No 31 Triple Ginger Biscuits

Following my love of things ginger I thought I'd share this one with you.  Biscuits and squares travel better on the bike than large delicate cakes....

Triple Ginger Biscuits

6 oz butter
1 up packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup treacle
2.25 cups of flour
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
1/2 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Cream the butter and sugar until smooth.  Beat in the egg and treacle.  Combine all the dry ingredients and sift them into the creamy mix.  Lastly add the fresh and cystallized ginger.

Cover the dough and for at least 2 hours (better over night).  I have found that rolling the dough into a log inside some plastic cling-film before refrigerating it, means that you can simply slice it and bake the slices next day.

However if you prefer, you can roll the dough into 1 inch balls, place them 2 inches apart on a baking sheet

Either way, bake them for about 10 minutes at 175 degrees C.

They don't go really crisp, and are great to eat warm.......

Gooseberry Shortcake

This one doesn't have a number because it never made it to work. 

The gooseberries were ripe enough to pick last week.  Mr B had to pick them while I was at work and I came home on Friday to find a bowl of them in the fridge.  They were ripe enough to eat just like that but I managed to restrain myself.

Last year I ate them straight off the bush.  The bush is right next to the bee-hive, but with only one beehive that wasn't really a problem; they were extremely well behaved bees.  This year we have 4 beehives at the end of the garden, and at least 2 of them have a tendency to stroppiness.  At least the gooseberry bushes are well guarded by day.

Shortcake

4 oz butter
4 oz sugar
2 beaten eggs
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder

Cream the butter and sugar, add eggs, then sifted flour and baking powder.  Roll holf of the dough to fit a 9 inch diameter straight sided cake tin.  At this point I put the base in the oven (170 - 180 degrees C) while I roll out the top half.  That bit of extra cooking avoids the soggy-base risk once the fruit goes on.

Anyway - top that with a generous layer of stewed fruit sweetened to taste, or fresh berry fruit (works well with backberries, gooseberries etc) uncooked, and some sugar.  Put the other half of dough on top (I roll it out between two layers of plastic wrap, peel off the top, tip it onto the pie and then peel the second bit off.)

20 minutes to half an hour in the 170-180 degree oven.  Serve hot with cream, or cold in slices as a cake.

Pre-cooked fruit will give you a nice rounded top, the bumps come with using fresh uncooked fruit.....

No 30 - Afghans

A tradition of some sort in NZ, no one seems to know why they were named thus, and I suspect they are just an excuse to eat chocolate icing and walnuts.  However they are easy, great to make with kids, and popular it seems (if my work mates are anything to go by).

Use unsweetened cornflakes, and mash them up a bit otherwise the mix can bea bit crumbly and the 'biscuits' don't hold together properly.

Afghans

6 oz flour
3oz sugar
2 oz cornflakes
1 oz cocoa
7 oz butter

Mix together, squash dessertspoonfuls into a rounded mound, bake in a moderate over (170-180 degrees C) for 16 minutes.  When cool, ice with chocolate icing and top with half a walnut.

(My colleague suggested using Nutella..... now there's innovation for you.)

Pictured with, or without, flash lighting.... the flash certainly makes them look more chocolatey.

No 29 Malt Biscuits

Long gap in there, no break from baking though.  There was all the biscuits, flapjacks, and toasted mueslei I did for the attempt by my work colleagues on the Welsh 3000's. (That had to be postponed because of high winds, and I will be in Norway when they re-run their attempt - The mueslei biscuits were consumed at work; and during our Round the Island Race last weekend.  Scarlet Jester got 7th in class and 85th overall.  We had a good day out).

The day after the Round the Island Race was extremely busy with catching up at the allotment, Portsmouth and District Bee Keepers Association summer lunch time barbeque, and a visit later from friends we hadn't seen for a while.  I managed a batch of Malt Biscuits for this challenge (my paternal grandmother's recipe: she of the shortbread), and a German Plum Cake to feed to my guests.

Apart from the 'cream the butter and sugar' instruction malt biscuits are easy to make, and popular with my baking testers.  The most difficult part might be sourcing 'extract of malt' - that's the stuff Kanga feeds to Roo as strengthening medicine in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories.  When we were children my bother got fed a spoonful of malt extract every day - as strengthening medicine.  I'm not exactly sure what it is meant to add to the diet, but I was extremely narked that I wasn't allowed to eat it.  That might be why I developed a taste for the stuff.  I always have a jar in the cupboard now.

Malt Biscuits

8 oz butter
1 and half cups sugar
3 tablespoons of malt extract  (use a hot spoon dipped in boiling water)
2 large eggs
4 cups flour
1 tsp Baking Soda
2 tablesppons of cocoa

Cream the butter and sugar.  Beat in the malt extract.  Ad the eggs one at a time and beat well aftereach one.   Sift in the dry ingredients and work the whole lot into a very stiff dough.

Turn it out on the bench, squash it around a bit to get all the crumbs to attach and smooth out the texture.  Cut the dough in half and shape into 2 logs which you roll in aluminium foil and put in the fridge for 6-8 hours.

Unroll the foil, slice the logs into biscuits about 0.5cm thick, and bake on greased trays (or baking papers) for about 15 minutes at 170 degrees C.

We used to eat these cold with butter on, but then Kiwis in those days would butter anything.  They don't need the extra butter, but if you are being decadent.......  Family favorite.

No 28 - Rhubarb Muffins

These too are from Lindsay - she of the banana cake recipe.   It is scrawled in my notebook in a combination of red and green inks in both mine and Lindsay's handwriting which suggests she might have been giving me this off the top of her head, and had to call me later to fill in the bits she forgot.  (I keep muffin recipes in a pocket sized notebook - no idea why they are separate from my other recipes, and I have dozens of them.)

You possibly also need to understand that these are Kiwi (or possibly US) style muffins (not English style yeast muffins).

They are quick breads which means eat within a few hours (24 max) of baking, or put them in the freezer and microwave them back into life when you want to eat one.

Muffins are quick to make and at their best eaten warm.  I often make savory ones to have with soup as a quick warming lunch or 'tea' in Autumn, or or bake muffins for 'round the cans racing' food.

This recipe (possibly in keeping with the banana cake) is a generous one.  Most of my recipes make 12 muffins, this makes 18 to 24.

Rhubarb Muffins

Beat together 1/4 cup of oil, 3/4 cup of sugar, and 2 eggs

Add 2 cups of milk, 1/2 cup of plain yoghurt and 1 tsp vanilla.

Stir in 2 cups of chopped raw rhubarb

Sift in: 4 cups of self-raising flour
              1/2 tsop baking soda
              1 tsp cinnamon

Spoonfuls into greased muffin pans (I put hald spoonfuls, a tsp of cream cheese and then the rest of the muffin mix making sure th cream cheese is enclosed).  Sprinkle brown sugar on top if you like a bit of extra sweetness or brown topping.

Bake at 170-180 degrees C for about 20-25 minutes.

Mum's Bacon and Egg Pie

Bacon & Egg Pie is picnic food tradition in our family.  I hope you discover how easy it is to be impressive with this pie.












Another weekend spent yacht racing: Cowes to Deauville (and getting back).  I missed the Jubilee River Pageant, and given that I have lived on (literally ON) the Thames for the best part of the last16 years, that is unforgiveable.  I hope those of you who were there enjoyed a spectacular. 

In the spare hour I had before we left on Friday, I threw together one of my mother's reliable stand-bys - a bacon and egg pie - for 'easy to eat racing food'.

Half of it was gone before we made the start.....

Bacon & Egg Pie a la Diana

Line a fairly large roasting dish with ready rolled flaky pastry/puff pastry,

Cover the bottom with bacon - either strips of streaky or chopped up bacon ends. 

Sprinkle a generous quantity of frozen peas over that

Beat up enough eggs to cover all that (with 1/4 pint of cream if you like rich) add ground black pepper, and pour it in.


Decorate the top with sliced tomatoes and strips from any left over pastry

Bake at 200 deg C until the egg mix is set and pastry golden.

(For an even more substantial pie, chop up any left over boiled spuds lurking in the fridge and throw them in with the peas.)

Eat hot (with homemade tomato ketchup) or cold, or slightly warm.  Freeze leftover slices (or make extra for the freezer).  Thawed and reheated works well too.

Bacon & Egg Pie is picnic food tradition in our family.  I hope you discover how easy it is to be impressive with this pie.

No 27 - Honey Fruit Cake

The bees have been looking for new homes.  We ran out of hives to put them in.  Meanwhile someone from Mr B’s beekeeping class, having had a run of bad luck with his bees, decided that perhaps this was not for him and offered us his three hives – sans bees of course, but still laden with stores that his bees had put away before departing his ‘care and control’ (if bees could ever be said to be within anyone’s control; as we have discovered).

The honey contained in these frames was set completely solid so the only way to ‘extract’ it was to cut the whole lot from the frames, pile it into a cauldron and heat it very gently.  At about the halfway mark I have bottled up about 6-8lb of very dark rich honey, and set aside a couple of good sized slabs of wax for soap making.  Because the honey has been heated I will keep it all at home for baking and making mueslei.

I thought I had a recipe somewhere for a fruit cake that used a lb (454gm) honey but I can’t find it, so searched the web and found a great selection of honey recipes on this website. I like to promote beekeeping and beekeeping websites, so you will find this in my list of links as well.

I modified this recipe to use only Mixed Dried Fruit, then doubled it, and I boiled my fruit (which was a bit hard and dry) in a whole 440ml can of Guinness, and proceeded from there.  The cake is definitely rich, with strong honey flavours and just a hint of Guinness.  Even sliced up and packed in a large plastic box it survived the motorbike ride in my backpack.

Honey Rich Fruit Cake

4oz. Mixed Dried Fruit

4oz. Sultanas

4oz. Dates

2oz. Dried Apricots

2oz. Cherries

 ¼ Pint Beer

4oz. Butter

6oz. Honey

2 Eggs

4oz. Plain Flour

4oz. Whole Self-Raising Flour

½ Tsp Spice

Cream butter and honey together. Beat eggs and add alternatively with sifted flour and salt to creamed mixture. Add fruit and enough beer if necessary to give a dropping consistency.

Turn into well greased 7 inch round tin (or 2lb. loaf tin) and bake on middle shelf for about 1¼ - 1½ hours in a pre-heated oven (300°F/150°C)

Allow to cool a little then turn out onto wire cake stand and leave to cool.

Yacht Racing

Race starts at Harwich tomorrow morning, goes across to Holland by some route around the North Sea, and we won't be back until late Sunday.  So I won't get any baking done this weekend. 

A lovely lady at work has just given me a gift of some baking ingredients, so I shall put my thinking cap on and find recipes that use them.  What are your best recipes with ground almonds?  All help gratefully accepted, atributions given....  just click on the word 'comments' below this and send me yours.

No 26 - ANZAC biscuits

This recipe came out of a New Zealand icon - the Edmonds Cookbook.  I have been told that in the early days of the book's existence (written to promote Edmonds baking products, strapline: "Sure to Rise"), the Edmonds used to send a copy to all newly engaged women.  I assume that they got the details from the engagements announced in the country's newspapers.

Generations of us have grown up with the Edmonds Cookbook, and more than one mother has deemed it an essential for a son leaving home to do so armed with a book of Edmonds' cooking wisdom.

My recollection of the copy at home was an A5 sized soft covered book  (a picture of the Edmonds Factory with its "Sure to Rise" icon on top, and the beautiful gardens it was also famed for in front), dog-eared and stained with years of baking spills, falling open at the Queen Cakes recipe.  (Since those days sprial binding transformed recipe books.)

ANZAC Biscuits

2 oz flour
3 oz sugar
2/3 cup rolled oats
2/3 cup desicated coconut
2 oz butter
1 Tb golden syrup
1/2 tsp Baking Soda dissolved in 2 Tb boiling water

Melt the butter and golden syrup together and add the soda and water.  Pour the wet ingredients into the mixed dry ingredients and stick it all together.

Drop teaspoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet and bake in a moderate over for about 15 minutes, until spread out and golden all over.

They range, depending on your mix, from a bit sticky in the middle and crunchy round the edges, to crunchy all the way across.  Take care as they can burn quite quickly after passing the stage of being 'ideal'.  For the English cooks out there - think slightly sticky hobnob.

No 24 - Spiced Date Triangles

Given that we were at No 14 when I let someone talk me into this blog, it has taken me a while to catch up with myself.  This is it - when this goes on-line I will be up-to-date and can concentrate in getting some photos together to illustrate some of the entries.  I never realized that this blogging business would require me to be so organized about baking.  Writing the recipes down has been the worst bit; I can't make all this up as I go along.  I have had to work out a measurement for some of the guesstimates I regularly use!

Here is a proper recipe and another one for those little biscuit things that go well beside a cup of 'sterk' coffee.

Spiced Date Triangles

2/3 cup (110 g) chopped pitted dates
1/4 cup (60ml) golden syrup
1 TB water
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1.75 cups (260 g) plain flour
1 cup (125 g) ground almonds
1/2 cup (100 g)firmly packed brown sugar
125 g butter, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 egg whie lightly beaten
1 Tb cinnamon sugar
3/4 cup (60 g) flaked almonds

Combine dates, syrup, water and spice in a pot and simmer for 2 mins; cool.

Combine sifted flour, ground almonds and sugar, and rub in the butter.  Add the egg and the cooled date mixture, stir well, knead gently and using a piece of foil to wrap it in, shape the dough into a long triangle (big Toblerone comes to mind).

Refrigerate it for 1 hour and then slice about 5mm thick, place them on greased oven trays, brush with egg white and sprinkle with almond flakes.

Bake about 12 mins in a moderate oven (that's 170 to 180 deg C)

Makes about 55.