yummeelicious

My good friends, the Gastronomic Girls, hail frozen raspberries as the ultimate in cocktail emergency ingredients. Well, I had a baking emergency this evening so I took inspiration from this post of theirs. My emergency wasn’t quite as desperate as theirs usually is of a Friday but, with a Saturday evening to myself I was desperate not to waste the chance of baking in peace. It was a spur of the moment evening alone, and my original plan was thwarted by the fact that himself has an unhealthy obsession with cream and had used up all the cream I bought yesterday!! With the little men in bed, going to the shop was out so I had to make do with what I had and as always I had frozen raspberries.

I have to add one caveat to the girls’ emergency ingredients and say, for the purposes of baking, you should always have a bar of chocolate in the press. A quick flick through my books for some inspiration, and I came up with these chocolate and raspberry cookies.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees and line your baking trays with parchment.

Beat 125g butter, 165g brown sugar, 1 egg and 1tsp of vanilla extract. I am a bit vague with the sugar type as I used a mix of light and dark brown sugar. I find all dark too much but all light and you loose some of the richness so I think it is a matter of personal preference.

Stir in 150g plain flour, 35g self-raising flour, 35g cocoa powder and 0.5tsp bicarbonate of soda. It’s easier to do this in 2 lots. Putting it all in together, creates a flour cloud that is not pleasant to inhale!

Next comes the magical emergency ingredients! Stir in 90g of chopped dark chocolate and 125g frozen raspberries. Fresh raspberries are too delicate so frozen is best as they hold their shape during the baking process.

Place large tablespoons of the mixture about 5cm apart on a baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, larger tablespoons give larger cookies and you can honestly say you had one but they take slightly longer to bake obviously.

I did learn something new whilst baking these and that is, I need more baking sheets. Yes dear, it is possible. I think a trip to buy some additional baking equipment is required. But not until I eat as many of these as possible! Yummee!

Whilst 99.99% of the population had their eyes on Poznan and Gdansk this week watching the Boys in Green, the other 0.01% where watching Vienna. Well, at least anyone with an interest in coffee. Seems those “coffee nerds” were onto a good thing, they fared way better than the football team. Ireland, Dublin specifically, is home to the third greatest barista in the world, Mr Colin Harmon.

In honour of the coffee boys in Vienna, I made some Viennese Whirls. These are so simple and I spent all week thinking of making them. Then, when I finally got the time to do it, I was missing a vital piece of equipment, a large star piping nozzle. Not really a hi-tech difficult item to come by but essential for making Viennese Whirls. So I had to wait another day to make them.

Once I got around to it, it was a simple as placing all the ingredient into a food processor – 250g very soft butter, 50g icing sugar, 250g plain flour, 50g cornflour and 1/2tsp vanilla extract. I will admit I stole the recipe from BBC Food website.

Once you have your smooth mixture, pipe the mixture through the now infamous star nozzle making sure to have an even number.

Place in a 190 degree oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown. Once cooled, prepare the buttercream filling with 100g butter, 200g icing sugar and 1/2tsp vanilla extract. Pipe one half of the biscuits with the filling, spread the other half with raspberry jam and sandwich together.

These are so simple and a great way to practice your piping skills. Yummee!

For the second weekend in a row, I have baked a non-summery cake. Again, it was dictated by what my 3 year old requested but given that the weather has been even worse this week, I think I can be forgiven. Also, I am still on my mission to not buy any more baking ingredients until I have used up what it is taking up about 50% of my available food storage space which I have achieved again this week.

I use the term bread in the title loosely to be honest. My 3 year old actually asked for “Banana Cake” and I think that’s more what it is! Any resemblance to bread is purely accidental.

Place 115g of walnuts on a baking tray and place in a 190oC oven (170oC for fan) for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them because they go from golden brown to burnt quite quickly. Remove and leave to cool a little before chopping into small pieces.

Also at this point melt 115g butter and leave to cool. Then mash 3 ripe bananas – this is easiest done by a 3 year old with the potato masher.

Sift and combine the following dry ingredients – 250g Plain flour, 150g Light brown sugar, 1 tsp Baking powder, 1/4 tsp Baking soda, 1/4 tsp Salt, 1tsp Cinnamon.

Beat 2 Eggs and add the cooled melted butter, mashed bananas and 1 tsp Vanilla extract.

Carefully fold the dry ingredients into the banana mixture, being careful not to over work it to ensure your bread/cake will be light and fluffy. You dont want a smooth mixture.

Pour into a 1lb loaf tin which is greased and “floured” and place on the middle shelf of the oven for 45 minutes or until golden brown and your cake tester comes out clean.

Cut into ridiculously large slices and eat! Yummeelicious!

WARNING: This cake contains nuts and is seriously addictive. One slice is just not enough!

I know it’s summer but in all fairness you could be forgiven for thinking the past weekend was actually the October bank holiday and not June! So with the rain bucketing down outside the options for activities for the day were limited and so the only thing to do was bake.

I had been craving an apple tart for a couple of weeks and had actually bought the bramley apples with the intention of making a regular old apple tart. The weather may not have ben summery but I did want something to brighten up my apple pie. I had a flick through some recipes and found hundreds of plain old apple and cinamon but then just when I was giving up and going to get on with it, I spotted a recipe for apple and orange pie. I like when I come across a recipe with ingredient combinations that I would never have thought of and putting oranges in an apple pie was one such recipe.

First up, make the pastry: 275g plain flousr, 0.5tsp salt, 150g butter (cold), approx 4 tbsp cold water. There are 2 ways of doing this, the “proper way” and the “lazy way”. The “proper way”, you get your hands dirty and rub the butter into the sifted flour and salt and then combine with just the correct amount of water. The “lazy way” is the put the flour, salt and butter into the food processeor and pulse until you get the desired breadcrumb texture. Add water to the processer and pulse to combine. The proper way is very therapeutic and provides the relaxation that you get from baking. The food processor is great when you have last minute guests or fancy something nice for after dinner midweek. However you make it, put it in the fridge for at least 30mins to chill.

While your pastry is chilling, it’s time to prepare the fruit. Obviously it depends on the size of pie you are making, but 3 large brambley apples and 3 large oranges should suffice. Prepare the apples by peeling, coring and cutting into large pieces. The large pieces are vital for ensuring your pie filling doesnt turn to “mush”. To prepare the oranges, cut a thin slice of peel and pith from both ends of each orange. Put the cut side down on a plate and cut off the peel and pith in strips. Carefully cut out each segment ensuring to leave behind the membrane.

Mix the apples and orange pieces together in the pie dish and sprinkle with 2 tbsp brown sugar.

Remove pastry from the fridge and roll out to the desired thickness. Because of all the juices created by cooking the apple and oranges this is a “bottomless pie”, ie pastry lid only. Cut a strip of pastry out, brush with cold water and cover the rim of the pie dish. Dampen the pastry strip and cover with the pastry.

Brush the top of the pie with a beaten egg and place in a 190oC oven for approx 35 minutes or until your pastry has a golden colour.

To serve sprinkle the top of the pie with caster cugar. You could also add a large dollup of cream or ice-cream. Yummee!