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Posts Tagged ‘baking’

Vicarage Recipes: Date and Coconut Chews

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 22 February, 2011| 6 Comments »

Someone asked me recently for a low-fat traybake. Most of my cooking isn’t terribly healthy – I prefer to have a small slice of something delicious rather than a large wedge of something worthy. However, sometimes deliciousness and worthiness can combine, as is the case with these fantastic Date and Coconut Chews.

I was given this recipe by my friend Summer after we spent a very happy day off on a walk with her and her Vicar husband. We took a picnic lunch with us. I brought soup and Summer brought various treats including these. I’m not normally a fan of dates, but these slices are wonderful – chewy and sweet but full of fruit and coconut, which I think cancels out the butter and golden syrup.

Ingredients

  • 6oz/170g plain flour
  • 3 oz/85g dessicated coconut
  • 6oz/170g stoned dates, chopped
  • 6oz/170g caster sugar
  • 3oz/85g butter (you could use hard marg, but butter is tastier, isn’t it?)
  • 2 teaspoonfuls (1 dessertspoonful) golden syrup
  • 1 egg, beaten

Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup (I always do this in the microwave, but you can do it on the stove aswell). Stir the dry ingredients together then add the hot butter mixture and the egg. Mix everything well and then spread out in a lined 9″x11″ (23cmx28cm) tin. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC).

When cooled a little, cut into 24 slices. I did a little maths and reckon that each slice has about 3.5g of fat. This isn’t quite low enough to classify as ‘Low Fat’ in the US , but I think it’ll do.

[Late Edit: A Twitter pal tells me he’s tried this recipe using prunes instead of dates and rice flour in the place of plain and that it worked really well. Good for those on a gluten-free diet then.]

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Vicarage Recipes: Speedy Sponge Pudding

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 31 January, 2011| 2 Comments »

This week we had a quiet Sunday lunch at the Vicarage – it was just our family: Rocky had an invitation to lunch out and I’d been disorganised about having folk over. So for pudding I decided to trial a recipe I saw on 22 Words a while back. It’s a chocolate sponge speedily cooked in a  microwave in a mug.

It was a great success with the Vicarage crowd, and two portions served four of us generously (the Engineer was not in a puddingy mood). It would be lovely served with vanilla ice-cream, which was lacking in our freezer so we ate it with lashings of double cream (a half pint between us – eek!).

The recipe was originally titled ‘3 minute brownies’ but what you get is more like a hot sponge pudding. Although it takes about 3 minutes in the microwave, total production time was rather longer – a whopping ten minutes for two of them, I reckon. A perfect pause time between courses, actually.

Ingredients

  • 4 tablespoons self-raising flour
  • 4 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • 3 tablespoons oil

First, mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cocoa) in your mug. My mug (more an enormous cup, actually) had a capacity of 300ml, and I think this is about the minimum you need. Then break in the egg and add the oil and milk. Mix all together until you have a smooth batter.

Pop it in the microwave on high heat for 3-4 minutes. Mine took 3 1/2 minutes in our 800W basic Matsui machine. The sponge feels pretty wet, but is firm to the touch when cooked. Spoon into a bowl and enjoy with cream or ice-cream.

Next time I might mix up the batter in a jug for ease of stirring (although this would add to the washing up, always an important consideration I feel). And I’d quite like to try experimenting with making a lemon version. I’ll report back on that one. In the meantime, why not try it for pudding this evening?

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Vicarage Recipes: Whole Orange Cake

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 11 November, 2010| 17 Comments »

Another week, another baking session. This cake is very moist and zingy with orange as you make it using the whole fruit, skin and everything. It’s also very simple as there’s no strenuous mixing involved.

The original recipe was in cups, but being a British baker, the inaccuracy of filling measuring vessels makes me nervous, so I have given a weight translation based on my cup measuring last night.

Today I topped this with a couple of candles for little Lollipop who was two, and we sang her Happy Birthday at Cake and Chat (the school mums coffee morning that I hold). I don’t think she actually ate any of the cake (more for us mums…), as it doesn’t really have enough butter icing for smaller people, but she seemed to enjoy blowing the candles out. This cake would also be good served warm with cream as a dessert.

Not exactly the WHOLE orange cake...

Ingredients

1 orange, including the skin
180g melted butter or soft marg
3 eggs
1 cup/220g caster sugar
1½ cups/210g self-raising flour

Put the marg in a microwave or on the stove to gently melt. Whilst that’s on, blitz the orange in a blender, having chopped it first so you can remove the pips and that white pith in the middle. I use the mini chopper that came with my stick blender.

Put the melted marg and the pureed orange in a mixing bowl and stir in all the other ingredients to make quite a sloppy batter. Pop in a greased and/or lined 8″ cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes at 180°C (Gas 4).

My original recipe came with an icing made with icing sugar, orange juice and zest and melted butter. If you like your cake very sweet feel free…

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Vicarage Recipes: Lemonies

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 7 October, 2010| 6 Comments »

As anyone who follows me on Twitter (or is a friend on Facebook) knows, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. My kitchen time is especially intense on Wednesdays, which is my baking day in preparation for the weekly coffee morning I organise which  is mainly attended by school gate mums.

Every week I bake at least two cakes or biscuity or bready type things. Others often bring toast or crumpets, and we eat together and talk about how to solve the problems of the week. This morning it was improving working memory in dyslexic and ADHD affected kids.

This morning’s Cake & Chat delicacies from the Vicarage Kitchen were malt loaf, apple turnovers and lemonies. When I mentioned the lemonies on Facebook, my friend Snap asked for the recipe. Neatnik at Cake and Chat was also very keen on them, so this recipe is also for her.

I’ve decided that the only way to blog recipes is to give up the exalted aim of photographing step-by-step cooking, but to be content with a finished product pic. My photography skills are just not up to those of the Pioneer Woman, whose recipes always look so easy as she shows the whole procedure from cast of ingredients through to half-eaten plateful.

 

Just the finished product, I'm afraid. Delicious though.

 

The original recipe book name for lemonies is Bahama meltaways. I renamed them lemonies, as they are like a lemon brownie, with a shortbread base.  Also I have no idea what the Bahamas have to do with a traybake. The topping is sweet and chewy like a brownie, but with a great lemon kick. The recipe was originally in a Royal Scottish Country Dance Society cookbook given to me by my most excellent mother-in-law, who knows a thing or two about baking.

Lemonies

Shortbread: 3oz butter, 5oz plain flour, 2oz icing sugar

Topping: 8oz granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 2tbspns lemon juice, 2 tbspns plain flour, 1/2 tspn baking powder

I make this the quick way, using my food processor to blitz the flour and butter for the shortbread base before pulsing in the icing sugar. But if you don’t have a processor, just rub the butter into the flour until you have a fine sandy mixture. Then mix in the icing sugar.

Scatter the mixture in a tin (9×11″/23x28cm) which you have lined with baking paper or greased well. I have reusable liners cut to fit the tin, which saves lots of hassle when baking but is a bit of a faff for washing up. Flatten the mix down with your hand and put it to bake at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC) for 15 minutes.

Then mix all the topping ingredients together in a medium bowl or a jug, and then, when the 15 minutes are up, pour over the partly cooked base. Return to the oven for another 20-25 minutes until the topping is golden and set.

Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes and then cut into squares. These are quite sweet, but have a wonderful crisp and chewy texture.

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