Black and White Shortbread

I have been shying away from some of the more frivolous cookbooks in my collection, and find myself returning again and again to the Leith's Cookery Bible. I quite like the way pages upon pages of it are filled with French sounding dishes I've never even heard of. The first chapters give advice on how to cater a buffet for 80 people and the basics of food hygiene. There are few pictures, and they are mostly pretty useless for the basic home cook - 3 ways to present apple flans?

Black & White Shortbread

I had a craving for shortbread, and I had some chocolate left over from the stall that needed using up. I love making shortbread, as it uses very standard store-cupboard ingredients. It's ideal for late night baking sprees when you can't be bothered to go to the shop. It's also easily jazzed up by whatever ingredients you have lying around (I'm quite a fan of citrus and herbs).

Two-tone Shortbread

As the chocolate helps seal in the moisture, these keep really well. Be careful not to leave them in a warm place, as the chocolate will melt. While this won't affect the taste, they might become a bit blotchy looking. The rice flour helps to keep the texture really "short", but if you don't have any, you can substitute it for more plain flour.

Black & White Shortbread (adapted from Leith's Cookery Bible)
Makes about 8

110g butter
55g caster sugar
110g plain flour
55g rice flour
100g white chocolate
100g dark chocolate

1) Preheat the oven to 170C.
2) Thoroughly mix the sugar and butter together.
3) Add the flour, and gently knead to make a smooth dough.
4) Roll out the dough on a floured surface, to about 5mm thick.
5) Use a biscuit cutter to cut out large circles. Reroll the scraps until you have 8 biscuits.
6) Put the biscuits on a tray, and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.
7) Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. They should be starting to turn golden.
8) Cool on a rack.
9) Melt the white chocolate in a small pot. Use a pot that the biscuits will only just fit in to, as you want it to be as deep as possible.
10) Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Dip the biscuits halfway in the white chocolate, and place them on the paper to cool. Put the tray in the fridge if your kitchen is warm.
11) Once the white chocolate has hardened, repeat steps 9 & 10 with the dark chocolate.

Salted Caramel Macarons

My first three attempts at macarons were pretty disastrous. Even looking back at the photos is making me cringe at how bad they were! My first go at a recipe from the Ottolenghi cookbook also entered into the "FAIL" category. I saw a few other blogs having success with the Ottolenghi macaron recipes, so I decided to remedy two fails with one baking session.

I had some egg whites already aging in the fridge, but I enjoyed weighing out 60g of them. I love doing everything by weight, mainly because I can't be bothered to get jugs and spoons out and create extra washing up. I don't know how Americans cope with cups. Have you ever tried scraping out peanut butter from the corners of a measuring cup so you can use it to scoop out another ingredient? It's lame. Buy a scale! Then you can just dump everything in one bowl!

A major problem with my last bunch of macarons was the lumpy mixture. They tasted ok, but macarons are meant to look a little bit pretty too. I don't have a food processor, so I gave the ground almonds and some of the icing sugar a bit of a bash around in a pestle and mortar before sifting them through a fine sieve.

I was also more confident about what the batter was meant to look like. It should be sturdy enough to pipe without running in to one big puddle, but soft enough that it will smooth down in to domes when left. After very carefully folding the sugar and almonds in to the whipped egg whites, it was obvious that the mixture was too stiff, so I got to give it a couple of good beats to get it down to a softer consistency.

After I'd piped all the macarons and topped them with some chopped peanuts, they sat by the radiator for a bit to form a skin while the oven preheated. In they went for 8 minutes, when I checked them to see if they were browning too fast.

Salted caramel and peanut macarons

YAY! While they were still underdone, every single macaron had a smooth topped dome, and some impressive looking feet. Another 4 minutes in the oven had the shells nicely starting to brown, and me dancing around the kitchen in triumph.

Finally with feet and smoothness!

Although I think that cooking is about making something that tastes good, there is always an element of presentation that I've struggled with. I don't have the patience to spend hours making things look perfect when all I want to do is eat them! So although my macarons had good feet and smooth tops, some of them were more ovoid that circular, so not a complete success, but good enough for me.

Once the shells were cool, I sandwiched them together with dulce de leche spiked with crushed peanuts and sea salt. I should have chopped the peanuts smaller and thickened the caramel more, as it was a bit oozy, and some of the larger peanuts made the macarons sit wonkily.

The smell when I opened the tin I'd stored them in was amazing, although I was a little disappointed that the peanut flavour wasn't that strong when it came time to taste them. However, after leaving them for 48 hours the flavours intensified, but the macarons lost a bit of their crunchiness. I would probably use more peanut next time to get the flavour and the texture.

The recipe is copied out here for your delectation.

Goat's Cheese & Onion Tartlets

I've been doing a cake stall in the evenings at a late night shopping event, and have found the savoury items go down just as well as the sweet. Although I love the bacon scones, I wanted something vegetarian too.

Goat's cheese seemed like a good idea, as did caramelised onions. I couldn't find a recipe I liked, so I winged it a bit. I thought this was one of the simplest recipes I make for the stall, although having typed it all out, it begins to seem quite complex! There are quite a few steps, but they can be done in stages over several hours.

Goat's Cheese & Onion Tartlets

I think they taste nicest served fresh out the oven, but they've had good feedback on the stall when I've been serving them at room temperature. They also keep well and will happily be reheated.

Goat's Cheese & Caramelised Onion Tartlets
Makes about 24

170g plain flour
55g butter
30g lard (use vegetable lard if making this vegetarian)
2 onions
150g goat's cheese
A little olive oil
Salt & Pepper to season

1) Begin with the pastry. Rub the butter and lard in to the flour along with a pinch of salt, until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs.
2) Add in 2-3 tablespoons of cold water, and gently mix to form a dough. You may need to add a bit more water, but the pastry dough should be quite flaky and dry.
3) Wrap the pastry in clingfilm, and chill it in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Overnight is better.
4) Once the pastry is suitably relaxed, flour your work surface, and preheat the oven to 180C.
5) Roll out the pastry to about 3-4mm thick. You might need to knead it a little before it rolls properly.
6) Using a large biscuit cutter, cut out circles of pastry. Gently push these into a non-stick muffin tin, to form the tartlet cases. Reroll any scraps until you have 24 cases. (If the kitchen is warm, or the dough is getting too soft, chill the formed shells in the fridge for 30 mins or so.)
7) Place a small square of foil or greaseproof paper over each tartlet shell, and fill it with baking beans. Bake it blind for 7 minutes, remove the beans, and bake for a further 5 minutes. Remove the shells from the tin and cool on a rack.
8) Meanwhile, finely chop up the 2 onions. Cook them with some salt and pepper in a covered pan on a very low heat for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.
9) Once the onions are cooked, put 1 tablespoon of onion in to each tartlet shell. Thinly slice the goat's cheese and top off each tartlet with a slice of cheese and a sprinkle of black pepper.
10) Put all the tartlets on a tray, and bake for a further 15 minutes at 180C.

Chocolate Brownies with Chestnuts & Figs

The only cookbook I got for Christmas was Ottolenghi. This was good, as my cookbook shelf is full, and I didn't want the usual semi-novelty cookbooks I usually seem to receive ('101 Biscuit Recipes' anyone?)

I had a packet of chestnuts in the cupboard leftover, so I decided to make Khalid's Chestnut & Chocolate Bars.

The digestive base was easy enough, and the chocolate mix for the top was also very simple, with the most strenuous part being chopping a large pile of chestnuts, figs and white chocolate. It went in the oven, and came out very, very, very wobbly. So it went back in the oven for another 10 minutes and was still wobbly. The recipe said it wouldn't be totally cooked, but I didn't expect it to basically look the same as when it went in. I put it in the fridge to see if that would harden it up. Maybe the chocolate would set solid.

A few hours later, it was still way too wobbly. I tried to turn it out of the tin (luckily I'd used a silicone one) but it was obviously going to end in disaster. I gave it another 10 minutes in the oven, but it was STILL wobbly! I shoved it back in the fridge as I was not in the mood to deal with a massive pile of fail goo at that moment.

The next day I was immersed in the domestic bliss that is the life of the self/un-employed. After warming up with bouts of bed making, laundry and sweeping, I decided to deal with the fail. I thought I might spoon some over ice cream and bin the rest.

It had set! I was not expecting that at all. A bit of a push and it popped out of the tin in one lovely firm lump, and sliced up with a crisp finish that is just so satisfying.

After all the abuse I'd put it through, I wondered whether it would taste any good. The chocolate mix was flourless, so although it was firmer than it should have been, it was still moist, almost like a giant truffle. The chestnut and the figs were there, but weren't as overpowering as I'd worried they might be, but not really that flavourful either.

Chestnut & Fig Brownie Bars

I guess I'll have to give this another go before I reject the recipe altogether, but I wasn't that impressed. It was just digestives with a eggy ganache on top, with no stand out flavours or textures. Not offensive, but just not that amazing either.

Orange and Rosemary Shortbread

It's taken me ages to write this post, just because there has been absolutely zero daylight in Edinburgh to take pictures with. It's so depressing that there is still a month left where it will just get darker. The curtains are shut and the lights are on by about 3pm most days. So, prepare yourself for some very dodgy photos in the coming months, and I apologise for my shaky-cam poor lighting. Brace yourselves for winter.

Anyway.

I've been thinking about the Lemon Thyme biscuits I made earlier in the year a lot lately. I wanted to make them again, but they didn't seem suitable given the cold and dark. Christmas doesn't seem like a lemon time of year. Oranges and clementines are more festive feeling to me.

Orange and Rosemary Shortbread

I swapped out the lemon zest for orange, and finely chopped a couple of sprigs of rosemary. I rolled the dough thicker than I would normally. It seems more appropriate to have a massive hunk of shortbread rather than a daintily thin slice. For some of the larger biscuits, I made a hole in the top so it could be used as a tree decoration.

Orange and Rosemary Shortbread Tree Decorations

The shortbread was crumbly and buttery, and the orange flavour shone through. The rosemary wasn't very strong, so added a pleasant herby aftertaste rather than a massive kick. I decorated the biscuits with an egg white wash and a sprinkle of granulated sugar, to create a frosty effect. Without the sugar topping, it was a quite grown up, but the extra sweetness made the appeal more universal, so perhaps more suitable for feeding to less refined palates! They are incredibly moreish though, so watch out...

Orange Shortbread with Rosemary
Makes lots

225g unsalted butter, softened
150g granulated sugar
zest of 1 orange
1 tsp salt
2 tsps finely chopped rosemary
1 egg, separated (save the white for the glaze)
275g plain flour
2 tbsps orange juice

GLAZE
Granulated sugar

1) Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2) Add in the orange zest, salt and rosemary, combine thoroughly.
3) Separate the egg, saving the white for glazing. Add the yolk into the biscuit dough mix.
4) Add the flour and orange juice. Once a dough starts forming, knead gently on a floured surface.
5) If the dough is sticky at this point, add more flour, a sprinkle at a time.Wrap the dough in clingfilm, and chill for at least an hour.
6) Preheat the oven to 180C, and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.Roll the dough out to 5mm thick, and cut circles out (I used a 2 inch diameter cutter). Keep gathering the scraps and re-rolling until you have about 40 biscuits.
7) Brush the biscuits with egg white, and then sprinkle with granulated sugar.
8) Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the biscuits are just turning golden brown at the edges.Cool on the tray for 1 minute, then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Madeleines

Last Christmas, I got a madeleine tin. I was excited to have such a one-purpose piece of kitchenalia, but there was a problem. The problem was, I had never really "got" madeleines.

Everyone else seems to be a madeleine fan, judging by how often I see them perched by tills in cafes, and they've cropped up at numerous markets I've been to lately. It's not that I didn't like them, but they always seemed a bit bland and lacking. I did take some comfort that Proust had to dip his in tea to get excited about them (and he wasn't really even getting excited about the madeleine itself, it was the memories it brought back. To me, madeleines remind me of going to my friend's house after school and having to feed her cats as she didn't like the smell of tuna.)

I felt bad about the pan though. It lived in a dresser with some wrapping paper and spare toiletries, before being upgraded to the middle shelf of the baking cupboard, albeit at the back. So, after making the Korova cookies the other day, I flipped forward a few pages in "Paris Sweets" and made some madeleines.

The recipe itself is fairly simple, and I upped the vanilla and lemon to squeeze a bit more flavour in to the madeleines. After resting the batter in the fridge, I carefully spooned 12 dollops of batter in to the shell holes on the tray, and put it in the oven for 12 minutes.

Fresh Madeleines

I was surprised at how high the madeleines rose (the left over batter, which I baked 2 days later, rose even higher. It was almost obscene). The rise was just enough to mirror the scalloping on the other side, so the madeleines were nicely symmetrical.

So now for the tasting. Had I just been eating bad madeleines all these years?

Well, yes and no. Madeleines straight out of the oven were a revelation. The inside was still soft, cakey, and a tad bland, but now it was paired with a crispy crust that was utterly moreish. The ones that managed to survive until the next day were not so great, with the crispy crust now replaced by a slightly chewier bit of bland cakeyness.

As the batter can last for several days in the fridge, I think from now on I'll be baking small batches to eat immediately. The recipe also has a couple of suggestions for different flavours, the Earl Gray variation certainly sounds intriguing!

Italian Bread

After taking T's brother and his girlfriend to a couple of restaurants over the long weekend, we decided that Saturday night should be a bit quieter (and cheaper!). We decided on a games night, with pizzas, beers, and perhaps even a bit of X-Factor thrown in.

I wanted to make something for people to nibble on, that was a bit more interesting than a bowl of crisps or nuts. Riffling through Leith's, I found a recipe for "Italian Bread". I'd also seen this post on Wild Yeast, which made me really want focaccia.

Italian Bread served with olive oil

The recipe itself is pretty quick to pull together, although the kneading time of 8 minutes is a bit of a killer if you are lacking in upper body strength. I mixed in a handful of chopped sun-dried tomatoes and some fresh basil, but rosemary, cheese or olives would also be tasty.

My two food fears are baking with yeast and deep-frying. Luckily this recipe didn't involve deep frying, but it did involve yeast. The last few times I've used yeast, I've seemed unable to get any rise out of it. However, on this occasion, an hour in a previously warmed oven seemed to do the trick.

Italian Bread flavoured with Sundried Tomatoes and Basil

I was initially a bit disappointed, as the bread was quite hard and crusty. It was still tasty, but it wasn't as soft as I was expecting. Left overnight, it softened up a bit, but still was a bit too tough and crusty for my liking.

Slightly too crusty.

I think if I was to make this again, I'd give the Wild Yeast recipe a go instead. It's fairly similar to the Leith's one, but the photos look less crusty so the small tweaks obviously make a difference.

Italian Bread (Leiths Cookery Bible)
Makes 1 large loaf

30g fresh yeast (I used a 7g sachet of quick yeast)
225ml warm water
450g strong flour
2 tsp salt
4 tbsp olive oil
coarse salt to sprinkle over the top

1) Dissolve the yeast in the warm water.
2) Put the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Mix in 2tbsp of the oil and the yeast mixture.
3) Once a dough in formed, knead well for 8 minutes. (After kneading, I added a handful of sundried tomatoes and some chopped basil.)
4) Roll the dough out until it is about 2cm thick. Place on to a greased baking sheet and cover with greased clingfilm.
5) Leave the dough to rise in a warm place until it is soft and fluffy looking. Preheat the oven to 200C
6) Make some indentations in the dough with your finger, and drizzle over the last 2tbsp of oil. Sprinkle over coarse salt, or you could use woody herbs like rosemary.
7) Bake for 20 minutes, then remove from the tray and bake directly on the oven rack for a further 10 minutes.

Scotch Eggs

A while back, my dad spent quite a while telling me that the perfect boiled egg was all about heating the white to a certain temperature, and that if you kept it at that temperature, it would never over-cook. As I've been reading more about the science of cookery, I've found that my dad was correct - an egg cooked at 65C will have a set white and a creamy yolk.

I've also been intrigued by the rise of the scotch egg from Greg's abomination to acceptable gastro-pub fare. They always seem to have a runny yolk, so maybe it was time to apply science to snacking.

Here comes the science bit!

Egg Number 1
Initially I thought the easiest way to keep an egg at 65C without using a fancy-pants waterbath (I don't even have enough worktop space to justify a stand mixer, let alone an water circulator) was in the oven. Although the oven was labeled 60C, it didn't seem particularly hot in there. I could comfortably put my hand in the oven and move the racks around without it burning. The oven thermometer starts at 100C, and the needle was hovering just under this, so I left an egg in there for about 45 minutes.

After the egg had cooled down a bit, I cracked it open. It wasn't firm enough to peel and so in that respect was an epic fail. However, I scooped the egg out of the shell and ate it, and it was amazingly delicious. The yolk was runny and rich, and the white was cooked but still creamy and soft. The only way it could have been better was if there had been some buttered soldiers to dip in it.

Egg Number 2
Next up I decided to try a water bath. Using a sugar thermometer, I heated a saucepan of water to 65C. I was surprised to find that by putting my hob on the lowest setting, that I could maintain this temperature very easily. I occasionally added a little cold water if the temperature started rising, but I only had to do this about twice in the hour or so that I cooked the egg for.

I cracked it open, and initially was quite pleased - the white was set enough to be able to peel the egg, but still wobbly enough to suggest that the yolk would be runny. However, as I continued peeling, it became obvious that the egg was far too fragile to put in to a scotch egg. As I took off the last pieces of shell, the egg collapsed completely.

By some fluke of science, I'd created an inverted egg. The yolk was completely set, and was like a little orange pebble in a pile of white gooey jelly. I ate this egg too. It wasn't as tasty as the first one, but the yolk, while set, was still moist. I'd be quite interested in using this method again to create set yolks that could be used as a garnish or as a component in a dish.

What had happened was that the yolk proteins had set at 65C, as had some of the white proteins. However, one of the proteins in the yolk doesn't set until 80C, so this egg obviously had a higher ratio of this high temperature protein and thus the white was still quite runny.

Egg Number 3
By this point, the leftover sausages that I was planning to use for the scotch eggs were dangerously close to their use-by date. So I wimped out and put two eggs in a cold pan of water, brought them to the boil, and simmered for 8 minutes. They were pretty standard hardboiled eggs.

In future, I think I'd go for a two stage process to find the perfect peelable boiled egg. First a lovely bath at 63-64C, to firm up the white, but keep the yolk runny. Then a quick dip (1-2 minutes) in a 90C bath to firm out the outer layer of the white, so it's possible to peel it without it falling apart. Then maybe a quick shock in iced water to ensure they don't over cook. Hmmm, several different baths and a peel, sounds like a day at a spa hotel.

Baked Scotch Egg

The actual scotch eggs were fairly simple to make - mash up a load of sausage meat (about 2 sausages per egg) and wrap this around the boiled egg. Then roll the egg in some seasoned flour, some beaten egg, and then breadcrumbs. I seasoned the breadcrumbs with a little cayenne pepper to give them a bit of a kick. As you can see from the photos, my wrapping wasn't entirely even, but that wasn't too much of a problem.

Uneven but tasty

As with most Scottish items, a proper Scotch Egg is deep fried. I didn't really want to do this, so I baked them at 200C for 30 minutes, and finished them off in the frying pan to get the breadcrumbs crispy. I think the sausage meat insulates the egg quite well, as when I finally got to scoff the eggs they yolk was still quite moist and not overcooked. They were also delicious later on when they'd been chilled for a while. Even though I'd baked them, you could feel the cholesterol destroying your arteries as you chewed. Perhaps this is not the recipe to repeat until I perfect it...

Millionaire Shortbread with Salted Caramel

When I was at primary school, my class was selected for an academic survey. We had to fill out a questionnaire detailing our parents' level of education and various other lifestyle questions. I guess this was then correlated with our academic achievement to see if certain households were more likely to produce academically successful children than others. The reason I still remember this is that we had to write down how many books were in our house. I lost count after about 250.

My mum loves books, and sometimes buys random books just because she likes the look of them. She also has a magic ability to find books on special offer or discounted, and she recently sent me Harry Eastwood's "Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache" as she was concerned that I eat too much cake!

Chocolate And Salted Caramel Squillionaire

There were quite a few recipes that appealed, but as I had a tub of caramel sitting in the fridge already, I decided to make the "Chocolate and Salted Caramel Squillionaire", which I then realised was the only recipe in the book that didn't contain vegetables. Oh well.

The addition of golden syrup to the biscuit base gave it a nice toffee flavour, and baking the base before adding the caramel and chocolate made it super crispy. I did think there was a bit too much biscuit base though, next time I would probably only use 250g instead of 300g of digestives.

I also liked using the salted caramel and really dark chocolate topping, as it counteracted the sweetness of the caramel and the base. They're a little bit more grown up than the usual millionaire's shortbread. Although the recipe says it makes 12, I cut mine in to 16 and they are still a decent size.

So yummy they make me lose focus...

I'm really excited to try some of the other recipes, although I agree with this review that the descriptions of the recipes can be rather annoyingly cutesy...

They don't last long.

Chocolate and Salted Caramel Squillionaire (Harry Eastwood - Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache)
Serves 12

397g tin of condensed milk
100g unsalted butter (melted)
3 tbsp golden syrup
300g digestive biscuits
pinch of sea salt
150g very dark chocolate

1) Preheat the oven to 180C, and line a 22cm square brownie tin with baking paper.
2) In a large and sturdy pan, put the (unopened) can of condensed milk. Fill the pan with boiling water so the tin is completely covered. Boil for one hour, topping up the water as needed.
3) Meanwhile, put the melted butter and golden syrup in a bowl, and put it in the oven or in the microwave to melt the syrup and butter together. (Make sure the bowl is oven/microwave proof!) It won't take long, 5 minutes in the oven or 1 minute in the microwave.
4) Crush the biscuits, either with a food processor or by putting them in a plastic bag and whacking it with a rolling pin. Get them really crushed, so the mixture looks like fine sand.
5) Mix in the hot butter and syrup with the biscuits. It should now look like wet sand!
6) Push the biscuit mixture in to the tin, squashing it down with your hand or the back of a spoon. Prick the surface with a fork to let out any air bubbles, and then bake for 20 minutes until golden. Leave it to cool while the caramel finishes it's bath.
7) Carefully remove the tin from the boiling water, and open it. Mix in a pinch of salt, and then pour it over the biscuit base, making sure it spreads out to cover the whole base. Put it in the freezer to cool down for at least 20 minutes as you need the caramel to be set when you pour the chocolate over.
8) Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Once it is thoroughly melted, pour it over the frozen caramel and biscuit base. Put it in the fridge to chill.
9) After the chocolate has hardened, cut in to portions and serve!

Palmiers

Although it was fun making the vol-au-vents for the Daring Bakers, using circular cutters meant I had loads of puff pastry scraps. Unlike shortcrust pastry, these can't just be scrunched up and re-rolled. The scraps have to be stacked to preserve the layers, but even then they probably won't be able to achieve the same rise as the original pastry could.

So, having a massive pile of scraps that weren't going to rise properly, it seemed sensible to follow Joy's advice and make palmiers!

I couldn't decide whether to go sweet or savoury. I went with both.

The sweet were dusted with vanilla sugar and mixed spice. The sugar caramelised and made them crunchy and chewy and delicious. The speckles of vanilla and spices mingled to give an appropriately autumnal flavour.

Sweetly Spicy Palmiers

The savoury ones were layered with an extra mature cheddar and cayenne pepper. The cheese is far too strong to eat on it's own, and even T, who loves a good cheddar found it too harsh. However, when baked up, the cheese flavour mellowed out and became more pleasant. The cayenne gave it a bit of a kick and stopped it feeling too fatty.

Cheesy Palmiers

Although I preferred the taste of the sweet palmiers, the cheesy ones would be perfect for a pre-dinner snack, and are a great way to use up any puff-pastry scraps you might have lying about!

Vol-Au-Vents with The Daring Bakers

After many months of umming and ahhing, I finally plucked up the commitment to join the Daring Kitchen, specifically the Daring Bakers. When I saw the challenge, I was nervous but relieved. The first time I attempted puff pastry it was a total disaster, but earlier this year I went to a pastry class and made a more successful attempt.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan. You could choose to make large or small vol-au-vents, and any filling. I followed the recipe exactly, with the only substitution being plain flour instead of cake flour.

Vol-Au-Vents

Initially things went well. The dough "wrapper" came together easily, and the butter was shaped into a square and then chilled. The first two turns of the dough went really well, and the butter didn't leak. Yay! Off I went to watch The Wire for an hour before the next two turns. Gritty urban drama and baking. A perfect match.

Turn 3 went wrong. I'm not sure if the dough was over-chilled, or if I rolled it too thin or roughly. The butter burst through underneath, so when I tried to do the turn, the dough was stuck to the worktop! I completed the turn as best as I could, reasoning that given there would be hundreds of layers by the end of the process, and one or two with a tear wouldn't matter.

The rest of the turns went ok, with lots of flouring to make sure there wasn't any more sticking. I think I might have been a bit over-enthusiastic with rolling out the dough too thinly, which was causing it to be prone to tearing. I made it to 6 turns, and added a 7th as the dough was looking a bit streaky in places.

Lots of Vol-Au-Vents!

Now I just had to think of a filling! Initially I wanted to do something Asian inspired, and was considering something Vietnamese as this would suit the French aspect of the pastry. However, I thought it would be strange to pair rich, buttery pastry with a light Asian filling, and I decided to go for something more traditional and "heavy".

The first attempt was large size vol-au-vents for dinner, filled with chicken, lemon and tarragon stew. Although they were delicious, they weren't lookers. They were also a little undercooked. I decided it was best to try again, and to make smaller ones that would be more manageable.

Next day I was flicking through the Saturday papers, and saw a recipe for coronation chicken. This was traditional and heavy, but also had an Asian influence! I also liked the very retro aspect of the dish. I used this recipe here, which was a big success. It's fruity and creamy, with a good spice blend. The mayonnaise isn't too overwhelming either. In fact, I liked this recipe so much I'm copying out by hand to go in my recipe binder. (That's the rule, if I don't like it enough to be bothered to write out the recipe with a fountain pen, it doesn't make the folder.)

Vol-Au-Vent with Coronation Chicken

As you can see from the photos, I didn't get that much rise from my pastry. I think I rolled it too thin again. It was crispy and flaky though, so not a total disaster. I was also proud of the good glaze I got from the egg wash, it was quite shiny in places!

Even though puff pastry takes a while to make, very little of that time is actually active. There's a lot of waiting around for the pastry to chill and rest. However, once you have got the hang of the "book fold" technique, it's a pretty simple and satisfying process. There's plenty of the pastry left in the freezer, so I shan't be buying any ready made puff pastry anytime soon. Given that the pastry can be easily made over a lazy weekend, I might not buy it ever again, and just have a massive pastry making session every few weeks.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm still in limbo between flats, and I'd sworn off baking until we reached the new flat. However, with T passed out on the sofa watching Jonathan Ross, and this month's issue of Delicious already read, I was bored and the kitchen was calling.

Raiding the cupboards showed there was some flour, baking powder (no idea how T managed to obtain that, I must have bullied him in to buying it at some point) and a bar of chocolate left over from the chocolate terrine. I didn't have any cake tins or a baking sheet, only a roasting tin, so today was not the occasion to attempt the Daring Baker's back catalogue.

Instead I opted for a classic chocolate chip cookie, with hefty chunks of chopped chocolate. I reappeared from the kitchen 30 minutes later with cups of tea and a couple of freshly baked cookies. Not the most exciting Friday night, but certainly a tasty one.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can also save this dough in the fridge for a few days, so I baked up the rest of these this morning for elevenses.

RECIPE
115g softened butter
100g brown sugar
25g caster sugar
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
215g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch salt
110g chocolate (cut in to chunks or chips)

Makes 24 cookies

1) Preheat the oven to 190c (Gas Mark 5)
2) Cream the butter and sugar until smooth, then add the egg and vanilla extract.
3) Add in the flour, salt and baking powder and briefly mix to form a dough.
4) Add in the chocolate and mix again to distribute the chips throughout the dough.
5) Divide the dough into 24 balls, and place on a greased baking sheet, lightly pressing each ball to flatten it in to a cookie shape. (At this stage you can store any extra dough in the fridge for a week or the freezer for a month.)
6) Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden. Transfer to a wire rack until cool. (If your cooling rack is in a self-storage facility, you can use the rack from a roasting tin that you found at the back of a cupboard)

Snickerdoodles

The other day, I realised I hadn't baked anything for at least a week. Plus my flatmate L was coming back to Edinburgh to move out of the flat, so baked goods were absolutely required.

Snickerdoodles are something that I'd seen a few recipes for, but never actually tried them in real life. I noticed a recipe for the them in Rachel Allen's "Bake", so it was time to give them a go.

The recipe itself is pretty easy, and you can find the Rachel Allen version already typed out here. "Bake" is fast shaping up to be one of the most reliable cook books I own, and my snickerdoodles came out very similar to Maria's.

Snickerdoodles, from "Bake" by Rachel Allen

I was possibly a bit generous with the nutmeg, but this mixed with the creaminess of the butter to create something very reminiscent of an egg custard tart in biscuit form. I wasn't entirely sold on the crispy outside with a cakey centre, but I can see its appeal. I liked the spiciness, and these are very "autumnal". I'd probably remake these as little Christmas presents to give out randomly, but make the spicing a bit more subtle and try to make them a bit thinner and crispier. Although that might move them too far to the realm of gingerbread, but anyway.

I've just discovered now that they are also pretty tasty dunked in tea and coffee, and they're strong enough not to crumble too much either.

Graze - Plus a Free Box!

I heard about Graze from Jess, and signed up to look round the site. As usual, I got distracted and totally forgot about it. The other week, I got a reminder email from Graze, pointing out that although I'd signed up, I'd never actually ordered anything. To tempt me back, they also included a code for a free box.

Graze is basically a healthy snack box, with a large portion of fresh fruit, and two smaller portions of dried fruit, nuts or olives. You can select a nutritional "theme" for your box, such as immunity boosting (I picked this one as I still feel a bit run down and sickly after having pneumonia a few months ago), pre or post-workout*, and energy boosting.

Graze Box

My first box was meant to turn up last week, but I think it got lost in the post (or the postman stole it. A suspiciously large amount of our mail never turns up...) so this was my debut box. When I noted on the Graze website that my box hadn't arrived, I was immediately given the next box for free to make up for it. I was so excited when the postman rang the bell this morning! The box contained: a large punnet of crunchy apples (I can confirm they were indeed crunchy), a punnet of "fire nuts" (chilli almonds, cashews and wasabi peas) and a small punnet of raisins. I wasn't keen on the chilli almonds, but the cashews were amazing! Wasabi peas were a little too hot, but I still happily munched my way through the box. The raisins were also good, being some of the fattest and juiciest I have had in a while.

Fire Nut Selection - chilli cashews, almonds and wasabi peas

Although a Graze box isn't cheap (£2.99 a go) it is very convenient. I don't tend to buy things like dried fruit as I don't eat it often enough, and it just sits in the cupboard. Having a nutritionally controlled portion (1 of the 5-a-day) was good, as normally I would eat about 2 raisins and then wonder if it counted!

Graze are promoting themselves quite heavily at the moment, and seem to be very generous with the free boxes. If you'd like to try them yourself, this code gets you a free box, and £1 will be donated to the Rainforest Alliance.

Enter 5CCT231G at GRAZE.COM

*I have also recently returned to the gym after knackering my old running shoes, messing up my feet and having to get a new pair that was gait analysed! I like that I could get an immunity box one week and then a workout box the next. I am so healthy it hurts.