Mango Ice-cream

By Di Melling on May 17, 2012

After a weekend of entertaining you sometimes get strange leftovers. I love the challenge of using these things up.

My ingredients today weren't that odd – a whole big tub of cream and 5 very ripe mangos – it's just I really needed to use them up, as to throw them away would have been a terrible crime.

Mango ice-cream was my plan, but I didn't have a recipe!

Now I know that you can easily make berry ice-creams with just cream, sugar and fruit. But I didn't know if this would work with mango. I have a Nigel Slater recipe for lemon ice-cream which uses yoghurt as well as cream in a custard base and I love that. So I decided to adapt that recipe for the mango.

The problem is mango is so sweet. I had to really cut down the sugar in my recipe. The lemon is going to come in handy too to help enhance the fruity flavour.

The mangos I have are indian and have a very intense flavour, they are also very soft and not fibrous like the bigger ones. My Mum gets me a box every May, as that is the only time you can buy them.

Firstly to make some mango puree.

I peeled and chopped the fruit from the stones and then used a hand blender to make a silky puree.

Now the rest of the ingredients are:

600ml double cream

2 egg yolks

75g sugar

300g natural yoghurt

2 lemons juiced and zested

Now heat the cream in a large saucepan until just coming up to the boil. Let it sit for a minute while you beat the egg yolks with the sugar until pale and fluffy. Now with your mixer going gently pour warm cream onto the egg and sugar. You now need to pour this mixture back in the saucepan (which will probably need a wash first) and put over a gentle heat, stirring all the time.

You want the mixture to slightly thicken (my recipe said stir until it is the consistency of double cream – well I started with double cream, so derr!) I went for a thickness of runny custard and that worked for me.

Now you can add the flavourings, tip in the lemon juice and zest, the yoghurt and the lovely mango. This will need another quick beat with the mixer.

The mixture is now ready, but will be too warm to put in the ice-cream machine or freezer. So just let it cool and pop in the fridge so it's well chilled.

When you are ready you can either pour into a plastic storage container and put into the freezer, beating it every hour or so until well churned and frozen. If you do use this method of making ice-cream, I kneel down and worship your patience!

I prefer the ice-cream machine method. I keep my machine in the freezer the whole time, even though I only make ice-cream about 3 times a year.

This amount of mix needed two batches in my machine. It's made two good sized tubs of ice-cream.

This was probably the messiest thing I have ever made. The whole kitchen was covered in orangey splodges of mix and I did resort to licking a few blobs of ice-cream off the counter, as it seemed like such a waste. It's not something to do if you are on a schedule. But I had the whole day and didn't mind the mountain of washing up afterwards.

I will now have to come up with something to serve with it. I am thinking lemon shortbread wedges…mmm!

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Flapjacks

By Di Melling on May 9, 2012

Such a simple treat is the Flapjack, but so many ways to get it wrong!

When I say "wrong" there is, of course, no way to go wrong with home-baking. The many guardian angels of baking will look down favourable on you for your good intentions. Your cake might be a little over-browned or too gooey, but aren't they usually all the more delicious for it?

No, when I say wrong with Flapjacks, I just mean I spent many years making them too hard and toffee like. They tasted great but I used to get an ache in my jaw from the crunch!

I think Flapjacks fall into two different styles, the first is the biscuity like crunch, and the second is the soft and slightly crumbly. (I don't put the toffee-like in a category, as I don't think that's how they should be!)

In my fifth year of event catering now, my flapjacks are exactly the way I want them to be.

Here is my version:

300g rolled porridge oats

100g jumbo oats

250g butter

200g demerara sugar

100g golden syrup

A very simple method, put your oats in a mixing bowl. The other ingredients all go in a saucepan and are gently heated until the butter is all melted. Pour the melted mixture over the oats and mix until combined.

Now, these little fellows are tricky to get loose from your tin. I use one of the silicone baking sheets now to line my tin, as I have had many failures with greaseproof and foil.

Tip the buttery, oaty mix into your tray (approx 8 x 12") and flatten down into all the corners with the back of a spoon.

Now bake for 15-20mins in a pre-heated oven at 180 C. You are looking for a lovely rich golden brown all over. Take out of the oven and let sit for a while, as they will be molten at first.

Some people like to score while still soft. But I wait until they are completely cold and tip the whole tray out onto a board and cut with a sharp knife, as it gives a cleaner edge.

Now what are you waiting for, get cooking and enjoy with a cup of tea and your feet up.

 

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Rhubarb Tart

By Di Melling on May 3, 2012

I haven't made this pastry since over-loading on mini mince pies. But I have been thinking about it alot!

Last year when my nephew visited from Australia I made him a Peach tart and he was so enthusiastic about it, even said to his parents when he got back home "it was the nicest thing I have ever tasted". Wow, high praise indeed!

Well last weekend, his parents came to visit (I'm sure not just because of the tart!). So I thought I should showcase it again. No peaches anywhere in the shops, so I used some rhubarb that has started to show its head in my garden.

This is such a well-behaved dessert for when you have people round. By that I mean you can get all the fiddly bits out of the way and just leave it ready to pop in the oven when you serve the main course.

If you worry about pastry, don't even give this one a second thought, all of the tricky bits have been taken away to make it dead simple and the results are always amazing.

Here is the recipe for the pastry

6oz butter

6oz self raising flour

3oz semolina

2oz caster sugar

I love rhubarb with ginger, but had forgotten that I also like it paired with orange. I had a couple of sad looking clementines in the fruit bowl that I squeezed over the rhubarb with some brown sugar and just heated gently in a pan until just tender but not falling apart.

Now the pastry: melt the butter in a good sized saucepan, when melted tip in all the other ingredients (yah! love recipes like this). Mix until combined, it will look like a soft, sandy mess and don't worry it won't hold together like a ball of normal pastry.

We don't roll it out (which is another time-saving plus point) just tip 3/4 of it into a pie dish,and press it down with your fingers. You want to make it roughly even all round, so you don't have any thick or thin bits, but don't worry about making the edges look neat.

Now fill with your fruit (I strained the juices off, but used them later). Now just crumble the remaining pastry over the top. You can leave it at that, or you can add some flaked almonds too.

As I said, mine waited all afternoon like this, without getting soggy. So put in the oven when you're ready at 180 C or 160 C fan for 25-30mins. You want it to be nicely brown all round, so turn if you need to. It's best to let it rest for 5 mins before serving, it makes it easier to cut. But is equally good cold. I drizzled some of the rhubarb cooking juices over the finished tart just to make it more yummy.

There is no baked photo of this. Sorry the family dived in before I could get the camera out!

 

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This week's birthday cakes

By Di Melling on April 23, 2012

Just like buses, birthday do all seem to come along at once in my life.

Here's a little peak at the cakes I baked this week.

Firstly my mum's bestest friend from school days Jo. Celebrating her 70th birthday chose a whopping 12" chocolate and cherry creation. A square cake is a good idea if you are feeding a crowd, as you can cut smaller pieces easily (or that's the theory!).

Next my friend Jason was celebrating his 40th with a "relive your youth" fancy dress party. I certainly did relive my youth, with some vivid red hair dye and ridiculously uncomfortable shoes which I danced in all night long.

His cake was a 9" round with chocolate buttercream and whipped cream filling, with a liberal grating of dark chocolate too, just for good measure.

Lastly, but not least, my littlest boy had his 8th birthday. He had seen a brilliant Zebra cake while I was looking at bakersroyale.com and decided that was what he fancied. Well, I didn't do it in any of the detail that she had done it, but it hit the spot and seemed to vanish at an alarming rate.

Happy birthday to all you lot and anyone else that celebrated last week xx

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Choc and Nut Cookies

By Di Melling on April 13, 2012

I'm waging war on Easter eggs!

I am so fed up with little pieces of foil littered all over the house and half eaten eggs on every surface (surprisingly the children are being quite good with theirs).

I think it would be much more appropriate to have Lent after Easter, as it would be quite cleansing to give up chocolate after all the excesses…not really much of a theological argument for it though (what am I talking about what has chocolate got to do with Easter?)

I have a pair of really lovely green chinos that I just must get into by May, so I am really trying to avoid all the unnecessary eating of chocolate.

But I heard this really cheesy line on a show the other night when a detective says – "sometimes the good guy has to do a bad thing!" It's a classic!

So this baking of cookies to try and use up some of the chocolate is my doing "a bad thing" in the hope that I can wipe the slate clean and get on with the diet.

This recipe is originally from Joy the Baker, who is an American food blog genius and has just got a book out, so some of her recipes are appearing all over the place…like here! But I found this one on www.bakerwithacause.com. (I have mucked about with the ingredients, as I was too lazy to go shopping for stuff I didn't have, and so many interruptions that I have omitted a half cup of sugar – so check out the original too!)

9oz butter

7oz dark brown sugar

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

12.5oz plain flour

pinch o salt

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2oz flaked almonds

6oz chopped chocolate (I used a mixture of milk and dark in this war!)

Put 4oz of butter in a saucepan. You are going to go beyond melting here, we actually want to brown it. I prepared all the other ingredients when this was happening (and I thought it would never brown, but the nice lady told me it would be worthwhile). Eventually (approx 15mins on low) you will notice a change in the smell and if you tip the pan you will see brown deposits on the base (a bit like you've been roasting potatoes). Leave this to cool slightly.

 

 

Now cream the remaining 5oz butter with the brown sugar for a few mins until it fluffs up a bit. Now pour on the melted mixture, making sure to pour all the brown bits too, now the vanilla. I was strangely reminded of the fun fair when I smelt this mixture.

Now add the eggs while beating and then finish by folding in the flour, salt and soda.

My mixture looked a bit like a gingerbread at this stage. Now add the choc and nuts.

You need to chill for 30 mins now. And the cookie dough could do with some chilling too!

When you are ready to bake, take a tablespoon scoop of the mixture and roll into a ball. Place on a baking sheet with plenty of space to spread and bake for 12-14mins until browned around the edges.

Cool on a rack…then stand back and wait for the earthquake!

Oh dear…I think I did a bad thing!

I must find someone to give these cookies to, else the green chinos will be just a distant dream…

 

 

 

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Easter Biscuits

By Di Melling on April 1, 2012

I can't believe Easter is just next weekend. I usually have a couple of Simnel cakes up my sleeve by now. But I seem to have missed the boat this year.

So, something different is in order. I have always looked at recipes for Easter biscuits and thought they looked just too plain, but I bought a couple at a school cake sale and changed my mind. They have a charm all of their own. In fact, if you had the Queen coming to tea, I'm sure she would choose one of these over a cupcake.

Just one problem, they do look like your child has made them (or maybe I'm doing something wrong). But I have come round to the thinking that some things do look better if they "look" homemade. So, don't loose any sleep about the appearance of these biscuits.

Here is the recipe:

100g/4oz butter

75g/3oz caster sugar

1 egg, separated

200g/7oz plain flour

pinch o' salt

1 tsp spice (I used half mixed spice, half cinnamon)

50g/2oz currants

1-2 tbsp milk for binding

extra caster sugar for sprinkling

Cream the butter and sugar together (I didn't spend as much time on this as I would have a cake). Then add the egg yolk (reserve the egg white for later). Followed by the flour, salt, fruit and spices.

You will have a scruffy looking breadcrumb mixture. Now add a little milk to get it to come together into a stiff dough. I then tipped it out onto a floured work surface and kneaded it slightly until it was workable.

Now roll out until the dough is about a quarter of an inch thick, use a cookie cutter to make the biscuits and re-roll the dough and cut until it is all used up. Place on a baking sheet and cook for 5 mins in a pre-heated oven at 200 C/180 C fan.

Now remove from the oven, brush with the egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar. Put back in the oven for another 10 mins (my recipe said they should cook for a total of 20mins, but I thought mine looked a bit too brown, but keep in longer if you wish).

When you are happy they are cooked, cool on a rack.

Now for goodness sake get the teapot warmed, Her Majesty is coming and she likes a nice cuppa with her biscuits.

Happy Easter everyone x

 

 

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Ginger Shortbread

By Di Melling on March 21, 2012

It's my first event of the season this sunday, so I am gearing up for it. And by that I mean I am pulling it out of the bag. The first event is always a little bit rubbish on our part, as we just can't remember how we do it!

I've spent the whole winter doing other things, now I just can't imagine how I am going to make 300 pieces of cake for sunday. There are other problems too like – the van doesn't work yet and I haven't tested the coffee machine, which has been in the shed for 4 months. So, all to play for…

So, todays cake (or biscuit, actually) is the Ginger Shortbread. This shortbread recipe was given to me by my very good friend, who is Scottish. This is her family recipe. I have added the ginger, but you can just as easily leave it out and have plain.

These quantities are large, you might want to half the recipe. The great thing about shortbread is, it is cooked very long and slow, the moisture is all cooked out, so it keeps quite happily for a week to 10 days in a air-tight tin.

By the way, this is not the sort of recipe you are going to knock up in a flash, it's only fair that I am honest. It does require a bit of grafting, as you will see. But the results are very impressive.

The tin I use is a 16.5" x 12" that is about 1.5" deep. But as I say, you might want to do a half recipe.

Start with

1lb 4oz of butter (I use a mixture of butter and block margarine, it makes it a bit crisper)

10oz caster sugar

Use a hand mixer to combine (doesn't need to be creamed, just until it is well mixed)

Then tip in

7oz cornflour

1lb 12oz plain flour

You will need to ditch the mixer now, but make sure you have scraped every scrap of butter off it first (I do this by dipping in the flour and rubbing it off). Now get in there with your hands and combine together. It doesn't really come together as a dough, but it's done if you get a cloggy breadcrumb mix, like this:

If you are using ginger, add 3oz preserved or crystallised ginger cut finely. Mix it through with your hands. Then tip it all into your pan which you have rubbed a little butter into.

Now the quite long and painstaking process of pushing the dough down into the pan.

Start with your hands getting it level in the pan.

Then take a knife and start to compress the dough, smoothing the surface as you go.

You want to end up with something that has no cracks or loose bits. These will make the shortbread too crumbly and it won't hold together into slices.

Once you've done that, you need to prick the whole surface with a fork, so that it doesn't bubble up. Nice and neat now please!

Now it's ready to put in the oven at 150 C/140 C fan. Bake for 2 hours, until it is pale brown and very firm to touch. If you find your oven is usually a bit fierce, then check after an hour and a half, you might want to turn down for the last bit.

Now, when it's cooked, there's no slacking. Straight away, sprinkle all over with caster sugar and then cut into fingers. Now you need to get these out and onto a tray while still hot. So sorry about your fingers, but if you leave it you just won't be able to get them out without breaking.

Now leave to cool and then box them up in a tin lined in greaseproof paper. I need to forget about these so I have taped up the tin, else every time I have a cup of tea I will be tempted.

Sleep well, little fingers, see you on Sunday xxx

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Sherry-soaked raisin and almond cake

By Di Melling on March 10, 2012

I still haven't shifted my Christmas excesses, so I feel I shouldn't keep making myself cakes. But when there's no cake in the house I rummage around for the kids treats instead. So this cake is my acknowledgement that I need the odd treat and if I share it with a few friends it shouldn't do me too much harm.

I really like all sorts of fruitcakes, but particularly enjoy ones that don't have too much fruit and are more cakey. This one uses ground almond and polenta along with the flour, so should be lovely and moist and dense.

So, the sherry the recipe asks for is some very posh and new-age sherry. I remember when sherry came in 3 different types, dry, medium and sweet. And the more you advanced in years, the sweeter the sherry you took. I can still remember the first time I was offered a sherry at a relative's house, I was only 32, I was mortified and immediately went and put on a bit more make-up!

The sherry I am using is a very old Harvey's Bristol Cream that I stumbled upon in my parents' loft. It had a music offer on the collar that expired in 1985. It really isn't fit for drinking but a cake is going to love it's rich oaky sweetness.

Here is the recipe:

200g raisins

100ml sherry (plus extra for dousing and sipping!)

250g butter

250g caster sugar

4 eggs, beaten

200g ground almonds

100g polenta

100g self raising flour

First soak the raisins in the sherry while you get all your other ingredients ready, 30mins minimum, but longer if you have the time.

Cream your butter and sugar together, if you haven't got softened butter, stick your bowl in the oven for a couple of minutes as it's heating up. I find an electric hand whisk the best tool for the job.

When the mixture is pale, gradually add the beaten eggs until they are all incorporated (you might need to add a little of your flour if it starts to curdle). Now add the dry ingredients – almonds, polenta, flour. This will feel quite dry when these are all mixed in, but now you are going to add the raisins with all their lovely soaking liquor.

I had the urge to add a little cinnamon or vanilla to the mixture at this point (a terrible habit I have to tinker with the recipe) but I resisted  because I wanted the sherry to shine through.

Now tip the mixture into a lined 23cm cake tin, I only had a 20cm tin within easy reach, so I used this which gives a deeper cake, but will take longer to cook. At this stage I couldn't resist a little sprinkle of demerera sugar on the top because I love the crunch this gives (tinker, tinker!)

Now make your cake comfortable in a preheated oven at 180 C/160 C fan for 45-50mins (or if you have followed my smaller cake size example you will need about another 20mins, but check a couple of times) a skewer should come out clean when it's cooked.

When the cake is still hot, prick it all over and spoon a little more sherry over the top (the recipe said to use 150ml more, but I didn't quite go that far).

I would most heartily recommend eating it when it's still a bit warm, as your teacher isn't watching and she can't tell you off for eating hot cake. We have tried really hard to keep to just one slice of this a day, unfortunately the size of the slice is questionable.

This would make a lovely Easter cake if you don't like the normal Simnel cake. It is crumbly and light and I think it would go just as well with a glass of fizz as it does with a cuppa.

 

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The best chocolate icing!

By Di Melling on March 2, 2012

Sometimes things just fall into place without any plan at all, and then other times…well we've all been there haven't we?

Just wanted to share this cake topping with you (well, virtually anyway). It's so simple, just 4oz of dark chocolate and 4oz of double cream slowly melted together in a bowl over simmering water. I have made this loads of times, but it doesn't always turn out so perfectly.

When I say perfect, what I mean is a topping that will just ooze over the edge of the cake without dropping to the plate. Any thicker and it doesn't even tempt the jump, any thinner and it's over too soon and just leaves a little streak down the side.

This chocolate cake is for the winner of the Facebook draw and it has luckily co-incided with a 40th birthday, so well done Lucie and happy birthday Stuart!

I'll just go back to looking at this lovely chocolate droplet now!

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Decorating the cake

By Di Melling on February 26, 2012

I usually have a rough idea how I want a special cake to turn out, but sometimes it's fun to just go with it.

I made the three-layers of this chocolate cake earlier (see previous post) and popped in the freezer. I got it out of the freezer on the morning that I wanted to decorate and let it thaw out a bit.

I made a sort-of syllabub mixture flavoured with Kirsch to sandwich together. I made it with 300ml of double cream 6 tbsp of Kirsch, 2 tbsp of caster sugar and juice of a lemon. Whisk it all together and eventually the cream thickens (the first time I used this mixture it thickened really quickly but today it decided not to, so I got so annoyed with it that I just needed to walk away for a while, I put it in the fridge, then looked at it 10 mins later and it had thickened itself…grrrr!)

So a nice thick dollop of the syllabub with some Morello cherry jam was the inside and I was happy with the look.

But what decoration is appropriate for a manly man's 50th birthday cake (i.e. my husband!). I was annoyed when the said husband bought some out of season cherries at a huge cost from the market, but I put them to good use on top of the cake.

Just a thin spread of chocolate buttercream on the top and them a pile of cherries (I glued them with a little extra buttercream). A light grating of dark chocolate and, if I had some mint leaves that would have been ideal, but the only thing I had handy was some fresh bay leaves, so that had to do.

So the cake evolved into a bit of a Black Forest tribute, and was delicious. We used it as one of the puddings at his party and then finished it off with a late night cup of tea after all the clearing up was done. Best served with some extra pouring cream.

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