ENGLISH MUM

Bourbon biscuits: homemade heaven in a little chocolatey sarnie

Right, so.  Enough of this doom and gloom.  As self-elected President of Chocolate for Ireland, I prescribe a healthy dose of feel-good… erm… fattening stuff.   Here, then, to cheer you all up, is a big fat stack of Bourbons.  This is adapted from an old Mrs Beeton recipe so it must be good.

First, then, grease and line a baking sheet, or use the wondrously fantastic non-sticky stuff that is Bake-o-glide.  Preheat your oven to gas 3/160, grab your Homer Simpson apron (woo hoo!)  and roll up thy sleeves.

You’ll need:

100g butter

100g caster sugar

2 tbsp golden syrup

200g plain flour

30g cocoa

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

and for the chocolate creamy stuff:

100g butter

150g icing sugar

2 tbsp cocoa

2 tsp vanilla extract

First, then, beat the hell out of the butter and sugar until it’s lovely and light and fluffy, then beat in the golden syrup (dip the spoon in boiling water first). 

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, cocoa and bicarb together :

and then carefully mix it into the butter and sugar with a fork, and then dive in with your hands.  Bring it together into a slightly crumbly dough and roll it out (here’s where the Bake-o-glide comes in, you can roll it directly onto the sheet), pushing the edges straight with a knife, until you’ve got a rough rectangle about 1/2 cm thick.

Now gently cut the rectangle in half right down the middle and put it on your baking tray:

 Bung it into the oven for about 15 minutes (it won’t change colour but will just feel firmer to the touch).  When you take it out, gently cut each strip into fingers:

Leave them to cool while you make the creamy filling stuff by beating the butter until very soft, then carefully adding the sugar, cocoa and vanilla (watch out for low-level icing sugar clouds here).  Beat it until it’s lovely and smooth and then sandwich your little bourbons together generously with the filling.

And yes, I know it’s easier to buy packet ones, but think of the satisfaction of making something better than Mr Tesco.  These amounts will make around 20 biscuits (I divided my dough into two batches as my bake-o-glide wasn’t big enough).  So that’s 19 for me and one for the dog, then.  Result.

In which Little Miss Lovely makes girly pink muffins and biscuits

So as you know, I don’t get much in the way of girly conversation here at English Towers.  I think the nearest we got was the recent discussion about whether that pathologist in CSI:Miami is really a girl at all (oh come on, her name is Khandi).  Anyhoo, so Mr and Mrs Lovely were away for the weekend and we happily volunteered to cover a shift of looking after the little Lovelies yesterday afternoon.  Little Miss Lovely and I decided to have a girly afternoon in the kitchen while all the boys killed zombies or whatever they were all doing crowded around the X-box.  First of all we made pink muffins.  I mean really pink muffins: pink sponge cake, pink royal icing and lots of pink bits and bobs on the top.  After that we made biscuits, then we made chocolate chip biscuits, and then we smothered all them in icing and pink bits and bobs too.

At one stage Middle Lovely wandered in, and quite fancied joining in but no.  He was firmly instructed that this was a girls-only baking session and any argument was followed by an instruction to talk to the hand by Madame, who was concentrating (tongue out)  on a particularly difficult bit of pink glitter addition.

You know the drill on the muffins by now, but here’s the low-down for Little Miss Lovely’s rather lush biscuits. 

250g butter (best at room temp)

125g icing sugar

375g plain flour 

1 tbsp baking powder

Teeny pinch of salt

This is best done with an electric whisk, but you can do it the old fashioned way if you’re a bit of a martyr.  So first beat the hell out of your butter until it’s lovely and soft.  Next, sieve the icing sugar into the butter and mix well.  It’s best not to whizz it at full power at this stage unless you want your kitchen looking like an icing sugar bomb has exploded.  Then sieve in your flour, baking powder and salt.  It’s best to switch to a metal spoon now.  Mix it all together gently until it starts to come together, then dive in with clean hands and squish it all together until it forms a dough (have patience, it will).

Now roll the dough into a sausage shape, wrap with clingfilm and chill until firm.  Then just slice it up into about 1cm slices and bake on a baking tray at 180/gas 4 for about 15 mins.  The biccies won’t spread too much so don’t cut them too thick or they’ll be like bricks.  If you like you can add about 100g chopped chocolate (or chopped nuts, lemon zest, sultanas, whatever) to the mixture  too.

Then just allow to cool and either ice (we used royal icing turned a delicious pink with a little red food colouring), dip in melted chocolate, or eat them as they are.  Pink glitter is,  obviously, optional.

Step by step: lemon meringue pie

 I’m still struggling with this photography lark, y’know.  It’s not easy trying to take classy pictures when you’re up to your elbows in egg whites.  I’m going to wreck my camera at this rate.  Still, here we go with another step by step: this time a classic lemon meringue pie.

For the pastry, you’ll need:

115g butter, melted

100g caster sugar

175g plain flour

Pinch of salt

Firstly, preheat the oven to 180/gas 4.  Pour the melted butter into the sugar and stir.  Then add the flour and teeny pinch of salt and mix it around until it becomes a thick paste.  Press the mixture into your flan dish or baking tin  (about 24cm should do it), then bake it blind (scrunch up a bit of greaseproof paper, then smooth it over the pastry and pour in the baking beans) for about 15 minutes.  Then take it out of the oven, remove the baking beans and put it back in to cook the bottom (ooer) for about another 5 minutes, then take it out and leave to cool.  Turn the oven down to gas 2/150 degrees.

Meanwhile, make the lemon curd:

100g butter

2 lemons, zested then juiced

150g caster sugar

2 eggs plus 1 extra yolk (keep the white for the meringue)

Take a saucepan and bung in the butter, lemon juice and zest and caster sugar.  Melt it all together slowly until the sugar is all dissolved.  In a bowl, whisk the eggs and yolk until well combined.  Now, take your warm, lemony, butter mixture and gently pour a little bit into the egg, whisking all the time, then a bit more, then a bit more, until you’ve combined about half of it with the eggs.  Now bung that lot back into the saucepan and keep whisking and simmering until the mixture thickens.  Turn off the heat and leave to cool.  Remember to just stir it occasionally to keep it from getting a skin on.  When it’s about room temperature, pour it into the pastry case.

Finally, for the meringue:

4 egg whites

225g caster sugar

Whisk the eggs in a very clean bowl until they form stiff peaks, then keep whisking while you add the sugar, spoon by spoon, until it’s all incorporated and the meringue is thick and glossy.  At this point, it’s best to keep passing children from all trying to nab fingerfulls of the meringue mixture.  I find something pointy helps here.  Pile it all on top of the lemon curd and fluff it up a bit.  Bake in the very low oven (gas 2/150 degrees) for about 40 to 50 minutes, depending on how squelchy you like your meringue.  Guard the pie with your pointy implement until it’s at room temperature, then quickly take it into the bathroom, lock the door, and stuff into face.

The Friday photo: cranberry and pistachio biscotti

Righty ho, then.  By now, your Limoncello should be festering maturing nicely in a dark cupboard somewhere, ready to render several of your relatives semi-conscious on Christmas day.  Here’s a recipe for a classic accompaniment: a twice-baked crispy, crunchy biscuit stuffed full of fruit and nuts to dunk in your Limoncello (or your Espresso) in an ostentatiously Italian manner.  This one came from my Ma’s friend and colleague, Robyn, to whom I’m eternally grateful, and probably owe a big apology for tinkering with her nice recipe:

500g plain flour

500g caster sugar

5 eggs

1 tbs baking powder

500g dried fruit and nuts (I used a hideously expensive pack of cranberries, pistachios, golden sultanas and macademia nuts from Tesco, but whatever you like)

So mix together all the dry ingredients.  Beat the eggs in a separate bowl, then pour into the other ingredients, stirring until it starts to come together into a soft dough.  You might not need all the egg so don’t bung it all in at once.  Knead the dough a bit until it’s smooth (well, it’s lumpy because of the fruit and nuts, but you know what I mean), adding a bit more flour if necessary, then form it into four big fat sausages.  Place your sausages onto a couple of baking trays which you’ve lined with greaseproof paper and sprinkled with flour.  Bake the sausages at gas mark 5/190 degrees for 20-30 minutes, then allow them to cool (I only cooked two – the others are in the freezer for Christmas):

Now cut your biscotti into thin slices(they’re too bloody hard to bite if they’re too thick) at an angle, and arrange them back on a baking tray, cut side up, to dry out completely in a very low oven (gas 1/2, about 120/130 degrees ) for about 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours (keep an eye on them – if they start to get too brown, take them out).  Allow them to cool.  Obviously having been baked for this long, they are very hard and crunchy, so really need to be dunked in order to enjoy them properly and not crack your teeth. 

They’ll keep for ages in an airtight container – ready to accompany your Christmas Limoncello shenanigans.  As Mad Uncle Ali would say: ‘rock and roll’!

Middle Lovely’s Chocolate Breakfast Pancakes… & grown up cranberry and orange ones

So it’s half term.  And Middle Lovely came for a sleepover with #2.  He’s a happy little chap; talks ten to the dozen like #1 and he loves to cook.  So last night I got talked into having chocolate pancakes for tea, and this morning we all made a cake.  He could never live with us full time as our arteries would probably explode.  Here goes with the pancakes, then:

For the basic breakfast pancakes:

2 eggs

1/2 pint milk

225g self raising flour

4 level tbsp caster sugar

Then for the cranberry and orange ones, you’ll need:

Handful dried cranberries

Zest and juice of one large orange

So sieve the flour and stir in the sugar.  If you’re making the grown-up version, it’s really nice to heat the cranberries in the orange juice and zest in a small saucepan to soften them up a bit.  Then just make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and whisk in the eggs and milk to make a thick batter.  Now, remove most of the cranberries from the orange with a slotted spoon and stir them into the batter.  Add a couple of teaspoons of sugar to the remaining orange liquid and bubble gently to reduce into a fruity syrup.

Next, heat a heavy-based frying pan and lightly brush the surface with oil.  Dollop a couple of tablespoons of the mixture into the pan, trying not to let them touch, then wait until you see bubbles on the surface before flipping them over.  The first one will be a disaster, it always is, but after that you’ll get light, fluffy pancakes studded with beautiful soft little fruity jewels  Serve with your orangey syrup.  These also make a lovely dessert with a slug of Cointreau added to the fruit juice, and served with mounds of whipped cream.

Or if you’re Middle Lovely, make the basic mixture, then stir in 50g chopped chocolate.  Make the pancakes in exactly the same way and serve them with more chocolate in the shape of chocolate spread, or gag-making amounts of golden syrup.  Nice one, Lovely.

My bestest chocolate chip muffins. No, really.

So we woke up this morning to the wonderful smell of baking.  ‘Mmmm’, I thought, ‘I love baking in the morning’.  Then, ‘that’s strange, though’, I thought after that, ‘I’m baking and yet I’m still in bed’.  Of course, it was the smalls in the kitchen: Head Chef #1 was knocking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, ably assisted by his slightly grumpy Sous Chef, #2.  And very nice cookies they were too, except… ‘they need a bit more butter’.  ‘What?’, says #1, ‘why?  They seem perfect to me’.  ‘Meh’, says I, ‘I just think they’d be nicer a bit more buttery.  Whose recipe did you use?’.  ‘Yours’, said the little sod, with just a small hint of triumph.

But that’s the thing about cooking, you see.  Nothing’s ever quite perfect is it?  Take my Bounty Cake.  I was so pleased with the result, I thought I’d try and make a chocolate version, but when I replaced the coconut with cocoa, the result was all horrible and powdery.  Back to the drawing board then.  So anyhoo, no, you’re not getting the cookie recipe just yet as it obviously needs a bit of tinkering.  Instead, I’ll let you into the secret of my chocolate chip muffins.  I make hundreds of these, often for breakfast.  My thinking being that I’d rather have my children eating something homemade in the morning, than some fat-soaked cereal bar, the ingredients of which I don’t even understand, let alone approve of.  The recipe for these, then, has been tinkered to death, and I’m pretty sure it’s foolproof:

200g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

75g granulated sugar

50g muscovado or dark brown sugar

2 eggs

100g butter, melted

125ml milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

100g dark chocolate, chopped

So get your oven on to about 190 degrees, gas 5, and put a dozen of those little paper muffin cups into a muffin tin.  Sieve the flour, baking powder and bicarb together, then stir in the sugars. 

In another bowl, whisk the eggs with a fork, then add the melted butter, milk and vanilla, whisk briefly to combine them, then pour this into the dry stuff.  Add the chocolate, then remember the golden muffin rule: mix as briefly as possible until everything is just combined.

Put a spoonful in each paper muffin thingy, then bake then for about 20 minutes or so, until they spring back to the touch and they’re a lovely golden brown.

Give them a try.  Oh, and feel free to burst my bubble if they’re a horrible failure for you, though.  Nobody’s perfect, eh?

Cheese Bread Wedges

What is it about Heinz tinned soups?  They’re actually pretty disgusting – I mean, how do they get that gelatinous texture?  It doesn’t bear thinking about.  And the mushroom flavour, which is #1′s preferred choice, is frankly revolting.  Too creamy, oddly grey in colour and, well, mushrooms don’t really taste like that, do they.  And then there’s the tomato flavour.  It’s bloody orange, for goodness sake.  If there’s a power cut you could just crack one open and bingo – you’d all be able to see by the luminous orange glow emanating from the tin.  But hey, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, sometimes only a tin of soup will do (I favour Baxter’s curried vegetable and lentil one personally) and I often whip up these little beauties, which are actually more scone than bread, to dunk in a revoltingly bad mannered way, into the bowl.

8 oz self raising flour

1 1/2 oz butter

4 oz cheese

1 egg

1/4 pint milk

So put your flour into a bowl, season generously with salt and pepper, then rub in the butter just like you would for, say, a crumble or whatever until it looks breadcrumby.  Grate the cheese and stir into the flour mixture with a fork until well blended (you don’t want big lumps of cheese).  Then measure out your milk in a jug, add the egg and whisk until combined.  Pour slowly into the floury cheesy mixture, mixing until it just comes together and makes a soft dough.  You can reserve any leftover egg/milk mixture to brush onto the top before baking.

So tip it out and give it a gentle knead just until it comes together in a nice ball.  Flatten it out until it’s about 2″ thick and vaguely circular and then just divide it into six or eight wedges.  Brush with the leftover milky mixture and bake at 200 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Eat warm with your weirdly gelatinous soup, or with a nice salad, or with cheese and pickle…mmmmmmm…

By the way, if you’re having a posh dinner party, these are amazing made with, say, half and half cheddar and parmesan and a sprinkle of chopped rosemary, or with snipped chives and a teaspoon of mustard, or any other flavourings you can think of.  Chopped sundried tomato and fresh basil would be lovely with a fresh tomato salad.  Much easier than baking bread rolls and with a lovely soft texture.

Original 1970s Gingerbread

So you’ll love this – I’ve a really mad 1970s version of that veritable culinary bible, The Good Housekeeping Cookery Book, which I nicked from me Ma.  I’ve got a new version too but I love the old one best for the naff photos.  Flicking through, I removed one of my myriad bookmarks only to find that it was covered in childish scribble.  Not just scribble, but… a recipe!  judging by the dodgy writing and misspelling of the word ‘suger’, I would wager that this was one of my very first forays into trying to poison people with my cooking, and the temptation was too much – I set to work and recreated it.  The good news is that this is possibly the easiest, and yummiest recipe in the world.  I’ve looked it up and there are tons of versions, but this one, happily, seems to be unique and therefore possibly is my very own work.  See what you think:

 3 oz butter

3 oz caster sugar

1/4 pint of milk

1 or 2 teaspoons ground ginger (depends how gingery you like it)

2 tablespoons treacle (my recipe said 1 1/2, but have you tried measuring half a tablespoon of gloop?)

1 tablespoon golden syrup

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

8 oz self raising flour (sifted)

So preheat your oven (I didn’t actually mention a heat on my original, but I guessed at 180 – gas 4 – and it worked fine).  Butter a small loaf tin and set it aside.  Measure out your butter, sugar, milk, ginger and treacle and melt them over a low heat in a saucepan.  When it’s all melted together, turn off the heat and stir in your bicarbonate of soda, which will kind of fizz up, then add your flour and beat until smooth.  There’s an amazing transformation to a lovely creamy batter.  Very satisfying.  Lob it in your tin, cover with foil (otherwise you get a crusty top and you want it to be soft and moist), bake for about 45 minutes, then remove to cool.  Or, if you’re big fatties like us lot, burn your fingers trying to get it out of the tin, and butter it while it’s still steaming.  Best eaten wearing flares and a shirt with a big collar.  Mmmmmm.

Proper Irish Brown Bread

Now I’ll confess I have a tendency to fiddle with recipes. Usually this is just a personal taste thing, or sometimes it can be because they’ve got too many ingredients and I can’t be arsed to put them all in. This time it’s because I live in the middle of bloody nowhere and couldn’t actually find some of the ingredients. The original recipe from my mate 73 (he adds 3 tbsp bran and 2 tsp wheat germ, as well as the odd handful of nuts or seeds) is linked here and is incredibly good so please try it out. Here’s my pared down tinkered-about-with version of Mr 73′s proper Irish brown bread which we scoffed, in its entirety about 5 seconds after it came out of the oven

300g coarse brown flour
200g plain white flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp black treacle
450 – 500ml milk

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the black treacle then enough milk to combine into a lovely pasty mess.

Butter a loaf tin then bake in a pre-heated oven for 20 minutes at gas 6 (200º), then another hour at gas 3 (170º).

It’s a testament to the simplicity of this recipe that one of my kids turned the oven off by accident half way through cooking. When I discovered, I quickly turned it back on and it still came out perfect. It makes a beautiful, moist, dense loaf, which is crying out for a thick covering of butter and some really good jam. Nice one, 73.