Oooh, a snowy cookie!

The snow has finally begun to disappear (for us at least, and for now...?) and unfortunately no snow day for me.  For a train service that runs shockingly badly a vast proportion of the time, First Capital Connect actually managed to run services in and out of London with a decent amount of frequency. 

Damn.  I really wanted a snow day.

Anyway, talking of snow that seems like a great segue to another one of the Christmas recipes, Pfeffernusse, more German spiced cookies except these ones look like they've been dusted with snow! 

The recipe - Pfeffernuse (slightly adapted from Chow.com)

For the spiced sugar:

1 cup icing sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground mixed spice (I used my own mix which you can find here)

For the cookies:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp fine salt
1/4 tsp ground mixed spice (again, my own mix)
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted (I used pre-toasted almonds)
8 tbsp unsalted butter (1 stick), at room temperature
2 tsp packed finely grated lemon zest (from about 2 medium lemons)*
2 tsp packed finely grated orange zest (from 1 medium orange)*
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup honey (I used runny honey)
1/4 cup finely chopped candied lemon or orange peel (or a combination) (I couldn't find any...)

1. Start by making the spiced sugar (although you could equally do this while the cookie dough is is the fridge).  Sift all ingredients together into a large bowl; set aside.

2. Then move onto the cookies themselves....Sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, salt, mixed spice, and pepper into a large bowl; set aside.

3. Place the almonds in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade attachment and process until finely ground, about 25 to 30 seconds. Add the almonds to the flour mixture and stir to combine; set aside (to be honest, I see no reason why you wouldn't just buy ready ground almonds to save a bit of time!).

4. Place the butter, lemon zest, and orange zest in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat on medium speed until fluffy and combined, about 1 minute. Add the brown sugar and beat until incorporated and lightened in colour, about 1 minute. Add the egg and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds more. Add the honey and candied lemon or orange peel (or mixture thereof) and beat until just incorporated, about 1 minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle with a rubber spatula.

5. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions, mixing until just combined, about 1 1/2 minutes total. (Do not over mix.) Cover and refrigerate the dough until firm, at least 1 hour (go wrap some presents, watch some tv, have a glass of wine...make more German cookies...).

6. Heat the oven to 350°F and arrange 2 racks to divide the oven into thirds. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

7. Roll the chilled dough into 24 (3/4-inch) balls and space them 1 1/2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake the cookies for 8 minutes, then rotate the sheets from front to back and top to bottom. Continue baking until the cookies are very lightly browned around the edges, about 5 to 6 minutes more. (The tops will be soft, but they will firm up as the cookies stand.) Transfer the baking sheets to 2 wire racks and let the cookies sit until cool enough to handle but still warm, about 3 minutes.

8. Drop the warm cookies into the spiced sugar, making sure to coat them all over, then shake off any excess sugar and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

9. Repeat baking and sugarcoating with the remaining dough. Store the cookies in an airtight container, layered between pieces of waxed paper, for up to 3 weeks (if they last that long!).

Yes, I know this pic looks familiar...

So yes, another batch of yummy cookies.  Bueno.

Right, now I need to go and amend my profile because sadly our lovely cat Maverick is no longer with us.  RIP Mav :(

* Not sure what to do with the now naked orange and lemons and the bells of St Clements are nowhere nearby?  Why not make this little aperitif to go with your cookies??

Citrus Night, Holy Fizz

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!



I love Christmas.  It really is my favourite time of the year.  I love the Christmas tree (I strung popcorn this year, it looks pretty cool), I love the giving and everyone's friendly to one another (unless you're reaching for the last "Princess Charm School" Barbie in Toys R Us that I happen to also be reaching for at exactly the same time then I'm sorry, its handbags at dawn, shoulders down, get out of my way, you are not my friend b***h.  Hell, I promised!).  Most importantly, Le Pose is now 3 and is at the age where she is able to enjoy the innocence and magic of Christmas.  Tonight, for example, is Christmas Eve so we happily sprinkled magic reindeer dust on the patio (I've no idea what that is or how it ended up in my house), put the "Welcome Santa" sign out in the garden and then wrote Santa a welcome note and put the special Christmas Cookies (I have been baking 3 days straight....), milk and carrot out for Santa and his reindeer*.  She is so excited she wouldn't sleep and finally fell asleep somewhere around 10pm.  I remember that excitement and I love seeing her begin to experience it.

Of course as soon as she was in bed we began our own Christmas cheer.

Of course I mean booze.

One of the cookie recipe's (this one) required the zest of 2 lemons and an orange and so I had 3 naked citrus fruits being offensive in the kitchen.  Something had to be done....

So I made a cocktail.

The recipe - Citrus Night, Holy Fizz (by ME!)

Juice of 2 medium sized lemons

Juice of 1 medium sized orange

3/4 cup caster sugar

1 tsp mixed spice (I use my own mix which you can find the recipe for here)

Sparkling wine (prosecco or cava is fine)

1. Put everything (not the fizz) into a sauce pan and place over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves (keep stirring).  Keep the mixture bubbling (simmering) for between 5-10 minutes.  Pour into a heatproof dish to cool.

2. Once cool, put about a teaspoon of the syrup (which should have thickened nicely by now) into the bottom of a wine glass/champagne flute (I didn't want to use my crystal champagne flutes - I randomly don't have any others! - so used a wine glass) and top up with fizz.  Give it a bit of a stir and drink!

Nicely aromatic and fizzy, its a great little change to our usual Christmas Mimosa and yes, this one's all out of my own little head.

xx Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night! xx

*She has also learned all about the nativity at nursery and we have also been talking about the important baby born at Christmas.

Carrot juice tastes like evil

Its only since I became an "adult" (and I use that term with not just a grain of salt, but a ruddy great bucket of it) that I began to like carrot cake.  Actually it could have just been that the thought of putting carrot...in a...cake (!?) sent me into a great sadness ("why god why!?!?").  I mean vegetables...in a cake....that's just wrong on all levels.

Then there's the carrot factor.  A couple of weeks ago I was in Pret grabbing breakfast and saw a bottle of carrot juice.  It said "grab me" (it literally said "grab me" on the bottle) so I thought "sure, what the hell".  I mean how bad could it be?  My friend K is into juicing (vegetables not just fruit) and really seems to like her concoctions plus its meant to be super healthy.  I was also trying to be on a new year's health kick, the carrot juice just seemed to come along at the right time.

Sure.

I took a sip of the carrot juice and instantly regretted it.  It tasted like vomit.  Actually carroty vom.  I told myself off, I mean I'm an adult right?  It really can't be that bad, I'm sure I'll get used to it.  So I took another sip.  Still vom.  Another sip?  Yep, still carroty vom.  I gave up.  Carrot juice tastes evil.  I-kid-you-not.  It tastes like the carrot found out about the carrot juicing, topped itself then rotted in the bottle for a year.  I spent the rest of the day belching carrot juice and feeling like I would actually vom carrot juice.  It was vile.  Morning sickness was more fun.

Anyway I wasn't a fan of carrot cake until recently.  Now I realise that it doesn't taste vegetable-y (yes, that's a word, I just wrote it and spell check didn't correct it) or carroty vom, it actually tastes quite pleasant.

My NCT group were having a little meet up and I offered to bake (I'll take any excuse) and figured carrot cake would be a good option.  Now when I was pregnant and suffering from delusions of wanting to be the greatest-mummy-baker but being paranoid of making my unborn child fat, I bought the book Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood.  Sounds good right?  Well there's a catch.  All of the recipes try to sneak in vegetables and contain very little fat.  Sounds like I'm talking sh*t?  To my constant surprise the recipes are actually pretty delish (I've secretly served the title chocolate cake (that contains aubergine, yes A.U.B.E.R.G.I.N.E.) to dinner guests and they've been very complimentary (and I don't think they were just being polite).  The recipes also seem to be largely gluten free.  So...

The recipe - Carrot Cake

I'm too lazy to type this up!

Basically follow the recipe!  Well, unless you're me.  I misread how much lime to use in the icing and instead put in the zest and juice of 1 whole lime (not just half the zest and 2tsp of the juice).  That being said everyone said they really enjoyed the zingy icing.

The recipe doesn't go into any detail on how to go about icing the cake so I've put some pictures below:

1. Put a big dollop of icing in the centre of the base cake (my base cake was a little bigger than the top cake - I realised all too late that none of my 3 loose bottom tins are the same size!).

2. Using a palette knife, spread the icing out across the base.

3. Carefully place the top cake onto the bottom cake and repeat steps 1 and 2 for the top cake.

4. Make some little carrots!!  Using some fondant icing, mix a little water, a couple of drops of red food colouring and a lot of drops of yellow food colouring (alternatively just use orange food colouring!!) and mix into a pliable dough.  Sprinkle some icing sugar onto a board and pop the icing ball onto the board.

5. Now I tried 2 different ways to make the carrot decorations.  The first way I split the dough into 4 portions and then tried to shape the dough into carrot shapes.  This didn't seem to work too well and in fact looked like I was trying to replicate an earlier creation.  I wasn't thrilled with the results of the second way but I needed to leave for the meet-up so the second way was the only way...I started by flattening the ball with the palm of my hand.

6.  Using a knife cut 2 eye shapes out of the icing and cut each of the eye shapes in half again.

7. Taking the knife, make several horizontal gashes across the surface of the "carrots".

8. Next I added a ton of green food colouring to the left over orange icing (yes I could have started again but I HATE waste) and flatten the icing out.  Then cut the icing into thin strips.

9. Cut the long green strips in half and layer them on the cake like the roots of the carrot and place the carrot gently overlapping the ends.

10. Continue to do the same for the other 3 carrots.

The cake tasted really good, even if I do say so myself.  My icing carrots were a bit of a disappointment though.  The icing wouldn't set so the carrots got a little limp.  I'm not having much luck with fondant icing!

All that aside, the cake went down a treat at the meet-up and I was able to take some leftovers to the folks (they had offered to babysit for us that night and I felt I should take some cake by way of a thank you).  In fact, my father insisted I left him the last of the cake.  Sounds like a success to me.

Pride goeth before a fall

A staple in our household is the humble Jaffa Cake.  Unfortunately they are both a firm favourite of mine and the hubby's so they rarely last long and in fact usually lead to a War of the Roses stand off followed by a couples counselling session.

I love Jaffa Cakes. I still practise the "Full Moon, Half Moon, Total Eclipse" mantra but that's just how I roll.

Anyway, so a while ago on Saturday Morning Kitchen I saw Simon Rimmer make homemade Jaffa Cakes.  "Amazeballs!" I thought and vowed to try them.  So this weekend with expectations running high given my recent successes (do you recall the Michel Roux Jr references....?) I set out to making them.

As usual, the recipe has my commentary...

The recipe - Homemade Jaffa Cakes (with thanks (through gritted teeth) to Simon Rimmer)

For the cakes:
2 free-range eggs (I'm going to throw this out there, I know it sounds like I have an obsession with fresh eggs but I think these should be as fresh as possible given the cooking method)
50g / 2oz caster sugar
50g / 2oz plain flour

For the filling:
1 135g packet of orange jelly, chopped
1 tbs orange marmalade
125ml boiling water

For the chocolate:
200g / 7oz good quality dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa solids), chopped into pieces (seriously its a chocolate covered cakey biscuit, what did you expect!?!?)

1. Start by making the filling.  In a bowl, mix together the jelly, marmalade and boiling water until the jelly has dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Pour the filling mixture into a shallow-sided baking tray or large dish to form a thin layer of jelly (the recipe actually says a 1cm/½in layer but that seems far too thick to me). Set aside until completely cooled, then chill in the fridge until set.  (The recipe also called for this to be made at a later stage but I figured I'd give it more time to set).

2. Next, make the cakes.  Start by preheating the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.  Bring a little water to the boil in a pan, then reduce the heat until the water is simmering. Suspend a heatproof bowl over the water (do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the water). Add the eggs and sugar to the bowl and beat continuously for 4-5 minutes, or until the mixture is pale, fluffy and well combined.

3. Add the flour, beating continuously, until a thick, smooth batter forms.

4. Half-fill each well in a 12-hole muffin tin with the cake batter. Transfer the tin to the oven and bake the cakes for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown and cooked through (the cakes are cooked through when a skewer inserted into the centre of the cakes comes out clean.) Remove from the oven and set the cakes aside, still in their tray, until cool.

5. When the jelly has set and the cakes have cooled, cut small discs from the layer of jelly, equal in diameter to the cakes (now my intimate knowledge of Jaffa Cakes means I know that the jelly bit does NOT cover the whole cake (the travesty!) so I cut the discs about 1cm smaller in diameter using a little medicine cup). 

                                          
6. This is where it all went tits up. Once the cakes were cooled they were meant to be removed from the tin.  I borrowed one of my mum's bigger non-stick tins for this as I didn't want to be faffing about with mine.  I went to turn the cakes out of the tin and they wouldn't budge.  I went to prise them out a little with a knife, and was successful.  At first.  Then they refused to come out without tearing. 

YOU WILL COME OUT!

"Fine, be that way" I thought "You're getting covered in chocolate anyway so I can cover the cracks" (yes, I sound like I know what I'm doing).  Then I had a little epiphany and figured that I should probably taste the cakes before making the chocolate.  Best.  Decision.  Ever.  They were vile - overly sweet, eggy, anaemic, rubbery hockey pucks.  They were like the little white sponges you can get to clean walls.  Unimpressed doesn't even begin to cover it.

At this point, it was coming up to 9pm on a Sunday night, The Time Traveller's Wife was on and the bottle of Port on the window sill had somehow found its way into my hand so I thought "sod it" and buggered off to the lounge.

The rest of the recipe, just to finish it off, is meant to go like this:

7. Sit one jelly disc on top of each cake.

8. For the chocolate, bring a little water to the boil in a pan, then reduce the heat until the water is simmering. Suspend a heatproof bowl over the water (do not allow the base of the bowl to touch the water).  Add the chocolate and stir until melted, smooth and glossy, then pour over the cakes. Set aside until the melted chocolate has cooled and set.

I have to say, I was pretty unimpressed by the recipe (yes, that may be influenced by my inability to complete it and yes, it was the recipe's fault not my mad-skillz).  I can't help thinking that the muffin tray should have been greased and I'm not sure what mixing the cake batter over the hot water does that mixing them cool wouldn't.  Perhaps I'll try doing it like that next time and see what those results are like. 

I guess I've been riding high for all of the posts so far that it was only a matter of time that I would have a tumble.  Problem is I now have a fridge full of orange jelly discs and nothing to do with them and I'm not going to attempt this again this week as I have a much bigger project to tackle.

Anyway there's a box in the cupboard so altogether now "full moon, half moon, total eclipse"....