Southern Pecan Pie

Mrs Beeton Pecan Pie (Serves 6-7)

Babbled Intro:

This has been on the wish list for a while now and found this simple recipe from a Mrs Beeton book which I adapted, using my own recipe for sweet pastry. Not saying that I know more than Mrs Beeton but my pastry always turns out well and as the saying goes: ‘If it’s not broken, why fix it?”

Ingredients:

pie filling:

50g butter

175g soft light brown sugar

3 eggs

225g shelled pecan nuts

150g golden syrup

1 tbsp dark rum

1/2 tsp salt

pastry:

250g plain flour

125g butter

100g icing sugar

Few drops of water to combine

Method:

• Make the pastry by rubbing the butter into the flour and icing sugar then add a bit of water to combine. 
• Roll out on a floured surface and then line a tart/pie case. Prick the base well.

 

• Leave the pastry case in the freezer for 20 mins then cook in a 200c preheated oven for 10 mins. (Freezing it slightly keeps it shape so you don't have to faff around with those baking beans). After baking it blind, leave to cool.
• Cream the butter and sugar until light. beat in the eggs, one at a time.
  
  
• Stir in the rest of the ingredients, the fill the pastry case.
• Bake for 40 mins at a reduced oven temperature of 180c.

My conclusion / review:

A lovely dessert, served warm with vanilla ice cream. Pecans are underrated anyway and this reminded me a bit of the sara lee danish pecan cake you used to be able to buy which has icing drizzled on the top. Not too sweet either, I think the pecans balanced that out and I really like the texture. Would recommend as pretty easy to make, if you don’t want to make your own pastry, then this mixture would fill two of those already made and cooked pastry cases you can buy from supermarkets.

James's Verdict:

"9/10 - extremely tasty; make this again, please ;)"

Bacon and Tomato Hash

Bacon and tomatoes with a difference (Serves 2)

Babbled Intro:

One of our old favourites. This recipe was in Nigella’s ‘Feast’ book in the ‘back from the bar’ section although I think it makes the tastiest breakfast/brunch on it’s own or with some scrambled eggs. And everyone who has tried this has loved it. The requirements are that you 1) like bacon 2) like Worchester sauce – And if your answer is yes to both, then you’re onto a winner with this one. Who knew that with a few simple ingredients you could make such a taste explosion in such speed?

Ingredients: 

8 rashers of streaky bacon

4 tsps garlic infused olive oil

2 tomatoes, diced

4 tsps Worcestershire sauce

scattering of chopped parsley

ground black pepper

Method:

• Using clean kitchen scissors, cut the bacon into 4-5 pieces and fry in the oil until crispy.
• Tip in the chopped tomatoes with all their seeds and juices into the hot oily pan and stir for a couple of minutes.

• Add the Worcestershire sauce and stir again for a minute.
• Scatter with the parsley and lots of freshly ground pepper.

My conclusion / review.

Yum! Such a sweet, rich, satisfying dish. We had ours with toast so you can mop up the leftover juices but I’m sure fresh crusty bread would be even better. The first thing you may think is – this is a really small portion, I could eat double this. Well perhaps, but its quite rich so I think these portions are fine and as I say it could just be an accompaniment with scrambled eggs or other brunch/breakfast favourites if you wanted to make a meal out of it.

James's verdict:

"8/10 - this is great, but it never seems like you're getting that much back for the amount of bacon you put into it."

Croque Monsieur? Oui, s'il vous plaît!

Fancy ham and cheese toasties - french stylie (Serves 2)

Babbled intro:

I’ve been wanting to make this for ages, I’ve done the bastardised version of course - just plain old cheese and ham sarnie grilled. But the proper version, with the thick cheesey mustard sauce is such a taste sensation. Decent ham made the world of difference too. I would point out that I took one look at the recipe and thought that one round each wouldn’t be enough, but trust me, it is.  Can you believe the turning point to making me try this was watching the new Meryl Streep film 'It's complicated'.

Ingredients:

50g butter, really softened
4 thick slices white bread
1 heaped tsp plain flour
5 tbsp whole milk
1 egg yolk
2 tsp Dijon mustard
75g Gruyère, grated

2 slices oak-smoked gammon ham or a similar ham

Method:

• Butter all the slices of bread then place face down on a chopping board.
• Melt the remaining butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat and add the flour. Stir them together until they are blended, then add the milk gradually until the mixture has become smooth and thick enough to spread. Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the egg yolk, the mustard and the grated Gruyère, then beat the sauce until the cheese has melted.
• Spread the Gruyère mixture over 2 unbuttered sides of the bread. Put the slices of ham on the cheese-topped slices. 
• Take the other slices of bread and place one on each of the cheese-and-ham-topped slices. Press them down lightly. Heat a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the sandwiches for 2-3 minutes on each side until they have turned golden and crisp. Remove them from the pan, cut into diagonal halves and serve.

My conclusion/Review:

This is lovely, buttery and rich – a really naughty lunch which probably should be balanced with a healthy green watercress salad. But curled up, on a sofa in front of the TV on a cold Saturday afternoon it was the perfect meal. I would definitely do it again.

James's verdict:

"7/10 - lovely, but one round would probably do it (otherwise you're being greedy!)."

Cinderella Cookies

Almond cookies with pink icing (Made approx 20 with my cookie cutter)

Babbled Intro:

Ok, so you thought the fairy cakes with edible glitter were girlie… :p Wanted to make some biscuits for a friends birthday and she likes shoes so the obvious baked treat for her was my now titled ‘Cinderella Cookies’. Cookie recipe was from the ‘Nigella Bites’ book which she calls’ Rainy day biscuits’ I believe (Which I halved). But with a cookie cutter and a bit of imagination I came up with these. And no my friend isn’t seven years old and still appreciated them!

Ingredients:

For the biscuit/cookie dough

85g soft butter

100g soft brown sugar

1 egg

Dash of almond extract

175g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

For the icing:

100g icing sugar

Drop of pink food colouring

water to mix

Edible silver balls 

Method:

•  Cream butter and sugar then beat in the egg and almond extract.
• Add the dry ingredients and stir to combine into a dough.
• Flour surface and roll out dough to a thickness of half a centimetre. Use a cookie cutter that's dipped in flour, cut as many shapes out as possible.
• Place on baking sheets on baking tins leaving slight spadces between the biscuits. 
• 180c - Bake for 8-12 mins until slightly golden but stile pale.
• Leave to cool on a cooling rack.
• Mix the icing sugar with colouring and water to a thickish runny paste. Dip the biscuits into the icing and let the excess drip off one side. Add more decorations like the silver balls if using and then leave to dry.

 

My conclusion / review:

A cookie in disguise! As these look like plain biscuits but the texture is soft and crumbly, like you’d expect from a cookie. The almond extract gives it a nice hint of a flavour. Very nice with a cup of tea. I would say that although I was nervous, they did transport very well and none were damaged.

James's Verdict:
" 6/10 - nice biscuits, but just that really."

Away with the fairy cakes...

Pretty Fairy Cakes (Makes 12)

Babbled Intro:
This was a very exciting experiment. Thanks to my aunty Heather, I now am the proud owner of edible glitter - how cool is that? So thought I'd make some cakes to celebrate and thought better play it safe and just make fairy cakes with some butter icing. Ok, so then thought, let's try make them a bit interesting so the result after much pondering was jam filled fairy cakes! Thanks to goggle, I researched how to do this and most people syringe the jam into the middle of the cooked cakes like you would with jam filled doughnuts. This sounds too hardcore for me so I experimented by putting 1 tsp of cake batter, 1 tsp jam and then 1tsp of batter on top and enclosed the jam before putting the cakes into the oven.

Ingredients:
For the cake batter:
125g butter, softened
125g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125g self raising flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp milk
12 tsp strawberry jam

For the topping:
125g butter, softened
3 tbsp icing sugar, sifted
1 tsp vanilla extract
Splash of pink food colouring
Sprinkle of edible glitter

Method:

• Preheat oven to 200c. Line a 12 hole tin with paper cake cases.
• Put all the ingredients for the batter (Apart from the jam) into a food mixer and process until creamy and light.
• Spoon 1 heaped teaspoon of mixture into each paper case (Try and spread so it covers base of case). 
• Then put 1 teaspoon of jam over the cake mixture, cover this with another teaspoon of cake mixture - trying to enclose the jam in between.

• Bake for 15-20 mins until golden and when the cakes spring back when you gently push the middle.

• Leave these to cool.
• Make the butter icing by mixing the butter with the sifted icing sugar, then add the vaniall extract and a bit of colouring (You won't need much).
• Spread onto the cooled cakes and the sprinkle the glitter over them all.

My Conclusion / Review:
Voilà - it worked and the food colouring with the butter icing went a beautiful coral colour. The overall look and taste was something that would sit nicely on a cake stand at a fairy tea party. The mistake I did make was to leave them in the fridge over night as I think it took away the lovely fluffy texture of the cakes.

James's verdict:
"8/10 - The cake mixture suffered from being the fridge over night, we'll have to leave them out next time. They still went down a storm at work."