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."

Roast Dinner Party!

As per the title (Served 7)

Babbled Intro:
Ok, a bit of a daunting task to tackle documenting all of this on a blog but will attempt to! Had some friends round for a Sunday roast and I did the usual classics with a bit of a twist. I always would choose to cook chicken as it's what feels the safest option for me. not just because I'm fussy with meat but because I have sussed the cooking times and have never got it wrong (Touch wood). I always try variations of classic vegetable sides to keep it interesting, this carrot recipe always gets lots of remarks and goes down very nicely. Not sure how helpful the below will be to anyone, as more a description of my dishes than a recipe but here we go.

Menu:
Roast Chicken with Sage&Onion Stuffing
Roast Potatoes (My way)
Mashed Carrots in Star Anise and Honey
Brocolli steam with soy sauce (No recipe listed below)
Homemade Chicken Gravy
Dessert - Cinnamon Apple Crumble with Home-made Custard

Roast Chicken with Sage and Onion Stuffing:

• The stuffing is a Mrs Beeton recipe and only really works with a food processor in my opinion. Peel then boil 4 large onions for 3 minutes. Add 10 sage leaves to the pan and continue to boil everything for 2 minutes. (By boiling the ingredients you take out the bitterness and the flavours aren't too over powering.

• Blitz these in a food processor until they're roughly chopped. Then stir in one egg, 125g breadcrumbs, salt and pepper, 50g butter.

• I then put this mixture in a large sandwich bag, then cut the corner and pipe the mixture into the chicken as per the below picture (Yes it looks glamourous but it makes the whole process much easier trust me). You could just spoon in the mixture of course. I then rub olive oil, salt and pepper onto the chicken I cut up some sage and sprinkled that on the chicken and put in the oven. (Tip - to make sure the chicken goes a lovely golden colour, cook the first 10 mins of the cooking time at the hottest oven temperature then resume at 180c for the rest of the cooking time. (Thanks to Kat's mum for that gem) I always go by the cooking times on the labels and add 15 mins for this stuffing.

• I put any leftover stuffing in a dish to cook separately in the oven for 30 mins (I drizzle some olive oil over to stop if burning.

Roast Potatoes (My Way)

• I always par-boil the potatoes for 7 minutes, then after draining, let them sit to steam dry. I add olive oil and onion salt at this time and shake the pan to roughen up the potatoes edges.

• Heat some butter in a baking tray in the oven and once melted add the potatoes and roast for approx 40 mins until golden and crispy (Shake/turn the potatoes half way through.)

 Mashed Carrots in Star Anise and Honey
(A Tana Ramsey recipe which is really gragrant and sweet)

• Cut the carrots into chunks then boil with a couple of star anise in the pot. (Approx 30 mins)

• Once cooked, drain the carrots and remove the star anise.
• Add a chunk of butter and a tablespoon of honey then mash everything together.

Homemade Chicken Gravy

• After you have removed the chicken to carve, leave the juices in the baking tray and skim as much of the fat off as possible.
• Add a couple of tablespoons of plain flour to the juices and whisk over a high heat. 
• Then add approx 1 pint of chicken stock (I use the bottles of condensed liquid stock) and continue whisking on a high heat.
• I then add some white wine if available and a fresh herb, in today's case sage since I had some leftover.

• I then sieve this into a jug but you can leave it as it is, if you wish.

Cinnamon Apple Crumble with Home-made Custard (Serves 5)
(I prefer to stew the fruit before cooking the crumble as a whole dish in the oven but you could just prepare everything into a dish, add the crumble topping and then cook) 

• Peel and chop 5 large bramley apples
• Put in a pan over a medium heat adding some brown sugar, half a cup of water, splash of brandy (Adds an extra warmth to the taste) and a good sprinkling of cinnamon. Cook, stir until a thick brown gooey mixture.

• Put this in an oven dish and sprinklle over saltanas.

• Then in a mixing bowl rub together 200g plain flour, 100g butter and 100g brown sugar (Caster is also fine) Put this on top of the stewed apples.
• Cook for approx 30 mins in 180c oven. (If you prefer the topping more golden then grill for a few minutes.)
• To make the custard, I heated 500ml of single cream and milk (half of each, but you could use all cream), then cut a vanilla pod lengthways and added to the pot of milk/cream. Heat gently and just before boiling point remove and cover for 20 minutes.
• In a seperate bowl whisk together 5 egg yolks with 1 tbsp of caster sugar.
• Add the creamy mixture (removing vanilla pod) to the sweet yolk mixture whisking all the time.
• Pour mixture back into the pan (riinse and dry the pan first) then bring to the boil whisking continually. Do this until the mixture thickens (Approx 10 mins)
• This is fine to serve now but I lower the pan into cold water (like a mary's bath)and then whisk for 2 mins, then put back on the hob to warm up. (This just makes it even thicker).

My Conclusion / Review:
Everything was cooked nicely, even the broccoli which I normally end up over-cooking. For some reason everything just seemed ok to me and nothing special, maybe I played it too safe or should have had more dishes? But I was trying to keep it easy so I could socialise and drink lots of red wine before and during the meal. (Which I managed to very nicely, thank you :p). The definite winners were the chicken and carrots at the main and the dessert went very quickly, especially the homemade custard!

James's Verdict:
"7/10 - A lovely roast, you always know what you're getting. I like red wine."

Happy Birthday Mailie!

Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes (Makes 12)

Babbled Intro:

So this is Nigella's recipe found in her 'Nigella Bites' book. Her recipe is for two 'sandwiches' of chocolate cake, cemented together with the chocolate fudge icing and then iced on top and all around the cake. And doing it this way is fantastic and tastes heavenly - she writes 'serves 1 with a broken heart' so we're talking proper comfort food here. Unfortunately I was carrying this to work so made a cupcake version (Halved her recipe) and put little iced daisies on top. :)

Ingredients:

For the cakes:

200g plain flour

125g caster sugar

50 light muscavado sugar

25g cocoa powder

1tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

Bit of milk

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

85g butter

for the fudge icing:

85g dark chocolate

125g butter

140g icing sugar

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

Method:

• Mix all the cake ingredients in a food mixer.
• Divide the cake mixture between 12 paper cases in a 12 hole bun tin. (Approx 2 large tsps of mixture in each case.) Just half the case should be filled.
• Bake in an oven (180c) for 25 minutes until you can gently push the sponge to watch it rise back.
• Let cool and then slice the tops off so they are flat and smooth and ready to be iced.
• To make the icing, melt the choolctae in a microwave or in a bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water. let it cool slightly.
• In another bowl, beat the butter until soft and creamy, then sieve the icing sugar into the butter then beat again (You must sieve it or the icing will go lumpy!)
• Then add the vanilla extract and melted chocolate to the bowl and mix together.
• Smooth the mixture onto the cakes - I then put an iced flower on each. Let the icing set a bit then it's ready to eat.
 

 

My Conclusion / Review:

Easy enough to make and taste lovely, you don't have to be a massive chocoholic to appreciate these - lovely with a nice up of tea. I was just pleased they made it through the commute without getting crushed.

Mailie's Verdict:

"8/10 Really light, perfectly chocolatey (but not sickly) and the icing was divine! Perfect birthday cupcakes. YUM!"