Oh yes!...

... black treacle AND golden syrup!

To me, this is always a sign of a good thing. In this case the good thing is flapjacks. Soft, treacly flapjacks.

I think it occurred to me to make flapjacks because I bought one from a shop the other day and it tasted so sickeningly sweet - all glucose syrup and margarine - that I couldn't finish it.

I like good pale flapjacks (the ones made just with golden syrup, butter, oats and sugar) - especially chocolate dipped or fruit filled - but I like treacly ones better. And I hear treacle is a good source of Vitamin B, so they're practically a health food.


This recipe is the one my mum used when we were little - it's child-level simple and it makes dense ginger-y treacly bars, perfect for lunch boxes, or afternoon snackage. A good addition is some chopped dried apricots for a little extra fruitiness and moistness.

Treacle Flapjacks

In a saucepan, melt 75g butter with 50g dark brown sugar, 1/2 tbsp of golden syrup and 1/2 tbsp black treacle over a low heat until all combined.

Mix in 50g wholemeal flour, 75g porridge oats and 2-3tsps ground ginger (and 25g chopped dried apricots - optional)

Squash into a shallow dish and bake at Gas 3-4 for about 45 minutes until it looks set and browned on top. It will still be a bit wobbly at this stage, but will firm up as it cools. Slice while its still hot, but let it cool and firm before removing from the dish.

(NB - I like Jordans Organic Porridge Oats the best - they are the only ones I can find that are proper whole oats, not mashed up little pieces.)

Apple and cinnamon cupcake

Making cupcakes is always fun. There's something just a little frivolous about bite size cakes and their pretty frilly cases.

These ones are very moist and appley, streaked through the middle with a band of cinnamon sugar and crunchy with the same on top. Very tasty.

The recipe is adapted from a very cute little book called simply cupcakes! by Elinor Klivans.

Without further ado:

1. Preheat oven to 350F
2. In a small bowl, mix 1/2 cup sugar and 4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3. In another bowl mix 1 cup grated cooking apple with 2 tablespoons of the cinnamon sugar mixture
4. In a larger bowl stir 1 1/4 cups plain flour, 3/4 cup soft brown sugar, 3/4 tsp baking soda and a pinch of salt together, and make a well in the centre
5. Add 2 eggs, 1 cup sunflower oil and 1 tsp vanilla extract and mix well
6. Stir in the apple mixture with any juice that has been released
7. Put 12 cupcake papers into a muffin tray and half fill each with mixture
8. Sprinkle 1/2 tsp of cinnamon sugar over each one and top up with more mixture
9. Use a pastry brush to dab the top of the batter with the melted butter and sprinkle a tsp of cinnamon sugar on top of each
10. Bake until the tops are light brown and a knife inserted comes out clean; about 25 minutes

banana bread

What to do when mid-afternoon in midsummer looks as ominous as this?

Storm clouds, thunder and lightning, hail stones as big as golf balls... Summer has forgotten its lines...

What to do in the face of such seasonal craziness? Bake banana bread of course. Well..., of course.

That's how it seemed to me anyway (especially as we had a fruit bowl of formerly yellow bananas lazily ripening into an inedible slush). It is good for this winter-summer though; it's got the sweetness and soft cakiness of wintery comfort food but the sunshiny taste of summer.

Banana and Walnut Loaf
adapted from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course

* Preheat the oven to gas mark 4, 350F (180C)
* Grease a loaf tin, 9x19cm, or equivalent
* Beat 3oz soft butter with 4oz caster sugar
* Add in a beaten egg, slowly, and beat well
* Stir in 8oz plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder and a teaspoon of ground nutmeg
* Mash 3 bananas and add to the mixture, along with the grated rind of an orange, the grated rind of a lemon and 2oz roughly chopped walnuts
* Transfer to the loaf tin and pop in the oven for 50-55 minutes, until the loaf is golden, well-risen and springs back.
* Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then loosen round the edges and turn out to finish cooling on a wire tray.

Mmmmm Cardamommm...

Was it just my imagination, I thought, or did the subtly spicy milky coffee I just supped as I reclined on the sofa, settle in my belly with a warmth like the physical feeling of happy contentedness?

I had got home a little earlier from a lazy day enjoying the city, and had decided to crack in to my treat to myself of a bar of the beautiful blue and white packaged Rococo chocolate. Discovering I had unwittingly bought white instead of dark chocolate I was momentarily disappointed. (I’m not a big fan of the pale stuff.) However, the cardamom it was infused with converted it completely from a sweet milky confection to something regal and intriguing and good.

I hadn’t had cardamom for ages - my first memories of it are of surprising chewy mouthfuls of a strong bitterness, when encountering whole pods in Dad Saucepan’s curries. And, its reputation stained by childhood distrust, I hadn’t afforded it a place in much of my cooking. Like much met with an older palate, it was joyous then to rediscover and re-learn the flavour and to find I really – really – liked it…

Inspired by this discovery, I found an old jar of pods in the spices collection, smashed some up and added them to the milk I heated to make the aforementioned coffee, with its feelgood aftertaste.

And, carried away on a wave of fondness for my new best spicy friend, I set to augmenting a recent VE&T cake recipe, which turned out pretty nicely...


Spiced Summer Fruit Mini Cakes

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Sift 200g plain flour with 75g ground almonds, 2 tsps baking powder, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1 tsp ground cardamom seeds and ½ tsp salt into a bowl.
Beat 125g butter, 220g dark brown sugar together until pale and fluffy
Add 3 eggs one at a time, beating well after each.
Add 150g sour cream, beat until just combined and then stir in flour mixture, followed by 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits (I used frozen ones defrosted and drained).
Grease a muffin tin, spoon in the batter and scatter another 100g raspberries or mixed summer fruits on top.
Bake for 35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Cool in tins for 5 mins before turning out.

PS - I’ve since discovered an utterly luxurious breakfast from a Jane Clarke article in the Times – you put a couple of crushed cardamom pods in with your porridge, and serve it with pomegranate segments and some thick greek yoghurt. It’s divine.

Savour it

...those moments that make you stop and smile and appreciate.

Some of mine from the week just gone:

• The novelty of staying in posh hotels for work - mini shampoos! cleaned rooms! new biscuits every day!

Daffodils and crocuses signalling the beginning of the end of the gloominess with their brazenly cheerful petals

Finding a new good book to get into on the tube - (Bel Canto by Ann Patchett)

Radiator-warmed trousers ready for post-work lounging

Surprisingly succesful crumbly sweet pastry

...

The last of which, I would like to share with you. I was planning to make cooked pears to eat with yoghurt for breakfast. I HEART cooked pears. It was a sunny lazy kind of morning however, and I found myself idling, vaguely thinking and reading the paper as I sliced. And they emerged from my fingers uniform and slim, not chunky for stewing. I was arranging them all neat in the bottom of the pan. Obviously my subconscious had been thinking about tarts. So, what else could I do but return to the little shop for butter and flour? Breakfast fell by the wayside, and I settled in to improvise a pear tart. I don't believe there are many better things to do with a saturday morning.

Now I wasn't actually going to mention the words, those alliterative beauties. But I can not kid myself that that was the platonic ideal - the mighty Tarte Tatin... But, you see, I have issues with tarte tatin. I tried it once and the caramel went wrong and it fell in a heap and the pastry was Awful, and I felt a little tricked and unamused.

So, I didn't put any pressure on. It's not a pear T---- T----, I told myself, it's merely a pear tart, upside down. Which really it is, because I couldn't be bothered with the caramel sauce.

And besides there are a million and one recipes for the TT. But in case you too are afeared of it, or you just quite fancy a plain Pear Upside Down Tart, then I thought I would share with you that this is: 1. very simple 2. fun to make (it's all that flipping out and watching the pastry float and brown above its fruity load) and 3. so tasty I polished the whole lot of in a day (NB - this is not recommended; try and make it when you are in the company of hungry people not avoiding white flour and sugar).

So, without further ado:

An Upside Down Tart of Pears...

4oz flour
2oz butter
2oz caster sugar
about 4 or 5 smallish pears
another few slices of butter (maybe 1 or 2oz)
another few spoonfuls of sugar (probably 4 or 5 dessertspoons)

1. Peel, core and slice the pears, and arrange in a frying pan that is ovenproof (I didn't peel mine, but I should have)
2. Put over a low heat with some slivers of butter and a sprinkling of sugar. Put a lid on and heat until it's all starting to cook
3. Add a little more butter and sugar and cook for a little longer with the lid off until it's going all brown and caramelly
Meanwhile...
4. Rub the butter into the flour and sugar with fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs
5. Drip in a little cold water - a teaspoon at a time, cutting it in with a knife until the breadcrumbs turn into bigger lumbs you can push into a soft dough - you will not need more than 2 tablespoons of water, probably more like 1. Err on the side of caution
6. Roll out your dough to a little larger than the size of the pan
7. When the pears are soft and covered in a sugary sauce, put a few more slivers of butter and sprinklings of sugar on for good measure, and then cover with the dough, tucking in the edges round the pears as best you can
8. Put in a preheated oven at 200C for about 20-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown
9. Cross your fingers, cover the pan with a plate and flip the whole lot over - hopefully it'll fall out, all golden and triumphant
10. Serve warm with greek yoghurt, or cream, as you like...

Too cute!

Many, many years ago, before email and mobile phones and reality tv, two little girls lived in a small town in South West England. Every Saturday the older of the sisters would get a shiny big 10 pence piece - pocket money. Being a generally super kind of big sister, she would allocate one penny of this to the younger child. Both would walk up the road and over the bridge and across the crossing, and enter the kingdom of the little shop on the corner, where big sister and littler sister deliberated over which of the myriad of sugary delights to drop into the old Vitalite tub and purchase with the treasured pocket money. Aniseed balls or white mice or sherbet spaceships for me and my one penny probably. Maybe a blackjack or fruit salad, a cola bottle...

Predictably, the splendour and allure of pick'n'mix sweets has rather faded 20-odd years on. However, when I popped into Heals on Tottenham Court Road recently, that wide-eyed kind of wonder and greed flooded back as I found an impossibly cute miniature bakery shop where there used to be a flower stall.

Before I'd even got to inspecting the edible wares, I'm a sucker for that old-style type font they use. Cute! - especially with the soft lights and tiled walls and minty hand-written labels. As for the food... it had rows of pretty multi-coloured fairy cakes with far too much swirly icing and liberal scatters of sprinkles; it had hand-thrown pork pies and big, luscious looking slices of quiche; it had fruit tarts and hugely decadent looking frou frou cakes; it had hot pies and cold sandwiches; it had jams and stylish boxes of various teas; it had plates and plates of sweet-smelling biscuits and muffins and cakes...

I wasn't really hungry and I didn't really need a cake but as with those Saturday mornings at the sweet selection, the fun was all in the oohing and aahing and ummming about what to pick over everything else.

I picked a banana muffin. It was good. Not super, but pretty damn good. And now I'm just enjoying thinking what I'm going to spend my pocket money on next time I go in...

... and the Delicious Doggy DooDoos (Birthday Cake Part Two)

Following on from my last post, did you notice those little things around the edge of the cake?...

Because there’s a little part of me that thinks birthdays aren’t complete without something of a chocolate nature, I decided to accompany my lemon and berry cake with some little treats I had been meaning to try for a long time, since seeing them on the magnificent Chocolate and Zucchini: Biscuits Chocolat et Feves de Cacao

I’ll refer you to Clotilde for the recipe (click link above)… My only modifications were accidental – I couldn’t find plain cacao nibs, so used chocolate covered ones (a tasty whilst-baking snack I found…) , and I somehow forgot to get cocoa powder in my rush to bake all this in secret, so just substituted flour. The result was still plenty chocolatey enough for me – these are just the right amount of bitter and sweet for me; nicely darkly chocolatey. The somehow heavy lightness, the cute bite-sizeness and a strange compulsion to distinguish whether this is a cake or a biscuit means you really can’t stop at just one.

I added raspberries too, as I had some leftover from the cake. This, I decided, was a good addition. The bites can be a little bit dry so the moist berry in the middle was the perfect foil.

The Crazy Canine Choir Cake...

It’s one of those happy serendipities that people seem to enjoy and appreciate homemade cakes as much as I like planning and making them. I sometimes feel almost guilty receiving thanks and praise when I truly feel the pleasure was all mine – it’s such a treat to have an occasion to bake for.

So it was with B’s birthday. Not long was it since I had read the latest Australia Vogue Entertaining and Travel and salivated over the lemon and berry cake Jo Miller and Juliet Robb shared in the story about their Long Track Pantry in Jugiong, New South Wales that there was this perfect opportunity to try it out.

I’m a big fan of cakes which use ground almonds, and a big fan too of citrus flavoured cakes, so this already had me sold on two counts. The addition of jewel-like and summery raspberries clinched the deal.

It’s a pretty easy recipe; one of those ones with melted ingredients which you can whip up conveniently quickly. I burnt mine at the edge a tiny bit but it didn’t matter an awful lot. I planned to do a lemon syrup to drizzle over and leave to soak in the day before, but in the event it was sticky and lemony enough already, so me not getting round to it was not too much of a loss.

Dense, crumbly, soft and moist, with tart sweet fruit flavours this is a cake for summer days or a taste of summer on not-so-summery days.

As for decoration it would have been a crime to cover the berries or detract from the lemon-ness with icing, so I opted for a cast of cardboard cutout dogs, a canine choir, to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ in speech bubbles (B being rather a fan of dogs). Though I do say so myself, I was pretty chuffed with my inventiveness and the slightly absurd effect, which continued to make me smile the whole hour I waited for the birthday boy to return home.

Berry and Lemon Cake
(makes 1 x 20cm cake)

1 cup plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¾ cup ground almonds
185g butter
1 cup caster sugar
¼ cup lemon juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup raspberries (or seasonal mixed berries)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 20cm cake tin.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, then stir in ground almonds.

Place butter, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice in a saucepan and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved.

Gradually mix butter mixture into the flour mixture until just combined

Then add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition

Pour batter into prepared tin and evenly distribute the berries on top (I attempted to spell out B’s initials, though it went a bit lopsided in cooking…)

Bake on middle shelf for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle withdraws clean.

Leave cake in pan and leave to cool on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from tin and leave to cool completely.