This was my first real recipe, cut out from the Daily Mail, and excerpted from James Ramsden's Small Adventures in Cooking. It is incredibly simple, but it produces the most rich, fragrantly elderflower ice-cream you can imagine. I think the biscuits could do with more lemon juice than the recipe calls for, why bother adding it if not for a strong lemon taste, but that's up to the individual's taste buds.
Ice-Cream Ingredients
600ml double cream
100ml elderflower cordial
100g icing sugar
Juice of half a lemon
Biscuit Ingredients
100g softened butter
150g plain flour
2 tablespoons caster sugar
Zest of 1 lemon
Tip the cream, cordial, icing sugar and lemon juice into a bowl and whisk until stiff peaks form. (I did this by hand, but if you're lazy, use an electric mixer.) Tip into an ice-cream tub and leave to set in the freezer for at least 4 hours, or overnight. To make the biscuits, preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Rub the butter into the flour with your hands until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs, then mix in the sugar and lemon zest with a spoon until it forms a stiff dough. Lightly flour a work surface and roll out the dough to about half a centimetre thick. Trim the edges and cut into 12 fingers with a knife and put on a baking tray. Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes until pale golden and remove. Leave to cool on a wire rack to allow them to crisp up. Store in an airtight container until ready to use.
Showing posts with label biscuits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biscuits. Show all posts
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
9: Melting Moments
This recipe for melting moments comes from "Biscuits and Biscotti", a small booklet put out by Australian Women's Weekly which contains some fabulous biscuit recipes. I used to see these on sale in the cookery section when I worked at Waterstone's, so it was the obvious first stop when I finally decided to start my own collection of baking books. I also picked up Cakes and Slices put out by Murdoch Books, Cupcake Magic by Kate Shirazi, and Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes. These melting moments are quite different from Holly Bell's but they look amazing, and when I get around to making them, I'm certain will taste amazing too.
Ingredients:
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (or orange?)
80g icing sugar
225g plain flour
75g corn flour
For the butter cream
80g butter
110g sifted icing sugar
Zest of 1 lemon (or half lemon?)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Preheat oven to 170. Beat the butter, vanilla essence and sifted icing sugar into a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in the combined sifted flours in two batches. With lightly floured hands, roll two level teaspoon portions of mixture into balls and place about 3cm apart on baking paper lined oven trays. Flatten slightly with a floured fork. Bake in moderate oven temperature for about 15 minutes or until biscuits are a pale-straw colour. Stand 5 minutes before lifting onto wire racks to cool. Sandwich together with a teaspoon of butter cream to serve. To make the butter cream: Beat butter, sifted icing sugar and rind in a small bowl with electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in the juice.
Ingredients:
250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla essence (or orange?)
80g icing sugar
225g plain flour
75g corn flour
For the butter cream
80g butter
110g sifted icing sugar
Zest of 1 lemon (or half lemon?)
1 teaspoon lemon juice
Preheat oven to 170. Beat the butter, vanilla essence and sifted icing sugar into a small bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Stir in the combined sifted flours in two batches. With lightly floured hands, roll two level teaspoon portions of mixture into balls and place about 3cm apart on baking paper lined oven trays. Flatten slightly with a floured fork. Bake in moderate oven temperature for about 15 minutes or until biscuits are a pale-straw colour. Stand 5 minutes before lifting onto wire racks to cool. Sandwich together with a teaspoon of butter cream to serve. To make the butter cream: Beat butter, sifted icing sugar and rind in a small bowl with electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in the juice.
Monday, 24 October 2011
7: Assorted Cakes and Biscuits
I’ve got really interested in baking at the moment; most of the recipes I’ve included in this journal so far I have tried myself from the recipe books we’ve got in the house. Mum has supervised some of my cooking but other times I have just got on with it myself, take the results as they come. I can make spaghetti Bolognese, shepherd’s pie and risotto perfectly well; I made the chicken fajita mix myself this evening with Mum’s instruction. I made shepherd’s pie Monday from the lamb we had leftover on Sunday and tomorrow I’m gonna get the spaghetti Bolognese done before Mum gets in. We’re gonna have battered cod and chips and peas later this week.
Gateau Breton
This recipe for Brittany butter cake comes from Nigella’s book and she got hers from Anne Willan’s Real Food, “a cross between shortbread and pound cake.” Pound cake refers to a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. The traditional recipe makes a cake much larger than most families can consume, and so the quantity is often changed to suit the size of the cake that is desired. As long as the ratio is preserved, the resulting cake will be identical to that using the traditional recipe. Hence, any cake made with a 1:1:1:1 ratio of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar is also called a pound cake, even if the quantity used is smaller or larger than an actual pound.
There are numerous variations on the traditional pound cake, with certain countries and regions having distinctive styles. These can include the addition of flavoring agents (such as vanilla extract or almond extract) or dried fruit (such as currants or craisins), as well as alterations to the original recipe to change the characteristics of the resulting pound cake. For instance, baking soda or baking powder may be incorporated to induce leavening during baking, resulting in a less dense pound cake. A cooking oil (typically a vegetable oil) is sometimes substituted for some or all of the butter, which is intended to produce a more moist cake. “Sour cream pound cake” is a popular variation in the United States, which involves the substitution of sour cream for some of the butter, which also is intended to produce a more moist cake with a pleasantly tangy flavor. Some of these variations may drastically change the texture and flavor of the pound cake, but the name pound cake is often still used.
Ingredients:
225g plain flour - preferably Italian 00
250g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
6 large egg yolks
A 25cm Springform tin, buttered well
The Glaze:
1 teaspoon of egg yolk
1 tablespoon of water
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Mix the glaze and put aside while you get on with your gateau. Put the flour into a bowl - sieve if using normal plain flour - stir in the sugar, and add the butter and egg yolks. Shape into a smooth golden dough: if you’re making this by hand, make a mound of the flour on a worktop, then make a well in it and add the sugar, butter, eggs and knead to mix. Scoop this dough into the tin and smooth the top with a floured hand - expect it to be very sticky, it should be. Brush the gateau with the glaze, and mark a lattice design on top with the prongs of a fork. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180 degrees and give it another 25 minutes or so until it is golden on top and firm to the touch. Let it cool completely in the tin before un-moulding it. It will keep well if you have a reliably airtight tin, and you can eat it cut into narrow cake-like wedges or into irregular criss-cross diamonds.
Holly Bell’s Strawberry and Custard Melts
This is the recipe that Holly made during The Great British Bake-Off biscuit episode, her very delicate strawberry and custard melts, which she said she imagined “ladies having for afternoon tea.” Mary-Anne made a very similar biscuit, which was described as a depression-era biscuit for the modern day recessional times with an interesting buttercream filling. Hers held their spiral ridges better than Holly’s because Mary-Anne put hers in the fridge prior to baking; however, they both looked wonderfully tasty. I suppose you don’t need to make the jam yourself so long as you use a good shop-bought strawberry jam.
Ingredients:
For the Biscuits
115g unsalted butter, softened
30g icing sugar
100g plain flour
1 tablespoon custard powder
For the custard cream
50g butter
100g icing sugar
1 tablespoon custard powder
For the jam filling
150g strawberries, hulled
185g jam sugar
Small knob of butter
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease two baking trays. Using a hand-held electric mixer, cream the butter until it is soft and fluffy. Gradually add the icing sugar, mixing on a low speed until it is all combined, then increase the speed and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the flour and custard powder, beating as you do so. The mixture should be loose enough to pipe through a piping bag; add a little cold water if needed. Spoon in the biscuit mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle; squeeze the mixture down to remove any air bubbles. Pipe 24 stars onto the baking trays, 4cm apart. Bake in the oven for 10-14 minutes or until the biscuits are pale golden-brown at the edges.
Remove the trays from the oven and set aside to cool completely. To make the custard cream filling, beat the butter using an electric hand mixer until light and fluffy, then add the icing sugar and beat at a low speed to combine. Add the custard powder, continue beating until thoroughly combined then set the mixture aside. Spoon the filling into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle.
To make the jam, blend the strawberries in a food processor or with a hand blender to make a puree. Place the puree in a saucepan and add the sugar. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved then add the butter. Turn the heat up and when the mixture has reached a rolling boil, continue boiling for four more minutes. Remove the pan from heat and pour the jam into a bowl to cool. Spoon the jam into a piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle.
Check the biscuits are completely cool and then use a palette knife to lift them onto a clean tea towel, flat side uppermost, pairing them up as you go. Be careful as the biscuits are fragile. Pipe a circle of custard cream filling onto half the stars, then fill with the jam. Place the paired star on top, pressing it down gently.
The Hairy Bikers’ Fat Rascals
“These buns originate from Yorkshire and have been made since Elizabethan times. Serve them warm or cool with a dollop of extra thick cream,” say the Hairy Bikers. A Fat Rascal, also called the Yorkshire tea biscuit or Turf Cake, is a type of cake, similar to the scone in both taste and ingredients. The Fat Rascal often has no definitive shape and is relatively easy to make. Fat Rascals are round domed teacakes with a rich brown crust and made with currants and candied peel. They are closely associated with the Cleveland area on the borders of County Durham and Yorkshire. The origin of the name is unknown, but has been in use since at least the mid-nineteenth century. The name Turf Cake comes from the tradition of farmers baking them on turf fires.
Ingredients:
150g plain flour
150g selfraising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g butter
150g mixed dried fruit
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
Half teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 orange, zest only
1 lemon, zest only
1 free-range egg yolk
50ml semi-skimmed milk
For the glaze
1 free-range egg yolk
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon water
Flaked almonds and glace cherries
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Grease a baking tray. Sieve the flours and baking powder into a large bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the mixed dried fruit, sugar, spices, orange and lemon zests. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add it to the mixture with enough milk to make a stiff dough (you may not need all the milk). Divide the dough into 12, shape into mounds and place onto the baking tray. For the glaze, mix egg yolk, salt and water together and brush the mixture over each rascal. Decorate with the almonds and glace cherries and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden-brown.
I don’t see the harm in switching the mixed dried fruit for chocolate chips, to produce plump spiced buns with chocolate surprise. I’m not really fond of raisins, sultanas or currants - the usual dried fruit that goes into fat rascals - but I do like soft sponge flavoured with lemon and orange zest.
Gateau Breton
This recipe for Brittany butter cake comes from Nigella’s book and she got hers from Anne Willan’s Real Food, “a cross between shortbread and pound cake.” Pound cake refers to a type of cake traditionally made with a pound of each of four ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, and sugar. The traditional recipe makes a cake much larger than most families can consume, and so the quantity is often changed to suit the size of the cake that is desired. As long as the ratio is preserved, the resulting cake will be identical to that using the traditional recipe. Hence, any cake made with a 1:1:1:1 ratio of flour, butter, eggs, and sugar is also called a pound cake, even if the quantity used is smaller or larger than an actual pound.
There are numerous variations on the traditional pound cake, with certain countries and regions having distinctive styles. These can include the addition of flavoring agents (such as vanilla extract or almond extract) or dried fruit (such as currants or craisins), as well as alterations to the original recipe to change the characteristics of the resulting pound cake. For instance, baking soda or baking powder may be incorporated to induce leavening during baking, resulting in a less dense pound cake. A cooking oil (typically a vegetable oil) is sometimes substituted for some or all of the butter, which is intended to produce a more moist cake. “Sour cream pound cake” is a popular variation in the United States, which involves the substitution of sour cream for some of the butter, which also is intended to produce a more moist cake with a pleasantly tangy flavor. Some of these variations may drastically change the texture and flavor of the pound cake, but the name pound cake is often still used.
Ingredients:
225g plain flour - preferably Italian 00
250g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
6 large egg yolks
A 25cm Springform tin, buttered well
The Glaze:
1 teaspoon of egg yolk
1 tablespoon of water
Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Mix the glaze and put aside while you get on with your gateau. Put the flour into a bowl - sieve if using normal plain flour - stir in the sugar, and add the butter and egg yolks. Shape into a smooth golden dough: if you’re making this by hand, make a mound of the flour on a worktop, then make a well in it and add the sugar, butter, eggs and knead to mix. Scoop this dough into the tin and smooth the top with a floured hand - expect it to be very sticky, it should be. Brush the gateau with the glaze, and mark a lattice design on top with the prongs of a fork. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 180 degrees and give it another 25 minutes or so until it is golden on top and firm to the touch. Let it cool completely in the tin before un-moulding it. It will keep well if you have a reliably airtight tin, and you can eat it cut into narrow cake-like wedges or into irregular criss-cross diamonds.
Holly Bell’s Strawberry and Custard Melts
This is the recipe that Holly made during The Great British Bake-Off biscuit episode, her very delicate strawberry and custard melts, which she said she imagined “ladies having for afternoon tea.” Mary-Anne made a very similar biscuit, which was described as a depression-era biscuit for the modern day recessional times with an interesting buttercream filling. Hers held their spiral ridges better than Holly’s because Mary-Anne put hers in the fridge prior to baking; however, they both looked wonderfully tasty. I suppose you don’t need to make the jam yourself so long as you use a good shop-bought strawberry jam.
Ingredients:
For the Biscuits
115g unsalted butter, softened
30g icing sugar
100g plain flour
1 tablespoon custard powder
For the custard cream
50g butter
100g icing sugar
1 tablespoon custard powder
For the jam filling
150g strawberries, hulled
185g jam sugar
Small knob of butter
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Grease two baking trays. Using a hand-held electric mixer, cream the butter until it is soft and fluffy. Gradually add the icing sugar, mixing on a low speed until it is all combined, then increase the speed and beat until light and creamy. Gradually add the flour and custard powder, beating as you do so. The mixture should be loose enough to pipe through a piping bag; add a little cold water if needed. Spoon in the biscuit mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle; squeeze the mixture down to remove any air bubbles. Pipe 24 stars onto the baking trays, 4cm apart. Bake in the oven for 10-14 minutes or until the biscuits are pale golden-brown at the edges.
Remove the trays from the oven and set aside to cool completely. To make the custard cream filling, beat the butter using an electric hand mixer until light and fluffy, then add the icing sugar and beat at a low speed to combine. Add the custard powder, continue beating until thoroughly combined then set the mixture aside. Spoon the filling into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle.
To make the jam, blend the strawberries in a food processor or with a hand blender to make a puree. Place the puree in a saucepan and add the sugar. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved then add the butter. Turn the heat up and when the mixture has reached a rolling boil, continue boiling for four more minutes. Remove the pan from heat and pour the jam into a bowl to cool. Spoon the jam into a piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle.
Check the biscuits are completely cool and then use a palette knife to lift them onto a clean tea towel, flat side uppermost, pairing them up as you go. Be careful as the biscuits are fragile. Pipe a circle of custard cream filling onto half the stars, then fill with the jam. Place the paired star on top, pressing it down gently.
The Hairy Bikers’ Fat Rascals
“These buns originate from Yorkshire and have been made since Elizabethan times. Serve them warm or cool with a dollop of extra thick cream,” say the Hairy Bikers. A Fat Rascal, also called the Yorkshire tea biscuit or Turf Cake, is a type of cake, similar to the scone in both taste and ingredients. The Fat Rascal often has no definitive shape and is relatively easy to make. Fat Rascals are round domed teacakes with a rich brown crust and made with currants and candied peel. They are closely associated with the Cleveland area on the borders of County Durham and Yorkshire. The origin of the name is unknown, but has been in use since at least the mid-nineteenth century. The name Turf Cake comes from the tradition of farmers baking them on turf fires.
Ingredients:
150g plain flour
150g selfraising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
150g butter
150g mixed dried fruit
100g caster sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder
Half teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 orange, zest only
1 lemon, zest only
1 free-range egg yolk
50ml semi-skimmed milk
For the glaze
1 free-range egg yolk
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon water
Flaked almonds and glace cherries
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Grease a baking tray. Sieve the flours and baking powder into a large bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the mixed dried fruit, sugar, spices, orange and lemon zests. Lightly beat the egg yolk and add it to the mixture with enough milk to make a stiff dough (you may not need all the milk). Divide the dough into 12, shape into mounds and place onto the baking tray. For the glaze, mix egg yolk, salt and water together and brush the mixture over each rascal. Decorate with the almonds and glace cherries and bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden-brown.
I don’t see the harm in switching the mixed dried fruit for chocolate chips, to produce plump spiced buns with chocolate surprise. I’m not really fond of raisins, sultanas or currants - the usual dried fruit that goes into fat rascals - but I do like soft sponge flavoured with lemon and orange zest.
2: Nigella Lawson's Snickerdoodles
A snickerdoodle is a type of sugar cookie made with butter or oil, sugar, and flour rolled in cinnamon sugar. Eggs may also sometimes be used as an ingredient. Snickerdoodles are characterized by a cracked surface and can be crisp or soft depending on preference. In modern recipes, the leavening agent is frequently baking powder in contrast with traditional techniques utilizing baking soda and cream of tartar. Snickerdoodles are often referred to as “sugar cookies.” However, traditional sugar cookies are often rolled in white sugar whereas snickerdoodles are rolled in a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon. The Joy of Cooking claims that snickerdoodles are probably German in origin, and that the name is a corruption of the German word Schneckennudeln (lit. “snail noodles”), a kind of pastry. A different author suggests that the word “snicker” comes from the Dutch word snekrad, or the German word Schnecke, which both describe a snail shape. Yet another hypothesis suggests that the name has no particular meaning or purpose and is simply a whimsically named cookie that originated from a New England tradition of fanciful cookie names.
I was surprised by how much I liked making these snickerdoodles from Nigella Lawson’s recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess. I’m not very fond of heavy spices and if you put too much cinnamon in something, it is awful to try and eat it. I chose to make this one today on the 29th September after receiving a call back from the Job Centre that I didn’t succeed in getting the voluntary placement at Pitman Training, and I picked them because they were relatively simple to make and we had all the available ingredients. They are sweet, crisp, soft on the inside, and lightly spiced - a wonderful, almost Christmassy aftertaste.
Ingredients
250g plain flour (or 225g plain four + 25g cocoa for chocodoodles)
Half a teaspoon ground nutmeg
Three quarter teaspoon baking powder
Half a teaspoon salt
125g butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar + 2 tablespoons for the cinnamon sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon cinnamon
[Two baking sheets, lined or greased]
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Combine the flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt and set aside for a moment. In a large bowl, cream the butter with 100g caster sugar until light in texture and pale in colour, and then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Now stir in the dry ingredients until you have a smooth, coherent mixture. Spoon out the remaining sugar and the cinnamon onto a plate. Then, with your fingers, squidge out pieces of dough and roll between the palms of your hands into walnut-sized balls. Roll each ball in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and arrange on your prepared baking sheets. Don’t put too many on each sheet or too closely together as when they expand upwards and outwards, they may merge into larger splats! Bake for about 15 minutes, by which time they should be turning golden-brown. Take out of the oven and leave to rest on the baking sheets for 1 minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool. It should make about 32 according to the recipe, but I hadn’t the faintest idea of how large a walnut was, so I made them quite big and ended up with three rows of six round blobs, eighteen in total. They weren’t “obviously” underdone in the middle, although I did wonder; they were softer in the middle than on the very crisp outside.
I was surprised by how much I liked making these snickerdoodles from Nigella Lawson’s recipe in How to be a Domestic Goddess. I’m not very fond of heavy spices and if you put too much cinnamon in something, it is awful to try and eat it. I chose to make this one today on the 29th September after receiving a call back from the Job Centre that I didn’t succeed in getting the voluntary placement at Pitman Training, and I picked them because they were relatively simple to make and we had all the available ingredients. They are sweet, crisp, soft on the inside, and lightly spiced - a wonderful, almost Christmassy aftertaste.
Ingredients
250g plain flour (or 225g plain four + 25g cocoa for chocodoodles)
Half a teaspoon ground nutmeg
Three quarter teaspoon baking powder
Half a teaspoon salt
125g butter at room temperature
100g caster sugar + 2 tablespoons for the cinnamon sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon cinnamon
[Two baking sheets, lined or greased]
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Combine the flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt and set aside for a moment. In a large bowl, cream the butter with 100g caster sugar until light in texture and pale in colour, and then beat in the egg and vanilla extract. Now stir in the dry ingredients until you have a smooth, coherent mixture. Spoon out the remaining sugar and the cinnamon onto a plate. Then, with your fingers, squidge out pieces of dough and roll between the palms of your hands into walnut-sized balls. Roll each ball in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and arrange on your prepared baking sheets. Don’t put too many on each sheet or too closely together as when they expand upwards and outwards, they may merge into larger splats! Bake for about 15 minutes, by which time they should be turning golden-brown. Take out of the oven and leave to rest on the baking sheets for 1 minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool. It should make about 32 according to the recipe, but I hadn’t the faintest idea of how large a walnut was, so I made them quite big and ended up with three rows of six round blobs, eighteen in total. They weren’t “obviously” underdone in the middle, although I did wonder; they were softer in the middle than on the very crisp outside.
1: Lorraine Pascale's Dreamlike Shortbread
The first thing I actually made when I started my new baking kick was a Victoria sponge, with copious amounts of encouragement and some assistance from my hovering mother, occasionally snatching the spoon off me to stir herself, that sort of thing. I immediately began to grasp the cause of Lintu's resentment when other members of the family stray into her domain. Much later, I almost flew off the handle at Dad, making remarks about my baking despite his utter ineptitude at cooking himself. That wasn't a case of "too many cooks", it was a case of the dishwasher lecturing the sous chef. Baking isn't necessarily an exact science, although I have found myself staring like a lunatic through the oven door at rising cupcakes, complaining when lemon drizzle cake was still raw in the middle despite being in for the length of time noted in the recipe, and angrily squashing elderflower cupcakes that were far too wet and squishy because of an excess of cordial (my attempt to achieve that elusive fragrancing of elderflower in fairy cake sponge, gone horribly wrong.) Making cake is much quicker than I expected it to be; bread such a long process that the only reason it is worth all the fuss is that the bread I turn out of the oven is far superior to the soft-crusted bird-feed that comes out of the bread maker.
This recipe for shortbread, which belongs to that marvellously personable cook Lorraine Pascale ("Baking Made Easy"), is the one that Mum swears by. So do I. It's rich and buttery, just as shortbread should be. You do have to pick up and press the mixture together when you've combined all your ingredients, packing it into a rough ball before you put it into the bottom of a cake tin and smooth it out - otherwise it's just crumbs - but it produces divine shortbread. Shortbread is one of those things that no one should live without. I ate far too much of it in Glasgow, my go-to biscuit when I'd gotten bored of eating as many bourbon biscuits as I pleased (ha ha Mum!) before it was replaced with inexplicable eclair cravings. Fortunately for my waistline, I'm not much fatter than I am because Sainsbury's on Buchanan Street stopped stocking the pre-cooked chilled pancakes after my first year. That's another thing that's difficult about my new interest in baking: balancing sudden consumption of cake with the dieting designed to reduce my jiggling middle.
Ingredients
130g butter, softened a few seconds in microwave
60g caster sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
130g plain flour
60g rice flour
A pinch of salt
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the plain flour, rice flour and salt, and stir well until the mixture is smooth and uniform. (I find it easiest to keep pressing the mixture against the side of the bowl to mix it.) Make sure all big lumps of butter are broken up and smoothed into the crumbly shortbread mixture. Bring the mixture together and press into a cake tin (20cm / 8in), smoothing it with the back of a spoon. Crimp the edges by pressing with the tips of two fingers, then score into eight pieces with a knife and prick each triangle three times with a fork. Put it in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Remove the shortbread from the fridge and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Remove the shortbread from the oven and sprinkle over some caster sugar. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before removing it from the tin and cooling on a wire rack.
I'm not at the moment very interested in cooking. Making meals is kind of dull; I want to make cakes and biscuits, the prettier the better. For the time being, the entries in this blog are going to be about making cakes and biscuits, with several repetitions as I try out new variations on the standard cupcake/fairy cake, and then report how it all went horribly wrong. Stay tuned.
This recipe for shortbread, which belongs to that marvellously personable cook Lorraine Pascale ("Baking Made Easy"), is the one that Mum swears by. So do I. It's rich and buttery, just as shortbread should be. You do have to pick up and press the mixture together when you've combined all your ingredients, packing it into a rough ball before you put it into the bottom of a cake tin and smooth it out - otherwise it's just crumbs - but it produces divine shortbread. Shortbread is one of those things that no one should live without. I ate far too much of it in Glasgow, my go-to biscuit when I'd gotten bored of eating as many bourbon biscuits as I pleased (ha ha Mum!) before it was replaced with inexplicable eclair cravings. Fortunately for my waistline, I'm not much fatter than I am because Sainsbury's on Buchanan Street stopped stocking the pre-cooked chilled pancakes after my first year. That's another thing that's difficult about my new interest in baking: balancing sudden consumption of cake with the dieting designed to reduce my jiggling middle.
Ingredients
130g butter, softened a few seconds in microwave
60g caster sugar (plus extra for sprinkling)
130g plain flour
60g rice flour
A pinch of salt
Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the plain flour, rice flour and salt, and stir well until the mixture is smooth and uniform. (I find it easiest to keep pressing the mixture against the side of the bowl to mix it.) Make sure all big lumps of butter are broken up and smoothed into the crumbly shortbread mixture. Bring the mixture together and press into a cake tin (20cm / 8in), smoothing it with the back of a spoon. Crimp the edges by pressing with the tips of two fingers, then score into eight pieces with a knife and prick each triangle three times with a fork. Put it in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Remove the shortbread from the fridge and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Remove the shortbread from the oven and sprinkle over some caster sugar. Leave to cool in the tin for a few minutes before removing it from the tin and cooling on a wire rack.
I'm not at the moment very interested in cooking. Making meals is kind of dull; I want to make cakes and biscuits, the prettier the better. For the time being, the entries in this blog are going to be about making cakes and biscuits, with several repetitions as I try out new variations on the standard cupcake/fairy cake, and then report how it all went horribly wrong. Stay tuned.
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