Birthday Brownie

I should be telling you about another great meal last night which used up another of the can of left over kidney beans (the ones I failed to put in the chilli for the Husband's birthday). It was a healthy bean salad type thing, all the more succesful because both kids ate it and enjoyed it. I also made some cheeky toasted cumin flatbreads to go with, which made me feel all domestic goddess-y again because - a confession - I haven't made bread of any sort for a good couple of months now.

But healthy suppers and flatbreads will have to wait for another time, because I cannot get brownie out of my head.

I don't have much that's original to say about brownies. It's mostly been said before, some of it by me, here, but when has that ever stopped me? Badly made, they can be one of the most disappointing things on earth - dry, unyielding - just, well, disappointing.

On the other hand, get it right and you have absolutely one of the best types of chocolatey treat you can, in my humble opinion, ever eat. Rich, damp, squidgy, revealing the hidden treat of a nut or carefully chosen nugget of dried fruit (cranberries and cherries are my favourites, bringing an edge of sour to the party), a good brownie is absolutely to die for.


When I was wracking my brains to think of a suitably birthday-ish treat to take with us last week end and stick candles in to allow for the purposes of singing 'Happy Birthday', brownie was the obvious solution. As it's not actually the Husband's birthday till December, I didn't want to go all out with a bells & whistles birthday cake (plus, the obvious difficulty of keeping something (possibly elaborate) intact on a campsite was vexing me), but I wanted something celebratory. 

Flapjack would absolutely NOT have done.

Nigella offers brownie as a birthday cake solution, and I have to say, she's right. Stacked up, with candles in the pieces, it looks very festive. It's also dead easy to make. Marvellous.

La Lawson reckons you can get 48 out of this quantity. I got 24 (admittedly fairly generous) pieces, but I wouldn't have wanted to go much smaller, and as we were 45, I made 2 batches, one with walnuts, one with dried cranberries. Do watch them like a hawk once you've baked them for around 20 minutes. I set my timer for 22 mins, and probably did take them out at around 25 minutes, but they will continue to cook in the tin, once you've taken them out of the oven, so don't leave them too long in the oven.

Chocolate & Cranberry Brownie

2375g unsalted butter
375g dark chocolate (70% cocoa)
6 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
450g caster sugar
225g plain flour
1 tsp salt
300g dried cranberries (if you prefer, use 300g chopped walnuts)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 and line a tin with greaseproof paper (I have a roasting tin which is approx 27 by 23 cm and 4 cm deep. Nigella's is bigger (33 by 23), so her brownie is probably thinner and so more easily cuttable into 48. It's up to you. I won't judge you...)

In a large pan, gently melt together the chocolate and butter, then set aside to cool slightly. 

Beat together the sugar, eggs and vanilla, and in a separate bowl, combine the flour and salt.

Beat the eggs and sugar into the melted butter & chocolate, then the flour, then stir through the cranberries. 

When it's all combined, scrape it into the prepared tin and bake for around 25 minutes. It's worth checking a little earlier just to see how its doing. The top will be paler and may have started to crack, but make sure the middle is still a little squodgy when you take it out of the oven.

Cut into pieces and serve - with or without candles.

A Fish Pie so yummy, Pink would eat it again - and low fat too...

So you might be forgiven for thinking that the whole diet thing has gone out of the window with all the cake that's been on here recently, but no, I have been doing my 'fast' days and I'm planning to write some more about that later on this week. I've also been trying to cut down the fat and stuff in some of our other meals.

Good Friday was a classic example. Something in my psyche says that  we should eat fish on a Friday. I'm not quite sure where this comes from as I was brought up C of E and the whole fish on Friday thing seems to be a more RC tradition, but whatever, fish on a Friday is always there in the back of my mind. Not that it happens much - I'm not a confident fish cook and it always tends to be the same 2 or 3 things that I cook. But if there was any day when I would cook fish, it would be Good Friday.

Fish pie is one of those 2 or 3 fish things that I cook. It's something I can't really remember learning how to make, although I have a vague recollection of a couple of phone calls to mum wondering about how much fish to buy. I always use the same method too - poaching haddock, undyed smoked haddock and salmon in some milk with bay leaves, peppercorns and a couple of cloves; making a white sauce using the infused milk, combining the two, and finally topping with mash. It's one of those things that I've never actually used a recipe for, and often end up making too much fish mixture, or not enough mash.

A few years ago, Good Food ran a series where they did 'ultimate makeovers' of classic recipes, with the aim of reducing the fat content and generally making the dishes healthier without compromising on taste, and in April 2010, fish pie got the treatment. Actually, I think they are still doing it, but it's called 'Make it Healthier' now. I think I prefer 'The Ultimate Makeover' as a concept, but who am I? Anyway, I digress. In my new low fat mindset, I decided to give it a go. A new recipe also meant I could truthfully tell Pink that it was a new way of cooking it and it would taste different, which means she has to try it and it would hopefully defer the wailing and the grimaces that currently accompanies most fish that's put in front of her.

The big differences to my usual method, as far as I could tell, were using cornflour to thicken the sauce rather than making a roux, using shell on cooked prawns to flavour the milk that you poach the fish in (and then make the sauce from), and most controversially as far as I was concerned using 125g of low fat soft cheese with garlic and herbs for extra flavour and creaminess. A final difference was using whole (skin on) new potatoes, boiled, then roughly crushed with a bit of rapeseed oil rather than mashed.

Well, my butcher (who I order fish through) could only get me a massive kilo bag of prawns, so I decided to leave them out, but otherwise, I pretty much followed the recipe and it was a revelation. I said the cream cheese was controversial, and I was worried that it would make it all a bit over poweringly garlicky, and claggy, but as promised, it was a lovely creamy sauce. The potato topping was particularly good too - I may well adopt this approach for other potato topped pies in future. In terms of calorie counting etc, a portion of this baby is supposedly 416 calories as opposed to a more traditionally made fish pie which would rock in at 676 calories, with only 15g of fat (4g saturated) as opposed to a whopping 38g of fat (19g saturated). And if you need any more convincing, I leave you with the words of my (allegedly) fish-loathing Pink, who had sulked round the house all afternoon once she knew it was on the cards for the evening meal:

"Mummy, that was really yummy. I will eat fish pie again if you make it that way".

I rest my case.

Easter Baking Part 2 - Fruity Simnel Tray Bake

So along with the hot cross buns, I also made a tray bake heavily based on a recipe I found in April 2012's Good Food mag . Handily, it's on the website, so you can access the original recipe just there.

You see, along with Christmas and weddings, Easter represents another opportunity to embrace marzipan. Weddings don't come along very often these days - we've long passed the 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' stage when we seemed to be at a different wedding every weekend with the same crowd of people - and Easter, like Chirstmas, only comes along once a year, so the mazipan usage has to be maximised. There are other things I use marzipan for throughout the year - Nigella's easy almond cake is one of my all time favourites (although, come to think of it, I haven't made it recently. Better rectify that soon) - basically, butter and marzipan, 6 eggs and a little flour chucked in almost as an after thought. It is heavenly cake. I recommend it.

 

I liked the idea of this tray bake though, because we are out and about this weekend and having squares of cake to pack up in a picnic (I know, I shudder to use that word to describe what will in reality be us shivering in a huddle) appeals. Also, it uses a whole block of marzipan, some chunked in the batter, some grated on the top and some made into the 11 marzipan balls that represent the apostles (again) on top of the traditional simnel cake.




What you get is quite a squodgy, almondy fruit cake, topped with an almondy crumble, and finally drizzled with orange icing - and the marzipan balls. Not one, you'll have guessed, if you don't like almonds, but if you're a fan, this is one for you. 

I adapted the recipe quite a bit (unlike the Hot Cross Buns, which I followed slavishly). If you do use the Good Food original version, bear this in mind: they recommend a  20 by 30 cm tin. I used a slightly bigger tray bake tin - 23 by 30 - and it still made quite a deep thick cake. Also, by using 11 marzipan balls and dividing the cake into 12 with one piece without adornment, you get massive slabs of cake. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, I'm just saying. Also, it might seem like you end up with wasting the zest of a lemon and an orange - I made this at the same time as some hot cross buns and used the zests to flavour the milk for the dough.

Fruity Simnel Tray Bake

110g each of currants, raisins, dates and apricots, chopped quite small
zest of 2 oranges
juice of 2 oranges and a lemon
250g unsalted butter cut into chunks (at room temp)
250g soft light brown sugar
4 large eggs
200g self raising flour
80g ground almonds
1 heaped tsp each of all spice and ground cinammon
a good grating of nutmeg
500g marzipan - 200g cut into small chunks, 200g grated, 100g divided into 11 and made into balls
100g plain flour
100g flaked almonds
3 tbsp golden syrup
85g icing sugar
juice of another orange

30 by 23 cm tray bake tin, buttered and lined

Soak the chopped fruit in the juice of the 2 oranges and lemon for at least 2 hours - overnight if you are organised.

Pre-heat the oven to 160C/140C fan.

Beat together 200g of the butter and 200g of the sugar till light and fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Sift in the self raising flour, then mix in the ground almonds and spices, the orange zest, the soaked fruit (and any juice), and the marzipan. Stir it all in then pour into the tin, level and bake for 45 minutes.

Take the cake out and turn the oven up to 200C/180C fan. Make the topping by rubbing together the remaining 50g of butter and sugar along with the 100g plain flour (like a crumble topping). Add the grated marzipan, and stir in the golden syrup, taking care that the mixture doesn't clump - I found this nigh on impossible - I might just leave out the syrup next time. Sprinkle this over the cake and put it back in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

Once the cake is cooked, take it out of the oven, add the marzipan balls to the top, then leave to cool in the tin. Mix together the icing sugar and orange juice and drizzle over the cake, leaving the icing to set a little before slicing.

Happy Easter!

Easter Baking Part 1 - Hot Splodge Buns

Quite often at the weekend, I get up early - well earlier than the Husband, later (usually) than the kids, and indulge in a bit of extra curricular baking. 

Baking that isn't particularly necessary to the smooth running of the RJ household (although it will often include a batch of bread, to justify the whole endeavour - "Well, the oven was on, so...). 

Baking to soothe my soul after the week that has been...

Actually, the baking might not be done before the Husband's up - but it's all been kicked off to the point of no return, so he often comes down to a kitchen that looks more like someone's had an accident in a flour factory (or added icing sugar to a food mixer while it's on full speed), tins, packets, knives, spoons and cracked eggshells and juiced lemon skins all over the place. Poor man.

Of course, this weekend it's Easter, so there was added purpose to my early baking session - hot cross buns and a rather tasty looking simnel tray bake thing, both of which I'd clocked in issues of April Good Food - the buns from 2013, the tray bake from April 2012's issue.

My record with hot cross buns is mixed. In the past, they have been like cannonballs on the heavier side, and I can never, NEVER get the cross in the middle right. Never one to shy away from a challenge, and armed with my new found bread confidence and a new recipe, I thought I'd give it a go - again.

I followed the recipe pretty much as is from the Good Food one (the link's up there) although I added in the zest of a lemon as well as an orange to the milk infusion.

You add a mixture of warm milk infused with orange and lemon zest and melted butter into the dry ingredients, along with an egg, so it's a very enriched dough, quite like a brioche.

It was also quite a wet dough, but where previously I would have panicked and chucked in more flour, I carried on kneading, and low, it came good.

Once it's risen, you divide it up and make your buns - 11 to represent the faithful Apostles (i.e. not Judas!), then put them in a circle on a floured baking sheet.

So far so good. Leave them again to plump up, before casually mixing up some flour and water paste and making crosses on each bun...

... or not. I never EVER manage this bit. Every year, I try. I use different methods suggested. Every year, I fail. This year may well be the last time...

But moving swiftly on, I'm sure you're not so shallow as to dismiss my buns for being more splodge than cross. And indeed, you really shouldn't because the buns themselves are a triumph. Really light - like iced bun texture, with a fruity, cinammony taste.  Not a rock in sight. They could have done with being a bit more spiced - if I make them again, I would add some all spice or something to give them a little more of those Easter scents

The recipe in Good Food recommends serving this ring of buns with some spiced honey butter (I expect if you did this, you'd get over the need for more spices in the buns themselves), but I chose to smother mine in passion fruit curd. Yum.

Rollercoaster parenting and dragon eggs

Parenting. How is it for you? A rollercoaster? That's pretty much how it is for me, and I've only survived 9 years of it. Apart from the admittedly rather extreme parts of my own parenting experience, the thing that really gets me is how one thing leads to another and before you know it, you've been talked into some completely bonkers project or other, feeling vaguely hysterical to boot.

now imagine it large scale, across the Humber

A throwaway comment the other week about how I'd made some bunting for my 40th birthday celebrations, and the next thing I know, I'm helping 1st Overton Rainbows with their contribution to the Helen Skelton/Blue Peter longest string of bunting ever Red Nose Day project. Two 2 metre bunting triangles, no less, to join a host of other flags adorning the Humber Bridge. Felt, scissors, fabric pens, orange squash, malted milk bisc.. oh sorry, those last two were 'tuck', not anything to do with the bunting. Crazy.





This from a woman who remains unshakeable in her belief that glitter was invented by a deeply mysogonist forbear of James Dyson who never spent any time with a toddler and a pot of PVA glue, and 'craft' is what Playgroup was for...

I am not a 'crafty' mummy. I am a reading stories mummy. A running around in a field mummy. A baking cakes mummy (of course). Try as I might (and I really do), I am not good at the whole craft thing. But one thing leads to another...

Blue & Pink are going to a Harry Potter party on Saturday. It promises to be a wonderfully orchestrated affair  - hand crafted 'invitations to join Hogwarts'. There is talk of the Petrificus Totalis game, and the potions lesson. I am torn between total admiration and a kind of snarling resentment - a new bar has been set. I for one am not in the market for competitive birthday parties - although I do own up to once spending 15 hours crafting a Thomas and the Troublesome Trucks birthday cake. 15 hours. In my defence, my son was in the grip of a potentially life threatening illness at the time, but even so - faced with this kind of inventiveness, I must stamp down a little part of me that has judged me on my birthday party enthusiasm and found me lacking...

Blue owns some 'robes' - and Pink has been hankering. The problem is that I MADE Blue's robes for a book day affair - nothing fancy, but Pink was after some herself, and things have moved on and I just haven't had time. So what is she to wear, my diminutive, headstrong, firecracker of a daughter? Well, my friends, I have convinced her to go as Hagrid. I have a curly black fright wig and enough black & brown facepaint to provide her a beard. She can wear some brown trousers and a shirt I modified for Blue to wear as a Celt (it works, I promise). My duffle coat with the sleeves rolled up, and her own pink umberella. 

"And perhaps we could make a dragon egg, Mummy? Hagrid always has a dragon egg"

My heart sinks. But then, one thing leads to another. Does this happen to other people or is it just me? I feel that I owe it to her to make the best of what is essentially a cobbled together affair. Am I really too busy to deny my  daughter? What kind of mother would that make me? A dragon egg? Let me think. Then the lightbulb moment!  A cake was on the cards anyway. There's no need for papier mache and messy balloon coating (which I imagine might be involved in such an endeavour - I can see it now bound to fail) - oh no! - I can blow the eggs. We can paint them! And before I know it, I have uttered those words out loud, so there is no turning back.

Why, why why? I am practically PHOBIC about blown eggs: it's a long story involving Christmas tree decorations and  the words "scarred for life". I could go into it now, but I won't - suffice to say that if my mum (remember, I love her, it's just easy to make the odd joke at her expense) could work out how to leave a comment on my blog, she'd probably remind me (and you all) of all the occasions I have sworn never to blow an egg myself for painting/craft purposes, less so even countenance the idea that I might inflict blown eggs on my children for whatever reason.

The cake required 4 eggs. I equipped myself with a pin and get started.

Getting the pin in is not as tricky as it first seems. But in my delight, I lose my head and put it down on the worktop. My camera is not working. I reach for my phone. 

Crack.

I try again. More luck next time, I get a hole in both ends - a pin hole to blow through, and an ever so slightly larger hole for the egg to slip out of. 

Or not

Can you see the pitiful blob of albumen? It is there. Do you know how much puffing and blowing that took?

In the end, I took a skewer to the 'exit hole', and - success:

OK, so may be I was hoping for a smaller hole

egg!

So I washed out the eggs and made a cake. And mighty good cake it was too.

Now all we need to do is paint the eggs.

Chocolate and raspberry roulade

 OK, so did you have a great New Year's Eve? Whatever you were doing? 

After the wet dog walk/recipe fail we headed off to the party last night with the kids and had a fantastic time. We didn't see the kids until just before midnight, and although Pink went into proper overtired meltdown with precisely 30 seconds to go, we were all there, together, for the countdown, the party poppers, the fizz and the kissing. It was lovely.

Despite the hasty exit immediately afterwards as the result of said meltdown, we had a great night and have crawled through today relatively unscathed. It helped that the weather has  finally been glorious, and to top it all, my jaw has miraculously sorted itself out, so I am off the painkillers, and my cobwebs this morning were strictly prosecco-related. My day was improved further by a beautiful cobweb-clearing dog walk, and then watching the DVD of Annie with Pink and the menfolk (Blue was most scathing of the whole thing, although I defy him to say he didn't get a little bit excited about the whole kidnap and rescue bit at the end when. All he could say is "Well, I just don't like musicals." More fool him, I say).

So I promised you chocolate roulade, and chocolate roulade I shall give you.

I intended to make this as our dessert for our New Year's Eve dinner party/gathering, and I'd already made the sponge before our guests had to postpone, so I thought it would probably be a good idea to finish it off and just make sure it all worked... I'll probably be making it again at the weekend when we're hoping our friends will be well enough to have New Year's Eve all over again (although as we explained to the kids at teatime today, the countdown, the party poppers, the fizz and the kissing might happen closer to 9 p.m. than midnight...) 

The best thing about this is that it is relatively easy to make, and not that bad (in a 'grand scheme' of things kind of way) for you, what with a fat free sponge, low fat cream and some fruit thrown in for good measure. The only caveat I must add is in relation to the ganache***, because as I explained last night, although it worked in the end, it was all a bit touch and go. We'll see how I get on writing it down today - I may have to revisit...

Chocolate and raspberry roulade

Serves lots - or a few greedy people. You'll get at least 12 slices - so may be that's a slice each for 12 people, or 3 slices for 4 people - I'm easy...

Ingredients
6 large eggs, separated
165g golden caster sugar
50g sifted cocoa powder, plus extra for dusting and rolling the roulade sponge
284ml pot of 'light' double cream (although you can use full fat if you like!)
400g frozen raspberries, thawed
50-100g icing sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
225g dark chocolate broken into pieces (but see caveat***)

You need a swiss roll tin around 23 cm x 33 cm, greased and lined, and more greaseproof paper for rolling.

Method

•  Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160Cfan.
• Whisk the egg yolks with 125g of the caster sugar until thick and pale. Fold in the sifted cocoa powder.
• In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites till they are stiff (I got a stainless steel bwl for my Kenwood for Christmas. So exciting to be able to give it an outing!) and then fold them into the egg yolk mix.
• Pour this sponge mixture into the lined tin, gently level the top and bake for about 25 mins till the sponge is starting to come away for the paper.
• Once the sponge is cooked, take it out of the oven. Spread a piece of greaseproof paper out big enough for the sponge to lay on, and sift some cocoa powder over it. Turn the sponge face down onto the cocoa powder and carefully peel away the paper that it was cooked on.  Using the paper that the sponge is now lying on, roll the sponge up from the short end and set aside.  
• Sieve 250g of the raspberries with the icing sugar, and whip the cream to soft peaks. When the cream is ready, stir through as much of the raspberry coulis as you feel necessary or to your taste. If you don't use all the coulis, you can serve it in a jug to pour over slices of the finished roulade. Slurp.
• Unroll the sponge carefully, although it doesn't matter if it does crack, and spread with the raspberry cream - again you may not need all of it but it's not going to go to waste served alongside - and then drain the remaining defrosted raspberries (add any juice to any left over coulis)  and spread over the cream. Roll the log up, this time without the paper, and sit on the serving plate. 
• Make the ganache. Put the chocolate in a bowl and then in a pan, add the vanilla extract and remaining caster sugar (40g) to 300ml of water and bring to the boil. Once boiled, add the water to the chocolate a little at a time, whisking furiously till the chocolate is melted, thick and glossy. 

          ***It was at this point that I poured in all the water, rather than a little at a time. I ended    up with silky, chocolate... water. I ended up adding about another 150g of dark chocolate and a few white chocolate chips that I had knocking around in the cupboard. I whisked and whisked then ended up putting it in the fridge, whisking every 10 mins or so, and eventually it thickened. Phew. If you don't want to take the risk, there are plenty of other ganache recipes out there, people!***

• Once the ganache is made, however you choose to make it, spread it thickly over the roulade, leaving the ends uncovered, and decorate, Yule Log style, with the prongs of a fork to make "bark". 

I had intended to use up some left over icing and marzipan from the Christmas cake, along with some food colouring and shimmer spray to make some tacky but fun decorations, but frankly the whole ganache episode left me fit only to reach for the gin bottle. And really, when it looks this good, I'm not sure it needed it.

 

 

***An Update 03/01/2013 - in my stress with the ganache, I tweeted @womanandhome about this, because I'd followed a recipe in their mag. I have had a tweet back!

" @Recipejunkie27 Hi there, apologies for the mistake - the recipe calls for 125ml of water and 300g of chocolate. Thanks! "

So there - you need 125ml of water and you'll be laughing.***