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Posts Tagged ‘treats’

Advent Snapshots #2 : Vicarage Recipes: Biscotti

Posted in Church, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 1 December, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I wonder if these Advent posts will all end up being about food? Today was Cake and Chat day – most Thursday mornings since we’ve been here in the parish (more than thirteen years now!). We started in the church hall, then migrated into the church when Open Church began pre Covid – we were open four mornings a week then. Then we were on Zoom in lockdown and then in the Vicarage back yard, into the red room (our front room, with a red painted wall) and now back into church since the revival of Open Church.

We’ve restarted Open Church slightly differently – with a session on Wednesday afternoons so that families returning from our church school can come in, and another in the traditional Cake and Chat slot on Thursday mornings. This means that, with our small groups meeting centrally at church on Wednesday evenings, our church heating is minimised with maximum mid week building use. And we’re finding that both Open Church sessions are growing as word gets out. Yesterday we had about 40 people in the building – long standing church members in to catch up and help welcome, and several families in with their kids to play and connect. I had to delve behind the table we use for communion for the Duplo set we have stashed there, and we set up two extra large tables for crafts and games.

And today the Cake and Chat team were all there and several extras turned up – including a dad and his daughter who’ve recently moved into the area and are waiting for a nursery place and had already joined us on Wednesday afternoon, and a lady from the same hometown in Jamaica as a church member who was also there.

Anyway, everyone in church this morning loved the apricot and pecan biscotti I made in a vaguely festive baking session yesterday. There was also an orange and choc chip ring cake, but the biscotti were the winners. I’ve made these a few times – my recipe card is really tattered, but this time I used Italian 00 flour and I think the extra strength in the dough made them work particularly well. This recipe allows you to improvise the filling from whatever you have in your baking cupboard.

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • 100g caster sugar
  • 125g plain flour (00 is best) – or 100g flour and 25 cocoa
  • 1/2 tspn baking powder
  • 1/4 tspn salt (flakes are great)
  • Filling options: 50g almonds/pecans/walnuts and 75g dark chocolate chips/chopped apricots – or try your own combination of nuts, cranberries, raisins, chocolate, mixed spice, lemon, rosemary – if you find a good combo do put it in the comments!

Put the oven on to 180C. Whisk the egg and sugar until thick and pale. Then fold in the flour, baking powder and salt, followed by the filling. Shape on baking paper or a silicone mat (on a metal tray) into a small loaf 5cm wide x 25cm long.

Bake for 25 minutes and then remove and cool for 5 minutes before slicing on the diagonal into slices that are about 1cm thick. Lay the slices on the tray with cut faces up and cook for a further 10 minutes. Turn the biscotti (‘twice cooked’) over and cook for a further 5 minutes. Mine were still quite pale yesterday, so I left them to cool in the oven when I switched it off and they were perfect – with a crunch that softened just nicely when dunked into coffee but not so crunchy that you worried about your fillings when taking a bite.

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Vicarage Recipes: Can Do Cookies

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 2 June, 2011| 3 Comments »

This is a brilliantly quick and easy cookie recipe given to me by Mrs Rev Ted, whose husband was the Vicar’s boss when he did his curacy. So she was my training incumbent, and this recipe was an essential part of my vicar’s wife training. It’s speedy, just like Failsafe Flapjack and is also flexible so you can fill them with whatever you have to hand – chocolate chips, raisins, cranberries etc.

Ingredients

  • 3oz butter or margarine (soft is fine)
  • 3oz soft brown sugar (or caster sugar if you don’t have brown)
  • 3oz demerera sugar (or granulated)
  • 1/2 tspn vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
  • 6oz self raising flour (or 5oz self raising flour, 1oz cocoa, 1/4 tspn baking powder)
  • 4oz chocolate chips, raisins, cranberries, or whatever you fancy

Cream the butter and sugars, then beat in the vanilla extract and egg. Finally add the flour (or flour, cocoa powder and baking powder for chocolate cookies) and your chocolate chips or raisins.

To bake them I line 3 baking trays with reusable silicone liners (you can use baking paper or grease your trays well) and use two teaspoons to make walnut-sized blobs of mixture. I can make about 40 standard biscuit-sized cookies from a single batch of this mixture. Bake them for 12-15 minutes at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC), until they have turned golden (you can only see this when they don’t have cocoa in them!) and have risen. They will flatten out again and harden a little whilst cooling – wait a few moments before transferring to cooling racks with a palette knife. If you slightly undercook them you can get a chewy cookie texture, or leave a little longer for a crunchier bite.

Options I have tried successfully for these cookies include double choc chip (cocoa in the mix with white choc chips) and cranberry and choc chip with a plain mix.

Double Choc Chip Can Do Cookies

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Vicarage Recipes: Failsafe Flapjack

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 26 May, 2011| 8 Comments »

I can start with 4 ingredients in the cupboard and have 2 trays of flapjacks ready and out of the oven in less than half an hour. This is a delicious flapjack recipe – my absolute favourite, with a chewy texture and a delicious caramel taste. It’s my go-to recipe for home-made treats in a hurry. I was originally given the recipe by another ordinand’s wife when the Vicar was training for ministry and I must have baked these flapjacks at least 100 times since then without a bad batch. I usually make a double batch as it only takes a couple of minutes more than a single batch and there never seems to be any trouble in disposing of them.

Ingredients

  • 150g granulated sugar
  • 150g soft margarine
  • 4 tbspns golden syrup
  • 250g porridge oats

Melt the sugar, margarine and golden syrup together in a large microwave bowl (or in a saucepan on the stove if you don’t have a microwave) – it takes about 2 minutes on full power in my cheapo 750W microwave. To get the golden syrup out of my measuring spoon easily I dip the spoon (a metal one) in a mug of just boiled water before adding each spoonful. Once the sugar, marg and syrup have melted together, mix in the oats. Then pop the mix in a 8″x12″ baking tin, lined with silicone baking paper (or a reusable liner like I use), and flatten it down so that it’s evenly distributed and pop it in the oven.

Your oven needs to be pre-heated to 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC). In my fan oven, the flapjack takes 15 minutes to cook, but can take 20-30mins if your oven isn’t as speedy or isn’t quite up to temperature at the beginning. Once it’s golden on top, remove from the oven and leave in the tin for five minutes before cutting into slices sized to your flapjack appetite (generally 21-24 in my experience) and leaving to cool fully in the tin. If you cook it a little longer, it’ll be crunchy rather than chewy, so you can cook differently according to your flapjack preference.

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Vicarage Recipes: Date and Coconut Chews

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 22 February, 2011| 5 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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