Honey wholemeal chocolate chip cookies

When I checked my (personal) emails at lunchtime on Friday, I had an email from Simple Bites with a recipe for these cookies: http://www.simplebites.net/honey-whole-wheat-chocolate-chunk-cookies-and-not-getting-organized/

They sounded so good and so easy that I promptly decided I should make them at the weekend.  

You make them in the food processor, in three stages and then roll balls of mixture to make the cookies. You flatten these and leave them to chill in the fridge while you heat the oven. Nothing to it. 

The cookies themselves are good - with a pleasing wholemeal flavour, giving the impression these are somehow healthy...

Perhaps not my favourite chocolate chip cookie of all time, but a good recipe to have in your repertoire. 

Unfortunately, my only photo is pre-bake since i forgot to take a picture before we ate them all.... 

Happy baking! 

Apple oat shortcake (apple flapjack slice)

When I lived in Oxford over ten years ago, I used to occasionally go to the Alternative Tuckshop. I was very partial to the chicken and Swiss cheese ciabatta, but they also had really lovely apple flapjacks. These were the flapjacks that persuaded me that it might be worth messing with the classic. However, fifteen years later I've yet to try and recreate them. One day... 

However, when I recently bought Annie Bell's Baking Bible I saw it had apple oat shortcake, which the author says is an attempt to combine apple pie and flapjack and I immediately thought back to the beloved apple flapjacks of old. So, they had to be the first thing I made from the book. 

So, this bake has a shortbread base that you make and bake (I used a wee bit of wholemeal spelt in this), before adding a layer of Bramley apples, sultanas (the recipe suggests currants), sugar and lemon zest and then top with flapjacks made with lots of lovely golden syrup before baking.

Did I mention my love of golden syrup?but it has to be Lyle and Tate and from a tin, not a bottle. I usually heat my spoon in hot water so the syrup will slide off. Mmm.... Golden syrup... 

Back to the shortcake, though. It tasted lovely. However, there is a lot of moisture from the apples, so do leave it till it is completely cold before you cut and move it. I thought it was cool enough last night, but it was a nightmare to move. Much easier this morning, though. 

All in all, very tasty and worth baking. If you don't have the book you can find the recipe here:

http://www.allaboutyou.com/food/recipefinder/apple-flapjack-recipe-10402

Happy baking! 

Homemade granola

I forget how I first found http://smittenkitchen.com/, but I've been following the blog for a while now.  So when I discovered that there was going to be a book, I was bound to buy it.  I had to wait an extra few months for the UK version, but it finally arrived. 

Now, since my honeymoon in America in 2010 and a rather memorable breakfast featuring granola near the Seaport museum in New York, I've had a soft spot for granola.  I recently bit the bullet and tried making my own and it's really very easy.  But it does generally have a fair bit of sugar and fat of one kind or another.  So, I was interested to see that Deb had a recipe for chunky granola with walnuts and cherries that had less fat and a bit less sugar. 

Making your own granola is pretty quick and easy. The time consuming task is chopping nuts up (unless you use flaked almonds that is) and the tricky part is not overlooking it, which I'm not sure I've entirely mastered. However the results have still been great. 

I used cherries (mixture of sour cherries from a health food store, which were super nice and super expensive, and morello cherries from Sainsbury's that for some reason had been soaked in apple juice) and pecans. I also used maple syrup, which I think was Deb's original suggestion but which has been anglicised to golden syrup (why? I mean I love golden syrup, but it's not maple syrup, is it?). 

I like my granola with yoghurt and fruit (banana, pear, berries (when summer arrives), stewed apple), but it is also good just with milk.

Happy baking!

Awesome Bakewell tart

I'm going to see a friend from church tomorrow and I thought I'd make her a Bakewell tart.  This is the third time I've made this tart - and all within about a month.  The first one I made because Fantastic Mr Fox is very partial to Bakewell tart and I hadn't made one for him in ages.  I was going to take most of it into work as I often do with baking), but then I tasted the tart and decided it was so awesome that my poor colleagues weren't going to get a look in...  It was that good.  The second time I made it I managed to take it out to a group of friends - and Fantastic Mr Fox was very disappointed that not much came back...
 
This recipe is from British Baking by Peyton and Byrne (http://www.peytonandbyrne.co.uk/peyton-and-byrne-at-st-pancras/index.html).  I make several trips a year to London for work and almost always go by train, so I've long been calling into St Pancreas to visit the Peyton and Byrne café for sustenance for the return trip, or into one of the British Library cafes they run for a restorative coffee after the trip down (particularly if I got the 5:40am train...).  The biscuits and cakes all look amazing - they vary from good takes on standard cakes to more unusual offerings including Jaffa cakes.  I am particularly partial to the chocolate hazelnut cookies, although I would also give an honourable mention to the gingerbread men and the heart-shaped jammy dodgers.  So really it was only a matter of time before this book joined the others on my bookshelf...
 

 
I used homemade jam previously, but having used up my stash (hooray!  Usually I don't - I enjoy making jam more than I eat jam...), I bought some jam from the lovely Craigie's farm near the Forth Road Bridge (http://www.craigies.co.uk/) because I was pretty confident it would be good and be worthy of this tart. 

The pastry in the recipe is quite unusual - it is described as being biscuit like and it is in more ways than one.  You start with soft butter and make the pastry via a creaming method (I used my KitchenAid mixer).   I made the pastry each time with partly plain flour and partly wholemeal spelt flour (trying to increase the whole grains in my baking).  The pastry was prone to breaking up and I had to do a patchwork job to line the tin, but it seemed to work.  This may be because the wholemeal spelt flour changed how much moisture was needed or may be due to my ineptitude with pastry (it's not my favourite thing to make).  The pastry is definitely the biggest job - partly because you need to chill it twice, although you don't bake it blind.  However, the chilling time does give me a chance to do a quick wash of the mixer bowl ready to make the frangipane (I added a few drops of almond extract).  Once the tart is lined and chilled you just need to put in the jam. Then you add some fresh berries (I used frozen raspberries) and top with the frangipane and then sliced almonds and bake.  I baked it on a preheated tray, just to make sure that I avoided a soggy bottom (given the lack of blind baking) and it all turned out beautifully. 
 

 

All in all, relatively easy (though a bit time consuming) and a delicious product. 
 

 
Happy baking!
 
 

Baking against the odds and the lemon cake everyone needs in their repetoire

So, I bought Annie Bell's Baking Bible the other week and decided to bake the apple oat bars.  All set and ready to go when I realise the only ingredient I don't have is ground almonds...  Back to the drawing board....

Next up, I decide that I ought to use up the jar of lemon curd that's been lurking in the kitchen for a while waiting for me to make one of my favourite easy cakes.  If only I could open it...  Even rubber gloves didn't help.  Unfortunately Fantastic Mr Fox was out and so my usual jar opening option was available.  Still, via the magic of the internet I get some advice and the jar opens.  Then my (digital) scales give up the ghost part way through the process and I have to revert to my analogue ones (I knew I had spare scales for a reason).  But finally I got the cake made.  

So is the cake worth proceeding in the face of battles with my kitchen?  Oh yeah....  Basically, it's a sponge but made with lemon curd - you put half the jar in as you cream the eggs and butter and dot the rest on the top of the cake to get a deliciously moist  lemony sponge with ingredients you have to hand.  As part of my continuing efforts to get healthier, I used some wholemeal self-raising flour this time (about a quarter of the total flour).  Absolutely one of my favourites and I usually make it all in the food processor - fast results and the dishwasher does all the cleaning up.  What's not to like?  

You can find the recipe (from Xanthe Clay) here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/3318608/Readers-recipes-something-simple-for-the-weekend.html  

And here's the finished cake - showing you that I'm not good at photography, lining cake tins or necessarily timing cakes (the lemon curd can catch easily).  Or showing you that even if you don't get those things perfect, you can still have a delicious cake.  




Happy baking!