My husband loves carrot halwa and always orders it when we go for an Indian meal.
I agree that it’s less sweet than many Indian desserts, which counts in its favour. But having tasted his portion any number of times, I never once regretted ordering the kulfi.
This all changed when we started making carrot halwa at home… Continue reading
Comfort food is having a bit of a moment around here, which makes sense. And things don’t get much more comforting than bread and butter pudding.
This one is made with a six-pack of hot cross buns that were inexplicably overlooked on Easter weekend. Continue reading
Microwave banana pudding has been a little spot of brightness in these worrying days, scratching a sticky toffee pudding itch we hadn’t known was there.
We’ve made this recipe from the BBC Good Food website four times in the past three weeks. It’s a great way to use up old bananas, takes 15 minutes start to finish, cooks while you have dinner, and tastes fabulous.
I make trifle only once a year – over the Christmas holiday, when a big creamy, custardy, boozy bowl of indulgence seems like just what Santa ordered…;-)
This is a very different trifle to my Grandma Ivy’s, which calls for red and green jello, candied fruit and optional coconut macaroons(!).
(If I’m to realise my ambition of cooking every family recipe in Fern’s Food, I’ll have to give it a go some Christmas, but we’re keeping it classic this year.) Continue reading
Portugal’s salame de chocolate is a little bit of kitchen fun.
A rich chocolately mixture studded with biscuits and nuts, shaped into a sausage and rolled in powdered sugar to resemble one of those dry-cured salamis. Continue reading
There’s something gingerbready about basler leckerli – despite the absence of ginger. And something Christmassy too, with the cloves, nutmeg and mixed peel.
So they weren’t my first choice for our World Cup cook-off, but the thought of eating cheese fondue in the sweltering heat tipped it in their favour.
Churros and chocolate sauce and another day of sun… It’s enough to make you feel like you’re on holiday… Continue reading
I first discovered the marvellous tarte tropézienne on a family holiday in Provence.
Queueing in the local bakery, I noticed several of the customers ahead of me were choosing what looked like a large, cream-filled hamburger bun.
I’m always on the lookout for easy, healthy-ish snacks to make for the kids, and I thought these Mexican alegrías sounded promising.
Amaranth is a great source of protein and nutrients, but there’s too much sugar involved for me to consider alegrías healthy.
Australia looks a strong contender in this year’s World Cup cook-off with their offer of lamingtons.
A delicate chocolate-coconut exterior conceals a substantial cake centre. Kind of like Giggs and Beckham on either side of Roy Keane, back in the day…:-)
The first time I made lamingtons was for an Australia Day celebration. I didn’t notice the advice about baking the cake a day in advance, and had a torrid time of the dipping and rolling.
There was much language and attrition, but the lamingtons I managed to produce met with our Aussie friends’ approval. Continue reading
I’m not a fan of bread and butter pudding, though I’ve warmed to it somewhat over the years. (As a child, I considered it a personal insult when mum served it for dessert.)
And I’ve never seen the point of panettone – that overrated, inevitably stale and dry-as-dust, identity crisis of a cake-bread, whose packaging is the best thing going for it.
But bring the two together in the form of panettone pudding, and it really is a case of two wrongs making a right… Continue reading
Unlike Halloween Thanksgiving still isn’t a thing in the UK. I still like to observe it, and each year we have a Thanksgiving meal with the same family friends.
I’m Canadian and they have American roots, so we diplomatically set a date between the start of October and end of November. We take turns hosting, and the travelling family brings the pies.
Tinned pumpkin still isn’t readily available in the UK, and on several occasions I’ve made my own purée from squash or sweet potato before baking the pumpkin pie.
Now that the Internet era upon us, I can order pumpkin purée online. This year I picked up an extra tin so I could make pumpkin bread. Continue reading
I’ve seen recipes for meringue roulades over the years, but assumed they were well beyond my baking abilities. My efforts to produce a passable Swiss roll were hardly confidence building.
But finding myself with a quantity of egg whites that needed using, I decided to give it a go.
What I knew as fruit pizza growing up I recognise to be a pretty standard fruit tart.
Maybe it’s because the biscuit base was cooked in a pizza pan? The sweetened cream cheese we spread on top? Or the thinly sliced toppings (kiwi, grapes and berries rather than pepperoni, mushrooms and olives)?
Eating well is important to me, and I’m happy to make time to cook our meals from scratch. But whatever I make, the final dish has to justify the investment of time and money.
Chocolate babka? Absolutely worth the (not inconsiderable) effort.
A salad I recently made that had me individually grilling a heap of mandolined courgette slices for half an hour while the shrieking smoke alarm provided a sound track that matched my ever-darkening mood? Not so much…
Strawberry-lemon sorbet scores off the charts on the effort to result ratio. Five minutes’ work for a hot-pink, ice-cold, sweet-tart sorbet you’d be happy to eat any day of the year.
And there’s something about blitzing up the whole lemon that is deeply satisfying to me. Continue reading
I practically never buy Nutella – it’s not a good fit with my “processed-food-avoiding, cook-from-scratch” approach to feeding my family.
So having reluctantly agreed to buy a jar for the pancake breakfast following a special sleepover, I was keen to use up the rest before the girls started thinking of Nutella as a store-cupboard staple.
These coconut Nutella squares from the Hungry Mum website were just the ticket. Unfortunately, they were such a big hit with everyone, I can see myself buying Nutella specially in order to make them again.
Or I could have a go at making homemade Nutella…;-) Continue reading
Given that eggnog has always tasted like rum-laced melted ice cream to me, I’m surprised it took me so long to hit on the idea of eggnog ice cream.
I made a batch a couple of days before Christmas as an alternative dessert for people who don’t like Christmas pudding.
It turns out I don’t know those kind of people… My guests like their Christmas pudding topped with both brandy butter and a goodly scoop of eggnog ice cream.
The pudding and ice cream combo is such a winner, that I think we’ll forgo the brandy butter altogether next year.
Next on my belated list of Great British Bake-off signature bakes is a classic lemon meringue pie.
Where I grew up, most restaurants (at least the kind my family ate in), had at least three types of pie on offer.
Apple, cherry, blueberry, pumpkin, raisin, bumbleberry, saskatoon, rhubarb, pecan, peach… I’d happily order any of them, but if lemon meringue pie was on the menu, they wouldn’t get a look in.
After reviewing several recipes, I settled on this one from The Great British Book of Baking, which was published to accompany the first series of the Great British Bake-Off.
Sweet shortcrust pastry, a tangy lemon filling you could stand a fork in, and pillowy French meringue – it looked and tasted like the lemon meringue pie of my childhood. Works for me.
Much to my girls’ disappointment, I’m not much of a dessert person. While I’ll occasionally make a batch of ice cream or throw together an apple crumble, it’s generally fruit, yogurt, fruit-and-yogurt, or maybe a biscuit on the dessert menu around here – none of which generate much enthusiasm.
So it was a pleasant surprise to see their excitement when I produced these little blueberry cheesecake pots the other day – which are essentially fruit, yogurt, and a biscuit. The power of presentation – and added sugar and fat of course…;-)
I’ve had a large tin of mango pulp taking up precious space in the pantry cupboard for ages now. It’s been so long, I can no longer remember my reason for purchasing it. I’m thinking maybe cocktails…?
The other day, it occurred to me that it would lend itself nicely to making mango ice cream. To my surprise, none of the recipes I found used tinned mango, so I decided to go it alone.
I kept things simple – just mango pulp, double cream, lime juice, salt and Malibu liqueur (another thing that’s been taking up valuable shelf space for the last ten years.)
The moment I saw those Great British Bake-off contestants tackling chocolate bread, I knew I’d be making chocolate babka.
I first heard of chocolate babka in that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine fail to buy one for a dinner party, but have never made – or eaten – any type of babka until now.
It turns out that making babka is a time-consuming, fiddly labour of love. Part way through the bread-braiding process, I thought “this is the first and last chocolate babka I’m going to make.”
And then I tasted that pillowy sweet dough laced with swirls and knots of chocolate and nuggets of toasted pecan. If I hadn’t been stupified by deliciousness, I could have happily started making another one immediately…;-)
This lovely, slightly damp and sticky ginger cake is fast becoming a staple in our house. I love how the sharp lemon icing cuts the sweetness of the sponge.
The cake keeps really well, and is even more delicious the following day. It could well be even better the day after that, but we’ve never had one last long enough to find out…;-)
The original recipe is from the BBC Good Food website. Continue reading
This yeasted apple streusel cake is less sweet than your typical coffee cake. The cake itself is quite light and is enhanced by the crunch of the streusel topping. I’d intended to make it for an afternoon snack, but the day got away from me and I ended up serving it with dinner.
Turns out that it’s also very nice accompanied by a nip of brandy…
The apple streusel cake recipe I followed comes from the For Love of the Table blog. Continue reading
Before moving to the UK, I’d never eaten summer pudding. I was dead impressed the first time my mother-in-law served one up for dessert.
As she’s a very accomplished cook, I assumed summer puddings required patisserie skills I’d never possess. Turns out she’s a canny cook as well – and summer pudding couldn’t be easier to make. Continue reading
Mazurka (or mazurek) is a traditional Polish cake served at Easter and other special occasions. There are lots of mazurka recipes online – some for single-layer mazurka topped with fruit or chocolate and drizzled with icing; others with the fillings sandwiched between two thin layers of cake.
I chose this blueberry mazurka recipe for its similarity to the date squares my family makes at Christmas. It hadn’t occurred to me to use anything other than dates for the middle layer – my eyes are opened to all sorts of possibilities now…;-) Continue reading
I’ve been meaning to make a kladdkaka for a while. I live with a houseful of pudding lovers, and I expected this would go down a treat. Apparently, it’s very popular in Sweden, and it’s easy to see why. Dense, gooey, chocolatey – what’s not to like? Continue reading
With a daughter called Nova, I would have chosen this dish for its name alone. For a girl whose first word was “cakey”, cherry bubble cake is tres Nova, indeed… 😉 Continue reading
Nanaimo bars are a national institution in Canada. I’d always assumed these delicious bars of nutty, creamy, chocolatey goodness were first in Nanaimo (a town on Vancouver Island) – and research bears this out.
Loved across the country, there was even a knockout round in the first season of MasterChef Canada where competitors had to make desserts inspired by Nanaimo bars. Continue reading
What I now recognise to be a mighty close cousin of the British classic lemon drizzle cake, went by the more modest name of lemon bread round ours.
Christmas baking aside, lemon bread was my hands-down favourite out of everything mum baked. I particularly adored the way the lemon syrup crystallised on the crust before seeping down to creating that thin layer of sticky citrusy goodness. Continue reading
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about chocolates is the element of surprise. Shapes can be a giveaway – square toffees, dome-shaped cherries and so on – as is the printed guide when it exists. But until you commit and sink your teeth into a chocolate, you don’t really know what’s inside.
The acute disappointment of biting into a strawberry cream with its cloying taste of cosmetics. The outrage of a square chocolate unpardonably filled with fibrous coconut. The double delight of getting whatever chocolate you and your brother both favour after he went first and chose wrong…;-) Continue reading
I was pleasantly surprised by these iced filled buns, which are like homemade, fresh and delicious jam doughnuts. Or sweet hamburgers. Needless to say, the girls adored them.
As I’m not keen on strawberry jam, I opted to fill mine with raspberry instead. It’s not the most photogenic of jams, appearing dark and gelatinous in the photos.
With these filled iced buns I complete my Great British Bake-off signature bake challenge – better late than never. Continue reading
This year, I’m kicking off my Christmas baking by making butterscotch fudge.
I use my precious stash of butterscotch chips for two things – oatmeal butterscotch chip cookies and butterscotch fudge, and I’m always careful to keep a bag in reserve for this moment. Christmas just wouldn’t be as sweet without butterscotch fudge.
There’s been a hiatus in the Great British Bake-off project, but the girls were never going to let me get away without making the double chocolate tart.
Chocolate pastry is new to me. My go-to pastry recipes have little or no sugar, and I wasn’t confident that would be enough to balance the bitterness of the cocoa. The pastry recipe I followed starts by creaming the butter and sugar, which resulted in a biscuity-crisp crust. Continue reading
Cream horns are delightful things – and were completely new to me when I saw them on the Great British Bake-off the other week.
The concept is a simple one. Thin strips of puff pastry are rolled around a conical mould. Once baked, the pastry cones are piped full of sweet cream.
The Great British Bake-off signature bakes seem to be increasing in complexity as the weeks go by – which is as it should be I guess.
Still, I find myself watching in trepidation, wondering what challenge I’ll be inflicting on myself next…
When the Great British Bake-off contestants were tasked with making a sugar-free cake, I immediately thought of Claudia Roden’s orange cake.
This Judeo-Spanish cake relies on puréed whole oranges for much of its sweetness, which I thought would make it relatively easy to adapt. And because it calls for ground almonds instead of flour, it’s gluten-free as well, which seemed in the spirit of the challenge.
As this was my first attempt at baking with agave nectar, I did some reading first. The recommendations are to cut the quantity of sugar by about quarter, reduce the liquid in the recipe and lower the oven temperature – all of which I did.
I can’t see Paul and Mary being very impressed with this 1970s classic… But as a child, I was wowed by it, particularly the stripes. We called it skunk, but it doesn’t appear anyone else did – my Google search on skunk cake brought up very different results!
Crème brûlée is – without a doubt – my favourite dessert. I love the moment when you crack the crust of caramelised sugar, and the shards shift apart to reveal the creamy custard waiting beneath. I’m already happy before I even raise the first spoonful to my mouth…
Until now, all my crème brûlée moments have occurred in restaurants. But the fourth Great British Bake-off signature bake was crème brûlée, so it was time to give it a go. Continue reading
Peaches and basil both say “summer” to me – and in this peach-basil sorbet they can say it together…
I made this sorbet with those little flat white peaches that have been appearing in the shops the last few years. The lovely rosy colour was a pleasant surprise – the result of leaving the skins on the peaches when I puréed them. Continue reading
Strawberry shortcake is America’s take on the quintessentially British scones with cream and jam. Fresher, looser, less “proper”, and somehow more bountiful – for me, strawberry shortcake wins hands down. Continue reading
Ten More Bites 