I've pretty much stopped buying recipe books - well, unless it's one I really want or 'need'! I just don't have the space to store them, and it seems profligate to have too many. Of course I make delighted exceptions to this rule for gifts, and also for irresistable bargains... So when I found Great British Bake Off winner Jo Wheatley's 'A Passion for Baking' in a local charity shop for only a pound, I figured I had nothing to lose in buying it. It's full of appealing recipes, mainly sweet, and has a nice section on Baking with Children. Ted is just beginning to show an interest in helping in the kitchen; although 'helping' in the loosest sense of the word, as only a toddler can! However, I love to include him when he wants to help out. Here he is starting off our chilli con carne earlier this week (eating the raw onion pieces!):
I decided to make my first Jo Wheatley recipe a seasonal one, and make her Peanut Cornflake Cakes, but substitute Mini Eggs for the Peanut M&Ms she suggests. There's something that appeals to everyone, adults and children alike, about those mini nest-like cakes at this time of year... And I have to say that this is the best recipe for them that I have ever found! The addition of peanut butter to the mix makes them really special and completely more-ish. Initially I loved the fact that the recipe only made a small amount, I didn't want to end up making 24 of them if they didn't turn out to be that tasty, but now I'm wishing I had more as this little batch disappeared within 24 hours!
A visiting friend asked for the recipe having tasted them (er, eaten two!), but I couldn't find it anywhere online. So I thought it was a perfect recipe to blog. Peanut Cornflake Cakes - from A Passion for Baking by Jo Wheatley
40g unsalted butter
2 tsp golden syrup
100g milk chocolate, chopped
2 tsp peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
80g cornflakes (although I used bran flakes which worked brilliantly)
1 small bag of peanut M&Ms (or Mini Eggs, which I used)
You will also need 6 paper muffin cases or 10 fairy cake cases.
Combine the butter, golden syrup and chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat; stir until melted. Add the peanut butter and stir until smooth.
Tip the cornflakes into a large mixing bowl, pour over the chocolate mixture and stir until all of the cornflakes are coated.
Spoon the sticky mixture into the paper cases and top with an M&M or Mini Egg.
Chill in the fridge until set.
If these are anything to go by, that was a pound well-spent, and I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from this book.
Easter is proving to be a strange time here in Brunei. In the UK the shops are no doubt filled with the secular signs of the season - chicks and rabbits and chocolate eggs - and churches across the country will be preparing for the most important event in the Christian calendar (and oh how I miss my church-choir days at this time of year). But here... nothing. Not even a day off work on Good Friday or Easter Monday.
My only Easter egg has been a lone Cadbury's mini-egg which was perched atop a chocolate-crispy-cake nest at Book Club last week (thanks Lis!). Still, I suppose I should just take the view that it's much healthier not to be stuffing my face with chocolate this year, and virtuously nibble on some fresh papaya instead...
But I couldn't let the season pass without some culinary celebration. We've planned a roast for Sunday (chicken, because the only joints of lamb we could find were vast frozen legs of it which would never fit into our tiny oven) and I'm making a fresh lemony drizzle cake, which always puts me in mind of Spring.
In previous years I've made a Simnel Cake, but somehow didn't fancy that this year. The recipe I like to use includes a lot of dried fruit, notably pears, and I just haven't seen them in the shops here. So last night - on Good Friday itself - I decided to have my first ever attempt at Hot Cross Buns and I turned straight to Nigella for inspiration, 'Feast' to be exact.
You begin by heating milk and butter with cardamom pods and cloves. I threw in several extra cardamom pods as I love them and I was worried mine might be losing their flavour (although they are a relatively 'new' purchase, being only 18 months out of date!) The recipe also calls for the zest of an orange, but I didn't have any so added a tsp each of Boyajian Orange oil and Lemon oil. The smells wafting from this pan were incredible!
This recipe proved an excellent way of using up some of the things lurking in the cupboards: My Canadian friends will recognise these 'Club House' brand spices, which dates them to our time living in Ontario from 2006-2008... but they have no use-by dates, and still smell fragrant and delicious, so I will just keep using them.
I used Pumpkin Pie Spice (which is a heady mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and cloves), plus some extra cinnamon.
I also grated in plenty of extra nutmeg - my favourite spice I think.
The sultanas were looking a little dry and unappetising, so I had the brainwave of putting them into the warm buttery milk to rehydrate. This was an excellent idea, apart from 2 fatal flaws... it meant that I could no longer see the cloves which I was meant to take out once the milk had cooled a little, and it also meant that the fruit became very squidgy, making kneading the resulting dough rather a messy affair!
Anyway, I think I managed to locate and remove all the cloves - after a traumatic childhood incident where I bit into a whole clove which was lurking in my bread-sauce I have a horror of doing the same thing again. Well, I put 3 in and after much searching got 2 and a half out, so there'll be a certain Russian Roulette element to eating the finished buns...
I used to think I was very bad at making bread products, I felt that yeast and I just didn't get on, but since moving to Brunei I now feel myself to be quite the expert! I'd love to claim that it was my superior culinary skills, but sadly that would be wrong. It's just that it's really warm here, perfect for proving bread.
Unfortunately, as the dough had its second rise, my previously round buns splurged out into weird shapes. I didn't think there was much point trying to force them back into the correct shape so just drizzled the crosses on as best I could and chucked them into the oven.
When cooked they had a quick sugary glaze which I hope goes a little way to disguising the fact that the bun pictured above was the only vaguely circular one of the 12...
Today, Easter Eve morning, I enjoyed a Hot Cross Bun with a hot strong coffee. The bun was warmed in the oven and slathered with salted butter. I'm really pleased with these - they taste amazing, full of spices and moist fruits. They're heavier, more doughy than the buns you'd buy in a supermarket, but I think that's always the way with home-made breads. I'm looking forward to trying them toasted as well.
A very Happy Easter to you all, wherever you may be and however you may be celebrating.
I didn't do as much baking as I had hoped for Easter. This was largely due to the fact that the school term didn't end until Maundy Thursday, so rather than the usual week-either-side-of-Easter holiday, we have the 2 weeks after Easter. I'm not complaining of course - it's lovely now to have so much time after the Easter weekend - but it has meant less cake. Oh well.
I've never got round to making my own Hot Cross Buns, but we have enjoyed plenty of bought ones. Halved, hot from the toaster and slathered in butter... sometimes with Marmite too. Although everyone who've ever seen me spread Marmite (or even Bovril) on a Hot Cross Bun thinks I'm some kind of madwoman. But it's nice, trust me!
The one thing I did manage to bake was a Simnel Cake. I don't use a 'proper' Simnel Cake recipe, but instead make Nigella's Marzipan Fruit Cake from the recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess. Instead of the traditional layer of marzipan in the middle of the cake, this recipe calls for a block of marzipan to be cubed, then frozen overnight before being stirred into the uncooked cake mix. This means that there are nuggets of marzipan throughout the cake - as well as the layer, plus 'apostles' (just 11 - Judas doesn't get one), I put on the top.
Looking at the finished cake I think I should have made the effort to make my own marzipan. The pack I purchased, labelled 'Golden Marzipan' should perhaps have been renamed 'Scarily Vivid Yellow Marzipan'... although maybe that might not have made it a best-seller. Our attempts to burnish the marzipan topping using our kitchen blow-torch nearly ended in disaster (Rob lost all the hairs on the back of one hand, and I consider myself lucky to still have my eyebrows...) But, it's the taste that counts, no? And this cake tastes good.
It's a very fruity cake, made with glace cherries, sultanas and, slightly unusually, dried pears. These give the cake a wonderful fudgy graininess and help keep it moist, even when accidentally overcooked.
I think I left it in the oven for 10 minutes too long, but in my defence it was very hard to test its 'doneness' as inserting a skewer without hitting some gungy marzipan was impossible. However, it was far from ruined as the marzipan and fruit kept it pleasantly squishy.
The recipe can be found here, on the Nibb'lous website. I didn't change the recipe much, although I don't keep white rum in the house so ended up soaking the dried fruit in medium sherry, with a splash of rum flavouring and some extra orange-flower water (not, incidentally, an essential addition to the cake).
