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.

No 41 - German Plum Cake

The inspiration for baking something new often comes (in my kitchen at least) from having something I want to use up before it wastes.  So it was with plums I had bought cheaply and in large quantity a couple of years back.  The answer was Plum Cake, and although I suspect it is meant to be made in a shallow rectangular baking tin, and cut into squares (a 'slice' I suppose), it works well for us like this - particularly if we intend to spoon it out still warm and eat it for pudding with lashings of custard.


The plums are a refreshing tart contrast to sweet cake, and the ground almonds ensure a moist firm texture.

German Plum Cake

150g golden caster sugar
150g butter
3 large eggs
75g sifted plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
100g ground almonds
75g chopped walnuts
16 plums (depends on size - use 8 of those big ones we get in supermarkets these days)

Cut the plums into quarter and remove the stones.  (I slice the really big plums into smaller pieces than quarters.)

Cream the butter and sugar until it looks like french vanilla ice cream.  Beat the eggs lightly and add them bit by bit to the creamed buter/sugar mixture and beat in well.

Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold it in with a metal spoon.  Fold in the ground almonds and walnuts chopped to about pea-sized pieces.

Spread the mixture into your chosen baking tin (well greased beforehand of course), and throw the plum pieces on top.  The mixture rises up through the plums as it cooks.

Bake 40-45 minutes at 170-180 degrees C (depending on fan or conventional oven).

PS. I also put a dash of vanilla in the mix

No. 40 - Belgian Biscuits

These are probably no more Belgian than I am.  They seem to be an Australian and New Zealand thing, however in texture and with all their spices they are not unlike a lot of the biscuits that abound in Northern European countries.

By traditional they are round with serrated edges, iced with white and sprinkled with raspberry flavoured jelly crystals.  Jelly crystals are a bit hard to find here, where I note that jelly seems to be made from blocks of concentrated jelly rather than gelatine in granular form. 

They were a treat to make as a child; being allowed to spread one with jam and find another exactly the right size and shape to sandwich onto it, carefully swipe on a circle of white icing and decorate with a pinch of the jelly crystals.  The good thing about jelly crystals is the burst of intense flavour that they add.  Pink sugar provides the look, but it really lacks the zing.

This week I made them heat-shaped a.) because I’ve got heart-shaped biscuit cutters, and b.) because it’s St. Valentine’s Day on Thursday.

Belgian Biscuits

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

250g butter, softened

1 egg

2 1/2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 3/4 cups plain flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 Tb cocoa

Raspberry jam, white icing, and pink sugar or jelly crystals

Cream the butter and suggar, add the egg and beat well.... I read a version that goes - throw the softened butter, the sugar and the egg in the blender..... it seems to work equally well so do that.  Then sift in the dry ingredients and pulse until you have a dough-ball.

Tip it onto your bench with some sprinkled flour and squash it about a bit to make it all stick together, cut it into two, wrap the pieces in plastic film and refrigerate them for half an hour or so.

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees C (fan oven) - 180 degrees C conventional and prepare two or three baking sheets.

Roll out the dough to about 5mm thick, cut it with a biscuit cutter and slide the biscuits onto baking sheet.  Bake 15-20 minutes and cool them on a rack. 

Stick the biscuits together with raspberry jam.  Ice them with white icing and sprinkle with pink crystals.

You can make pink sugar with 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, and a couple of drops of red food colouring - mixed well.

Saturday was wet and snowy and I spent the day out cutting birch off some common land with the Hampshire Conservation Volunteers;  a great day out despite the weather, a magnificent bonfire, and a piece of birch to take home for my wood-carving class, where I plan to make a kuksa (and possibly some wooden spoons for my kitchen).  Anyway as a result the baking was left until the last minute on Sunday and I was too rushed (and too lazy truth be known) to do some fancy flood icing on my themed biscuits.  Maybe I’ll save that for next year….but I doubt it.  They are not for sale and they’ll be consumed in an instant whether swiped or flooded with icing – so swiped it is.  They did however get royal icing because I’m a convert to its superior properties.

January Resolutions

Loads of my colleagues are on a weight loss challenge - £10 to enter winner takes all based on a percentage of body weight lost by the end of January.  Not a good month to be bringing baking to work then? 

Unless I had entered.

I hadn't.  I've got no chance.

I'm knitting this month - wedding ring lace - a woollen shawl so fine that should pull through a wedding ring when it's finished.  Watch this space.....

More baking in February.

Gingerbread Christmas Tree

No 39 - Swedish Christmas Biscuits

About 10 years ago (om ti år siden) I lived in Denmark.  I like the tradition of having the Xmas celebration at night on 24th - we had already started doing that with friends when we lived in London.  In the dark it somehow seems much brighter and more celebratory.  The day-time version does drag on doesn't it...?      Long after I would like to go for a bike ride, or a walk, or just get outdoors.  You never want to go back outdoors after dark.

Anyway another of the Scandinavian Jule traditions I adopted came  from their range of baked goods.  I still make Christmas Cake (that's from my NZ background), and Christmas Puddings (that's for my UK life), and now I also make Peberkager as well.  The only difference is that not having any kids I don't make them big, and decorated with icing to hang on the tree.  This year however I did make a batch for a friend with 2 children and she reckoned her kids (all three of them she said - referring I suspect to her husband, who is a prodigous baker himself) would enjoy the process of icing them and hanging them up.

Swedish Ginger Christmas Biscuits

140 g butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup treacle

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla essence

4 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

icing to decorate

thin ribbon to hang them up

Melt the butter, sugar, treacle and spices in a saucepan over a low heat.  Cool

Stir in the egggs and vanilla.  Stir in the sifted flour and baking powder and make sure it is well mixed.  Divide the dough into 3, wrap each portion in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge for at least two hours.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C (170 for fan ovens).  Line some baking trays with non-stick paper.  Roll out a portion to about 4 mm thick, cut out shapes and put them on the trays.

Use a piping nozzle to make a hole in the top of each one.  Bake for 5-10 minutes.  They should be firm but they will only be crisp once they have cooled completely.  Cool them on a rack.  Repeat with all the dough portions.

Decorate, thread with ribbon and hang them on your Christmas Tree.

No 38 - Mudcake

While I was as University I worked nearly full time 5 nights a week in a local restaurant.  The owners were head cook and maitre d' together and ran one of the most 'hip' restaurants in town.  They eschewed formal 'cheffing' qualifications and pulled together everyday dishes from a wide range of ultures and countries where they had travelled.  Dishes on the black board menu hailed from around the Mediterranean, Middle East, North and West Africa, Mexico, Indonesia & Japan - and anything else that was tasty, unfussy, fresh & personal.

Daily changes in the blackboard menu reflected that which was seasonally available and as much as possible was purchased from local producers. (And this was the 1980's)

Sue grew a wide range of herbs, and fresh herbs featured abundantly.  My own garden supplemented this on occasion.  We sometimes used quient afternoons when all 'prep' forthe evening was complete, to make up jars of colourful preserves that were displayed on open shelves between the otherwise open kitchen andthe dining room: salted lemons, spiced mandarins, red capsicum jelly, asparagus and red pepper strips, pickled carrot sticks for the antipasti platters, pickled qualis eggs, feta cheese in herbed olive oil & garlic......

Only the desserts and puddings were relatively unchanging -homemade icecreams, cakes, special mousses, and guest appearances using seasonal fruit.

This mud cake was a standard.  I don't recall it ever going off the menu, and it was always in demand.

Mud Cake

Sift together:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1 and 3/4 cups raw sugar (I use golden sugar in UK)

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

then whisk in

2 large eggs

2 cups water

1/2 up oil

And really whisk it lots.  Introduce lots of air.  Give your whisking arm a work out.

This is a really runny mix - don't be alarmed by that.

Line he base of a 9 inch loose botton tin and grease the sides.  Pour in the mix and bake at 180 degrees C (fan oven) for 1 hour. 

Let it cool in the tin.

When it is cold use a large knife to slice it into 3 layers horizontally.  Put raspberry jam generously between the bottom and middle layer.  Put raspberry jam AND some of the icing between the middle and top.  Put icing all over the top and sides.

The Icing:

1.5 cups icing sugar

1 cup cocoa

125 g butter

juice of 1 lemon

100 g sour cream.

Sift the dry ingredients, soften the butter and beat all the ingredients together.  I make this in advance, put it in the fridge for a while, then microwave it just before I use it - that seems to improve the texture, makes it  easier to spread, and makes it go really glossy.

No 37 - Lime Marmalade and Pear Cake

As promised I have been working on using up lime and ginger marmalade.  And there were some pears looking neglected in the fruit bowl that went into this cake  (pears and ginger always seem to go well together don't you find?)- so it was very moist, slightly gritty as pear cakes are (as pears tend to be) and was very popular at work - even without icing, which tends to just get stuck all over the place on the trip up to London.

Lime and Ginger Marmalade & Pear Cake

6 oz butter

2 oz butter

1/4 cup golden syrup

2 eggs

5 ox marmalade

10 oz flour (wholemeal if you like texture and believe in making cakes a bit more healthful)

4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ginger (if your marmalade doesn't have it already - or you like extra)

2 grated pears

1 tsp soda disolved in 1/4 milk

Cream the butter sugar and golden syrup, beat in the eggs, then the marmalade.  Sift in the dry ingredients, addn the grated pears and lastly stir in the soda and milk.

I useda 9" ring tin for this cake - so that it cooks slightly faster.  Grease it well.

Bake at 160 degrees C for 1 hour to 75 minutes.  Cool it in the tin for about 15 minutes.

You could ice it with icing made from icing sugar and  lemon or lime juice - and sprinkle on chopped toasted walnuts if you like some class to your cake.  We just like cake - and this one is quite good as a pudding - still warm with lashings of custard......