Baby flapjacks

I I finally had a) the baby napping solidly enough and b) the energy to try baking something new! As a household we've always had a pretty healthy diet, so we're not making major adjustments now our son in on solids, but it did make me realise that while a biscuit when you're peckish isn't so bad for an adult who should know better, it's not really desirable for a baby who doesn't know better! Our son eats enough fruit at each meal time to keep Dole in business for many years to come, so I scoured the offerings of Pinterest for something a little different he could have for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Lo and behold, the sugar free baby flapjack has been baking in our oven.

This is the original recipe, but please carry on reading to find out how I found it and what my end result was: http://www.myfussyeater.com/sugar-free-flapjacks-for-baby-led-weaning/

The ingredients are (and I used cup measurements just because they were available, though my scales were handy and they definitely didn't match the weights to cups conversion on the original recipe):

2 cups rolled oats, ground up a bit in the food processor

1 tbsp desiccated coconut

1/3 cup butter, melted (you can use coconut oil but mine is for my hair!) - also, be careful if melting it in the microwave, I hadn't done it before and have ended up with a butter-coated microwave interior to clean

3 dates, pitted

1 & 1/2 bananas

4 tbsp orange or apple juice (I had orange open)

1. Mix the processed oats and coconut together in a large bowl

2. Put the other ingredients into a blender / food processor and blitz till they're paste-like, or at least combined and not too lumpy

3. Pour the wet paste into the dry mix and thoroughly combine

4. Line a tray with parchment (I used Fry Light to grease my tray and help the parchment stick)

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tray, then pat it down tightly with a spoon to make it nice and dense

I had preheated the oven to 170 Celsius (actually 150 due to mine being fan). When I do this again I'm going to put it at at least 170 fan, if not 180, to encourage a bit more colour and less drying out. 

The original recipe says to bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden, but mine were in for much longer... Maybe 40 minutes. Hence the idea about upping the temperature next time. 

This recipe should make 8 to 16 bars depending on how greedy you are. I'm actually giving my son no more than half a 16th of the total at a time (a 32nd??!?) because I made them quite thin but they're pretty wide. You can just slice them into however many you want once they're a little cool.

I had licked the spoon as I out the tray in the oven and really enjoyed the taste. I then shared a bit with my son after they'd cooled a little, and I have to say, neither of us were disgusted at these healthy little bars! Normally with healthy versions or sugar-free things I usually think I'll just make the sugared version and eat less, but these are pretty good. My husband tried one and he won't be stealing them; they're not quite up to his sweet tooth requirements, but I think we'll happily make our way through the remaining 30 32nds! 

The original recipe says they can be frozen in parchment and defrosted with 30 mins notice, this excites me quite a lot but I've run out of parchment so they will be plastic-tubbed until I can get some more parchment tomorrow! 

French macarons

I made French macarons! Ooh fancy!

I was trawling through Pinterest a few evenings ago and stumbled across a recipe for French macarons that promised to be easy, so I thought "heck, why not give it a go", and did just that.

The recipe I used is this one, courtesy of Martha Stewart.

I halved the recipe in order to halve the risk of wasted ingredients, in case it all went pear-shaped, so I used:

Just over half a cup of ground almonds
Well over half a cup of icing sugar (some of which I made by grinding caster sugar, as I ran out of icing sugar)
A pinch of salt (which you'll note isn't actually added in the instructions Martha gives, though is in her ingredients list... hmmm)
2 egg whites
1/4 cup caster sugar
A drop of vanilla essence
Raspberry jam, stirred into a runnier consistency

I sieved the ground almonds and icing sugar into a bowl and put them to the side. In a large bowl I whisked the egg whites and salt until they were frothy, then slowly added the caster sugar while whisking until the mixture formed medium peaks. Slop in the vanilla essence somewhere along the way too.

Then I folded the sieved mixture into the eggs (it said to do it the other way, but I had to use the big bowl for the eggs so I just kept them in it and added the dry ingredients to it). The whole lot was mixed together thoroughly, keeping in lots of lovely air.

I then used a sandwich bag and a piping nozzle (I tore the proper piping bag doing some hardcore cupcake icing last year) to pipe what should have been inch wide blobs onto a lined baking sheet. Note for next time - if it looks like an inch when it lands it will spread to 2 inches (minimum!).

I then let them sit for 30 mins (should have let them sit for 1 hour, in retrospect) and then baked them at 170 degrees for 14 minutes, turning once. 

This gave me 16 halves. It should have given me quite a bit more than that, and if I'd done them small enough it would have done!

I let them cool, which took hardly any time at all, and then squashed them together with jam in between.

They tasted lovely and for a first attempt I'm pleased. Next time, however, I'll let them sit longer, make them smaller and use less jam. They were very very soft in texture and could really have done with being harder. But yay for trying.

Happy Valentine's Day!

We don't really do Valentine's Day in this house - I like the idea of it (who doesn't want to be romanced regularly?!) but my husband doesn't like to conform to society's expectations... so, we do a little lop-sided thing where I make a fuss and he doesn't mind too much.

This year, the man of the house will be cooking steak his way (in lemon and butter, with lots of resting and mess) and I will be spending lunchtime today baking little heart shaped shortbread biscuits to have with our post-dinner cup of tea.

I've got him a silly gift and a cute card I found on Etsy too!

Victorious Sponge

Every Victoria sponge I've tried to make since I left home has failed. I followed the instructions to the letter and it always came out as a hard, crusty, un-risen disaster. Once I made 4 sponges just so they'd get to the right height for a normal sponge.

This weekend I made my first successful and GORGEOUS Victoria sponge! The secret? A recipe off YouTube, lob it all in a bowl together and don't really think about it!

200g self raising flour
200g castor sugar
200g butter (mine was slightly salted)
4 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp strawberry jam
1 tbsp icing sugar

1. Mix the ingredients except the icing sugar and jam in a large bowl
2. Divide between 2 lined cake tins, which are about as wide as my hand span
3. Bake at 160°C for 25-30 minutes or until risen and golden
4. Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing from the tins
5. Cool to room temperature on a wire rack
6. Sandwich together with strawberry jam then dust the icing sugar through a sieve over the top

Ta daaaah!

Bread - bingo wing buster & taste sensation!

I made bread! I followed a recipe from Mrs Beeton's "Baking and Cakes" book, and with a minor alteration made a fantastic loaf...

Use your loaf

Ingredients (for a 23 x 13 x 7.5cm loaf tin):

400g strong white flour (about the amount you can fit in a big cereal bowl)

1 tsp salt

12.5g lard

0.5 tablespoon dried yeast

0.25 tsp sugar

250ml luke warm water

flour for kneading

water for glazing (makes a crusty top)

sunflower seeds - I added these to the top

What I did:

1. Sifted the flour and salt into a large glass mixing bowl, then rubbed in the lard.
2. In a jug I measured the luke warm water, stirred in the sugar till it dissolved then sprinkled the dried yeast onto the water and left it in a warm room (utility room!) for 5 minutes until it frothed.
3. Then I mixed the yeast fluid into the flour by making a well in the middle, pouring the fluid in and bringing it together with my hands.
4. I dusted the worktop with flour, then turned the dough out and kneaded it for 8 minutes until it was smooth and really springy - fantastic work out for your arms, just remember to use both or you'll end up lop-sided! 
5. Then put the back into the bowl (it stuck a bit so put some flour up the sides of the bowl), covered it in clingfilm and left it in a warm room for 2 hours.
6. After 2 hours it had at least doubled in size, so I took it out of the bowl and kneaded it for about 5 mins more till it was springy and smooth again.
7. Then it was popped into the loaf tin - no greasing but the tin I've got is really good non-stick, wrapped it in cling film and put it back in the warm room for another 45 minutes.
8. Then I preheated the oven to 210 degrees (it's a fan oven), and while it heated up I brushed water on the top of the loaf and sprinkled a generous helping of sunflower seeds on top.
9. I put the loaf in the oven for 35 minutes - I did turn the temperature down a little to around 160 degrees after 30 minutes because it smelled like it was too warm.
10. Then it got turned out onto a board and left to cool for a while, before slicing and serving with some margarine to accompany a chicken and bacon salad dressed with honey and mustard. Yum!

Breakfast this morning was a few more slices, with coffee and a good read!

I'm trying another loaf today - Honey and Sunflower Seed - I've replaced the sugar with a generous teaspoon of honey (mixed with the warm water as before) and I measured by eye rather than weight. It's sitting in the utility room proving at the moment... we'll see how it turns out later!

Making bread from scratch without a bread machine sounds like it takes ages... but activity-wise it takes next to no time; prep takes 5 minutes and that's only to let the yeast activate, kneading takes in total about 12 minutes, so really under 20 minutes effort is required. With the rest of the time you can go off and do something or nothing, whatever you fancy! And the pay off / effort:result ratio is off the scale! Well worth a go and it means no extra kitchen contraptions to find a home for!

PB&J Bars

This recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly bars is courtesy of The Boy Who Bakes, Edd Kimber. I tried it, and it works - a treat! The photos are of my attempt at his fab recipe!

450g Plain Flour

300g Unsalted Butter

150g Caster Sugar

1/4 tsp salt

150g smooth peanut butter

250g jam (choice up to you) (I used strawberry because it was on offer!)

1. Press a piece of foil into the base and up the sides of a 9×13 baking pan. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.

2. Place the flour, butter, sugar and salt into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and pulse until the ingredients form a dough. (I used my Braun Multiquick Handblender with the big jug attachment, and it worked well).

3. Tip the dough out onto the worksurface and lightly knead until it becomes uniform. Remove a third of the dough and wrap it in clingfilm and refrigerate until needed. Press the remaining dough evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 25-30 mins or until lightly golden around the edges. leave to cool for 20 mins.

4. Spread the peanut butter evenly on the cooled base then repeat with the jam. Remove the third of dough from the fridge and crumble into pieces and scatter evenly over the jam. Bake for a further 25-30 mins or until the crumbled dough starts to colour a little bit. Cool completely before cutting into 12 large squares.

Here's Edd's website if you want to try more of his lovely recipes. 

Margarita Cookies

My friend and colleague, Matt, showed me a recipe book a few months ago - it had lots of different types of cookies and biscuits to try, and one that stuck in my mind was Margarita Cookies, so I thought I'd give them ago. I didn't have the recipe book to hand today when I was making them, so I sort of made it up as I went, following the principle of lime biscuits with tequila icing.

So here's what I did...

For the biscuits:
225g butter
110g caster sugar
275g plain flour
Zest of 1 lime

For the icing*:
115g icing sugar
2 tablespoons of tequila
Splash of lime juice

1. Cream the butter so it's light and smooth
2. Cream together the caster sugar and smooth butter
3. Mix in the lime zest
4. Work in the flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, until a dough is formed

The first batch of these I did had quite a dry dough - the second was more moist even though I used the same quantities. It's worked out nicely with both consistencies - so long as it's not sloppy and you can mould it with your hands you should be ok!

5. Roll these into small balls, about the size of a walnut, and place on a baking tray, lined with baking paper.
6. Squash the balls down with your fingers to make rough circles about 8mm thick. They don't need to be smooth - in fact the bumpier they are the easier they are to ice. You should end up with 25 biscuits.
7. Bake at 170 degrees celcius (fan assisted oven) for 13 minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack for cooling.
8. Mix in the first tablespoon of tequila to the icing sugar, to make a paste. Then mix in the next tablespoon which should loosen the mixture even more.
9. Add a splash of lime juice if you think the mixture needs loosening further - but remember it's got to stick to the biscuits and dry, so you don't want it too sloppy.
10. Dip a spoon into the icing, and drizzle it over the biscuits. To do mine I put all the biscuits close together and shook the icing over a bit like a cobweb.
11. Allow to dry for an hour (but they're ok to try before they're dry!).

*this much icing was enough to cover a batch and a half of cookies