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…
Sticky, gooey, plumptious, scrumptious, soft iced buns
So poor little #2 came home from his GAA tournament yesterday feeling all under the weather. He was cold and clammy, his head ached, his tummy hurt and he felt all ‘kind of wobbly’. Of course, there’s only one cure for this particular group of symptoms, which is a snuggle on the sofa with the dog, the fluffy blanket, a hot chocolate and a fistful of sticky bun. Trust me, I’m a doctor:
450g strong white bread flour
1 tsp salt
75g sugar
1 x 7g sachet dried yeast
150ml milk
150ml water
50g butter
4 or 5 tbsp icing sugar
½ tsp liquid glucose
Sieve the flour into a large bowl, then stir in the salt, sugar, and dried yeast. In a small saucepan, warm the milk, water, and butter over a low heat until the butter has just melted, then turn off the heat. The liquid should be at no more than blood temperature when it’s added to the dry ingredients. You can do this in the microwave, but remove it as soon as the butter starts to melt and stir gently until it’s all combined, otherwise you’ll be waiting for ages for it to be cool enough.
Pour most of the milky mixture into the dry ingredients and stir it around with a knife until you get a light dough. Leave it as sticky as you can bear as you want your dough plumptiously, pillow-soft. You can always add a bit of flour. Now start kneading: with the heel of one hand, press and splurge the dough away from you, (imagine you’re smearing it across the work surface) then bring it back, squish it into a ball again, turn it over and then splurge it again. As it’s quite a wet dough this is a bit messy, but that all adds to the fun. Again, if you’re getting really covered, you can always add a bit of extra flour. As you knead it, it will become more elastic and springy and less squelchy.
Apologies for the lack of photos here. I was enjoying myself so much (I love my kitchen – a week away is about all I can bear) that I forgot I was supposed to photograph it for you. Anyhoo, when you’ve kneaded for about 5 minutes and your dough is springy and pillowy-soft and looks bizarrely like a nice, round bottom-cheek (it really does, I’m sorry – maybe that’s just my filthy mind), cover it with clingfilm and leave it in the airing cupboard or somewhere else warm until it’s doubled in size. Then, just knock it back with your fist and form it into 8 balls. Either place them on a baking tray or arrange them inside a springform cake tin like I did, then cover and rise again until they’re puffed up.
Bake for about 15-20 minutes at 180/gas 6 until they sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Now while they’re baking make your icing by adding a couple of teeny drops of boiling water to the icing sugar and liquid glucose (optional but it keeps the icing from setting) until you get a thick, gloopy icing.
As soon as they’re out of the oven…
drizzle the icing all over them so it runs down the sides…
…then stuff into face before your family appears to steal them hand to little chap snuggled on sofa and watch as he feels better instantly.
Of course, #2 likes these completely plain, but there are a myriad different additions I could suggest – how about a hint of spice? Or some orange zest and a few dried cranberries? Or some nice, juicy sultanas? Or after the first rise, roll the dough out, spread it generously with butter, brown sugar and sultanas, maybe a little sprinkle of cinnamon, roll into a sausage and cut into rounds, arrange them flat onto a baking tray, allow to rise and then bake and, Bob’s your Auntie – you’ve produced Chelsea Buns, you kitchen legend, you.
Rhubarb crumble traybake cake thing (that’s extra yum with syrup instead)
So a friend of mine mentioned that she’s rather fond of rhubarb crumble traybake, but that she’s been unable to find a recipe. Being a stick-my-nose-in sort of a person, I decided I’d have a fiddle around and see if I could make her a good approximation of her bakey cakey thing. And here’s what I came up with:
First you need some lovely young rhubarb. Mine’s not quite ready in the garden so I had to make do with some from Tesco, which was well past its pension-pulling age, I can tell you. Anyhoo, here’s what you need:
115g butter
115g sugar
2 eggs
A teeny grating of fresh ginger/orange zest/tsp vanilla extract/cinnamon/whatever
115g self raising flour
400g sliced rhubarb
Beat the butter and sugar together until it’s really light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs, one at a time. To flavour your sponge, you can either go with the usual teaspoon of vanilla extract, or I found that some grated fresh ginger added a nice zing (I keep it in the freezer and grate it straight from frozen). I was discussing my ressup with Madame Belly Rumbles and she then pointed out that a little chopped preserved ginger would be lovely here too – along with a dash or two of the syrup. Or some orange zest maybe. Anyhoo, then gently stir in the flour. If the mixture is a bit stiff you can add a splash of milk.
So spoon this batter over your sliced rhubarb, which you’ve arranged in the bottom of something akin to a small baking tin or lasagne dish or whatever (if you haven’t yet discovered the bestest non-stickiest tray ever that was dirt cheap in Tesco, then I suggest you butter your tin first too). I used 200g rhubarb, but honestly, it was a bit of a case of ’spot the rhubarb’ – you really need at least double that I think as it practically disappeared.
For the crumble:
115g plain flour
60g butter
60g demerara sugar
So after you’ve blobbed the cake mix haphazardly over the rhubarb, make the crumble by gently rubbing the butter into the flour, then stirring the sugar in. Give it a bit of a squeeze with your fingertips so it clumps together, then crumble it over the cake mix.
Bake at 180 degrees /gas 4 for 30 mins and serve with cream or custard or vanilla ice cream (not the one made out of rehydrated skimmed somethinorother, the one made with eggs and milk and cream, thankyouverymuchly).
This is one of those ‘use anything’ kind of recipes – it would be just as nice over a layering of apples with some grated lemon zest, or some lovely fresh peaches and a touch of honey… Oh, and then on the Sunday when me Ma was here, I did the same recipe, but instead of the rhubarb, I dolloped about a ton of golden syrup in the bottom of the tin, covered it in the cake mix and then added the crumble. Naughty, but ohhhhh so nice:
Dark chocolate and peanut butter brownies
The little man’s school doesn’t allow any form of pre-packed sweets or snacks in their packed lunches. That means no crisps, no sweeties and absolutely no chocolate bars. Now I’m not an ogre, and while a healthy sandwich, some carrot sticks and an apple might be the way to go, it’s a bit bloody boring, frankly. So I like to slip in a small something to perk up his lunch a little – on the understanding that all the healthy stuff has to be eaten first, obviously. Home-made snackage is, happily, completely acceptable, so my current obsession is tray bakes, muffins, biscuits and flapjacks – anything to enliven the tupperware, as it were.
This one turned out pretty well, and, as I explained to him, peanut butter is good for you too, which makes this practically a health food (and if he’s not looking, I slip in some finely chopped dates, which add a nice toffee taste as well as being good for him):
175g dark chocolate
100g butter
70g crunchy peanut butter
2 eggs
170g caster sugar
110g plain flour
Preheat the oven to gas 4/180 degrees. Melt together the chocolate, butter and peanut butter in a bain marie (or a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water):
Remember not to let the water touch the bottom of the bowl – you want it all to melt very gently. Turn off the heat as soon as it’s starting to melt and continue to stir occasionally, letting the residual heat melt everything together.
Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar together (spiky hair optional):
When it’s really light and fluffy, sieve in the flour and fold gently through:
Now pour in your melted butter, chocolate and peanut butter mixture and stir gently until just combined, then pour into a baking tin:
Pop it into the oven and bake for about 25 minutes, until even and slightly cracked on top. Remember you want to retain some squish in the middle. When cool, cut into squares and store in an airtight container, ready to enliven the lunchbox (or if you’re feeling all posh, serve warm with whipped cream). I guess you could say they’re nutty but nice. Ahaha.
In other news, EnglishGrandma is a-visiting, and last night I tried out the recipe that I’m going to co-post with Curious Wines (you’re going to love it – they’re going to choose wines for us to complement one of my recipes). Trouble is, after spending a whole afternoon toiling over oven-roasted butternut squash risotto, and chicken breasts stuffed with a sage, apple and red onion stuffing, taking step-by-step photos of the whole process, my camera promptly turned itself off and I lost every single photo. Not. Happy. Still, it came out well. I’ll just have to repeat the whole thing and photograph it all over again. Tsk.
Ooh and in other other news, I’m a Disney Blu-Ray Ambassador! Yay! Lots of film reviews coming your way, including one each from the English Smalls. Be afraid.
