Sunday bakes - 'Little treat for the train' lemon macarons

The weekend I made these treats was the weekend of the wedding of one of my best friends. It was a beautiful day, full of happiness and love. Congratulations Ruth and Dave, I hope you have a wonderful future together and I look forward to seeing you enjoy all the good times you have ahead. 

Now for the train ride home, and the extra train ride down to Cornwall, because after the wedding I was also off on holiday. 

So here's a little treat I made for the train to get me through the long hours of travel. 

Ingredients
6 oz icing sugar
5.5 oz ground almonds
120 ml egg whites – about 4 eggs
5.5 oz granulated sugar
2 tbsp fine lemon zest
50ml water


Filling

Lemon juice and zest of about 4 lemons
3.5 oz butter
7 oz caster sugar
3 eggs, plus 1 extra yolk

Method
After sifting the almonds to get rid of any larger lumps, put into a food blender with half of the egg whites, the lemon zest and the icing sugar and blend into a paste with about 15 long pulses. 

Put the rest of the egg whites into a mixer and whisk up until the egg whites hold soft peaks. At the same time put the water and the sugar into a saucepan and heat gently. The sugar will dissolve and when the water starts to boil. Use a sugar thermometer and the mixture will be ready when it reaches 110°. Keep the mixer whisking as you pour the sugar syrup into the eggs slowly. Once you have finished pouring, keep the mixer going as the mixture gets glossy and slightly stiffer. Keep whisking until it is cool.  

Fold the almond, lemon mixture in together with the egg whites until you have a smooth mixture. Place this into a piping bag and pipe evenly onto a greased baking paper sheet. I add a little more grease because the paper does not seem to be quite enough. Draw a circle with the piping bag about 2 cm diameter and then hold the bag in the center and pipe out to make a small dome. 

Leave the disks out on the side for a couple of hours to form a slight skin and then bake at 170° for 14 minutes. 

In the meantime you can make your lemon curd filling. 

Put all the ingredients into a bowl and place over a saucepan with boiling water. Heat the mixture until the butter has all melted. Whisk up the eggs and yolks together a little before adding to the melted butter mixture. Heat very gently, stirring every now and then until the mixture coats the back of the spoon. Leave the curd to cool. 

Choose disks that are a similar size and spoon some curd onto the flat side and sandwich the two together. 

Eat these little disks of sunshine while on a train, with a good book, on your way to a great holiday.

Sunday bakes - 'bribing people to like me' buns

It's been a while since I made some choux pastry and so this weekend I cracked out my wooden spoon and gave it another shot. 

This time instead of the usual chocolate topping I wanted to try something a bit brighter and opted for a speedy raspberry jam. 

They went down pretty well in the office, I might make another batch ready for project 'make my boyfriend's parents like me'. 

Ingredients
Pastry
200ml cold water
4tsp caster sugar
3oz margarine
4oz plain flour
3 beaten eggs

Cream
500ml cream whisked to stiff peaks with a little raspberry-ripple flavour

Jam
100g frozen raspberries
5tbsp caster sugar

Method
Put the water, margarine and sugar into a saucepan and heat until the margarine melts. Pour the flour into the saucepan in one go and stir vigorously until the dough has a slight gloss and is in one consistent ball off the sides of the saucepan. Put the dough into a bowl and leave to cool for ten minutes before slowly beating in the eggs, little by little. Once the dough is combined pour into a piping bag and pipe into balls on a sheet of baking paper. Tap the tray a little to knock out any bubbles of air. Pre-heat the oven to 180 and place a tray of water in the bottom of the oven to build up steam. Once the oven is at temperature put the buns in and bake for 25 minutes, when they will have puffed up and become golden brown. 

Put the raspberries in a saucepan and heat, one they start to breakdown add the sugar and continue to heat. Breakup any lumps of raspberry left and reduce the mixture until it is sticky and thick. 

Once the buns are done leave until thoroughly cool, snip a small hole in the side, pour the cream into a piping bag and fill the buns one by one. 

Top with the jam and definitely wait before trying one, because the jam will essentially be molten hot sugar. You will burn your mouth. 

Sunday bakes - 'Berry messy' brioche breakfast bake

After a fun-filled weekend at the Edinburgh fringe with my brother (he was in Adam Long's Dickens Abridged, a really good show), I opted for a bank holiday baked breakfast treat. No, I don't have a hangover, anymore. In addition to Dickens Abridged I would highly recommend Spillikin. It was a beautiful show featuring a robot actor that managed to be touching, sweet and funny as well as leaving you questioning morality and scientific developments for the future. A really interesting watch. 

I picked up a bag of chocolate brioche on my way back through the airport and this morning I made an american inspired breakfast. 

Ingredients
3 chocolate brioche rolls
1 frozen sliced banana
2 handfuls of frozen blueberries
5 tbsp egg whites
1 tbsp caster sugar
3 tbsp maple syrup

Method
Lay the fruit in the bottom of the dish and place the sliced brioche over the top. Mix up the egg, sugar and maple syrup and pour over the brioche. Tilt the dish to help the brioche absorb the mixture then bake at 180 for 8 minutes

Now you should have a crispy french-toast inspired breakfast treat, to be enjoyed with fresh coffee, the newspaper and the traditional bank holiday rain. 

Sunday bakes - 'Feeling good' flax seed bread

A friend at work recently told us over drinks that her family bakes their own bread every day, using a bread maker. Her husband, who for years suffered from IBS, found that after a few weeks eating home-made bread this had improved dramatically. Even with a brief search on Google and you can easily find the reasons why this might happen. 
The mass-produced bread we can buy today are just loaded with chemicals to improve their flavour and texture and worse, the flour used to make it in the first place is modified so the bread can be baked quickly, with no timely fermenting process.
Now I'm fortunate that I don't have these health problems, but that's not to say that I never will; inflammatory illnesses like this can happen at any time. But my main concern is the level of chemicals that we have been ingesting. I have been increasingly interested in the level of synthetic hormones working their way into our systems, the chemicals in our environment that can induce hormonal changes and how this affects our overall health. Whilst chemicals can be helpful and necessary for some people to manage certain conditions I am more wary that I used to be of the side effects and the impact of non-medicinal chemicals. 
After talking to my friend I decided to try out my own bread recipes, which I have been honing over the last few weeks, adding in healthier alternatives and additions.

I don't have a bread maker but this recipe is actually really easy and kneading is not as hard as I thought it was. I added flax seeds because they are a really great addition to your diet being rich in Omega-3 and great for your skin and hair. I substituted the vegetable oil for coconut oil which does boost the flavour but is also a healthier fat. 

Ingredients
500g (1llb) wholemeal strong flour
3 tbsp coconut oil
3 tbsp flax seeds (linseeds)
1.5 tbsp dried active yeast (I like Allinson's for hand baking only variety)
300ml water
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Method
Mix the sugar in with 1 parts boiling water to 2 parts cold water to make 300ml of warm sugar water, then whisk in the yeast. Leave this to froth up for 15 minutes. Make sure you do this in a big enough jug, because it will bubble over and make a mess. 
Put the seeds in a pestle and mortar and grind until the seeds are broken down. You need to crush up the seeds because otherwise they will just pass through your system and you won't benefit from the nutrients. Put the salt into a big bowl and pour the flour on top, add the crushed seeds and the coconut oil. Pour the frothed up water and yeast over the flour and mix with a fork until the mixture is a consistent ball. 
Get your hands in there and start mixing with your fingers, knead the dough in the bowl. To do this I've been using a twisting action pushing down with my middle knuckles, splaying my fingers, then folding the mixture back in on itself. Do this for 5-10 minutes. Pick up the mixture, making sure to leave the bowl as clean as possible and spritz the inside of the bowl with a little coconut oil just to make sure the mixture doesn't stick then put the dough back in again, cover the bowl with a wet tea towel and leave in a warm spot to rise for an hour. 
Line a tin with greaseproof paper and as gently as possible move the dough into the tin, it will deflate a little, but don't worry it comes back up again. Cover the tin with the tea towel and leave to rise for another hour. 
Heat the oven to 180 and bake the bread for 40 minutes until the crust is crispy and the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it. 

Make sure you eat this hot when it's at its best, but the crumb will firm up the next day and make better sandwiches and toast. 

I love this bread, it smells amazing, it's really not that much effort to make and I know exactly what is in my toast. My next step is going to be sourcing local flour made from older types of grains, the newer breeds are chosen to grow faster and have fewer nutrients but this is a big step to cutting the processing chemicals from my diet and hopefully cutting the risks associated with them. 

Sunday bakes - 'save some for tomorrow' tomato pasta bake

This summer is great for tomatoes, as long as you keep them watered they will ripen and caramelise in the sun.
This pasta bake is full of sweet tomatoes and basil, with some of the pasta swapped for bulgar wheat to add a different texture.

Ingredients
8 vine ripened tomatoes, quartered
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Half a red pepper, diced
1 cup of bulgard wheat
1.5 cups of pasta
A pack of basil leaves (about 10 leaves)
3/4 a jar of pesto
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp Ketchup
50g of grated cheddar

Method
Cook up the pasta and the bulgar wheat in boiling water, drain, and stir all the ingredients, except the cheese together in a baking dish.

Scatter the cheese on top and bake in the oven until bubbling and golden.

This is about as simple as dinner gets, and there will be plenty for lunch tomorrow too.

Sunday bakes - 'good grief it's hot' gooseberry and apple pie

When I was little we used to have huge blackcurrant bushes, all around the vegetable patch. The summer used to be spent underneath these bushes, making dens in the shade that smelled of blackcurrants. In with these bushes was a single, small gooseberry bush. I absolutely love gooseberries, but they are hard to find now that we don't have that little bush anymore.
This gooseberry pie uses the tinned gooseberries, their softness boils down to a gooseberry treacle which works well with apple. cooked gently and left with a little bite.

Ingredients
One pack of shortcrust pastry
Two tins of gooseberries
One pink lady apple, cored and sliced
4 tbsp brown sugar

Method
Add the sugar and gooseberries to a saucepan and heat gently, stirring as little as necessary until the mixture is treacle like, but keep as many as the gooseberries in tact as possible.

Roll out the pastry until it's ab out 4mm thick and line a pie dish, blind bake until just starting to change colour, then cover the bottom with the sliced apples. Pour the gooseberry mixture over the top and cover with pasty.

You can either have a solid top, or cut thin slices of pastry and weave them together to form a lattice top.

Paint the pastry in milk and bake at about 180 for twenty minutes until golden brown.

I served this with an apricot and peach frozen yoghurt which worked wonderfully.

Sunday bakes - 'Stop eating cake' salad

Wow, so I've missed a couple of weeks, where did the time go!

Good news is that after putting on a bake sale at work we raised £233 for my friend's earthquake efforts. She and her team are making santitation packs for the people who have been displaced by the earthquake. If you're interested in seeing their efforts or donating to the cause you can do that here:http://www.kgnepal.com.np/health-relief

In the meantime, here in the UK, after baking (and eating) an epic amount of cake it's time for salad.

So today we have fennel and radish salad with spiced lentil, which I ate with chicken baked with crushed pineapple.

Ingredients
1 Fennel bulb
7 radishes
handful of dried lentils
cajun spice
Lime juice

Method
Thinly slice the fennel and radishes, save the fennal leaves from the top to garnish the salad. Cover the chopped vegetables in lime juice and set aside to marinade together while you cook the lentils and chicken.
Boil the lentils in salted water, drain and pour onto a baking tray. Cover the lentils in cajun spice and a bit of salt and bake in the oven until they are crispy.
Put the chicken breast onto a piece of foil and cover with crushed pineapple pieces from a can, bring the edges of the foil together but don't totally seal it and put it in the oven for 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Open this up for the last 5 minutes to give the top a chance to brown.
sprinkle the lentils over the salad with the fennel leaves and serve with the chicken.

The best antidote to cake.