Too good to be true

Every now and then you come across a recipe that is so good that you just cannot believe it. It is everything a recipe should be: easy to follow, easily available ingredients, perfect for when living on a budget and the result is so tasty that you just keep going back for more. The other day, I found just such a recipe.

I had bought two tins of apricots but hadn't really thought about what to do with them. In principle, all they are good for is serving them with some yoghurt but, for some reason, it made hubby think of upside-down cake. If I am honest, it is not my favourite cake and I was... hesitant... to use them in that way. But it did make me think about baked apricots, which is something I like to do with fresh apricots that aren't quite ripe enough to eat out of the hand. I just didn't have any almond paste... Or vanilla... What I did have was loads of cream... And walnuts...

And so I went looking for a recipe that could combine these three random ingredients: apricots, walnuts and cream. I didn't quite find what I was looking for so I 'adapted' an old French recipe for Apricot Clafoutis. Traditionally, a Clafoutis is a baked French dessert of black cherries (stones and all), arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter. Over the years, many different varieties of fruit have been used but the best fruit to use is 'stone' fruits such as cherries, apricots, peaches, plums, and so on. Technically, when you use a different variety of fruit the dish is not a Clafoutis but a Flaugnarde. But that just doesn't sound as nice...

Remember how I said that a good recipe is not only tasty but also contains easily available ingredients and can be made living on a budget? This entire dessert costs £1.50 for four to six people. And yes, I do realise that some of the ingredients, such as the vanilla, are not necessarily things that you would call 'cheap' but ...a little goes a long way; in most recipes you will only use about a teaspoon. Another option is to buy some fresh vanilla pods, use the seeds for one dish but stick the pods themselves into a jar of sugar: vanilla flavoured sugar that will last as long as you keep the pods in the jar, even if you add more sugar... This way you can use the sugar every time a recipe asks for vanilla...

But, like I said, I didn't have vanilla, nor did I have the desire to go out in the rain to get some. Instead, I decided to crush up some walnuts that I had lying around and use those to flavour the custard.

Apricot Clafoutis

Ingredients:

• 250 gram fresh, ripe, apricots (halved and pitted)  or 1 tin of apricot halves, drained
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 25 gram plain flour, sifted
• 50 gram caster sugar or 50 gram vanilla sugar (then don't use vanilla extract)
• 150 millilitre double cream
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract or 50 gram vanilla sugar

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C and lightly grease a shallow, ovenproof, dish with a little butter. The dish should be large enough to fit the apricots in a single layer
2. Place the apricots cut-side down in a single layer in the dish (there should be a little space between them)
3. In a bowl, whisk the egg, egg yolk and the flour together
4. Whisk in the caster sugar (or vanilla sugar)
5. Add the cream (and vanilla extract if using) and whisk thoroughly to form a smooth custard
6. Pour the custard over the apricots so the tops of a few are just visible
7. Place the dish on the top shelf in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes until puffed up and golden brown in places
8. Remove the dish from the oven and leave to cool for at least 15 minutes

Dust the cooled down Clafoutis with a little icing sugar and serve with a little lightly whipped cream or creme fraiche.

If you don't have apricots (or don't like them) try one of the options below:

• (black) Cherries and Kirsch
• Toss the (pitted) cherries with 3 tablespoons of Kirsch and 2 tablespoons of sugar and leave for 30 minutes. Strain the cherries and whisk the Kirsch in with the eggs. Place the cherries into a buttered dish and pour over the custard (you still want to see some of the cherries). Bake immediately for 30-35 minutes
• Plum and marzipan (or almond paste)
• Halve the plums and remove the stones. Place a dot of marzipan or almond paste into the hollow of each plum before placing them cut-side down into the dish. Pour over the custard and bake for 30-35 minutes
• I like to add little dots of almond paste on top of the custard, before it goes into the oven
• Plum and (plum) Brandy or Kirsch
• Halve the plums and remove the stones. Place the plums cut-side up in a single layer in a buttered and sugared dish, pour over the batter and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons of Brandy or Kirsch. Bake immediately for 30-35 minutes
• Fruit and ...
• If you don't want to use vanilla (or like me don't have any), try flavouring the custard with some nuts that are crushed very finely or some spices or ...
• Apricots and walnuts or almonds
• Cherries and macadamia nuts or hazelnuts
• Plums and pecans or almonds
• Cherries and cocoa powder and/or cinnamon
• Plums and ginger

You know what they say:

Bon Appetit

Or

Enjoy

The best mistakes...

Every once in a while I will try my hand at something I have never done before. Or I return to something I haven't made in a long time. That this doesn't always work out right was proven to me over Christmas. To be honest, I wasn't going to write this post; I would like you to believe that I do not make mistakes, that I am the perfect kitchen goddess. But, I can't. Because I do mess up from time to time.

It was decided that I was going to make truffles. Chocolate truffles that is. Because it's Christmas. And because we had a surplus of chocolate. Now, I have made plenty of dark-chocolate truffles in my time; at least 20 years ago. It's a lot of hassle and usually the chocolate goes before I even have the chance of saying "Let's make truffles". We only had a little dark chocolate but we had plenty of white chocolate. And so, white-chocolate truffles it was going to be. With apricots and walnuts and marbled with dark chocolate. They were fantastic. Or, at least, they would have been if I had remembered how to make truffles...

I didn't... I forgot that the easiest way is to heat cream and let the chocolate slowly dissolve into it... And I had forgotten that white chocolate has such a high fat content that when you melt the chocolate and add in the cold cream it splits. No matter how much you stir, it splits!

What I was left with was a bowl of a semi-set, glue-y, sticky mess (lumpy because of the walnuts and pieces of dried apricot) in the middle of a pool of oil. Now, if warm eggs split you can bring them back together again by whisking in a tablespoon of ice-cold water. I knew that this wouldn't work with chocolate but I hoped that vigorous whisking with an electric hand whisk would do the job. It didn't. It was fast turning into a day of 'it didn'ts'. Leaving me feeling rather miserable. And then I remembered; heat cream, equivalent to half the content of chocolate, and - once warm - stir in the chocolate until fully incorporated. It worked... And the truffles were beautiful. Or, they would have been if I hadn't incorporated all the oil in as well.

I did... I forgot that it was the fat that had caused it to split in the first place. I didn't remember to just incorporate the solids... Although it didn't split again, I was now left with something the consistency of icing (runny-ish icing, to say the least)... My husband had a brainwave: "Stick it in the fridge and see if it will set solid". I did. It didn't... I was left with... well... with this:

It tastes great. Scratch that, it taste sublime. But it isn't set into something I can turn into truffles. It is sticky, lumpy (still the walnuts and apricots), and the consistency of your favourite brand of hazelnut-chocolate paste.

Forget everything I have just said. I am a true kitchen goddess. There is no need to cry over spilled milk, broken cake or a recipe that has gone wrong. Taste is what matters.
Are you tired of spending a mass of money on chocolate spread? Would you like to know exactly what you give yourself and your children to eat? Are you worn down by all the additives in commercially bought hazelnut spreads? Fear not, you can easily make your own and it won't cost you an arm and a leg. Better yet, rather than being stuck with milk chocolate paste and hazelnuts: by making your own, you decide what flavour to use. Everything is possible: white chocolate with walnuts, milk chocolate with Brazil nuts, dark chocolate with almonds, three-chocolate swirl. If you can think of it, you can make it.

Perfect Chocolate Spread

Ingredients:

• 400 gram of your favourite chocolate (milk, white, dark: with or without added flavours) (it can be as expensive, or as cheap, as you like)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)
• 284 millilitre double cream (1 tub)
• nuts and/or dried fruit of your choice

Method:

1. Take a pan and fill it half with cold water and place on the stove, bringing the water to the boil
2. Place a heatproof bowl on top of the pan
• Make sure that the bowl does not touch the water but that it seals off the pan completely - you want the water to stay in the pan and no steam escaping
3. Break the chocolate into the bowl and add the cream
4. Let the chocolate melt as the cream and the bowl warm up
5. In the mean time, chop the nuts and/or dried fruit as coarsely (or finely) as you like
6. Stir the nuts/fruit (and the vanilla extract, if using) into the chocolate
7. Leave the chocolate to cool
• If the mixture is setting too solid, mix in some extra cream once cold

Flavour combinations that will work well:

• white chocolate:
• tart fruit such as apricots, raspberries, cranberries and sour cherries (all dried)
• to keep the chocolate as white as possible, try not to break the fruit as much as possible by stirring it in gently just before you leave it to cool
• ground cardamom
• any kind of nut
• milk chocolate:
• banana, coconut, raisins and tart fruits as above (all dried) (blitz the dried banana to a powder so that you don't break your teeth on it)
• any kind of nut
• for a more adult version: replace up to half of the cream with Baileys or rum
• dark chocolate
• strong flavours such as orange and ginger (both candied) but also sour cherries
• any kind of nut
• spices such as cinnamon or ground ginger
• for a more adult version: replace up to half of the cream with Cointreau, Tia Maria, rum or brandy

Try not to get too many air bubbles into your chocolate as this will decrease the amount of time you can keep it. Leave the chocolate in the bowl or scoop into sterilised jars.

You can use the chocolate spread on sandwiches or you can loosen the paste a little with some cream and use as fillings or icing on cakes and biscuits.

That leaves me just with:

Enjoy!

Coffin or Star?

You must be thinking I have gone off my rocker but this title, "Coffin or Star?", is not as daft as it may sound. In days gone by, the crust of a pie (yes, we're taking pie again) was called the coffin. We have moved on since then and just call it the pie crust but I can see where they were coming from. Especially when you know that in those days most pies were not round but oblong, regardless of the filling. The question itself, coffin or star, relates to how you fancy your mince pies; do you prefer a full 'coffin', or are you more of the 'star' variety?

My preference depends on how sweet the filling is, how much alcohol it contains and how good the crust is. If the filling is not too sweet, and contains a decent amount of alcohol, then I prefer a 'coffin' as the pastry will dampen the harshest alcohol flavours and add sweetness to the filling. If the filling is too sweet and there is not a lot (or no) alcohol, then I prefer a 'star' (or any other shape the baker has come up with).
Aesthetically, however, I prefer the 'star'; I like the contrast between the dark filling and the golden pastry, so I will usually make plenty of full 'coffins' and a few 'stars' to put on top of the pile.

In 2008 I had my first British Christmas. Can you imagine my face the first time I had a mince pie? Someone, I think it was my now sister-in-law, asked me if I wanted cream or custard with my mince pie. As I only knew mince of the meat variety, this question puzzled me. Why on earth would anyone want to have custard with a gorgeous beef pie? The look on my face must have been worth a million quid, and before long everyone was laughing at my mistake. It was quickly explained that Mince Meat is a sweet filling of dried fruit with spices. I opted for the brandy cream...

Mince pies used to contain meat and was a mix of (usually) mutton, suet, dried fruit and spices that had been brought over by the European crusaders returning from the Middle-East. The original recipes used to contain thirteen ingredients representing Jesus Christ and his twelve Apostles. The meat component has since been dropped from the recipe, although this was still used in the 1900s, but suet is still required.

With Christmas fast approaching (just 37 more days), I suddenly realised this morning that I had not made my 'Mince Meat' yet. There is still time but I need to get a move on... 

Mince Meat

(to be used in Mince Pies)

Ingredients:

• 500 gram Bramley apples
• 500 gram mixed dried fruit (raisins, sultanas, dates, figs)
• 225 gram chopped, mixed peel
• 500 gram suet of choice
• 500 gram demerara sugar
• 2 lemons, grated zest and juice
• 60 gram chopped, mixed nuts
• 1 tablespoon mixed, ground spices (cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger)
• 4 tablespoons whiskey, rum or brandy (optional)

Thirteen ingredients (excluding the optional alcohol and including the suet)!

Method:

1. Peel and chop the apples into pieces the size of the sultanas
2. Mix the apples with the lemon juice and rind
3. Chop the dates and figs into pieces the size of the sultanas and add to the apple mix
4. Add the rest of the dried fruit, mixed peel, nuts, spices, suet and sugar
5. Stir in the alcohol (optional) and leave to stand, overnight, at room temperature, covered with a cloth
6. Pre-heat the oven to the lowest setting
7. Stir the mixture and transfer to an oven proof dish
8. Put the dish in the oven and heat slowly for one hour
9. Pack into clean, dry jars, cover with wax disks and cling film or cloth
10. Store in a cool, dark place until needed
• The longer it can stand the better the flavours will be developed

The recipe should yield approximately six 500 gram jars.

I wish you an early Merry Christmas

Enjoy