I may not be as good at this as this site, but I'm getting there.
Sunday, 8 June 2008
Saturday, 7 June 2008
Baking Day! (June): brownies, cupcakes and biscuits
Although there have been bits and pieces of baking going on, it feels like a very long time indeed since the last baking day. In the end it turned into rather a mammoth day, with me making not one, but three things! Clearly I had been feeling deprived.
I've been craving brownies all week for some reason. I'm not sure why because they are rarely something I think about eating of baking. Perhaps I just felt the need for a pure chocolate hit. So whatever was going to happen brownies would be made. However, I also wanted to make some biscuits. Ages ago I bought a moose-shaped cookie cutter and still hadn't gotten around to using it. N kept reminding me of it, and this week my new hoodie arrived in the post, complete with moose design and "mooses like peanut butter too..." slogan. So I knew I had to get the cutter out and give it ago, moose shaped peanut butter biscuits it had to be!
But, then I was faced with a real dilemma. I already had to things I wanted to make, but three new cookbooks on my reading pile. It felt rude not to try something from them, particularly as the Ottolenghi has such an impressive and extensive baking section. Also, N had commented in a cafe recently that their chocolate cake looked really good, and that he reckoned the only reason he thought so was because it was decorated with bits of Cadbury's Flake! I of course, replied with a sarcastic comment about now having to top anything I baked for him with Flake to make it appetising. Another challenge for my baking day, I had to make something I could stick a bit of flake on to continue the joke.
It occurred to me that I also hadn't indulged my cupcake love for a while too, and what would be more perfect than cute little cakes topped with flake. Fortunately Ottolenghi not only includes two cupcake recipes in his book, but I had all the ingredients for one of them.
Thus began the baking day adventures. My mission, to make low-fat brownies, peanut butter cut-out biscuits and hazelnut cupcakes topped with flake!
The brownie recipe came from Baking Bites, a blog I not only read twice a day (because she manages to update so often) but rate really highly. It not only talks about recipes, but reviews products and give tips and advice. It really is everything you'd want from a food blog. There had been a post on their previously about double chocolate brownies, that looked great, but then a few days later she posted about low-fat brownies. Now what with needing as low fat a diet as possible because of my back this immediately caught my eye, especially as her comments said that it didn't lack anything taste and texture wise die to being low fat. I eagerly copied down the recipe and decided to give it a go. The batter was really thick, and hard to spread in a parchment lined baking tray (I had to get N to hold the paper in place while I struggled with the spatula) but it did settle out whilst baking. I wasn't sure what the result would be like, especially as I managed to overcook it slightly and so it didn't come out as gooey as I had hoped. However, the taste was great. Rich and cakey (due to overbaking, next time I'd baked for less time to get it fudgey) and with a nice chocolate flavour that wasn't too sweet. Plus you definitely wouldn't know it was low fat.
Low-fat chocolate brownies (makes 8)
preheat the oven to 180C and grease/line a 10" by 6" baking tin
3/4 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2oz dark chocolate
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp fromage frais of low-fat yoghurt
1 egg
1 egg white
1tsp vanilla essence
Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl melt together the butter and chocolate. Whisk this mixture with the sugars and yoghurt and when combined whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Gently mix in the flour. The batter will be really thick. Bake for about 20mins until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs. Allow to cool then cut into eight.
The peanut butter biscuits posed slightly more of a problem. I couldn't find a recipe anywhere for a peanut butter cookie recipe that you could roll out and cut shapes with. In the end I decided to just experiment. It could go horridly wrong, but that was a risk that would be worth taking! I used a basic recipe for cut-out biscuits and used peanut butter rather than butter. I also only used an egg yolk, since I had one left from the brownies. This meant the dough didn't really come together, so I had to add a bit of water, but in the end it rolled out fine and made some nice biscuits, not too sweet with a subtle peanut flavour. I glazed them with some of the icing I was going to use on the cupcakes.
Moosey peanut butter biscuits. (Makes 8-10 large biscuits)
Preheat oven to 190C and line/grease a baking sheet
125g plain flour
63g peanut butter
63g brown sugar
1 egg yolk (or 1/2 beaten egg)
water to make up to a dough
Beat the butter and the sugar and add the egg. Sieve the flour into the mixture and mix into a dough, gradually adding enough water to make it roll-able. Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake on a high shelf for aprox. 15 mins.
Finally I made the hazelnut cupcakes. I halved the recipe to make only six since there was already a rather large amount of baked goods in the house. Instead of using the cream cheese icing suggested in the book I used a whipped chocolate ganache, and plonked a hunk of flake on top.
Now you have all these delicious goodies, settle down in front of the cricket with a cup of tea and enjoy!
I've been craving brownies all week for some reason. I'm not sure why because they are rarely something I think about eating of baking. Perhaps I just felt the need for a pure chocolate hit. So whatever was going to happen brownies would be made. However, I also wanted to make some biscuits. Ages ago I bought a moose-shaped cookie cutter and still hadn't gotten around to using it. N kept reminding me of it, and this week my new hoodie arrived in the post, complete with moose design and "mooses like peanut butter too..." slogan. So I knew I had to get the cutter out and give it ago, moose shaped peanut butter biscuits it had to be!
But, then I was faced with a real dilemma. I already had to things I wanted to make, but three new cookbooks on my reading pile. It felt rude not to try something from them, particularly as the Ottolenghi has such an impressive and extensive baking section. Also, N had commented in a cafe recently that their chocolate cake looked really good, and that he reckoned the only reason he thought so was because it was decorated with bits of Cadbury's Flake! I of course, replied with a sarcastic comment about now having to top anything I baked for him with Flake to make it appetising. Another challenge for my baking day, I had to make something I could stick a bit of flake on to continue the joke.
It occurred to me that I also hadn't indulged my cupcake love for a while too, and what would be more perfect than cute little cakes topped with flake. Fortunately Ottolenghi not only includes two cupcake recipes in his book, but I had all the ingredients for one of them.
Thus began the baking day adventures. My mission, to make low-fat brownies, peanut butter cut-out biscuits and hazelnut cupcakes topped with flake!
The brownie recipe came from Baking Bites, a blog I not only read twice a day (because she manages to update so often) but rate really highly. It not only talks about recipes, but reviews products and give tips and advice. It really is everything you'd want from a food blog. There had been a post on their previously about double chocolate brownies, that looked great, but then a few days later she posted about low-fat brownies. Now what with needing as low fat a diet as possible because of my back this immediately caught my eye, especially as her comments said that it didn't lack anything taste and texture wise die to being low fat. I eagerly copied down the recipe and decided to give it a go. The batter was really thick, and hard to spread in a parchment lined baking tray (I had to get N to hold the paper in place while I struggled with the spatula) but it did settle out whilst baking. I wasn't sure what the result would be like, especially as I managed to overcook it slightly and so it didn't come out as gooey as I had hoped. However, the taste was great. Rich and cakey (due to overbaking, next time I'd baked for less time to get it fudgey) and with a nice chocolate flavour that wasn't too sweet. Plus you definitely wouldn't know it was low fat.
Low-fat chocolate brownies (makes 8)
preheat the oven to 180C and grease/line a 10" by 6" baking tin
3/4 cup plain flour
1/3 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2oz dark chocolate
2 tbsp butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp fromage frais of low-fat yoghurt
1 egg
1 egg white
1tsp vanilla essence
Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl melt together the butter and chocolate. Whisk this mixture with the sugars and yoghurt and when combined whisk in the eggs and vanilla. Gently mix in the flour. The batter will be really thick. Bake for about 20mins until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbs. Allow to cool then cut into eight.
The peanut butter biscuits posed slightly more of a problem. I couldn't find a recipe anywhere for a peanut butter cookie recipe that you could roll out and cut shapes with. In the end I decided to just experiment. It could go horridly wrong, but that was a risk that would be worth taking! I used a basic recipe for cut-out biscuits and used peanut butter rather than butter. I also only used an egg yolk, since I had one left from the brownies. This meant the dough didn't really come together, so I had to add a bit of water, but in the end it rolled out fine and made some nice biscuits, not too sweet with a subtle peanut flavour. I glazed them with some of the icing I was going to use on the cupcakes.
Moosey peanut butter biscuits. (Makes 8-10 large biscuits)
Preheat oven to 190C and line/grease a baking sheet
125g plain flour
63g peanut butter
63g brown sugar
1 egg yolk (or 1/2 beaten egg)
water to make up to a dough
Beat the butter and the sugar and add the egg. Sieve the flour into the mixture and mix into a dough, gradually adding enough water to make it roll-able. Roll out and cut into shapes. Bake on a high shelf for aprox. 15 mins.
Finally I made the hazelnut cupcakes. I halved the recipe to make only six since there was already a rather large amount of baked goods in the house. Instead of using the cream cheese icing suggested in the book I used a whipped chocolate ganache, and plonked a hunk of flake on top.
Now you have all these delicious goodies, settle down in front of the cricket with a cup of tea and enjoy!
Thursday, 5 June 2008
A thank you, and a promise of things to come.
My Mum's amazing. Look what arrived for me in the post this morning! She's also rather naughty. We were innocently having a discussion on the phone a few nights ago about the cookbooks I'd seen on Amazon, when suddenly she asks me to confirm my postcode with her. I ask why, slightly suspiciously, and she says, because those books will be on their way. See, wonderful, amazing, but very naughty indeed - not entirely unlike her mother!
Thanks to her never-ending generosity and indulgence of her daughters obsessive book/baking/cooking habits, I now own the new Ottolenghi cookbook, the Nigel Slater "Kitchen Diaries", and Locatelli's "Made in Italy." The first will help my not only my veggie repertoire, but will add some great ideas to baking days, the second will prompt me in the right direction whilst continuing my seasonal cookery, and the final one will make me yearn for Italy even more than I already am, and will hopefully help cure my cravings with great food and stories. All three books are beautiful aesthetically too - which to me is important in all books, but particularly books about something as aesthetically pleasing as good food - and no doubt will become favourites for bedtime (and test match) reading very soon indeed.
So this is a public thank you to my Mum for the wonderful new additions to my ever-growing cookbook collection and a promise that all subsequent food adventures from them will dutifully be posted, and quite possible even be carried to the North when I go and visit.
Thank you Mum, you're the bestest.
Wait a minute, this bread is cake
There seems to always be a glut of kiwi fruit in this house. I'm not really sure how it happens, we get them in our Abel and Cole box every so often but I swear they multiply in the fruit bowl. N has renounced them as a lunch box fruit after I insisted on packed them for him every day for about three weeks. This is acceptable for bananas, but not kiwi fruit apparently. I try and do my bit, eating them as "dessert" after my lunch, but somehow they still build up.
Last week I decided to try and do something different with them, and stem the glut, at least for a week. So I searched the Abel and Cole recipes, kindly provided on their website, and found one for kiwi fruit bread. Perfect, I thought, I can use up the excess and overripe fruit and at the same time produce some bread for lunch. I quickly wrote the recipe up into my scrapbook, not really paying attention to it, and put it aside for later in the week when our bread ran out.
Then, on Saturday morning, I got up, donned my apron, fished out the recipe and began to assemble the ingredients. "kiwi fruit, walnuts, raisins, sugar, honey, mixed spice, flour, eggs..." hang on a minute, that sounds an awful lot like cake! Oops. What the recipe was for really was kiwi loaf, like apricot loaf, you know the "loaf" that is actually just a long shaped cake. So much for my virtuous attempts to use up some leftover fruit.
Oh well, I decided to make it anyway, we'd just have to cope somehow!
It was rather nice in the end. Not as sweet as I'd expected, and with a definite kiwi tang, and slight crunch from the seeds. It went rather well with strong cheese and salad. We just had to remember that it was actually cake and so eat less of it at a time. Yeah, right!
Here's the recipe. From the Abel and Cole website, but adapted slightly by me. It's certainly a winning way to use up all those sneaky kiwi fruit that end up lazing at the bottom of the fruit bowl. But it's not really bread!
* 1/4 cup liquid honey (I cut this down ever so slighty)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil (I didn't have quite enough so just used what I had)
* 1 egg
* 1&1/2 cups wholewheat flour
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice (I used this rather the
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* dash salt
* 1 cup raisins
* 1 cup chopped walnuts
* 1 cup kiwifruit pulp ( about 3 or 4 kiwis)
Beat the honey, oil and egg well. Sift the flour, spices and bakng powder and salt and add to oil mixture. Lightly stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon into an 8-inch oiled loaf tin and bake at 350°F / 180°C for 40-45 minutes and allow to cool before serving.
Last week I decided to try and do something different with them, and stem the glut, at least for a week. So I searched the Abel and Cole recipes, kindly provided on their website, and found one for kiwi fruit bread. Perfect, I thought, I can use up the excess and overripe fruit and at the same time produce some bread for lunch. I quickly wrote the recipe up into my scrapbook, not really paying attention to it, and put it aside for later in the week when our bread ran out.
Then, on Saturday morning, I got up, donned my apron, fished out the recipe and began to assemble the ingredients. "kiwi fruit, walnuts, raisins, sugar, honey, mixed spice, flour, eggs..." hang on a minute, that sounds an awful lot like cake! Oops. What the recipe was for really was kiwi loaf, like apricot loaf, you know the "loaf" that is actually just a long shaped cake. So much for my virtuous attempts to use up some leftover fruit.
Oh well, I decided to make it anyway, we'd just have to cope somehow!
It was rather nice in the end. Not as sweet as I'd expected, and with a definite kiwi tang, and slight crunch from the seeds. It went rather well with strong cheese and salad. We just had to remember that it was actually cake and so eat less of it at a time. Yeah, right!
Here's the recipe. From the Abel and Cole website, but adapted slightly by me. It's certainly a winning way to use up all those sneaky kiwi fruit that end up lazing at the bottom of the fruit bowl. But it's not really bread!
* 1/4 cup liquid honey (I cut this down ever so slighty)
* 1/3 cup vegetable oil (I didn't have quite enough so just used what I had)
* 1 egg
* 1&1/2 cups wholewheat flour
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice (I used this rather the
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* dash salt
* 1 cup raisins
* 1 cup chopped walnuts
* 1 cup kiwifruit pulp ( about 3 or 4 kiwis)
Beat the honey, oil and egg well. Sift the flour, spices and bakng powder and salt and add to oil mixture. Lightly stir in remaining ingredients. Spoon into an 8-inch oiled loaf tin and bake at 350°F / 180°C for 40-45 minutes and allow to cool before serving.
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Fair weather cat
Sniff is definitely a fair weather cat. After two days of moping about in the study curled up on his "hug-chair" scowling at the sound of the rain on the roof, he has emerged to re-stake his claim on the sofa.
He's so like his owners, we're so proud!
I am aware that recently the blog has been more like "From a North London Cat Obsessive" than a North London Kitchen, but no fear, recipes and updates to come. I have been experimenting, it's just the pictures of Sniff are so much cuter than my pictures of the food!
He's so like his owners, we're so proud!
I am aware that recently the blog has been more like "From a North London Cat Obsessive" than a North London Kitchen, but no fear, recipes and updates to come. I have been experimenting, it's just the pictures of Sniff are so much cuter than my pictures of the food!
Monday, 2 June 2008
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