latest discovery – sniffed bloodhound-like from the bowels of the interweb and delivered to me ready to be fiddled with and muddled with and twiddled with and delivered to you, sparkly, new and fattening. Aren’t you lucky? Many thanks to the incredibly clever lady at One Ordinary Day for sharing this one.
Double Chocolate Cookie Dough Brownies
First, then, you need to make some brownies, for which you need my double, triple, quadruple, tested brownie recipe:
200g bar dark chocolate
170g butter
3 eggs
225g caster sugar
110g plain flour
110g nuts if you want, or chocolate chips, or nothing – see if I care…
So melt the butter and chocolat in a bain-marie (bowl over saucepan of just simmering water – not letting bottom of bowl come into contact with water – you know the drill). Turn the water off when it’s just bubbling and stir the mixture gently until it’s combined. Take it off the heat and allow it to cool to blood temperature (one doesn’t want extra scrambled eggy bits in one’s brownie, trust me).
Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar together. I don’t put raising agent in my brownie as I guess they’re supposed to be quite fudgy and heavy, but I whisk the eggs and sugar to add a few bubbles. Don’t if you don’t want to – it’s just me being picky.
Now, pour in your chocky/butter mixture, stir until combined then bung in the flour and the whatever else you’re using: cherries/chocolate chips/nuts, etc. Or nothing.
Line a lasagne tin or baking tin with greaseproof (or have bits of bake-o-glide cleverly cut into the right shape, if you’re really anal about it *cough*), pour in the mixture and bake for about 35 minutes at 180/gas 4 until the top is shiny and cracked but the middle is still dense and squidgy. Leave to cool.
Now, for the cookie dough mixture:
130g butter, softened
130g muscovado sugar
100g caster sugar
4 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g dark chocolate, chopped (or chocolate chips)
200g plain flour
So whizz up the butter and sugars with the electric whisk, add in the milk and vanilla and whizz some more. Stir in the flour (it seems a lot, but it all goes in eventually). Finally, stir in the chocolate chips. Spread over the top of your cooled brownie and refrigerate.
Finally, to make sure your guests really suffer a coronary, melt another 100g of chocolate and drizzle it all over the top. Chill to finish. Serve in very small pieces as this is very, very rich indeed. Oops, sorry, I just drooled a little on the keyboard, let me get that…
