Sunday bakes - 'Packing up the old' Pear and almond scones

It's time for a spring clear out. Perhaps a little early, but if the weather is ready to move on from winter, so am I. I've been boxing and bag things for the charity shop for months and it's time to get it all out of my house and have a fresh start. So to go with my domestic fresh start, here's a fresh recipe that I tasted in Dublin last year at Avoca. I'm not sure of their own recipe, but this is my attempt.


Ingredients
130g butter
400g plain flour

100g ground almonds
1tsp baking powder
65g caster sugar
1 can of pears in juice (not syrup) - chop into cubes
1 large egg, beaten
80ml milk
100ml of the pear juice
1 vanilla pod
a few drops of almond essence
some flaked almonds for the top

Method
Rub the butter, flour and baking powder into bread crumbs before stirring in the egg, sugar, vanilla and almond essence. Add the pears and mix thoroughly before adding the milk and juice mixture a little by little. The mixture can't be too wet so you might not need to add all the milk/juice.

Spoon onto a baking tray and sprinkle in flaked almonds and bake at 170 for twenty minutes until lightly brown. Dust lightly with icing sugar.

Sunday bakes - 'bossy boots' banana bread

I'm having a fairly fruitful January.  I am still working my way through the dates and the banana flour so this week I have made some banana bread, but with no flour and very little additional sugar. I'm again using the dates for sugar and the banana flour instead of real flour. 

Ingredients
120g Stork
140g pitted dates 
140g banana flour
1tsp baking powder
50g caster sugar
3 very ripe bananas
2 eggs

Method
I put everything into the blender and mixed it all up well until it was a sloppy cake mixture texture. Pour into a paper lined loaf tin and bake on a low heat until it has stopped wibbling when you prod it. It is rather gooey, but holds together nicely and it's really sweet. 

Sunday bakes - 'Second Christmas' sweet raw tart

I found a lot of dates. And I do mean a LOT! Tescos were selling them by the (big box) so this week I decided to try out a recipe using dates as both a sweetener and a binder. Dates are brilliant because in their natural unadulterated state they are incredibly sweet and sticky. So whilst not being the healthiest thing to eat (they are about 80% sugar), it is natural sugars and they do also contain fibre and protein. 

So this time I've made an (almost) entirely raw foods tart, which is flour free as well, thanks to another new discovery, banana chip flour. This is a fine powder that I found in my local health foods shop made almost entirely of dried and ground bananas, neat!

Ingredients
300g pitted dates
40g ground almonds
40g banana flour
2 sliced kiwis
1 sliced apricot
2 tbsp lemon curd

Method
Put the dates, the almonds and the banana flour into a blender and blitz into a crumbly paste. Spoon into your dish and press down into a firm crust with your spoon. 

Spoon the lemon curd over the top and spread evenly, then arrange the fruit on top. 

Super easy, and the crust holds together nicely. 

Sunday bakes - 'Many happy returns' marzipan lace cakes

Goodness it’s been a while since I last posted, happy New Year to all!

So since I last posted I’ve gotten old(er), so I thought for this post I would put up my birthday cakes. They were just little ones that I made for my office, but I tried out my hydrangea flower designs and my new lace mats to decorate them.

I chose a mixture of cinnamon, and vanilla and marzipan flavours, just to keep it simple and focused on the decoration (I left it a little late, so only had an evening, to get these done). As I was a little short on time I used my oven to help speed up the lace-drying process. You can get the sugar lace dried enough to take out in an hour, but you have to keep a watchful eye on the temperature and how long they are in there, otherwise it will discolour or even burn.

Aside from a few small burning mishaps where I got distracted by bowl licking and forgot to keep an eye on my lace, it's very easy to make. You can buy the speciality icing sugar in most baking shops, or online and after mixing with water to make an elastic, gummy paste you use a palette knife (or just the biggest, smoothest flat knife you have, I’ve used a normal dinner knife before) to ‘plaster’ the silicon mould. It’s important that you fully fill the mould, or your lace will have gaps but also be aware that any left-over icing between the dips will stay there, so you might have to spend a little time making it smooth, or trimming any strays afterwards. If you are in no hurry you can leave this to dry out over a few hours, or overnight, but as I mentioned I was in a rush so used the oven for a little while it was heating and cooling and the top oven while I was baking the cakes.

The flowers again require some specialist icing, bit this time I bought it ready made. I’ve opened this pack already but you can re-seal and store in the freezer if you don’t want to use it all at once. I used a hydrangea cutter with built in texture, added the centre part and painting with a dust icing paint.

There are two different cakes, Cinnamon flavour and vanilla and marzipan flavour. They both use vanilla sponge basic mixture so I’ll just add in alternatives for each when I get to that bit of the recipe.

Ingredients

140g Caster Sugar

40g butter

120g self-raising flour

A few drops of vanilla essence, or a tablespoon of cinnamon

120ml milk

1 egg

A block of marzipan

A block of fondant icing

Icing

250g Icing sugar

80g Stork spread
25ml milk

2tsp Cinnamon jam
1tbsp Ground Cinnamon

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until it’s as fluffy as you can get, this will be a little crumbly. Add the egg, essence (or cinnamon) and whisk up before slowly adding the flour, sifting through a sieve. Add the milk little by little to avoid lumps and whisk thoroughly before spooning into cake cases and baking for 20 minutes at about 180.

Ice with your preferred icing, I have chosen cinnamon butter cream with a small splodge of cinnamon jam for the cinnamon cakes and a layer or marzipan and then fondant icing for the vanilla and marzipan cakes, this is mostly to give a good surface for the lace.

Take these into work to thank everyone for being kind as you age and to buy you favours for the next year.

Sunday bakes - 'fright night fun' figgy brown treacle tart

I read an article the other day about brown sauce, it was an abusive piece, lambasting the poor old sauce for being a taste bully. It made me feel a bit defensive of poor old brown sauce, yes sure it's not everyone's cup of tea and generally I only eat it on a full english fry up, but if you look at the ingredients it's really quite an interesting one. It's jam-packed with spices and tamarind sauce and it got me thinking about the other possible ways brown sauce could contribute in my kitchen. 

This weekend I went to Tulleys farm's shocktoberfest, which is hands down my favourite thing to do all year. It's a halloween theme park, with a selection of 'haunts' in an atmospheric setting and I find it both hilarious and terrifying. I went with a couple of friends and my boyfriend so afterwards we curled up in front of a fire with a glass of whiskey and this pie. 

Ingredients
250g plain flour
4tbsp caster sugar
130g butter
350g golden syrup
50g brown sauce
3 ripe fresh figs
150g fine fresh white breadcrumbs
2 lemons
1  egg

Method
First make the pastry. Chop the butter into small cubes and combine with the flour, rub between your fingers to make a fine breadcrumb texture, add the sugar, then add 2 tbsp of cold water, one by one to bring the mixture together. You don't have to add it all. Don't play with the pastry too much, wrap it in cling film and put in the fridge for 20 minutes. 

Pour the liquid ingredients into a pan along with the zest and juice of the two lemons and heat gently. Once this is warmed through add the breadcrumbs and heat for another 5 minutes. 

Roll out the pastry, grease the tart tin and lay 2/3rds of the pastry into the tin. Prick the bottom so it doesn't rise up. Fill the tin with the breadcrumb mix then slice the figs and lay them in a pattern on top. 

Roll out the rest of the pastry and cut into strips of equal width, arrange in a lattice pattern and place on top, pressing into the base pastry along the edges. Make an egg wash and brush all over, bake at 160 for 15 minutes until the crust is golden brown. 

This is surprisingly nice with a good old fashioned custard in front of a fire. 

Sunday bakes - 'Pretty pleased to be home' plum and marzipan pie

The last few weeks have been a bit crazy with travelling, first going up to Edinburgh, then to Chelmsford for a wedding, then down to Cornwall and then to Dublin once a week ever since. So it's been lovely to spend it a little bit of time at home.

To celebrate homeliness this week I bakes a plum, cherry and marzipan pie to give to my mum in lieu of a birthday cake.

Ingredients
Ripe plums
Caster sugar
Dried cherries
2 tbsp cherry brandy
200g marzipan, chopped into small cubes
1 pack of shortcrust pastry
1.5 tbsp cornflour

Method
Place the plums carefully into a saucepan with the caster sugar and heat gently. One the plums are starting to sizzle a little and the sugar is melting, add the brandy. Cook for just a couple of minutes, you want the plums to keep their colour and shape. Pour them into a sieve over a bowl and leave them to drain.

Roll out the pastry and line a pie dish, trimming the edges.

Place the plums into the pie dish, so the coloured domes face upwards. between each layer of the plums scatter the marzipan and the dried cherries.

Add a small amount of the plum juice mixture to the cornflour and mix into a paste, add a little more juice and mix again. Keep adding until all the juice has been mixed with the cornflour so you have a thicker syrup.

Drizzle two to three tablespoons of the juice over the plums in the pie and then add your pie lid. You can do whatever style lid you like, but remember to leave a space for the steam to escape. I opted for a sun rays design.

Cover the pastry in a milk or egg wash to give it a lovely golden brown colour and then bake at 180 for twenty minutes.

Misty mornings, mussels, and mackerel

I went on holiday!

I had a wonderful time down in Cornwall, thank you to the Anderson family for inviting me. I learned to fish, and make a couple of not fabulous attempts at star photography. The positive news was that I found my camera had a bulb setting, the bad news was that I needed a remote shutter. But never mind, I'll get one for next time. My last morning there was beautiful, it was about halfway through for everyone else so we were all sleeping in a little, but I woke up at 7.30 to find a blanket of sea mist with the sun rising behind it, so of course I had to run out with my camera, still wiping the sleep out of my eyes. So here are a few of my holiday snaps.