Apple and blackberry crumble traybake

It seems to have become a tradition that whenever I go home, I bake  a crumble. Last weekend was no exception, just a variation on the crumble arrangement. Presenting: the crumble traybake. I could go on for hours about this, but I don't need to, because the sheer joy of the thing speaks for itself. 

I will say three things:

1. It's good if left to cool completely (in the tin) and then cut into squares. It's even better just out of the oven: a warm, melt-in-mouth kind of better.

2. You can switch around the flavours. Swap ground almonds for ground hazelnuts, or wholemeal flour. Cinnamon instead of almond essence. Different fruits. (One I want to try is pear + chocolate chip filling with ground hazelnuts.

3. If you use an 8x8 tin, it will be slightly thinner, chewier and crispier, and will set better if you want to eat it cold. Use 7x7 for something deeper and more crumbly. 

Here is the recipe.

(Original recipe here: http://baketheneat.com/blackberry-apple-crumb-bars/)

p.s. never blogging from my ipad again...apologies for the inconsistency of fonts and bizarrely small photos  - it's annoying me, but I don't have time to fix it

Florence II: eating in Florence

Giant circles of pizza; mouthful after glorious mouthful of thin, chewy dough, crisp at the edges, adorned with fresh grilled vegetables. Heaven. Another pizza with even fresher dough, covered with slices of fried potato and fat, tasty artichokes.

Mama's Bakery has bookshelves and courtyard seating where students in deck shoes and chinos are working. It's peaceful. There are free refills of the filter coffee, which is reason enough to return, and bagels toasted and smothered in jam or just as they are.
We learn there are two prices when it comes to Florentine breakfasting - standing at the bar, or sitting down. If you sit at a table in a cafe, the price suddenly elevates. So we stand, drink cappuccinos and coffee and eat flaky, fragile croissants. 2 euros.
On our last morning we enjoy breakfast on the rooftop terrace cafe of La Rinascente, a department store in the centre of the city. This place is a hidden secret, not well-known to tourists.The view is excellent. We can almost reach out and touch the Duomo.

In an unassuming white building in a quiet street in Florence is the Libreria Brac. There is a bar, which also houses a selection of delicious looking tortes. There are Macs and magazines. A courtyard, with a forest of suspended ribbons, the chef's bicycle and a cluster of battered chairs, and into the libreria itself, lined with books on art, photography, design. Candles are lit. The menu, all vegetarian/vegan, is small - always a good sign - and we tuck into pasta, freshly prepared and very, very good.

Supper at Gilli. We are sitting outside in the piazza. A Florentine lady sits at the table next to ours, drinks an espresso. She is elderly but glamorous, like a seventy-year old Audrey Hepburn, if such a thing had ever existed. She is alone. I eat sesame-crusted tuna with a celeriac puree and a balsamic vinegar reduction. The food is wonderful, but just as wonderful is the simple pasta we ate at the Libreria Brac.

I'm not normally an ice-cream fan (give me bread any day) but I make an exception for Italian gelato. The gelato is a fruity tub-ful of delight after a hot day of sight-seeing. Lampone & torroncino - raspberry & nougat to you and I.

Fussy eater?

There are only a few foods I am really fussy about.

B r e a d   
Fresh and homemade, if not then from a bakery. Crusty, soft inside, warm, with a bit of butter or some homemade marmalade. Maybe toasted. My all time favourite thing to eat. Sliced white supermarket stuff just isn't bread. It'd do a better job as a kitchen sponge. 

P e a n u t  b u t t e r 
Always crunchy, and should never ever contain added sugar.

C o f f e e    
I still have a lot to learn but my favourite kind of coffee tastes slightly nutty. (Instant coffee is tapwater.) Strong, black, no sugar, but I like cappuccinos too. (Working in a cafe I have learnt that old people prefer filter coffees with cream on the side, mums with buggies drink lattes, spoilt children like babyccinos if only for the chocolate sprinkles, and birdwatchers like black Americanos with an extra shot.)

O r a n g e s    
That navel kind you get in January, super juicy with the most amazing flavour.

A p p l e s     
If you leave apples out in a fruit bowl they go mushy and soft, and that is very wrong. I think mushy apples would be in my Room 101. Apples must be kept in the fridge so they stay really, really crisp. I'm fond of a granny smith, and those ruby red apples with the almost translucent white flesh.

Other than that, I'll happily tuck into pretty much anything. (Except mayonnaise. And whipped cream. And scrambled egg. And banana cake. And pineapple...)

Moroccan lamb & chickpea stew

Sometimes when I'm cooking dinner it goes wrong. I'm not in the mood. It takes me too long to decide what to make, my timing's out or I rush it and get stressed. I've learnt that the key is to decide and plan what I'm going to make early on in the day, instead of opening and reopening cupboard doors in desperation at 18:00. Then the cooking will hopefully go right - the thing I make is just what everyone feels like eating, or it satisfyingly uses up leftover bits of things in the fridge.

Today it was grey and dull and damp. I found some lamb in the fridge which needed using up and a can of chickpeas that had been knocking about in the cupboard for months. Some brightly coloured spices and a bit of simmering later and there was a big pot of bubbling lamb & chickpea stew on the hob. Just what was needed to put some colour into January's cheeks.

I sort of made this up as I was going along, so I decided to paint and blog the recipe so I can make it again.

To make the stew (serves 4)

350-500g lamb, diced (I used diced lamb shoulder)
1 to 2 tbsp plain flour
2 onions, finely chopped
3 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic
1 to 2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp cumin, ground
1 to 2 tbsp paprika
1 tsp wild thyme
1 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper to taste
1 can chopped tomatoes
500 ml stock (chicken or vegetable stock is ok if you don't have lamb stock)
1 can chickpeas
Cous cous, to serve

Trim any excess fat off the pieces of lamb. Coat the pieces of lamb with the flour.
Heat the oil in a heavy pan and brown the meat on all sides.
Once the lamb's well on it's way to browning, add the garlic, onion and carrot with a little more oil if necessary.
Once the veg is browning & beginning to soften and the onion is turning translucent, add the herbs & spices and mix well.
Add the chopped tomatoes, and mix again. Then pour in the stock and bring to the boil.
Simmer for 75 minutes, then drain and add the chickpeas.
Simmer for another 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve with cous cous and green beans or fresh sliced greens.


I hope you all have enough colour in your cheeks this January. I have to admit, I'm counting down the days til spring.

Christmas star biscuits

I have been bad at blogging again... mainly due to being tired from work and Christmas festivities... I have been on late autumn walks, Christmas shopping trips, seen Florence + the Machine at the O2 (amazing), gone on the Harry Potter studio tour, been ice skating, spent time with family and gone rummaging in antique shops. I've also painted decorations for 150 mini Christmas cakes at work which has probably killed any excitement for our own Christmas cake this year. I am loving the time of year though. I'm sitting in the living room with tree lights and candles for company, and there's so much good food in the fridge already. Happy!

I was recently commissioned to make a lot of biscuits (200!) to be put in jars and given as Christmas gifts. This was my second large-scale baking commission so I was slightly more adept at coping with the amounts. Baking on a big scale requires you to consider so many things you normally don't think about - like how much biscuit mix the food mixer can handle, and what to do when you run out of wire racks...

These biscuits are really very nice. I used a recipe for shortbread, so you get that lovely crumbly texture, but I substituted some of the flour for ground almonds. This gives the biscuits a bit more of a moist, melt-in-the-mouth constitency and provides greater depth of flavour. Basically: even more tasty.

Also: you must use butter. Not baking margarine. Butter tastes so much better.

Scroll down for the recipe...

 

To make the biscuits:

60g golden caster sugar
120g unsalted butter
1 tsp almond extract
125g plain flour
50g ground almonds

Cream together the sugar, butter and extract.
Sift over the flour, pour in the ground almonds and mix until a dough is formed.
Shape into a disc, wrap and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees (fan 160).
Roll out the dough to 5mm thickness on a flour dusted surface, and cut out small stars.
Place on a lined baking tray and bake for 15-20 mins until golden around the edges.

Warning: I am not responsible for how much biscuit dough you consume during this process. Or for how many 'testers' you feel obliged to taste. Not mentioning the stars that may have unfortunately lost their limbs in the oven...

Once the biscuits had cooled I wrapped them in cellophane, put them in Kilner jars, added some ribbon, gingham bows and homemade labels (decorated with sections of doilies) and voila! Easy peasy Christmas gifts.

The Medicine Garden, Cobham

On a sunny day in September I visited a little place called the Medicine Garden, tucked away in Cobham, Surrey. Once a Victorian walled garden, it's now open to all those who appreciate a spot of tea, a wodge of cake, a mosey and a shop. There's a lovely cafe located in the old hothouse, which serves lunches and tempting afternoon teas. In the courtyard behind the main garden a cluster of independent shops, businesses and art galleries make for an interesting wander about. We had a really relaxing afternoon here and I loved the look of the place - the sharp brickwork, sail white shades, green grass and lavender. It's a truly beautiful find - photogenic opportunities galore.

Autumnal eating

I love food, and I love it most in autumn.

These are some of my favourite autumnal meals. I could have drawn about a hundred more (risotto, stuffed giant mushrooms, cottage pie, lentil dahl...) but these were the first that sprung to mind.

Lasagne has been a favourite since childhood. Minestrone and chili are the kinds of meals I love cooking on cold rainy autumn evenings, warm wholesome smells fugging up the kitchen. Food that is nourishing, warming and satisfying. Pastry is my vice so I can never resist a pie.
And if you put roast beef, butternut squash, carrots, onions, stock and herbs in a pot and slow cook it for a few hours, you're onto a winner.

This is the kind of drawing I did all through my childhood and teenage years...even aged sixteen lots of my schoolbooks were illustrated with colouring pencil and black ink. My religious studies teacher, who said she looked forward to marking my work because she loved looking at the illustrations, wrote in my leaver's book that I should always "march to the beat of [my] own drum". She probably didn't mean "switch all your direction in life to art because I really liked that illustration you did of the Garden of Eden at the end your essay that time," but it's funny that I've chosen a more artistic route with her advice in mind.

P.S. sorry about the dodgy scanning!

River Cottage for lunch

Food in order of photographs: selection of homemade breads & butter; sugarsnaps, hazelnut pesto & toasted almonds; wild boar burger, foccacia bun, homemade ketchup & chips;  smoked wild boar tenderloin, blackberries & Trill leaf; chocolate brownie, praline & ice cream.


So there's this guy called Hugh who wears black-framed specs and is a bit of a foodie. Once upon a time he ventured into the depths of Devon in search of a better, more self-sustaining lifestyle. He moved into a former gamekeeper's lodge called River Cottage and began growing and rearing his own, turning his produce into delicious meals. A few years (ok, a decade and a half) later and River Cottage isn't just a cottage with a vegetable patch any more, it's grown into many projects, from books to television series to canteens and delis. But everything is still centred around the same belief in locally sourced food. Which makes sense really - the fresher the food, the better it tastes (especially if Hugh has a hand in the cooking).

We found this out back in August when we went to the River Cottage canteen in Axminster to encounter a very tasty lunch. Wild boar burgers. Focaccia bread. Delicious homemade butter - and I hate butter. Hazelnut pesto, fresh greens, blackberries. And a really gooey wodge of chocolate brownie.

River Cottage may have become a bit of a business enterprise, but it's one with its heart in the right place. If you find yourself in that part of the country, go to the canteen. And you'll remember how good a humble homegrown vegetable can be.

Jammy baking

 



























I used raspberry jam to make a little feast of pretty edible treats, as a kind of last hurrah to summer. All floral, pink and light, before autumn begins properly and I get stuck into squashes and gingerbread lattes and pies.

The first thing I made were jammy dodgers. These are like the ones you can buy, except better because they taste homemade. An alternative is to make shortbread biscuits and sandwich them together with jam, but this biscuit is made with milk and is a little bit smoother and creamier. I essentially made up the recipe after failing to find anything suitable online. Somehow it worked!

I also made raspberry cupcakes from 'Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery' (a wonderful book for all cake lovers). You lightly swirl raspberry jam into the cake mixture, meaning you get the odd really jammy bit of cake - it's good. I didn't go all out and spoon jam inside the cake after baking, then ice the cakes with white chocolate buttercream, as the recipe instructs, but that extra effort does transform them from good to brilliant. It was just white water icing and pink glitter for lazy old me. They were still delicious though.


Recipe - Jammy dodgers

Makes 12 jammy dodgers (i.e. 24 biscuits sandwiched together)

150g butter
75g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
225g plain flour, sifted
3 tbsp milk
100g raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
Rub together the butter, sugar, vanilla and flour (or use an electric mixer) until sticky breadcrumbs are formed.
Add the milk a tbsp at a time, until a dough forms - don't let it get too sticky.
Wrap the ball of dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 5-6mm thick. Use a 3 inch round cutter to cut 12 circles, then use a 1.5 inch round cutter to cut out smaller circles from the centres. Gather all scraps, roll out again and cut 12 more whole 3 inch circles.
Bake everything on a lined tray for 12-15 minutes until pale gold and fairly crisp.
When cool, sandwich together with 1-1.5 tsp of jam, then leave in the fridge to set a little before eating. If you can resist.


Recipe - Raspberry cupcakes

Makes 12 regular cupcakes

110g butter, softened
180g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour, sifted
120g plain flour, sifted
125ml semi skimmed milk, at room temp
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius (160 for fan ovens). Line a 12 hole muffin tray with cases.
In a large mixing bowl cream the butter and sugar until pale and smooth, which should take about 3-5 minutes using an electric mixer.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Combine the two flours in a separate bowl.
Mix the milk in a jug with the vanilla extract.
Add one third of the flours to the creamed butter and sugar mixture, and beat well. Pour in a third of the milk and beat again. Repeat until all the flour and milk have been added.
Gently fold in the raspberry jam until it's mostly combined. You want streaks of jam through the mixture, rather than an evenly coloured batter.
Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, filling them to about two thirds full.
Bake in the oven for 25 minutes until slightly raised and golden brown.
Leave the cakes in the tin for about 10 minutes before cooling on a wire rack.
(Optional:)
Once they are cooled, cut a small hole in the centre of each cake and carefully place a teaspoon of jam inside. Ice the cakes with buttercream.