undrcooked, overcooked Gingerbread me

Last night I attempted my first ever batch of gingerbread.  I need 3 slices for the show on Saturday.  I have to say I am really struggling with this.  And whilst I am loath to blame my oven I can not get it to cook correctly.

Equipment: 1 x  8 inch square deep cake tin
Greasproof paper
Tin foil

Gingerbread.

6 oz black treacle
6 oz golden syrup
6 oz dark brown sugar
6 oz butter
12 oz plain flour
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp mixed spice
1/4 pint milk
1 egg, beaten
4 pices stemm ginger, finely chopped

Grease the cake tin and line with greaseprrof paper (no need to flour it).  Preheat oven to 170C

Put the treacle, syrup, sugar and butter in a nonstick saucepan and slowly heat through until all the butter and sugar have melted, stirring occasionally.  then remove from heat.

In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, bicarb, ground ginger and spice.  make a well in the centre.

Blend the milk in the sugar mix and test the mixture.  it should be no more than tepid.  If it is hotter leave to cool down some more.

Put the egg and chopped stem ginger into the bowl with the flour and add the sur mixture. combine well with an electric hand mixer.  The batter should look shiny and smooth with tiny tiny lumps of ginger.

Pour the mixture into the lined cake tine and bake for 60 - 90 minutes.  Test after 60 minutes and the gingerbread is ready when a cocktail stick or tester come out clean.

By this stage your house will be smelling amazing.  The smell of fresh gingerbread is almost as good as fresh bread.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a minimum of 1 hour before removing from the tin.  Once fully cool cut place onto long strip of greaseproof paper and cut into slices.  Wrap in the paper and then wrap in the tin foil and leave for a minimum of 48hrs to mature and become the moist chewy ginger bread we all know and love.

 My first attempt I left in the oven for exactly 90 minutes as directed by the recipe and ............ well you can see the results here:

Definitely burnt round the edges.


My second attempt tonight, I cooked for 60 minutes and used a cake tester on it, which came out clean.  But as you can see the edges are just starting to become overcooked and yet it has sunk in the middle.

However, as you can see from the title picture the middle slices look good enough to eat, even though it is clearly more dense on the bottom half.  Once it has finished cooling I'll wrap it up and it will remain wrapped until Saturday morning when I will take 3 of the middle pieces to the show.

If anyone can offer any tips a to how I can get the stupid thing to cook evenly I'd be very grateful.

I have a new pie maker

So.... I bought myself a depp fill pie maker.  I love pies and rather than cooking big ones with all the temptation that entails, with not eating the whole thing in one sitting, I thought making individual pies would end up being better - portion control you know.

I decided to start with a simple classic British pie.  After looking at some other recipes I estimated the amounts that would be required to make 4 separate pies.

Individual Cheese & potato pies

Makes 4 pies

Equipment: Deep fill pie maker

Tips:  Put pastry into pie maker when the pie maker is cold.  You will need to cook the pies for a couple of minutes longer, but that is better than burning your fingers by putting pastry in when it is hot.

1 lb shortcrust pastry

1 1/1 lb potatoes

1 red onion

1 oz butter

5 oz mature cheddar cheese

2 tsp fresh chives - chopped

2 tsp English mustard powder

Salt & pepper

1 egg – beaten

Directions:

Peel the potatoes and put them on to boil.   Peel and slice the onions and fry them in a little olive oil until translucent.   

Remove onions from heat, cover to keep warm and put to one side.  Once the potatoes are boiled drain the water out of the pan.  Using a fork gently crush the potatoes – you want the potatoes to be half mash half lumps – and add the butter and mix. Mix the cheese, onion, milk, mustard powder, chives and potatoes together adding a dash of salt & pepper to taste.

Roll out the pastry and cut the tops and bottoms for the pies.  Line the pie maker with the bottoms and fill with mixture.  Put on the lids, brush with beaten egg, close the machine and cook for approximately 12 minutes.

You definitely need to make sure filling forms a dome to ensure the lid is cooked.  As you can see from the picture the 2nd batch I put more filling in the the top cooked quite well.

Too early for Christmas? (Fruit liqueur and Christmas cake)

Today being the first of September I have started my cooking for Christmas. This is the first time in a few years I have been able to make my own Christmas cake since I am unable to stir the mix due to my arthritus.  As James is moving to live here in less than a forthnight I'll have someone to do the stirring of the cake mix for me.

I like to soak the fruit for the Christmas cake for 2 1/2 months before baking.  I have weighed out the fruit (just under 2lb of raisins, peel and sultanas) and put them into a rumtopf.  I then threw in 70cl of brandy.I didn't drink any - honest.

I stir the fruit/brandy on a daily basis for a fortnight and then just once per week until mid November.  After the first fortnight I'll be adding another 35cl of brandy.  It is a lot of brandy I know, but I make good use of it.  When it comes time to bake the cake I drain the brandy through a sieve into a large container.  I then set up a jelly bag and pour the liquid through that.  This step means that all the little bits have been removed from the liquid.  I then pour the liquid into a decorative bottle and store it until December.

The plain brandy turns into a fairly potent and fruity liqueur. The perfect after dinner tipple for the winter months.

I'll do a full post just for the fruit liqueur and show you the results in a couple of months.

Another show

I am all excited.  A friend has just brought round and entry form for a small local show at Egremont for next Saturday.  I knew there was a show at some point was was not sure when it was. 

After my first ever attempts at entering items in the produce section of a show earlier in the month,  getting a 2nd and two 3rds, I am very keen to have another go.  Whilst we are on the subject, I will also be entering my pink grapefruit marmalade into the World Marmalade Championships in March 2014.

I think will enter the following items for Saturdays show:

• Strawberry, raspberry and blueberry jams
• Lemon curd
• plain and cheese scones
• And if I have time some gingerbread and possibly some shortbread.

The scones of course have to be cooked on the morning of the show, so that will be an early start for me....... No Saturday morning lay in.  Since I have never made gingerbread I'd better start hunting out some recipes, seeing what is involved, practising and getting my valiant crew of taste testers at work on the case.

No time to be chatting here.............. I have recipes to find.

A little bit of Heston - lemon cream biscuits

 

I decided to go all Heston Blumenthal experimental this evening.  From my disaster the other day I still had some lemon juice and the zest of one lemon to use up.  I thought I’d make some lemon biscuits.  Though having checked the recipe I was going to amend it only called for ½ tsp of liquid and I did not feel that was enough to flavour the biscuits to make them taste really lemony.  So my problem was how to get more lemon flavour into the biscuits.

I hunted round the internet and found nothing that was of any help.  So making a vain attempt to think logically about this I decided I needed a lemon concentrate.  But how could I make a concentrate?  I decided a concentrate was something that had the water taken out.  How could I do this to lemon juice?  By boiling it.

Makes about 70 individual biscuits or 35 if sandwiched together  

Equipment – Biscuit press

Ingredients:

1 lemon

8 oz butter soft butter

2 1/4 oz icing sugar

7 oz plain flour

2 ¼ oz cornflour

Filling:
3 tbsp cream cheese

8 oz icing sugar

1 – 2 tbsp Lemon curd

1 tbsp lemon juice

Temp 175 degrees C

Tips: 

• Put baking tray in fridge to cool before mix dough 
• Between batches wash and dry baking tray and place in freezer for about 5 minutes. 
• Any biscuits that do not press correctly pick up and add back into spare dough 
• After each loading of the press do a couple of practice presses straight into bowl with dough in and then scrap excess dough from bottom of press with spatula. 
• Recommended you watch a couple of the 'How to use a cookie press' videos on Youtube

Directions: 

Here’s the Heston bit………Home-made lemon concentrate

1. Zest the lemon and put the zest to one side
2. Cut the lemon in half and extract the juice.
3. Put 10 tsps of lemon juice into a small non-stick saucepan and bring to a fast boil.
4. Keep gently tilting the juice until you have about 1 tsp of liquid left – this will only take a minute or 2.
5. Remove from heat – keeping pan slightly tilted so all the juice goes down to one corner
6. Use silicone spatula to scrap all reside down to the juice.
7. Put the pan with the juice in to one side – keeping it tilted. 

Note: Do not be concerned if it is a sticky mess when you go to put it in the biscuits – all the lumps and stickiness disappear.

The biscuits

1.      Using electric hand held mixer cream butter until smooth and paler in colour. 

2.      Add sugar and lemon concentrate and mix until smooth. 

3.      Sift together flour and cornflour, add to mix and mix well. 

4.      Add lemon zest and combine again.

5.      Put some dough in biscuit press, choose design. 

6.      Press biscuits directly onto cooled baking tray. 

7.      Bake for 7-8 minutes. 

8.      Cool fully on cooling rack before putting the biscuits together. 

So, the biscuits have been cooked and cooled I have had a couple of cups of coffee to cleanse my palate from all the biscuit dough I ate.  I am ready to try a biscuit to see if my experimentation has worked.

I am very pleased they have a delightful fresh, but subtle lemony flavour.

So now what?  Well I still have the cream cheese left over from the other nights disaster.  Let’s experiment with the filling.

Filling

1. Add all the ingredients together and mix until smooth. 

Putting together.

1. Place half of the biscuits on a large tray upside down. 
2. Holding one of the biscuits upside down put on some of the filling repeat with all the biscuits on the tray.  Then sandwich all the biscuits together using the other half of the biscuits.

I tried them out on the food delivery van man to night.  I gave him one, which he promptly ate and asked for a couple more to take away with him.  So I say these are a success.

Individual winter lemon puddings or 'I hate courgettes'

A friend at work had given me some of her free range eggs and home grown courgette, so I decided to try something new.

 Yes I know it looks like a small marrow, but honestly it started life as a courgette

Lemon and courgette cupcakes.

I have been working hard this evening after I got home from work to bring you something delicious.  All I can say is 'Sorry'

First things first I had to do a dash to the nearest shops.  I happen to live in the middle of nowhere so it is not as though I can just walk to the corner shop to pick up what I need.  An hour, some unsalted butter, plain wholemeal flour and cream cheese later I was ready to start.

I re-wrote the recipe and broke it down into areas to make it easier for me to follow.  Luckily my computer is just through the doorway from the kitchen so I do not have too far to dash to check that I am doing things right.

I have the worlds tiniest kitchen so I always read through the recipe and pre-weigh, grat, zest, beat etc everything I need to so I can put all the packets away to give me what little space I can get.

I zest and juice 2 lemons, add the vanilla essence to the eggs and beat them.  I soften the butter, add both the flours, baking powder and salt together and pre-sift them.  I weigh out the sugar and then it is time to attack to giant courgette.

10 oz of courgette flesh is required.  I roll the courgette around the worktop a few times pondering how to achieve this.  I decided to use the potato peeler on it.  I grab the small end of the courgette and run the peeler down the courgette.  Whoo hoo! This is easy.  Although it does need two runs down.  One to remove the peel and the second to remove the underlying green stuff.  I cut off the thick end, grab my grater and roughly grate out 10 oz of flesh.

Now on I'm fire.  I cream the butter, add in the sugar and cream again until it is light and fluffy.  The next step is to add the eggs and vanilla extract mix, the lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and the courgettes.

Oh

Oh dear

Oh ewww

The mix looks very curdled.  Well I can't stop now and quickly chuck in the flours and give it a good fast stir.

As you can see, my mud loving Shih Tzu would be quite happy to swim in this.  But I am game to carry on regardless and spoon the mix into 6 large cupcake cases in a silicone muffin tray and throw them gaily into the oven.

They didn't rise and look a bit odd.  If you look closely at the one I have picked at you can see the middle is a soggy mess.  So now what do I do?  I don't want to waste the rest of the mixture.

I add the same amount of flour to the mix plus half the original amount of sugar and 2 extra tablespoons of lemon juice and give it a good mix round.

Now this is looking and feeling more like cake batter.  I line up another six cupcake cases and fill them almost to the top this time.  Throw them in the oven, quickly shut the oven door and run away.  After an estimated time of death I check and they do not look done.  So I leave them in there for another 5 minutes.

Hmmmm.  I'm not sure about these.

They do taste lovely.  However, the texture is a bit stodgy and you can see from the look inside that something is just not right.

So I am very sorry that I have been unable to bring you another lovely recipe.

You may ask what next?  I will be baking the rest of the batter and will freeze the results.  I will bring them out during the colder months, reheat them and serve them with custard as "Individual winter lemon puddings".

The lesson I have learnt tonight is to do more research when cooking with something new.  Apparently if your courgette is very watery, once grated, you should wrap it in a clean cloth and wring some of the water out, before baking with it.  I wish I'd known that before I started baking tonight.

Fruit cake - boiled

I have arthritus which means making some items rather difficult, grating the zest for lemon curd and in this instance mixing a good fruit cake by hand.  I have not made a christmas cake from scratch for a few years, as living on my own and not owning a Kenwood Chef or other such appliance, I just do not have the ability to mix a full on fruit cake.

Therefore I was delighted when I cam across boiled fruit cake recipes - who knew???  I can now easily make fruit cakes again.

Equipment:

• 1 x 9 inch springform cake tin or 2 x 2lb loaf tins -Grease and four the tin(s).  Cut strips of greasproof paper, fold so that it covers all of the tin and is about 2 inches higher than top of tin.  Then wrap around the tin(s) and tie off with string. 
• Stock/stew pot

Note:  It is important to make sure you prep up all the ingredients in advance.

Ingredients
4 oz soft brown sugar
8 oz butter
1lb mixed fruit - if you do not like mixed peel make up your own mix
3 tsp mixed spice
3/4 pint milk
6 oz glace cherries - chopped and rolled in flour
4 eggs - beaten
12 oz self-raising flour (pre-sifted with bicarb soda)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Demerara sugar to decorate

Temperature 160C
Timings:
9 inch tin - check after about 1 hr 30 minutes test and cook for longer if not cooked through
2 x loaf tins - check after 40 minutes
          

• Put the first 5 ingredients into the stock pot and slowly bring to the boil - stirring occasionally.  
• Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally and remove from heat, leaving to cool for about 30 minutes.  
• After the 30 minutes add cherries to mix and stir. 
• Add egg to mix and stir in fast and well.  
• Add pre-sifted flour and bicarb and fold in carefully but fast.  
• Pour or spoon immediately into tin(s), sprinkle with demerara sugar and bake in the oven for the timings given above..