Mexican dense bean salad

I've been experimenting with new lunches this term, ever since I came across the dense bean salad trend on Tiktok. It seems to be very much a thing, though, realistically, I have been eating lunch this way for many years now; I was fondly remembering when I used to make up huge salad jars for the whole week. But it's nice to see other people sharing recipes because it gives me fresh ideas, particularly for dressings, which I'm not good at.

I've figured out that the best long-lasting salads have robust veggies in them and to date, it's usual for me to add a couple of packets of mange tout, but recently I have been going with a coleslawy base, which adds plenty of bulk but not much flavour. This is good but requires some robust other flavours and also something nice, because shredded cabbage is just so...worthy. 

Thus I broke my own rule this week and added avocado - which qualifies as something nice - to this one, but it held up well in the back of the fridge (we've got a Smeg fridge and it is actually magic, tbf) for the week. Nobody gasp in horror at this revelation, but I take my lunch out of my fridge at home and it sits on my desk at work until around 1pm, sans refrigeration (yes, even with meat/fish in it, don't come for me, I apparently have an iron constitution) - by Thursday, this salad was not coping with that and had a somewhat fizzy flavour, so I put it in the work fridge (double bagged) today and it was still good by the time lunchtime came around. 

• 1 can Mexican beans
• 1 can butter beans
• 1 large can sweetcorn
• 1 bunch coriander (150g, really whack it in there, it's not for you if you don't like coriander)
• 2 peppers, any colour, I like yellow
• 2 avocados
• 300g cabbage
• 2 large carrots
• 3 limes
• 2 tbsp oil, I have cold-pressed avocado oil at the moment because I'm apparently incapable of walking past Holland and Barrett without going in to buy something
• Salt and pepper

Shred the cabbage and carrot. Chop the coriander, except the stalks, and combine with the cabbage and carrot in a bowl. Drain and rinse the canned stuff, add to the bowl. Chop the peppers and avocados and add those too. Salt and pepper to taste. Juice the limes and shake hard in a jar with the oil - mine turned the most wonderful garish chartreuse colour; dress the salad. Shovel into containers. It makes five portions of about 350 cal each and all five of your fruit/veg servings in one meal. I topped mine with Mr Z's Mexican chicken breast. 

Weekend Cooking

 I haven't done masses of baking in lockdown. I did a bit to begin with, until I realised I was the only one going to be eating it and that this would just require a lot of exercise and dieting at the end of lockdown.

However, I have tried to do a bit more cooking, now and again. Early on in lockdown, I discovered IoW Tomatoes, who will ship boxes of delicious tomatoes (and assorted other vegetables, including asparagus when it was in season) direct to your door. We have had many boxes of tomatoes pass through the front door since. I forced myself to lay off it for a while but, when I went back this week, I found that there were many different varieties available, presumably having recently come into season, and I ended up placing my biggest order yet. 

In order to sneak these in past Mr Z, I earmarked this 3kg box to making marinara sauce.

Look how shiny! I hadn't made a marinara sauce before and most of those available are for tinned tomatoes, so I made a bit of an experiment and it turned out great. 

3kg tomatoes

3 tbsp olive oil
2 small red onions (or one large, I guess - I only had small), chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed and chopped
1 tbsp salt
1.5 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Half tsp crushed fennel seeds
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs each of fresh rosemary, sage and thyme
A good scrunch of black pepper

If I'd had basil and oregano I would have added these too, but I didn't. 

Skin the tomatoes and deseed. The way I do this is with a big pot of hot water on the stove and a big bowl of cold water: immerse the tomatoes in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes, in batches, then plunge into the cold water - slip off the skins and give them a really good squeeze under the water to get all the seeds out. I was taught this method on an Italian cooking course run by a nonna in southern Italy and I can highly recommend.

Put the tomatoes in a pot with all the other ingredients - I tied the fresh herbs and bay leaves together into a bundle and put them in whole. Put over the heat and simmer gently for 2 hours or so. You'll probably have an idea about the desired thickness; I went until there was no liquid fill of a spoon draw, after stirring - if you make chutney you will hopefully know what that means. Take it off the heat, remove the herb bundle and blend with a stick blender until it's your desired thickness. This made about 5 and a half cups of sauce and I've frozen it in one-cup bags. 

It is really, really tasty. Dealing with the tomatoes was definitely the most time-consuming bit but I think there is a huge pay-off for using fresh over tinned.

I'm constantly trying to get better at using TikTok (I don't know why, don't ask me) so I filmed myself making this sauce, for practice. I am not very good at pausing before talking so I get cut off a bit at the start. I also don't know how to film more than a minute's worth of clips and then chop it down. But it is always fun to give it a go. 

Weeknote: 5/10

Knitting:
There hasn't been any knitting this week. There has only been the dark and foul art of crochet. I've made a start on a baby blanket for my incoming niece; I found a tutorial to help me get started and I am not getting into the rhythm of the thing, although I had to pull out about a third of what I accomplished at knitting group today because I can't really see what direction I'm supposed to be working in or where the rows fall. The Smoothie is splitty. I can't hold tension. But - I will persevere.

Going to:
On Monday we had the first of our annual nerdy history teacher meet ups, which ended with a long chat with Lizzy and a sushi take away. Yum.

On Wednesday I went on my first ever Geography field trip as an adult! We went to Swanage and Lulworth Cove, the latter of which I'd been to with a Geology field trip back when I was studying Geology #atmylastschool. We had absolutely stunning weather for the whole day, which happened to be the only day of the week where it didn't pour with rain. WINNING.

On Friday I hung out with my friends Ghaz and Kath, neither of whom I have seen for quite some time. We ate Chinese, learned about VSCO girls and watched Jimmy Kimmel celebrity mad libs. We know how to rock a Friday night.

Entertained by:
Bizarrely, I picked up Malory Towers this week at school and started reading. My brain is feel a little squeezed and it was about all I could manage.

Baking:
Today I made some Levain-style chocolate chip cookies. I don't know who or what Levain is, but a friend posted pictures of some she'd made a few weeks ago and so I had to copy. Here is the original recipe I used, copied here in case it disappears and with the ingredients converted to weights instead of cups.

250g butter, cubed
200g soft brown sugar (I ran out of this so I used molasses sugar today, it added a great depth to the flavour)
100g caster sugar
2 Eggs
200g self-raising flour
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon cornflour
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
300g dark chocolate, chopped (use chips if you like but, meh)
200g walnuts roughly chopped

Cream together the butter and sugars for 3-4 minutes, until creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Stir in the chocolate and nuts - I do this by hand to save the mixer and avoid over-mixing. Roll largish handfuls into hockey puck shapes - I get about 15 cookies out of this mixture, but they are super big.
Bake at 210 degrees for 9-12 minutes or until golden brown on the top. Let them rest for at least 10 minutes to set.

Feeling:
Significantly less overwhelmed than I was on Thursday. Time passes. Deadlines loom and pass with no world-ending consequences.
I've got two very busy weekends coming up, but then it is half term, whoop whoop!

The Last Bake of 2018

My step-sib Alex's birthday turned 28 yesterday and picked out a cake that he found disappointing. He said he wished he'd got a cheesecake or a Boston cream pie, since he'd never had the latter and always wanted to try one. So, today, we put one together for him.

I used my foolproof vanilla sponge cake recipe from here and chocolate glaze recipe from here (without syrup, or vanilla...there's no such thing as golden syrup in this country and I simply forgot the vanilla), so the only thing that was new to me was the creme patissiere to go in the middle. I debated not bothering and going with just whipped cream, but, meh, best to do it properly.

The creme pat was as follows -

3 egg yolks, whipped with 5 tbsp of sugar until pale and thick
Beat in 1 and a half tbsp each of flour and cornflour
Heat 1 and a half cups of milk with 1 tsp vanilla in a saucepan until just boiling
Pour slowly over the egg yolks, whisking all the time
Put the mixture back into the saucepan and heat gently whilst whisking until super thick. Mr Z was in charge of this and was very cautious with the heat, so it took a while, but if I'd been doing it I would undoubtedly have burned it, so I guess that was for the best.
Scrape into a container, lay clingfilm on top of the surface so it doesn't skin over, and chill until required.

It tasted pretty good. The cakes rose more than I thought they would; it could maybe have done with a thicker layer of creme pat, but since we were just talking yesterday about cakes having, in general, too much frosting, I think this was fine for today.

Christmas Baking: attempt at tiramisu slices

Last Christmas, Cafe Nero sold a delicious morsel they called a tiramsu slice. It was a millionaire's shortbread with coffee caramel and white chocolate, and a dusting of cocoa powder. I ate far too many of them and was mildly distraught when I realised they hadn't returned for this winter season.

So, I decided it could not be that hard to replicate, particularly since I had a millionaire's shortbread recipe I was already confident about. Turns out, it was harder than I thought.

I made the shortbread as usual and then made the caramel with the addition of a short of espresso into which I had stirred three heaped teaspoons of instant coffee. It all seemed to be going fine until I left it bubbling away for a little too long and came back to find it had gone grainy. I have no idea why. It was weird. I beat it at length with an electric whisk which helped, but the consistency was not ideal. I think next time I would make the caramel as normal and stir in some coffee at the end.

Then, of course, I burnt the first batch of white chocolate I melted in the microwave. I do this 90% of the time I try to microwave white chocolate. I was particularly annoyed because the white chocolate was almost done and then I put it back for a little longer and got distracted telling Mr Z about my visit to the dentist, so it was practically smoking when I took it out. Huff.

Anyway, here are the finished articles. Not bad for a first go, I guess, and definitely worth trying again in the new year.

Autumnal Caramels

I am a big lover of a baking blog though I rarely make things from them. Sometimes a recipe pops up that I'm keen for though, and this is what happened last week when I came across Bourbon Maple Pumpkin Seed Caramels on the Sprinklebakes blog. They were duly made at the weekend and have kept us going on a sugar rush all week.

I adjusted the recipe a little from the original; I subbed in golden syrup for corn syrup because, yknow, Britain; I roasted and salted my own pumpkin seeds (worked fine); and when it came to the bourbon, I added some kind of blend of Jim Beam and apple sours that Asda had available. I'm not a whiskey drinker and trawled through pages of whiskeys in the Asda online store; they were mostly scotches which Mr Z tells me is categorically not the same. The few available bourbons were expensive for something I expected to bung in a caramel and never drink. This was the very last available item on the scroll, but it has done its job well. There's a slight alcoholic kick and a slight taste of apple which is just perfect with the rest of the flavours. Although Heather is a dyed-in-the-wool southerner and might well be horrified at the idea of adulterating good bourbon with some fru-fru liqueur knocked back by barely legal drinkers on the sesh, I like to think she would enjoy the apple flavour.

225g unsalted butter
400g caster sugar
225g light brown sugar (I had to add in a bit of dark to make the weight up)
240ml golden syrup
170g can evaporated milk
400ml double cream
120ml pure maple syrup
120ml apple bourbon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
300g pumpkin seeds

Spread the pumpkin seeds on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt (you'll know how salty you like it. I'm quite salty myself so I added a big pinch). Roast at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes - keep a close ear on them, they will be popping and ticking when they're hot. They keep on popping and ticking for a while after they come out, too. Cute.

Put everything except the booze, salt and seeds into a saucepan. Heat gently with lots of stirring until it all dissolves together in one big sinful, diabetes-inducing mass. Put in a sugar thermometer at this point, when it's still coolish.

Bring to the boil and boil until the thermometer gets to 120 degrees C. It took about 25 minutes. It doesn't need stirring as long as your temperature isn't too high. The caramel will probably have reduced by about a quarter and be much darker. I heated mine until it hit temp but really I should have kept it at that temp for a few minutes, I think - mine hold their shape in the wrappers but they're very sticky unless they're straight out of the fridge.

Remove from the heat and stir in the salt and the whiskey. Be prepared for a lot of heavy bubbling.

Pour into a lined rectangular tray and sprinkle the pumpkin seeds over straight away. Refrigerate when cool enough. When you're satisfied with the set, turn them out and cut into pieces, wrapping each one in greaseproof.

Recipe: Grilled Salsa

One of the aforementioned Camp America friends that I am still in touch with on Facebook shared this way of making salsa a whole year ago, and I only remembered I was going to copy it when she reshared it from her memories this week. I did it the same day. No time to waste on forgetting it again.

It's ridiculously easy. You select your vegetables. This is five tomatoes, two chillis, one yellow pepper, one red onion and four cloves of garlic. Cut up the toughies but leave the garlic in its skin.

Put them on a baking sheet, sprinkle with olive oil and I added salt here but I probably wouldn't bother next time. Put the whole lot under the grill for about 10 minutes. Turn the peppers and onions once. Don't bother with the tomatoes.

I was in such haste I almost forgot to take a picture of the grilled results.

Once everything is softened and grilled, slip the skins off the tomatoes and pop the garlic out of its skin. Bung the whole lot into a food processor with a big handful of chopped coriander (I used stalks as it was all we had).

Pulse briefly. I gave this five short pulses in my Kenwood and it was done. You'll know how chunky you like it, obvs. I did read one comment from someone who said they keep blending and eat it as a soup. I think that would work nicely.

I left the seeds in the chillis on this one and it has a nice kick to it, but not too strong. You can vary your veggies according to your taste. We made this to go with fajitas but then also ate it with lamb kebabs and in turkey wraps. So good. I recommend.

Christmas Treats: Salted Caramel Sauce

I've made three batches of this over the past week. I burnt the first batch; the second batch was all given away; the third batch was cooked up for adding to things over Christmas, because, yknow, there's never enough sugar around at Christmas, is there?

400g white sugar
180g butter, cut into cubes
250ml double cream
Sea salt, to taste

Put the sugar in a big pan and set it over a low heat. We got a new oven last week and I set this over the lowest setting as I'm still learning it. Lowest setting meant I could go away and wash up/do other things while I was waiting for the sugar to melt, but it did take a while. I'm sure you've seen enough Bake Off to know not to stir, but swirling and prodding is to be encouraged.

Once the sugar has melted, add the cubed butter and stir rapidly, while it bubbles and spits, until the butter is all combined - takes a couple of minutes. Then add the double cream in a very thin stream, stirring constantly to create a rambunctious inferno of boiling sinfulness. Allow to boil for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and add the salt, to taste.

Pour into a jar. Admire.

I plan to have this over ice cream, and use it to make sticky buns from a recipe I saw in the Guardian at the weekend. And since it has set quite solid, I might try my hand at making some into chocolates. It probably won't end well, but I guarantee I will enjoy it.

More fruit gins

You might remember my forays into lemon gin and more lemon gin from previous years; one more year to wait for the first batch to mature, so it must be nearly time to kick off batch three.

Well, the website with the recipe also has one for raspberry gin, and there were lots of ripe blackberries in the lane early in August, so I have kicked off a couple of new vintages and thought it wise to record my recipes here so that I can find them when I look them up.

The blackberries: I squeezed a large cupful into a 625ml water bottle (all the way from S America) and slugged a bunch of Bombay Sapphire over the top until the bottle was full. Today, I have decanted it into a glass bottle, a 75cl Bombay Sapphire one, berries included, and added 170g of sugar, which was all that would fit in the bottle. At the end of October I should be removing those berries and having a very boozy dessert with them, so I can add a little more sugar then and possibly top up with some gin. I have a large jugful of gin with no home at the moment.

The raspberries: I squeezed a punnet of raspberries - 200g - into what was left of the litre bottle of Bombay Sapphire and added 200g of sugar. I've just topped it up with gin today. I had a sip and it already tastes good, and they've only been in there a couple of weeks.

Both bottles are in the drawer of the fruit and veg cupboard - where else would they be? - since they need storing in the dark.

Party round mine in the autumn of 2018, I reckon. Don't come if you don't like gin.

Plum chia seed pudding

(I know, three posts in one day: I told you I was on top of my workload this week).

Much as I was enjoying the apple chia seed pudding, I thought I had better mix it up a bit, so I brought home some plums at the weekend and had a go with them. It's a new favourite.

5-6 plums, quartered and destoned
1 star anise
Vanilla caster sugar, to taste. Normal sugar probably OK too, especially if you use vanilla yogurt. Or you could put a bit of vanilla pod in with the plums
2 cups almond milk
200g Greek yogurt (I ended up using honey yogurt, because Asda delivered it to me by accident and I was already stirring it in by the time I realised it wasn't ginger)
Half cup chia seeds
2 tbsp flaxseed (this is a usual inclusion, only left out of the previous recipe because I had run out)

Stew the plums with a little bit of water and the star anise until they have disintegrated. Fish the star anise out and add a bit of sugar if the plums are a bit sour. Wait until they are cold, then mix everything together in an ice cream tub and put in the fridge overnight.

I am not a huge fan of aniseed in its most common forms (balls, Pernod) but this is an absolute winner of a combination. The flavour is quite subtle and - I can't put it better than this - cold, but not overwhelming.

I might try again this weekend if I remember to buy a cinnamon stick - I think that would be a great further addition.

November traditions

It seems that I have a few traditions, not all the usual type, in my kitchen during November.

Firstly, the Christmas cake. I followed Delia's Creole Christmas cake recipe once again, but adjusted it this year as I had a surfeit of cherry brandy. I decided I would make it a cherry cake instead. Here were my subs:
* The soaking booze consisted of 9 tbsps cherry brandy and 3 tbsps amaretto
* I replaced the currant with dried cherries
* I left out the molasses sugar and reduced the amount of sugar in the cake by 50g: it is virtually impossible, I have found to buy unsweetened dried cherries and even though these were only spiked with apple juice I don't want it to be too sweet
* I replaced the mixed nuts with flaked almonds

Once again, it smelled a bit clovey to me so I have made a note in the book this year to reduce the amount I add next year.

Secondly, mango chutney.

There comes a point every autumn when the local green grocer sells off cheap mangoes, hard as bullets. That point arrived two weeks ago (2 for a pound) and this weekend they were soft enough for chutney. The whole house is currently steeped in the smell of vinegar and coriander. Loving it.

Finally, gin. I have been patiently waiting for Sainsbury's to do their usual price lowering trick with Bombay Sapphire, and had actually given up hope, but this weekend the litre bottle was finally down to £18 so it came home with me and more citrus gin has been made. As good as my word from last year, this year's vintage will be two lemons, two limes and 200g caster sugar.

The first bottle is still living it up in the boot of Mr Z's car. He insists it must be ready by now but I think it needs to go for at least another year.

Sunday recipe: autumn apple chia seed pudding

I started making chia seed pudding for breakfast some time last school year, but it was always the same and I realise now I was making far more than I needed. This year I have upped my game a little and managed to figure out a quantity that makes exactly enough to fill the breakfast chia seed pudding jar five times over. Perfect for a week's breakfasts (as long as I remember to eat it).

This one is my favourite so far.

2 cooking apples, peeled and sliced
2 tbsps raisins or sultanas
Cinnamon, maple syrup - to taste
2 cups almond milk (or you can use normal milk. I just don't like normal milk)
200g ginger yogurt (the Rachel's Dairy one is the richest but the Yeo Valley one has big chunks of ginger in it - you decide)
Half a cup of chia seeds

Put the apples in a bowl with a bit of water, cover and microwave for about five minutes until squashy. While still hot, stir through the raisins, maples syrup and cinnamon. Chuck in some other spices if you like: nutmeg might be nice. Leave to get cold.

Beat the yogurt and milk together in the ice cream tub you will be using to store the pudding for the week ... or a bowl, if you've got a dishwasher. Stir in the cooled apple mixture and the seeds. Cover and leave overnight before eating. Stored in the fridge this lasts a week. It may last longer but I've always eaten it all within a week.

Half Term Baking

I haven't baked in a while. I made some pumpkin spice latte cupcakes for the Macmillan cake sale at work a few weeks ago but the less said about those, the better - did not realise that in America, espresso powder is actually instant coffee, not espresso; so the cakes were somewhat bitter. Oh well.

I was enabled with that recipe because I found tinned pumpkin for sale in Waitrose. This was some time ago; there was a big stall at the front of Waitrose festooned in stars and stripes with some sign-based encouragement to eat American-style: maple syrup, pancake mix, that sort of thing. It was incongruously timed, being roughly equidistant between July 4th and Thanksgiving. But I didn't stop to think about it too much.

I used my second tin of pumpkin to make this pumpkin loaf cake from SprinkleBakes. Now, technically there wasn't enough pumpkin in one tin for the recipe but I just went for it anyway and it worked out fine. Better than fine, in fact: I baked two loaves, intending to take one to the party last night, but I kept it for myself instead. It's so good, especially when smeared with mascarpone. I haven't eaten anything all day because Mr Z has had noro virus this weekend and I think I might have it too (significantly, I have no appetite), and am thinking the only way I can avoid the same suffering is by not consuming anything which can then be violently expelled from my person; but this pumpkin loaf has really tested my resolve.

I'm not sure that recommendation is as flattering as I mean it to be ("So good I nearly risked vomiting") but, there it is.

Heather warns that there is a lot of mixture. She's right. I just about squeezed it into two 1lb loaf tins, but one was of the silicone variety and I ended up with a fat loaf where the mould had bowed in the middle to accommodate the cake. Both loaves caught a little on top before they were fully baked, so dense was the batter. But it didn't matter. Next time I would stick some of the mixture into a few muffin cases, though.

I think Bake Off* might have inspired me because I also pulled out my Dan Lepard cake book and had a go at two new recipes from that: chocolate crumble marble cake and orange cassata cake. The latter made it to the party. The rest is here, taunting me.

Having looked up those recipes online I realise now that I mistakenly melted the chocolate for the marble cake instead of stirring it in, chocolate chip style. This explains why that bit of the cake is so dense. Je ne regrette rien.

* SOB. Now finished forever.

Half term baking: Ginger curd

I'm running a revision session at school this Sunday. This is not as crazy as it sounds, since (a) our first exam is on Monday and (b) I work every Sunday afternoon anyway, so I might as well do it in school. I'm making some cakes to take in the keep their spirits up. This is mainly an excuse to make cakes, if I'm honest: there hasn't been a lot of cake-making going on lately.

I saw some ginger curd in the National Trust shop at Dyrham Park at the weekend and thought that it would be excellent in a lemon drizzle, so I set about making some of my own. I have cobbled this recipe together by firstly, reading about how other people prepare their ginger for curding, and secondly, adapting the recipe I always use for lemon curd. It has come out very nicely.

150g fresh ginger (weight after peeling)
2 lemons
250g caster sugar
125g butter
5 eggs

The absolute easiest way to sort out the ginger is to run it through a juicer, along with the lemons. When I did this I ended up with something approaching 200ml, including the frothy layer that forms on top. Alternatively you could cut the ginger up and put it in a blender with the peeled lemons, and then press the resulting paste through a sieve. You'll probably get a bit less juice doing it this way, so you can either blend more ginger/lemons or adjust the proportions of the other ingredients down.

Put the juice in a glass bowl with all the other ingredients. Set it over a pan of simmering water and stir periodically, until the butter and sugar have melted and the curd has thickened. Pour into pots. Do not let Mr Z near it unless you're willing for a lot of it to be spooned into his mouth.

My batch isn't super thick; it probably could have taken another egg. Also, it's not massively sweet, as was my wont. I recommend tasting yours to see if you want more sugar.

One recipe I read suggested finely chopping some stem ginger to stir through the finished article, which I think sounds delightful. However, the thought of trying to finely chop those balls of ultimate stickiness is not filling me with delight, so I'm giving it a miss.

More Christmas Baking

I tried to go easy on the baking this year, because of being away on Christmas Day. Mother Hand and I are jointly in charge of desserts. She is bringing three desserts. There are five of us and we're there for two days and Mr Z doesn't eat dessert.

Therefore, I am bringing cheese.

I made these mincemeat Chelsea buns for work in the last week of term; I took them to a department meeting.

Here's the result of the Christmas cake I stirred up at the end of November - a fave with Sib (so I'm sure we can squeeze some in, even with all the desserts).

Naturally, I made a Tunis cake again. This will probably stay here and wait for our return. This year I have decorated it with chocolate-dipped candied orange peel that I bought from a patisserie on Piccadilly Circus. It is delicious.

Finally, I tried my hand at these:

Cantucci biscuits. I have a growing stockpile of dessert wine so these are coming to Sib's with me, and a bottle of Vin Santo, and a bottle of Tokaj (Hungarian dessert wine purchased at Waitrose on a day when I wasn't watching the pennies).

These are meant to be made with almonds but I think Mother Hand does not eat almonds, so these are half almond and half Brazil nut. There's a lovely orange, vanilla flavour to them. Yum.

200g almonds
200g Brazil nuts
500g flour
2 tsps baking powder
250g vanilla sugar (or use caster sugar and throw in some vanilla extract)
4 eggs
Finely grated rind of one orange
A little a milk

Toast the nuts in the oven for five minutes. Chop roughly (but keep separate).

Throw everything except the milk and nuts in the mixer and mix until a dough forms. Add a little milk if necessary - you just want to bring everything together (don't add too much like me, or it will become very sticky very quickly).

Divide the mixture in half. Mix the almonds into one half and the Brazil nuts into the other half. Shape into long dough sausages - about 2 inches wide by 1 inch high - and bake at 180 degrees for about 25 minutes, until golden.

Leave to cool a little so you can pick them up without risking burns. Slice into 1-inch pieces and place the slices back on the baking sheet. Return to the oven for about five minutes, until golden and mostly dried out. Mine could maybe have done with a couple more minutes but I was worried about getting to tooth-breaking stage.

Dip into dessert wine and feel like you're on holiday.

Christmas baking: Candy Cane Cupcakes

My year 10s are hardcore. We had a discussion in which I gave them the option of stretching out their final piece of coursework over two lessons or doing it all on the last day of term, and they opted for the latter. So, I baked them something I hoped would be amazing. And they lived up to it, too: they worked in silence for an hour on the essays. I hope they're decent.

Makes about 28 decorated cupcakes, because that's how many I needed for my class. It actually made 42 cakes but the icing only stretched to 28.

Ingredients:
Bark:
36 candy canes
200g white chocolate
A bit of peppermint extract
Cakes:
100g cornflour
6 tbsp cocoa
200g soft brown sugar
450ml cold water
300g unsalted butter, cubed
250g dark chocolate, broken small
1 tbsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs
250g caster sugar
250g plain flour
5 tsp baking powder
Icing:
250g unsalted butter
500g icing sugar
A bit of milk
Peppermint extract
Red food colouring

First, the bark (night before, ideally).
Snap about 3 inches of stem off each candy cane - leave behind a short candy cane which will decorate a cake (see picture). Crush the cane stems (I also added some of the canes themselves to this since I only needed 28 toppers). Melt the white chocolate carefully in a microwave. Stir in a few drops of peppermint - you don't (imo) want an overwhelmingly minty flavour. Add the crushed candy cane, stir and turn onto a lined baking sheet - I poured mine into my silicone brownie pan. Leave to set.

Make the cakes. This is almost Dan Lepard's chocolate custard muffin recipe (a fave), scaled up. Put the cornflour, cocoa, brown sugar and water into a saucepan and whisk together over a medium heat until boiling, very thick and smooth. Remove from the heat, beat in the butter and chocolate until melted and absorbed.

Transfer the chocolate mixture to your and beat until smooth. Whisk the eggs with the vanilla and, with the beater running, pour into the chocolate custard, followed by the sugar.

Measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl, stir together, then add to the custard and beat through until combined. Spoon into paper muffin cases; bake at 180C for 25 minutes.

Make the buttercream - whisk the butter until fluffy, then add the icing sugar a bit at a time. Add some milk if it gets too thick. Add red food colouring as desired: I had it in mind to make brilliant white mint icing for these but Mr Z brought me home golden icing sugar (which actually had a delicious depth of flavour) and I didn't have any green colouring in, so I dyed mine red. It's worth noting that the red hue continued to develop for some time after the cakes were iced, so less is more.

Pipe the buttercream onto the cooled cakes, then top with a candy cane and a piece of bark.

Next time I might try royal icing. I think something crisp and white is a great indicator of mint. I know the Americans think mint is red but it should really be green or white, shouldn't it?

Sunday baking: Almond Christmas cookies

I had all good intentions to continue blogging but, as you see, it hasn't happened. The book is nearing completion so it's been getting all of my words. So close!

I did make time to bake this weekend, though. I found a new baking blog, Sally's Baking Addiction, and she is doing something called a cookiepalooza at the moment. I'm not normally a cookie baker (this is really because I am too lazy to line the trays) but I decided I needed to clear out my baking supplies and this recipe suited my needs.

Almond snowballs

250g softened butter
250g icing sugar, divided
2 tsps almond extract
300g plain flour
200g packet of flaked almonds that are almost out of date (this last bit optional)
Sprinkles

Toast the almonds in the oven for 5 minutes until golden brown. Meanwhile, beat the butter until it's soft and smooth, around 2 minutes. Add 100g icing sugar and beat until combined. Then add the almond extract and beat. Add the flour and doubt this will ever work. Be surprised when it comes together nicely. Challenge your stand mixer one last time by mixing in the flaked almonds and the sprinkles. These are optional, but festive. I used about a tube and a half.

Chill the dough for about half an hour - if you forget, let it soften a bit when you get it out of the fridge as this makes it easier to roll. Roll tablespoonsful into balls and bake on lined baking sheets for about 15 minutes at 180 degrees, until golden brown. Allow them to cool slightly while you place the rest of the icing sugar in a lidded bowl or box (ice cream tub is ideal). Add the cookies in batches, put the lid on and shake gently until coated. Use tongs to put them on a wire rack. When completely cold, roll in the icing sugar once more. Gift to someone whose teeth you don't care about (a quote from Mr Z).

Sunday baking: Banana Blondies

I made these once in the week but have repeated them today, as I have a surfeit of brown bananas. This was good, as it allowed me to tweak the original recipe a little. While they really did come out with no hint of cakiness about them, I was actually a bit sorry about this, so I have added some raising agents to try to combat this. I also used brown sugar instead of white to up the fudge factor, in direct competition with the raising agents.

Ingredients:
Bars
150g white chocolate
125g butter
1 large egg
125g light brown soft sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large ripe bananas, mashed
225g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
Half tsp baking soda
pinch salt, optional and to taste

Glaze
65g butter, browned
150g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
Milk, to desired consistency

Zap the white chocolate and butter in the microwave for 1 minute. Stir until combined, then heat again in short bursts until all the chocolate has melted. Leave to cool a little.

Beat the egg and sugar until the mixture has gone pale in colour and increased in volume a bit. With the mixer running, pour in the chocolate mixture and vanilla and beat until smooth; then beat in the bananas. Sift the dry ingredients over the mixture and fold in gently - don't overmix. Turn into a square brownie pan (which you should grease and line unless you're using lazy silicone, like me) and bake at 180 degrees for about half an hour, until springy to the touch.

Meanwhile, make the glaze. Brown the butter - this involves heating the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat until it goes brown. Mine frothed right up so this was difficult to see so I was (unusually) cautious - you don't want it to go TOO brown. Place in a mixer with the icing sugar and vanilla and beat slowly until combined. Add milk slowly until you get the right consistency - this is a glaze, so you're looking for pour rather than spread.

Pour the glaze over the bars and resist the temptation to cut them up until the glaze as set - go on, I dare you.

Many thanks to Averie Cooks for this recipe.

Sunday Baking: Stir it up

I have been making Delia Smith's Creole Christmas Cake for at least 20 years now. It doesn't come out every year but it is a firm favourite; since Sib is going to be in the country this Christmas and he's so partial to it, I have got it going today ready for this Christmas.

I usually tweak the recipe a bit, according to what I have on hand. This year I have used dried cherries instead of glace, roughly chopped almonds instead of chopped mixed nuts; and the booze was -
3 tbsp rum
1 tbsp Cointreau (all that was left in the bottle)
5 tbsp cherry brandy
3 tbsp Becherovka, my favoured east European drink that tastes like Christmas

We'll see how it comes out.

Weekend Baking: Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake

My favourite ice cream at the moment is Haagen Dazs chocolate salted caramel praline. It is deliciously chocolatey with little pockets of salted caramel that I like to dig for. Delicious.

Having made a salted caramel recently when trying out this recipe (I bought the same bundt tin, I couldn't resist), and having had a request for a cake, I decided to try out a cake version of the ice cream. It has worked very well - the cake rose like a mofo and is light and very chocolatey, but not so sweet that the caramel is too much. I also added a generous sprinkling of pecan nuts. YUM.

I'm not winning any photography prizes here - it looks a lot more spectacular in real life.

Cake:
250g butter
400g caster sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
270g plain flour
130g cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp salt
350ml buttermilk
150g dark chocolate, melted

Drizzle:
125g butter
200g caster sugar
125ml extra thick double cream
Dash of vanilla
Pinch of salt
Packet of pecan nuts - I think mine was a big 200g packet. I love pecans though, so not all of these made it to the cake.

Cut a small piece of butter (about a half cm slice) off the end of your block, melt it and use to to grease the inside of a bundt pan - you can pour any excess into the mixing bowl with the cake mix.
Cream the rest of the butter until fluffy, then beat in the sugar for a couple of minutes until light. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and sift into the egg mixture in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk but finishing with a flour dump and mixing between each addition. Don't overmix. Melt the chocolate and fold this in. Rummage around in the cupboard to see if you have any chocolate chips; if so, throw those in too.

Pour into the bundt pan. Bake at 180 degrees for about an hour, until coming away from the side of the pan and clean when skewered. Take this opportunity to toast your pecans, too - spread over a baking tray and place in the oven for about 5 minutes (set a timer). Chop them up once they're cool.

While the cake is baking, make the caramel. Put the sugar in a saucepan and melt over a low heat. Don't stir it - I'm sure you watch Bake Off. Swirling and gentle prodding with a wooden spoon is OK. Add the cubed butter. It will hiss and spit and you will worry but keep stirring, it will probably be OK. When the butter has combined and isn't sitting in a greasy layer on top of the sugar, stir in the vanilla, cream and salt. You should end up with something resembling melted chocolate.

When the cake is out of the oven and cool, drizzle with the caramel and sprinkle over the pecans. Wait for the compliments to roll in.