Drier / Dehydrater / Dried fruit (bananas in this case)

I got a question today about the drier I mentioned in the last post - see here
(that is a bag of dried bananas beside it ...I slice  them longways so they dry quicker)  I never pass up an over-supply of cheap, ripe fruit which has reached the end of its shelf-life.

This one does not have variable temperature and is supposed to be used for fruit and veg only.  Meat should (in theory) be dried at a slightly higher temperature, but I have dried meat and fish in it very successfully - cut into strips and marinated before drying. 

It is a great bit of kit for preparation for some long distance sailing, and has done very good service over the years.  Even fruit leathers are possible - fruit pulp (sweetened with a bit of pureed banana if needed), gets spread out on freezer paper on the trays - takes a little longer but is just as effective.

Banana Curd

Heard of Lemon Curd?  Well this is the banana variety.  My grandmother used to make this.  It is not a long keeping spread - a few weeks (6-8 say) and preferably in the fridge or cold safe.  New Zealanders eat a lot of bananas - so we have a lot of bananas getting over-ripe from time to time too.

Last week I bought 5 kg of bananas for 50p, put most of them in the drier, and reserved the over-ripe and damaged ones for banana bread.   Somewhere in the middle of a thought process a memory fought its way to the surface and I had to go on a quest .... for an old diary that had the 'other' childhood recipes.  And here it is:

Banana Curd

Set up a double-boiler - basin over a pot of boiling water.

In the basin melt together:
2 oz caster sugar
2 oz butter
juice and zest of half a lemon
juice and zest of quarter an orange
1" stick of cinnamon & 3 cloves (ground)

Add 2 beaten eggs and cook stirring for a couple of minutes
Add 10 mashed bananas, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for a further 10-15 minutes.

Pot is up in small pre-warmed jars and cover and seal.  You can eat this straight away so have some freshly made bread handy.

No 43 - Cherry Almond Biscuits

Mothering Sunday - while my other half was entertaining 'sa mere et sa soeur' following his maginifient roast pork 'lunch', I took my turn at doing the dishes and turned the kithen to my own use to bake something a little bit special for a meeting at work tomorrow morning.  I needed to hunt out a biscuit recipe that I hadn't made before (for my personal challenge), and I've found this which fits perfectly with my current obsession for recipes with ground almonds.

And this one is really easy.

Cherry Almond Biscuits

200 g butter
90g caster sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
25g ground almonds
200g self-raising flour
glace cherries

Melt the butter, stir in sugar and essence, sift in the flour and add the ground almonds. Mix the lot to a smooth dough,

then roll teaspoonfuls into balls and space them out on baking sheets (aim for 25-30).  Stick half  cherry on top of each, flattening the ball slightly. 

  Bake 15-20 minutes at 160 degrees C (fan oven)/180 degrees C (conventional).  Leave them 5 minutes on the trays before transferring them to a wire rack.  They are very buttery and will crumble if you move them too soon.

No 42 - Coffee Walnut Biscuits

There is a jar of aging instant coffee taking up space on the shelf above our kettle.  Neither of us drink instant coffee, and the only visitor who does (other half''s mother) insists on a particular brand - which isn't this one.  

Not being one to throw anything away unless it poses serious risk to health or digestion, and never having heard of or eaten a coffee flavoured biscuit, I decided a coffee flavoured biscuit was well over-due.

This week's biscuits (see previous post) seemed rich in chocolate (in particular), dried fruit of all kinds (but with a clear preference for cherries), nuts (for England), but no coffee.  So some research was called for.

It's quite simple really - take a basic biscuit recipe (butter, suggar, egg, flour and leavening, and add coffee - and some walnuts, I reckon, because coffee and walnuts go together like.... well like...coffee and walnuts.)


Coffee Walnut Biscuits

150g butter
100g brown sugar
100g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
250g flour
75g chopped walnuts
1/4 tsp each baking powder & bicarb soda
2.5 tablespoons instant coffee dissolved in 1 TB hot water and 1 TB milk

Cream butter and sugars, add egg and beat well.  Sift in dry ingredients and add coffee mix, walnuts, and vanilla.  Roll into balls, space out on a baking sheet,  and flatten with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.

Bake at 160 degrees C (fan)/ 170-180 degrees C conventional, for 15 minutes.

A Baking Week

I've just had a week at home (some annual leave to use up, and my available funds committed to a trip home to EnZed in April), so I have spent it getting the allotment ready for Spring, cleaning up a topper dinghy and our old escort van which are both for sale, digging up my front lawn which was pure moss and not a great enhancement to the house, and BAKING.

The allotment hasn't needed any digging, the layer of seaweed suppressed the weeds, and a thick mulch on top of some two year composted stable waste has it looking very loved.  This year's potato bed is deep under straw and the seed spuds are chitting on the kitchen windowsill, where I have been able to watch over them while doing my daily baking.  I dug 7 biscuit recipes off the BBC Good Food website and resolved to make one batch a day.

So here they all are (clockwise from bottom centre)

Custard and White Chocolate Biscuits http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2198644/custard-and-white-chocolate-biscuits
A great tasting crisp biscuit, easy to make

Cherry Shortbread Hearts
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1104645/cherry-shortbread-hearts These are a bit of a challenge to make - you need to have a  lot of time to rub butter into flour.  I cheated and cut it in using the food processor.  It was virtually impossible therefore to bring the dough together without some extra wet ingredient (that isn't mentioned in the list of ingredients).  I used a few tablespoons of water.




Almond & Lemon Curd Biscuits
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9839/almond-and-lemon-curd-buttons
A bit of work but well worth it; fabulous biscuits.



Chocolate Chunk Pecan Cookies
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5720/chocolate-chunk-pecan-cookies
I accidentally cut a few corners on the assembly method for this recipe and it turned out to be the easiest (and possibly most luxurious) of this week's biscuits.  Crisp but with a bit of a tendency to crumble (and can be eaten straight from the freezer as my other half will attest).


Pistachio & Cranberry Cookies
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1759655/pistachio-and-cranberry-cookies
Despite the name, this is 'shortbread'.  It is a good shortbread too.  Leave it in the fridge for longer than suggested in the recipe and use a well sharp knife to cut the log.


Gooey Chocolate Cherry Cookies
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/9837/gooey-chocolate-cherry-cookies
The name says it all.  This one was voted favorite by a group of the other half's work associates.



Star Anise Biscuits
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10212/star-anise-biscuits
They smell heavenly, - and have delicate flavour.  I made these ones small to have beside that special coffee.