What Would Nigella Do?

26/11/201203/11/2013

Magical Mince Pies

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…’

So that can only mean one thing. Yes, it is time to rustle up a batch or ten of mince pies. Whether it’s the school fair, party time, Grandma coming for tea or just to indulge in with a cup of tea and sit down, the humble mince-pie is (nearly) always a hit. Except, of course, with my kids who, despite my protestations, remain unconvinced that it isn’t actually mince meat in inside and still turn their noses up at the dark, sticky filling oozing forth. Even my signature glitterfication couldn’t change their minds, BUT hopefully, for all you mince-pie fans out there, these will bring a little more sparkle to your festivities.

Who do I turn to for these little beauties? Why, Lady Nigella of Lawson, of course! I LOVE her Christmas recipe book and this is just one of her recipes I am sure to bring to the blogosphere in the near future. I must tell you about her turkey preparation…

Anyway, back to the mince pies. Now, it is up to you whether you cheat and use ready rolled pastry or home-made and again your choice whether to go for short pastry or puff, which makes one hell of a mess but looks like a little puffball of pleasure. So many decisions…I am using Nigella’s recipe which requires you to make the pastry. Not of the puffy kind, but nice and flaky.

To make a batch of 18 you will need:

240g plain flour

60g vegetable shortening (like Stork Perfect for Pastry – by the lard)

60g diced cold butter

Pinch of salt

Juice of 1 orange

350g mincemeat

Put the flour into a bowl and drop in the shortening in little dollops. Add the butter and give it all a gentle stir so the fats are covered with flour. Then pop it into the fridge for 20 mins which will give it extra flakiness.

Mix the orange juice and salt and pop this into the fridge too.

Have a quick sherry whilst singing along to the Michael Bublé Xmas album and imagining him popping out of a parcel under the Christmas tree (this is optional and depending on your persuasion feel free to swap the Bublé with Kylie or whoever takes your fancy)

Put the flour mixture into a food processor/kitchenaid and blitz until it looks like porridgy-breadcrumbs. Pour in the salty juice and pulse until it starts to come together as a dough. Turn out onto a board and combine into a ball of dough. Split into 3 flattened discs and wrap in clingfilm.

Pop into the fridge for 20 mins, preheat the oven to 220ºC (200 fan). Grease and flour a jam tart type tin. Have another sherry, if you’ve time.

Roll out the dough quite thinly and cut into 18 circles. The cutter needs to be slightly bigger than the holes in your tin so the discs cup up the sides. Cut the rest of the dough with a star cutter. Again, the star needs to be just big enough to sit its pointy tips on the rim of the pie.

Pop the circles into the tin and add a teaspoon of mincemeat into each – not too much else it will ooze out when cooking and glue your pie to the tin, as well as looking a mess.

Top each pie with a star and bake for about 10 mins. Do keep an eye on them…

When cooked, pop them out straight away onto a cooling rack and dust with icing sugar (snow) and (this is my addition) edible glitter. When cool, pile them on a plate and pop a sprig of holly on the top. Ta-da! A sparkling mound of yuletide deliciousness!

Pssst! You can freeze them too, for up to 3 months. Just warm them in the oven to spruce them up and, what the hell, a bit more glitter!

25/11/201214/11/2016

Christmas Pudding

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people!” That was once the reading from the Book of Common Prayer in church on this day and it has incited people to also stir up their suet and fruit! Today is Stir-up Sunday, the last Sunday before advent when traditionally the Christmas puddings & mincemeat and now, cakes get made for Christmas. It is a great opportunity to uphold one of the dwindling non-commercial Christmas traditions and all take a turn in stirring the mixture and make a wish.

As ever, I am sticking with Nigella’s Ultimate Christmas Pudding. A few years ago, I splashed out and bought some sterling silver traditional charms to go into my pudding. Health and Safety dictates that you wrap them in greaseproof paper so nobody inadvertently chokes on one. I’ll leave that decision up to you, but I wholeheartedly ignored it. Eat at your peril!

Christmas Pudding

You will need:

150 grams currants

150 grams sultanas

150 grams prunes (cut into pieces)

175 ml sweet sherry

100 grams plain flour

125 grams white breadcrumbs

150 grams suet

150 grams dark muscovado sugar

1 teaspoons cinnamon sticks

¼ ground cloves

1 teaspoons baking powder

1 lemon (zest and juice)

3 medium eggs

1 medium cooking apple (peeled and grated)

2 tablespoons honey

This is for a 3 pint basin.

How to make:

The currants, sultanas and prunes should ideally be soaked in the sherry for a week previously, or at the least overnight. I use the recommended Pedro Ximenes, which is a dark, treacley sherry, but any sweet sherry is ok. Put the ingredients in a bowl and cover with cling film, or I just pop it all in a Tupperware-type tub which seals tightly and can be knocked without worry.

Mix all the other ingredients together in a large basin and stir, stir, stir! Stir-up a storm! Don’t forget to make your wishes…

Add the soaked fruit and every drop of the sherry and combine thoroughly. Then carefully fold in your charms if you use them. (You can always pop them in as you serve if you prefer. Then you know who’s got what and can keep an eye out for untimely choking).

Scrape all the mixture into your buttered basin(s) and press down firmly. If you use a plastic basin, put on the lid then foil or if a normal pudding basin, take a pleated layer of greaseproof paper and foil and secure tightly to the top with string. Put into a pan on a trivet or suchlike and add boiling water so it comes half way up the basin. Cover and steam for 5 hours, checking fairly often to make sure the water hasn’t boiled dry.

When it’s done, carefully remove the pudding from the pan and pop it somewhere cool until Christmas. At times like this I wish I had a lovely walk in larder…

On Christmas Day, re-wrap the pudding and steam again for 3 hours. This year I am going to attempt the warming of some brandy, setting it alight and then pouring it over in the pudding in a flame of glory. Yes, just writing that I raise my own eyebrows at myself. While I still have them and they haven’t gone up in a blaze of glory.

Don’t forget to stick a sprig of holly on the top too. Merry Christmas!

23/11/201223/11/2012

Wealden Times Winter Fair

Today I enjoyed a rare morning out sans children to the Wealden Times Winter Fair. Set in the walled garden of Bedgebury Pinetum, Kent it is a festive fair for the home, garden and, in my case, stomach. As this is a food blog I am not going to dwell on how much I spent on ‘vintage’ things for my kitchen, Christmas decorations and a rather nice bracelet….I am going to stick to the foodie bits and introduce you to some of the lovely stalls I came upon and don’t switch over just because you’re not from Kent! Some of these companies will deliver nationally…

bakestore

Bakestore @bakestorecouk

You may have heard mention of these lovely people in my previous post. I popped over to say hello and, despite nearly calling the founder Harriet (my friend was waving at me in the background), it was nice to put a face to a name. The stall was busy so I didn’t linger, but they have great quality bakeware and loads of those lovely silicone coated utensils to boot. Pop over to their site for a browse and don’t forget – use the code ‘Nigella’ at the checkout and you’ll get 10% off!

Kent Cookery School @kentcookery

I have been hankering to go on a cookery course for a while….I started by contemplating a week’s course in Italy learning how to cook al dente, then I whittled it down…perhaps something more local? So imagine my delight today when I came across the Kent Cookery School. And not only do they do courses for the grown-ups they do kids’ parties too! Adult courses include: Foraging, Macaroons, Game, Dinner Parties and Fish and there are also corporate events or hen/stag parties. I think it all sounds fab and might have to explore the Italian course…Pah! Who needs Florence? *sobs in Italian*

Judges Bakery @judgesbakery

All I can say is I bought a loaf of their sourdough walnut bread and a few hours later there isn’t a whole lot left……
Based in Hastings Old Town it was reinvented by the founders of Green & Black’s and has won lots of awards. Justly so, going by their walnut bread.

Perry Court Farm @PERRYCOURT_FARM

This guy was doing a roaring trade selling his air-dried fruit crisps. I had to muscle in to get my shout. Fat free, less than 79 calories and despite all that they taste really nice! I was tentative in nibbling one of the samples but they are really flavoursome and crisp (I know they are called crisps, but often the fruit type is soggy). Think crinkle cut zingy fruit. I have yet to try them on my kids, but I might well scoff them all before they get a look in. I bought one of each flavour; sweet apple, tangy apple and pear. Check them out…

Coffee Real @brownbean

Not sure where they are based…but they were there in the food court and their coffee was superb and were putting up with a lot of tripe from over-coiffed middle-aged women whilst I was queuing. ‘Are you SURE this is decaff? Sure? You PROMISE me?’ Yes, love. That’s what you ordered. I was standing right behind you. Unfortunately. They’re not idiots…unlike some.

Anyway, these guys are friendly, COMPETENT and they really know their stuff.

Staplehurst Nurseries & Frankie’s Farmshop

OK, this one is local but the man I spoke to was absolutely charming and I am definitely making the trip to Staplehurst for a shop and a cuppa. This is a new farm shop/restaurant opened in Staplehurst, Kent and looks amazing. The sort of place I would wander into at 11am and not re-surface until 2 hours later…their site is a work in progress so be patient…

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So there you are. My shout out for some brilliant local businesses. If you are in the vicintiy….the fair is open tomorrow too.

18/11/201203/11/2013

Christmas Gingerbread Tree

The lovely people at Bakestore sent me some cookie cutters to try out. Or so I thought….what they actually sent was a full on tree kit. How to make a tree out of gingerbread stars. Momentarily I thought they had seriously over-estimated my baking skills. Then I saw the tree for sale in M&S for £18!! And theirs is barely decorated, so I thought ‘Hang on just a minute. It’s lots of biscuits piled up in a stack. Surely I can do that? My decorating skills are ok, I can bake biscuits, my icing isn’t too bad..’. So I gave it a go!

I used the Biscuiteer recipe for treacle spice biscuits (or treacley gingerbread to you and me). I trust Biscuiteer wholeheartedly as will any of you who have ever had the pleasure of diving in to a tin of their biscuits. See below for recipe.

The Christmas Tree kit did include some other recipes as well as tips for icing, decorating etc. Not all the recipes were gingerbread. One idea (see pic) was for a rice krispie cake tree. I might try that one as well. Also in the kit were all the cookie cutters and good quality icing bags and nozzles. The kit is made by Wilton, so I would expect good quality anyway.

In total I made four batches of gingerbread. At first I thought you would need one of each size biscuit, but a bit of basic maths told me that some sizes would need to be doubled or tripled even to get a decent height in the tree. Although it is a bit of a faff making these type of shaped biscuits (a lot of putting it back in the fridge to harden up) the recipe is pretty easy and they do turn out well. I made 18 biscuits in total and stacked them by placing a blob of royal icing in the centre of the board and then each biscuit to ‘glue’ them in place. Do keep peeping at the overhead view too, else you’ll end up with the leaning tower of Christmas!

Once stacked and (sort of) straight, I hummed and hawed about how to decorate it. I went for the easier option of dusting it with icing sugar so it ‘snowed’ over the tree and then adding a blob of white royal icing to each corner as snowdrifts. Then I popped a silver ball on each and decorated the top with the smallest star, iced. To finish it off I sprinkled it with edible glitter so it was like a little bit of winter wonderland in my kitchen. For the photos I resisted the urge to add a robin and plastic deer for a bit of kitsch but I’m sure they’ll be adorning it very soon.

I think it looks pretty impressive and as you now I am not a highly skilled cook, so this is very do-able for anyone, including the kids. A lovely Christmassy activity with the kiddiwinkles on those cold, festive afternoons and one to wow the relatives with. Aunty Marge will see you in a whole new light!

To get a Christmas Tree kit click here to visit the Bakestore website. They have such gorgeous stuff that I bet you’ll see a few more must-haves while you’re there! And they are based just up the road from me, so I wholeheartedly support my local business AND if you enter the code ‘Nigella’ you get 10% off your order! Yes, dear reader, that’s me with my very own discount code. Check. me. out.

Happy cooking (and eating!)

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Treacle Spice Biscuits Recipe

Ingredients

200g plain flour

½tsp baking powder

½tsp ground ginger

½tsp cinnamon

½tsp mixed spice

50g muscovado dark brown sugar

100g salted butter, diced

50g black treacle

Sift and mix the flour, baking powder, spices and sugar in a bowl. Add the butter. Either rub in with your fingertips or use the paddle on a mixer to combine until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the treacle and bring it all together until it is of an even colour with not too many streaks of treacle.

Line a table top with baking parchment and place the dough on, squashing it into a flat disc. Place another piece of parchment on top and roll out to 5mm thick. Put in fridge to chill for ½ hour and pre-heat oven to 170ºC (150ºC fan).

When chilled, cut out biscuits and place on lined baking tray. You can keep the cuttings to be re-rolled. Bake for 14-18 minutes – the biscuits will turn a darker colour (even these already dark treacley ones) but be careful not to burn them!

Transfer to wire rack to cool but do this VERY carefully as they are fragile and will break easily. Totally cool before storing in airtight tin (for up to a week) or assembling tree.

20/10/201202/11/2013

Triple Chocolate Cupcakes

Calling all chocoholics! This is the recipe for you! Also great for kids’ parties/taking into school and impressing the staff/pudding.

I took my favourite choccie cake recipe and turned it into cupcakes with a twist. These cakes are very rich, but quite delicious and VERY easy to make!

THE CAKE

chocolate cupcakes

You will need:

200g plain flour
200g caster sugar
1tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
40g good quality cocoa
175g soft, unsalted butter
2 large eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
150ml sour cream

Mix all the ingredients together in a mixer until light and creamy. Using an mechanical ice cream scoop, put a dollop of mixture in large cake/muffin cases and bake at 180ºC (160 fan) for about 10-15 mins. The mixture makes 15 with a good scraping left in the bowl for ~~you~~ the kids.

Cool on a rack.

FILLING

When cool, hollow out the middle of each cake with an apple-corer. Don’t go right to the bottom, about 3/4 of the way down. Fill the hole with a small teaspoon of chocolate spread, then plug the top with the cake from the corer.

ICING

Well, I cheated and used Betty Crocker’s choc fudge icing, but feel free to make your own which will definitely be nicer! Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Depends on how much butter I have in the larder and how much mess I am prepared to clear up!

I use a Mr Whippy nozzle and pipe the icing in a small swirl on top of each cake. Don’t use more else it really will be too chocolatey!

Decorate as you please. I always have to use a bit of glitter!

EATING

Well, the kids dig in but I am slightly more refined and use a fork. Depends who’s watching really….

ENJOY!

18/10/201231/07/2015

Lemon Drizzle Cake

Lemon Drizzle is my son’s absolute favourite cake. I tried a few recipes before finding Paul Hollywood’s one (sorry, Mary) and it makes the most delicious, moist cake. It ‘aint pretty, but it’s divine.

To make this tablet of lemony gorgeousness you need to preheat your oven to 180ºC (160 fan). Butter and line a 2lb loaf tin with baking parchment. Then beat together 75g soft unsalted butter and 125g caster sugar until light and fluffy. This can take a long time, so keep going with it. Mixing all the time, add 150g self-rasing flour, 1tsp baking powder, 2 medium eggs, 1 tbsp lemon curd and 2½ tbsp full-fat milk.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for about 40 mins or until a skewer comes out cleanly from the mixture.

For the drizzle, mix the juice and fine zest of one unwaxed lemon with 2tbsp granulated* sugar. Pour this over the hot cake when it comes out of the oven and leave to cool completely before removing from the tin. Sometimes I skewer a few holes over the cake top to help the drizzle sink in. Other times I just leave it to get even more topping the cake. I’ll leave that conundrum to you.

* You can also use icing sugar instead of granulated. Same amount or judge it by gloopiness…you know what I mean…

Addendum

Jackie’s suggestion from the comments to this post and my son’s demand for smaller cakes, called me to try this recipe as muffins. The mixture made 10 muffins (1 ice cream scoop per case) and I baked them for 18-20 mins. I let them cool before I poured on the lemon glaze. To make this I warmed the juice and zest before adding 3 tbsp icing sugar. They turned out pretty well and, if you’re interested, come in at 192 calories per muffin. Not too bad for the cake world! Now, I have to say my personal preference is a slice of the loaf cake, but these are great for taking to village fetes and the like and still taste just as wonderful. Oh, and my kids preferred them but that’s because I let them squirrel them off to the playroom with a bowl rather than make them sit up to the table. So fickle…..

Addendum 2: Try orange curd and orange drizzle….

Yum

05/10/201227/07/2015

Smartie Cookies

Who hasn’t been coerced to buy these beauties in the supermarket for wide-eyed children….or, indeed, just for yourself? Well, now you can bake them at home! Easy to do and, if they don’t eat them all first, the kids can help put the Smarties on the top. I actually preferred them the day after I made them, they were slightly chewier, but that’s just down to personal preference. My kids loved them both days; ‘Mummy! They’re just like the ones at Waitrose!’. Job done.

smartie cookies emma bridgewater plate

You will need…

350g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
250g soft butter
250g sugar
1 large egg, beaten
5ml vanilla extract
2 tubes smarties (150g)

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl and put to one side. Then (preferably in a mixer) cream together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and mix. Then slowly beat in sifted dry ingredients to form a stiff dough. By hand, stir in one tube of Smarties. Roll dough into balls about the size of a ping pong ball and place on baking trays lined with parchment paper. Leave plenty of room between each ball as they spread! Adorn the top of each ball with three or four more Smarties and bake at 190ºC (170º fan) for 12 to 15 minutes until pale golden brown. When you remove them from the oven, leave on the trays for a couple of minutes before transferring to cooling racks to cool completely. Store in airtight tins.

Yum