Baking Butter Biscuits

A bit of alliteration and some delicious basic biscuits are the result!

Butter Biscuits
(makes 30)
Ingredients:
125g butter, softened (I used salted butter to cut down on the sweetness of the biscuit)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, at room temperature
2 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp milk

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C. Line two baking trays with baking parchment/paper.

Using a food processor or electric mixer, beat butter, sugar and vanilla until pale and creamy. Add egg and mix well until combined.

Sift flour and baking powder over butter mixture. Add milk and stir/mix until just combined.

Using 2 teaspoons of dough at a time, roll dough into balls. Place on lined baking trays. Using a lightly floured fork, flatten biscuits slightly (remember to allow room for spreading).

Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, swapping trays over in the oven after 10 minutes, or until light golden. Allow to cool on trays for 5 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar. Biscuits will keep up to a week in an airtight container.

Cupcakes Sweet and Cupcakes Savoury

Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes with a Gingerbread Men toppers!

I've been reading an extraordinary blog over the last few days called the Cupcake Project. It's a wonderfully creative exploration of one woman's cupcake adventures. I love the fact that Stef (who writes the blog) freely admits that she embarked on her amazing adventure having never baked a cupcake before but volunteering to make cupcakes for a friend's wedding. Now there's a spirit of get-up-and-go to emulate - I love her gumption!

So having been inspired by her blog, I decided to make some of her Ultimate Vanilla Cupcakes with some Butter Icing and Gingerbread Men as toppers. I'll admit, it was partly because DS2 has a class party coming up in a couple of weeks for the end of the year and I thought I might make some cupcakes for the occasion. I did make one alteration to her recipe though. I didn't use a vanilla pod, instead I used 1 1/2 tsps of vanilla paste added to the sugar and butter during the creaming stage.

Dapper looking Gingerbread man with bow tie

The butter icing recipe I used was from here, and I used raspberry essence to flavour it. It's a nice alternative to the standard vanilla and gives the final product a really gentle almost floral flavour. Finally, the gingerbread recipe came from here. This is a really easy and quick gingerbread recipe and one I'll use often. It's much simpler than the one I normally use (which includes treacle) and the kids loved it. I ended up with loads of left over little gingerbread men, so they got iced and stored for munching on during the week.

Having spent the morning in a frenzy of sugary baking, I decided there had to be a savoury alternative. After all, if you can make a sweet cupcake, why can't you make a savoury one? With that thought in mind, I trawled a variety of websites in an attempt to find a good recipe for a savoury cupcake - one that wasn't a muffin, but also one that didn't include a cup of sugar. Most of the sites I found had recipes that were really sweet cupcakes with meat and vegetables added. That definitely wasn't what I was looking for. One site had a gorgeous alternative, but no recipe.

The creative process at work

In the end, I made up my own. I love making up recipes. It's a creative process that requires me to work with ratios and think about how ingredients will work with each other. Chemistry, math and food all in one exciting process (with a bit of artistry thrown in) - joy! I jot down possible ingredients, figure out possible amounts and then work on what temperature to set the oven and how long to cook for. I read through the recipe 3 or 4 times and then I jot the steps down in pictorial form. I can't draw more than poor squiggles, but these little scribbles help me during the hectic cooking process when I'm rushing from one step to the next, often without reading the steps properly. The pictures jog my memory. Here's the recipe I came up with (using some tinned Spam I had in the pantry). The results were really pretty good. A bit doughy, but I'll work on that - it might be a little less so if I'd used minced meat instead (Note to Self: that's something worth pursuing for the next batch).

Spammy Cupcakes
Ingredients:

• 223g plain flour
• 80g unsalted butter
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda (bicarb soda)
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 2 - 3 tsp mixed herbs
• 230 ml milk
• 100g cheddar cheese, cubed
• 1 tin Spam
• 50g fresh tomato, diced
• 1 medium red onion or 1/2 a large one, chopped
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp non-iodised salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C.

In food processor, cream together butter and sugar.

Add egg and mix well.

Add Spam, onion and cheese and mix until onion and cheese are well incorporated (indistinguishable).

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and herbs and mix.

Slowly add milk. When milk is incorporated, add tomato and pulse (you want to keep some of the chunky pieces of tomato).

1/2 fill patty pans and bake for 25 - 30 mins.

Potato, Sweet Potato, Garlic and Blue Cheese Icing:

Ingredients:

• 4  medium potatoes
• 1 -2 sweet potatoes (depending on size)
• butter
• milk
• 2 cloves garlic
• 50g Blue cheese
• salt to taste

Method:

Peel and boil potatoes, sweet potatoes and garlic together. Drain and mash well (I used a Bamix), adding butter and milk.

While potato mash is still warm, blend in the blue cheese and salt to taste. Allow to cool a little then fill in piping bag.

Pipe onto savoury cupcakes and garnish with a sliver of cherry tomato.

These can be eaten hot or cold (we had them for breakfast the next day too!).

Easy Cheesey Snacks

This super-simple recipe was inspired by the fact that I ran out of packaged lunch box snacks to put in my boys' lunch boxes today and couldn't quite muster the courage required to brave the supermarket. Cheese straws; much maligned, much forgotten, but such a quick, easy snack that's delicious. You can make them a bit more posh by using different cheeses, as I've done here, or keep them simple with reliable cheddar or Colby (for those who like their cheese creamy but essentially flavourless).

Cheese Straws
Ingredients

• 2 sheets ready-made frozen puff pastry (you could go to the trouble of making your own, but really, why bother when there are great quality puff pastries available?)
• Red Leicester cheese
• Parmesan cheese

Method

Preheat oven to 200C.

Slice very finely or grate cheese over pastry sheet (one cheese on one pastry sheet).

Press the cheese into the pastry sheet. The pastry should have thawed sufficiently in the time it took you to grate/shred the cheese for you to press the cheese firmly into it.

Cut the pastry into long, thin strips (straws). Yes, I do this after I put the cheese on top and it works well.

Line a biscuit tin or flat baking sheet with baking paper. Arrange the straws on the tin with 2 - 5 cm between straws to allow for expansion.

Bake for 10 - 15 minutes (mine took 13 minutes). Allow to cool completely on baking tin out of oven. Store in an airtight container.

A few final notes:

• Remember that firmer cheeses will work better in this recipe. The soft cheeses melt too quickly and tend to run all over the place causing a mess! 
• You can dress these straws up by sprinkling herbs (rosemary chopped up very fine works well, as does sage) or paprika for more adult tastes. 
• If you're using a blue cheese, go for the firm blue cheeses rather than the blue castello.

What's Up Doc?

I've been wanting to try my hand at cooking rabbit for some time now. As a meat, it completely intrigues me. Not quite red meat in a beef kind of way, but not white meat like chicken or pork either. So today, I decided to get some from my lovely local butcher (the trip there is always fun since he flirts like mad with all the customers!). He very kindly chopped it up for me and gave me lots of encouragement.

I trawled both recipe books and the internet for recipes and in the end, came up with a mish-mash that I'm pretty happy with. It's a bit reminiscent Coq au vin, but here it is...

Rabbit Stew
Ingredients:

• 1 rabbit (chopped into small pieces by the lovely butcher)
• 2 brown onions, finely sliced
• 2 large cloves garlic, whole
• 3 strips pancetta, finely sliced
• 3 medium carrots, cubed
• 3 bay leaves
• 4 - 5 tbsps extra virgin olive oil
• 8 medium-sized button mushrooms, halved
• 1/2 small fennel bulb, finely sliced
• 1/3 cup good red wine
• 2 tbsps good quality balsamic vinegar
• 1 litre water or chicken stock

Flour for dredging:

• 1/2 cup plain flour
• 2 tsps salt
• 2 tsps smoked paprika (Spanish paprika is really good)

Method:

Preheat oven to 190C.

Mix flour, salt and paprika. Dredge rabbit in flour and keep aside.

Heat oil in heavy based pan and fry pancetta strips till crispy. Remove and reserve for the end.

Brown garlic pods gently. Remove and reserve.

Brown rabbit pieces, a few at a time. Remove and reserve.

Fry onions and mushrooms. Add a little salt (a pinch is plenty) as this helps to soften the onions quickly. When the onions are translucent, add the browned garlic, fennel, carrot and bay leaves. Fry for a few minutes until fennel softens.

Arrange rabbit pieces on top. Add water/stock, red wine and balsamic vinegar. Taste for seasoning and add salt if required.

Bring to the boil then transfer to the oven. Cook in oven for 1 1/2 hours or until rabbit is tender and comes easily off the bone.

Sprinkle the reserved pancetta on top just before serving. Serve hot.

Ebony and Ivory....

Brownies seem to be making a come back and this weekend, I offered to make brownies for my godson's birthday party. Never one to take the road most travelled, I wondered what brownies would be like with white chocolate instead.

Let me tell you, they're delicious. That's a huge admission coming from someone who divides the world into "those who like white chocolate" and "those with taste". This particular use of white chocolate has even me admitting that it may have its uses.

Needless to say, they don't come out a rich brown colour, but they are a satisfying caramel colour. My youngest son has decided that they also deserve a name change, so in our house, we're calling them "Whities".

Whities
Ingredients

• 125g white chocolate (roughly chopped or use "melts")
• 125g butter, cubed
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups caster (superfine) sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (get the best quality)
• 1 cup plain flour, sifted
• 1/4 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 100g peanuts, roughly chopped

Method
Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease a 20 x 30cm baking tin and line base and sides with baking paper.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of hot water, stirring until smooth. Allow to cool a little.

In an electric mixer or food processor, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla for 3 - 4 minutes or until pale and fluffy. Beat in the cooled chocolate mixture. Add the sifted flour and baking powder and beat until smooth. Stir in the nuts.

Spoon the misture into the prepared baking tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until caramel coloured and the top has formed a crust. DO NOT OVERCOOK - this isn't a cake and should be soft and moist in the middle.

Allow to cool in the tin. Remove and cut into squares or rectangles. Dust with icing sugar. Whities can be stored in an airtight container for 3 - 4 days or frozen for longer.

For the regular Brownies, substitute the same amount of dark chocolate.

Home-land cooking

Recently I've been exploring a few new avenues for food. Well, one old avenue and one new one.

The New...
We're aiming, as a family, to eat less meat...at least during the weekdays. The ultimate goal is to not eat anything with a face during the week, and paint the town red (meat) at the weekends if we feel like it. Even this small adjustment to our diet should have some nice pay-offs.

It should improve the state of our health (and waistlines) for a start and then there's the additional benefit to the environment. So how did this all come about? From watching another episode of TED talks, of course. Graham Hill makes a good case for weekday vegetarianism, but we're not game enough to go the whole-hog just yet (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html). So we're doing this in small increments. We figure we can manage not eating red meat during the week. We could even manage without poultry or pork, but we need something. So what's our solution? Seafood.

Seems simple, doesn't it? The problem is, I have one child who doesn't like shellfish particularly (I'm convinced there's probably a food intolerance at play there). That limits the seafood options. So faced with the prospect of fish every week night for dinner, I've been plumbing the depths of my, admittedly shallow, repertoire of culinary knowledge. So what's my epiphany? Return to my roots.

And the Old...
My father's family comes from Ponani, one of the oldest ports in Kerala, a tiny town and an important fishing centre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponnani). They lived and breathed fish. My memories of holidays at his home include eating fish at every meal... every meal...even breakfast. We're not talking smoked kippers here, we're talking serious fish curries...and hot. My sister remembers eating a fish curry for breakfast on the first day of her six week stay at my Grandmother's house and then having a stomach upset as a result of the chilli for the remainder of the six weeks! This is not cooking for the faint-hearted, or tender-stomached.

It is, however, a tidy solution to my week-day meat-free dilemma - eat fish and introduce the children to an important part of their cultural heritage and my childhood at the same time. It also doesn't hurt that it's a good way to acclimatise them to higher levels of chilli before an impending trip to India. So the recipes I'll be posting for the next little while will draw on my rich cultural heritage and reflect the cuisine of my father's family. I hope I do them justice...

Love and Cupcakes

I decided this week to make cupcakes. Those of you who have read previous posts know how deeply I love to cook; how it nourishes my soul as well as my appetite. So making cupcakes is as much an expression of my love as it is a tasty treat for B1 and B2.

If only the cupcakes had known this and cooperated, all would have been well. This week was one of cupcake disasters. I made three successive batches of cupcakes following the recipe to the letter. Baking is exact science and cakes are not forgiving of any deviation from the recipe. The ratio of solids to liquids to fats is precise. Knowing this, I scoured through my cupcake recipe book, double-checked Michael Ruhlman's Ratio book and made sure the butter and eggs were at room temperature before I started.

Three batches of cupcakes were made. Three batches of cupcakes went sailing into the rubbish bin. Well, ok, two batches went into the bin. The third was rescued by B1 who threw himself in the path of the exiting cupcakes and barred their path with his person. His view of food borders on obsessive and the thought of  losing another batch to the bin was more than he could bear.

Then came the four-day-migraine which put paid to any notions of repeating the cupcake experiment. Today, heart in mouth and courage pinned, I went at it again. I threw aside my Cupcake Recipes book, Googled some good recipes and used the principles I'd learned in Ruhlman's Ratio. With all of this, I came up with a scrumptious, lightly chocolate, fluffy cupcake. So if you're in the mood for cupcakes, here's the recipe (and yes, that's them at the top of this post).

Slightly Lightly Chocolate Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 150 g softened butter
• 150 g superfine (castor) sugar
• 175 g self raising flour
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder
• 3 eggs lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

• Preheat oven to 180C. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with cupcake papers (use the good ones, they hold their shape better).
• Measure butter and sugar into a bowl.
• Measure and sift flour and cocoa into another bowl.
• Crack eggs into separate bowl and beat lightly with a fork.
• Beat sugar and butter with electric mixer until light and creamy.
• Add vanilla extract and beat again.
• Add eggs a little at a time, beating well between each addition (this is an important step and will stop the mix from curdling).
• Add flour mix and milk alternately and continue beating during additions till all ingredients are well mixed.
• Divide mixture evenly between the patty cases. Do not fill - 2/3 to 3/4 is plenty!
• Bake for 20 mins or until well risen, firm and springs back to the light touch.
• Allow to cool in the tin for 5 mins.
• Transfer to wire rack and allow to fully cool before icing.
• Ice as prefered (though they're delicious without icing too).

The key to this recipe is to work quickly and not overwork the mix. Overworking the mix will result in flat cupcakes (it ruins the raising agent in the SR flour).

Enjoy!