Rhubarb and Ginger Pie

My Rhubarb and Ginger Pie brings together the age old combination of sweet and sour as the soft rhubarb and ginger filling is encased in a sticky syrup and sweet pastry crust. And what’s more…it’s in season!

I hadn’t really discovered rhubarb until a year or two ago. We have always grown it in our garden but it was something the parents sneakily ate when we had gone to bed. Because of this I never really had much interest in it as a fruit. The other fruit we grew like apples and gooseberries were eaten almost daily in our house during the summer months but the rhubarb was kept hidden away!

The more I got into cookery shows the more I became intrigued by this bright pink fruit! (How you get it to retain this bright colour while cooking still escapes me: answers on a postcard please.) If it was good enough for celebrity chefs it was good enough for me surely?

I really fell in love with rhubarb in a delicious rhubarb crumble. The topping had a claggy yet crunchy texture and the filling was so soft and sweet yet sharp at the same time. The combination of textures and flavours was to die for and I knew I had to try and recreate my own.

Crumbles feature a lot in my cooking. You can find an Oaty Apple Crumble and Gooseberry Crumble already on the blog, and in a week or two’s time I will be posting a Spiced Pineapple Crumble (seriously amazing, watch this space!!!) So with that in mind, plus the fear I could never recreate the amazing rhubarb crumble that made me fall in love with the fruit in the first place, I decided instead to try a pie.

Traditional Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns,
Hot Cross Buns,
One-a-penny,
Two-a-penny,
Hot Cross Buns.

The tune to this little ditty was one of the first things I learnt to play on my recorder at primary school! I went to a local C of E school and so the links between hot cross buns and Christianity have never been in doubt in my mind...until now!

Any good Christian family will teach their children that the cross on top of a hot cross bun is directly linked to the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. As long as I can remember before heading to church on Good Friday morning, for the stations of the cross, we would all gather on Mum and Dad’s bed for a breakfast of hot cross buns. But, as I started looking around the internet for a recipe this year I found a few things out about the hot cross bun that I didn’t know...

Although there seems no doubt that hot cross buns are English in origin, they may have been around long before this country became Christian. In fact, it seems they might be another example of a pagan tradition that Christianity took over. There is some suggesting that the spiced buns were eaten when celebrating the goddess Eostre. Now even I can see (or hear) that Eostre sounds a lot like Easter... coincidence I think not!!!

Regardless of whether they are Christian or not, there are also some rather cool superstitions surrounding the hot cross bun. So the story goes...if you bake hot cross buns on Good Friday they will not spoil or go mouldy!!! I’m actually quite tempted to try this one out. Another superstition is that hot cross buns can protect sailors from shipwrecks. I’m afraid I can’t test this one so we’ll just have to trust the internet!

After spending just 20mins surfing the internet, I soon realised that the origins of the humble hot cross buns weren’t quite as straight forward as I originally thought! I just hoped that baking them would be easy.

The fact that they have been around for hundreds of years also brings its own challenges. Do you know just how many varieties of hot cross bun you can get now? I’m talking chocolate, toffee, apple, cinnamon, earl grey, orange blossom – you name it, a supermarket makes it! I’m particularly a fan of the GIANT hot cross bun loaf that Asda do but that’s a whole other ball game!

I decided to begin with I would try a traditional recipe from none other than Mrs Beeton. I’m not a big bread baker as I find no matter what tip or trick I use to kick start my yeast into gear I never quite get it right. BUT by just tweaking the traditional recipe a little bit I was able to SUCCESSFULLY bake my first batch of traditional hot cross buns!!!

The spice balance really is quite a personal thing so feel free to adjust this to your taste: I used a little less than Mrs Beeton calls for and also adjusted the dried fruit used.

Now that I’ve managed to master this traditional version next I will have to take on the supermarkets and attempt a twist on this classic.

Gingerbread House

There are two types of people that reveal themselves at Christmas: those who are painfully organised, have their presents bought in August and have all of their Christmas baking finished before Christmas eve and those who have ribbons and bows attached to their clothes, burnt cookies in the oven and friends and family unexpectedly knocking on the door.

I usually fall in the latter category!

I must admit...it’s Christmas Eve Eve and I am still yet to finish one of my parents’ presents, wrap ALL of the presents I’ve bought, make truffles for my Grandad, bake two different batches of cookies, make ice-cream for dessert Christmas Day, make the starter for Christmas Day, BUY and write Christmas cards to my family, and I have to complete all of this on Christmas Eve when I will be working from 7am. Can anyone spot a problem?

Despite all of this, I did manage to do something pretty damn impressive at the beginning of the week. I made my first ever gingerbread house.

It was so much easier than I first thought, though I’m not going to lie to you, it is time consuming.

So, if you are one of these super women who was planning on pouring herself a snowball and watching it’s a wonderful life tomorrow, I challenge you to instead bake yourself the ultimate of Christmas table centre pieces – the ginger bread house!

The basic premise is that you make a ginger flavoured dough, roll it out, cut out the various shapes, and stick together with royal icing before decorating with all sorts of yummy sweets and chocolates.

Easy peasy right?
 
Well hopefully, by following this recipe you will find making your gingerbread house just as easy as I did.

Spiced Cranberry Chutney

An extra large jar of Spiced Cranberry Chutney
ready for some cheese!

This is my second venture into the Christmas kitchen this year and yet again it involves a couple of jars!
I’ve been thinking about “dabbling” in preserves since the summer. In the past we’ve ended up with a huge glut of fruit and I was looking forward to attempting to make jam for the first time. But, summer came and went, and in true British style the weather was disappointing. We had hardly any raspberries on our canes this year so my new jam thermometer never got a look in.

But, as we get ever closer to Christmas, I’ve begun to find festive uses for the jam jars I have collected.

First I attempted my own mincemeat perfect for mince pies and other festive favourites. The recipe was super simple, and I managed to get an airtight seal! Woo hoo! Not too bad for a first attempt.

This time I thought I’d try something a little bit different.

At Christmas my family gets through an UNHOLY amount of Cheese; cheeses of all kinds, from soft to smelly, sheep to goat. Last year my Dad’s present from my sister and I was actually a Cheese hamper complete with 5 types of cheese 2 chutneys and a plumb bread. You can buy these hampers from farmers markets and supermarkets alike but I started to think...how hard can it REALLY be to make chutney?! As it turns out, it’s not very hard at all.

When coming up for the flavour combination, I wanted something that didn’t just go well with cheese, but something that well and truly said CHRISTMAS! So my starting point was cranberries. As I searched the internet for basic cranberry chutney I was a bit concerned about how I would actually find fresh cranberries. Turns out...that’s also pretty damn easy! Who would’ve thought they can found in the fresh fruit isle of Sainsbury’s in a plastic bag by the nuts.

Well that was the first hurdle overcome. Next I had to decide what else I would but in the chutney. For a truly festive flavour it had to be cinnamon, nutmeg and a touch of ginger. This combined with the basic chutney mix (the fruit, red wine vinegar, a little onion) seemed like a good place to start, but I didn’t want to play it too safe. So, to give the chutney an extra kick, you can also find a red chilli in the ingredients list. This works really well to give the chutney a bit of excitement without drowning out the mellow Christmas spices.

Chocolate Chip Shortbread

Right, if you haven’t notice I’ve been rather busy of late! Law school is in full flow and I’m trying to keep down a job at the same time, as well as having a thriving social life. Oh yeah, I’m so cool I have a thriving social life! I think I’m actually going out even more than I did at uni; between hanging out with my boyfriend (yay no more long distance) being close to university friends, new friends and old friends, as well as all of Jon’s work friends, we have more than enough play dates to keep us occupied.

Nevertheless I HAVE still been cooking! It’s just taken me a little while to find the time to share the recipes with you.

But, as I’ve been super busy at law school, I thought it was appropriate to share one of my more student friendly recipes – Chocolate Shortbread. Super cheap it only requires 4 ingredients – 3 if you don’t fancy going all out and adding in the chocolate!

Gooseberry Crumble

Despite being a foodie for almost ALL of my life, fearlessly trying anything my Dad ever put in front of me and hanging off of his apron strings in the kitchen, there are still a few foods that have managed to elude me until recently, gooseberries being one of them!

My parents LOVE gooseberries, and a few years ago decided, that rather than visiting the local fruit farm every week to get their gooseberry fix that they should plant their own bush in the garden! Last year we had a huge gooseberry crop and my parents were soon asking me to whisk up various gooseberry filled dishes. You may remember that I posted a recipe for gooseberry fool, and even won a competition over @WeGrowOurOwn.co.uk for baking Gooseberry and Elderflower Butterfly Cakes!

We picked our first punnet off of our gooseberry bush just last week, and once again I was faced with the challenge of coming up with something delicious! This time, I decided to embrace the tartness of the gooseberry but top it with a rich, gooey, yet crunchy crumble top.

Strawberry Ice Cream

In the summer time when the weather is high

You can chase right up and touch the sky

When the weather’s right

You got *ice-cream you got *ice-cream on your mind

Have a drink, have a drive

Go out and see what you can find...

(Hopefully more ice-cream!)

You would have to live in a cave to have not noticed the beautiful weather we have been having across the UK the last 3 or 4 days. The picnic blankets have come out, there have been walks in the park, gardening, cool cocktails in the evening sunshine and plenty of BBQ’s and the whole time I’ve been walking around with my own personal summer theme song playing in my head, except unlike the Mungo Jerry original, I have not had women on my mind, but instead, ice-cream!

I love all types of ice-cream, scoops in a bowl with fresh fruit, in a tall sundae glass covered in sauce, nuts, sprinkles and whipped cream, Ben and Jerry’s out of a tub, or soft my whippy in a cone with a flake...ALL types of ice-cream! I’m also quite partial to a sorbet or frozen yogurt too...but I’m sure there will be more of that as the summer continues.

As most of you know my exams are already over due to a horrible timetable that meant I had all of my exams in the first three days of my university’s exam period. As a result, I thought I’d return home for a week so as not to distract my friends still slogging it away over their textbooks and revision notes!

I’ve been fortunate enough to not only be able to sun myself in the garden all weekend, but I’ve also had access to my parents fridge/freezer and a couple of gadgets I couldn’t take to uni with me, like my ice-cream maker!

Basic Pancake Recipes

I don’t want to alarm you but...PANCAKE DAY IS LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY! But don’t fear, this evening I’m sharing with you two fool proof recipes, one for the Traditional English pancake, and one for the American Style pancake.

At the weekend, I will then share with you 5 variations/toppings/fillings which will make sure this Pancake Day is your best Pancake Day EVER!

Now, I myself have got BIG things planned for Pancake Day (a.k.a. Shrove Tuesday).

It has always been a big deal in my house since I was little and a basic traditional English pancake recipe is one of the first things my Dad taught me to cook!

Though, he phas robably regretted this since! As soon as we were old enough, Mum and Dad would go off to church on a Sunday leaving my sister and I to mess up the kitchen in pursuit of pancakes for breakfast! There would be flour, egg and milk everywhere! (I'm a messy cook as it is, but the combination of my sister, pancakes and I meant there was ten times the mess!)

Oaty Apple Crumble

Autumn has finally arrived! The leaves are falling from the trees, wooly jumpers are being worn, and yummy warm soup is filling my tummy at lunchtimes! But, when I get home after a hard days work, and I've whipped up a dinner, there's just one more things that makes an Autumn day complete...Oaty Apple Crumble!

This isn't quite your traditional apple crumble, with the toppoing including porridge oats which makes it slightly crispier and more of a dense, gooey yummy crumble topping! Best served with a huge dollop of 0% fat 'Total' Yogurt for guilt free pleasure, or ice-cream if you're feeling naughty!

Here's my recipe:

Basic Flapjack Recipe

This is a perfect recipe for students, very cheap, very tasty, and the perfect dish to help you make friends during freshers week!

It's extremely versatile so you can add any extras - fruit if you're feeling healthy, chocolate if you're feeling naughty, and much much more!

So put the kettle on and whack some flapjacks in the oven!

Food Trend #3 - Whoopie Pies!

What is a Whoopie Pie: The best way to describe a whoopie pie is a cross between a soft biscuit, a cake, sandwiched together like a macaroon! They have a sweet filling in the middle and are often 2inches across. The perfect size to have alongside a cup of tea!

History: My favourite story about how Whoopie Pie’s came about comes from www.recipes4us.co.uk which suggests Amish women in Pennsylvania used to bake these sweet treats for their husbands and children who would shout Whoopie when they found one in their lunchbox at lunchtime.  Traditionally the cake part is flavoured with cocoa powder and made with brown sugar resulting in a dark brown finish, whilst the filling is very light and fluffy, often made with marshmallow fluff or marshmallow crème and flavoured with vanilla.

According to Matthias Kiehm the food director of Harrods, his store were responsible for bringing the whoopie pie over the the UK. Chris Seaby who is in charge of cakes at M&S originally launched the products in metropolitan areas but has now rolled them out across the country so everyone can buy whoopie pies! You can even find them in coffee shops such as Costa Coffee. No ones quite sure why it took so long for the whoopie pie to find its way to England, and no one knows just how long they are here to stay! (see: “Thebun fight”)

Essential tools: There are no specific tools needed to make whoopie pies, but a flat baking sheet and an icing bag will make your life a little easier!

Method: Using the basic recipe below you can make 10 large whoopie pies or 12-14 small whoopie pies. This ingredient list is very similar to that of a cake, but the added flour gives it a more dense texture.

Food Trends #2: Macaroons (Le Macaron)

This is my second post on a series of food trends; first I posted on cake pops, and today I am writing about macaroons.

Gooseberry Fool

The last of this seasons gooseberries have been picked form our gooseberry bushes and I needed to come up with a quick and easy recipe for them...

I'd never had Gooseberry fool, and as far as I can tell, it's quite a retro dish! BUT it is super yummy and quick and easy!!!