Slippery Nipple cupcakes

I got a little carried away on a recent trip to Lakeland and bought some flavour extracts (namely chocolate, lavender and anise). When I had explained to my husband what anise tastes like, he suggested that we try to bake something which tastes like a ambuca-based drink. Lo and behold, the Slippery Nipple cupcake was born. These cupcakes are based on the BBC's vanilla cupcakes recipe, but with an aniseedy twist.

Ingredients (makes 8 large or 12 small):
80ml grenadine
40ml water
1 sheet gelatine

85g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
170g icing sugar
2 tbsp Baileys

Grenadine jelly
1. Soak the gelatine sheet in water for around 5 minutes. Mix together the grenadine and water and gently heat in a pan. Squeeze the gelatine gently to remove any excess water, then add to the grenadine and water mixture and gently heat until the gelatine has dissolved then simmer for 2 minutes, stirring every so often. Pour into a container and leave to cool slightly before transferring into the fridge until set and jelly-like.

Cupcakes
2. Follow the BBC recipe (linked above) or any recipe of your choice, replacing any vanilla extract called for with anise extract.

Baileys buttercream
3. Beat the butter until fluffy then whisk in half the icing sugar until combined. Beat in the Baileys and the rest of the icing sugar.

Construction
4. First, fill the inside of each cake with some of the grenadine jelly; this is the "nipple". To do this, first cut a circle around the top of the cake, angled at about 45 degrees into a "cone" shape, keeping the "cap" you cut off to one side. Make the hole within the cake a little broader by cutting around it a little more, the cut or spoon some of the jelly into the hole. Replace the "cap" so that the cake looks as it did before -- the perfect crime!

Final touches
5. Pipe the buttercream onto the cupcake in a swirling motion. Voila!

Nut-free lemon macarons

I'm always very impressed by and slightly envious of the macarons shown on cookery shows. They are crunchy and gooey and come in a plethora of flavour combinations. However, I am the cruel victim of a nut allergy and have never eaten a macaron since the main ingredient in them is almonds. But this situation has now been rectified! Part of my Christmas present from my husband was a macaron making class at JoJo's Danish Bakery, meaning that I was taught the correct technique for making them as well as suggestions of substitutes for the almonds. The recipe below is my nut-free adaptation of the recipe we were given in the class. It's also best to use an electric whisk, as this will cut down the amount of time you have to spend whisking.

Macarons:

75g desicated coconut

115g icing sugar

2 egg whites (medium/large)

50g granulated sugar

1/2 tsp lemon oil

Little gel food colouring of your choice

Butter cream

Ingredients

40g unsalted butter

80g icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Cut up baking paper to fit perfectly inside 2 large flat baking trays - set aside for later. If you want to use a template trace around something with the diameter of about an inch (we used a whisky glass), spacing them about half an inch apart.

2. Weigh out your coconut and icing sugar. Blend the coconut to a fine consistency (a coffee grinder is good for this). Add to the icing sugar and then either blitz together in a food processor for 15 seconds or sieve together into a clean dry bowl. Any coconut left in the sieve needs to be put back into the mixture to keep weight correct.

3. Weigh out granulated sugar.

4. Put your egg whites into a clean, dry, grease free bowl and whisk on lowest speed for around thirty seconds. Increase the speed to medium and whisk until soft peaks form. Continue whisking on medium adding 2 tablespoons of sugar at a time in 10 second intervals until all the sugar is incorporated. Turn the speed up to high and whisk until glossy. Stiff peaks should form and stay when the whisk is lifted out the mixture.

5. Add the colouring to the whisk and flavouring to the mixture, whisking until just coloured. It is very important not to over-whisk at this point as that will ruin the mixture.

6. Gently fold a third of the coconut and icing sugar mixture into the meringue until just combined. Continue to do this with the remaining mixture. When it is fully combined check the consistency by using the spatula to pick some macaron mixture up and see how it falls back into the bowl. It should flow off the spatula to leave a ribbon trail that settles and almost disappears after 30 seconds.

7. Fit your piping bag with a 1/2 inch plain nozzle. Half fill the piping bag and firstly pipe a small amount onto the corners of the baking tray to stick the baking paper to. If using a template pipe put macarons onto baking paper then transfer and stick to baking trays or if doing free hand pipe your macaron shells onto baking paper already stuck to baking tray.

8. Bang your baking tray on your counter top to remove air bubbles and settle the macarons.

9. Leave the macarons out to dry on the counter top until they do not stick to your finger when gently touched. This can take anywhere between 30 minutes and 2 hours.

10. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius when the macarons have begun to dry slightly. When the macarons have dried, bake them for 5 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 135 degrees, bake for a further 5-7 minutes.

11. Remove from oven and leave to cool on the baking trays then transfer the baking paper to a cool surface or wire cooling rack to cool completely.

12. Once cool gently and carefully peel back the baking paper from the macarons and match up like sized macarons in pairs. If you do have a problem removing them from the baking paper, place the cooling tray over a pan of simmering water and the macarons should peel away easily.

13. At this point, make your butter cream. Beat butter until soft, shiny and very pale (almost white), then add the icing sugar, beating until incorporated, and the vanilla extract. Continue to mix until consistently smooth.

14. Sandwich the macaron shells together by piping a round of butter cream onto one half and gently twist the two halves together.

Maple banana muffins

I like bananas, but have a tendency to forget they're there and leave them to get very ripe. Banana bread is a great way to use up over-ripe bananas but this time I decided to branch out a little and make banana muffins, using a recipe on the BBC website but giving it my own twist. I scaled the ingredients up to make 15 muffins, instead of the 10 in the original,  as well as substituting maple syrup for the sugar to make them less sweet as well as having a subtle maple flavour. Because maple syrup is very liquid I also had to alter the amount of milk in the recipe.

Ingredients:

112.5g unsalted butter

375g self-raising flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

¾ tsp bicarbonate of soda

pinch of salt

¾ tsp ground cinnamon

¾ tsp ground nutmeg

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

3 large, ripe bananas

2 large or 3 medium eggs

80ml milk

80ml maple syrup

paper cases

2 12-hole muffin trays

Heat the oven to 190C/180C fan/Gas 5. Melt the butter and allow to cool. Mash the bananas well. Sift the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl and mix together.

In another bowl beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, melted butter, maple syrup and milk, then add the mashed banana and stir through.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, stirring roughly with a fork until it is a lumpy paste. Don't over stir, as you want to retain some air in the batter to make the muffins lighter.

Set paper cases into the muffin trays and spoon in the mixture until almost full, then bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the trays and leave to cool on a wire rack. These can be served warm or cold, ideally with a glass of milk.

Prawn cocktail vol au vents

This year my husband and I were charged with the task of making the starter for the family Christmas dinner.  He suggested making a creative twist on his family's traditional starter (prawn cocktail) and suggested trying them as vol au vents. So with a little help from the instructions on the back of the pastry packet, we set to work.

Ingredients (makes 40):
500g packet pre-made puff pastry
1 egg, beaten
450g prawns, cooked and peeled
1 avacado
mayonnaise to taste
ketchup to taste
splash of lemon juice
splash of Worcester sauce
splash of hot sauce (optional; we used a Cajun jalapeño sauce from Louisiana)
ground paprika

Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. We have a fan oven, so the temperature for a normal oven would be 190 degrees. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface until it formed a rectangle about 30cm by 20cm and 5mm thick, then cut these into small circles.

Cutting pastry with a whisky glass

Once the pastry had been cut score a circle half way down, leaving a small border. This makes it easier to remove the centre once baked, meaning that the pastry case can then be filled. Place the pastry circles on a baking tray lined with baking paper and brush each circle with some beaten egg to give it a better colour once cooked.

Brushing with beaten egg

Bake the pastry until it has risen and is golden brown on top (about 12 minutes) at which point remove them from the oven, carefully peel away the baking paper and place them on a wire rack to cool. When they are cool enough to touch, run a knife around the pre-scored circle and that section should pop out easily. Then leave the pastry cases to cool completely.

Pastry before the removal of the centre...

...and after

While the pastry is cooling, make the prawn cocktail. Place the prawns in a medium sized bowl. We used king prawns which were slightly too large for the cases, so I cut them in half. To these add the ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcester sauce, lemon juice and hot sauce to suit your taste. The mixture should be quite wet, but not swimming in sauce. This can be left in the fridge for a few days, depending on when you need to use it.

To serve, peel the avacado and remove the stone, then slice into thin strips about the height of the pastry case. Place 3 or 4 of these strips into each case, spoon in a little of the prawn cocktail sauce, arrange 2 prawns inside the case and sprinkle with a little paprika. These vol au vents can be served either on a large platter or on individual plates as below, where some of the remaining prawn cocktail mixture has been placed on some thinly sliced avacado to bring the plate together.

Dalry Mess

This dessert came out of a mistake. I was attempting to make macarons, adapting a recipe from the BBC, but the mixture wasn't thick enough so it wouldn't pipe properly. However, I decided to cook it anyway and in the process created a new dessert, which I dubbed Dalry Mess.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the meringues:

125g macadamias

200g icing sugar

3 free-range egg whites

2 tbsp caster sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

For the chocolate ganache:

100g dark chocolate, chopped

100ml double cream

1 tbsp Camp Coffee

1 tbsp Tia Maria

10g unsalted butter

After weighing out the macadamias I blasted them in the blender until they were finely ground. I then added the icing sugar and blended them until they were well combined, then passed them through a sieve to remove any lumps and setting the mixture aside once that was done.

Sieving the macadamia and icing sugar mixture

I whisked the egg whites in a large bowl at a low speed until stiff peaks formed when the whisk was removed prom the bowl. I slowly added in the cream of tartar and caster sugar to the egg whites until the mixture was smooth and then folded in the icing sugar mixture.

I dropped dessert spoonfuls of the mixture a few centimetres apart on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper, banging the tray sharply on the counter top to remove any air bubbles. Then I left the tray to rest uncovered for an hour, during which time I pre-heated the oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

After the hour was up, I baked the meringues for 10 minutes, then removed them from the oven and left them to cool for 5 minutes, after which I peeled off the greaseproof paper and left them to cool completely. Once cool, I crumbled them into pieces and set them aside.

While the meringues were cooling I made the chocolate ganache. For this I heated the double cream and chocolate in a saucepan over a low heat, stirring occasionally, until they were smooth and well combined. Then I added the Camp Coffee, Tia Maria and butter to the mixture, stirring until it was smooth, then removed from the heat and left it to cool.

To serve, I placed some of the crumbled meringue in ramekins and topped it with the chocolate ganache.

Dalry Mess

Coq au vin

My husband and I spent our honeymoon this summer in Vancouver. One of the things which most struck me about the city was the quality of the food. There is a very strong emphasis on local produce and the quality of the ingredients. One of the things we brought back with us (along with copious amounts of maple syrup and some ice wine) was The British Columbia Seasonal Cookbook (published by Lone Pine Publishing). This recipe comes from the Fall section and calls for specific local ingredients, such as Okanagan Pinot Noir, for which I substituted more generic ones. It also wanted a whole chicken cut into pieces whereas I used thighs, as I think they are an under-rated part of the chicken. So here is my version of the recipe with the North American measures (cups etc.) converted into grams.

Ingredients (serves 2):

35g unsalted butter

60g bacon lardons

4 chicken thighs, boned but with the skin left on

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, diced

1 celery stick, diced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1tbsp flour

250ml red wine

2 sprigs fresh thyme

500ml chicken stock

2 bay leaves

100g button mushrooms, peeled

freshly ground salt and pepper

I first melted half the butter in a casserole dish then added the bacon cooking it over a medium heat until it was browned. I then removed it from the pan and drained off the excess fat on a couple of sheets of kitchen roll before putting it to one side.

Draining the fat off the bacon

I then seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper and cooked them in the butter/bacon fat mixture until golden brown, turning them every so often. I then removed these from the pan and set them aside with the bacon.

Browning the chicken

Further detail on the browning

I then added the onion, carrots and celery to the pan and cooked them on a medium heat, stirring every so often to prevent sticking, until softened. I then added the garlic to the pan and stirred in the flour, cooking this mixture for about 5 minutes.

Part way through dicing the vegetables

The vegetables softening

Once soft, I then put the chicken and bacon back in the pan, adding the thyme, bay leaves, stock and wine until the chicken was covered. I then brought this mixture to the boil, reducing it to a simmer and partially covering it with a lid and set the timer for 45 minutes.

After the dish had been simmering for about 35 minutes I melted the remaining butter in a pan, added the mushrooms and cooked them over a low heat until they had coloured and started to release their juices then seasoned them with a little salt and pepper.

After the 45 minutes were up I checked that the chicken was cooked all the way through, then turned the heat off under the mushrooms and added them to the chicken. As the sauce was still quite liquid at this point I turned the heat up and reduced it until it had thickened up and had a slight sheen to it.

Coq au vin served on a bed of buttered tagliatelle

Sauerkraut

As part of my gap year between school and university I lived in Germany for 3 months. During this time I got a taste for German food which has influenced much of the cooking I now do (although I'm not sure my husband approves). As part of this culinary flowering I first tried sauerkraut, which I hated. I found it far too vinegary for my taste. Recently, however, I decided to try making it myself as I had heard that sauerkraut is good for you since the cabbage releases probiotic bacteria during the fermentation process which aid digestion. With this in mind, I set out using a recipe I found online.

Ingredients:
1 white cabbage
1 tbsp sea salt

Equipment:
food processor (not strictly necessary as the chopping can be done with a knife)
kilner jar (or any other heavy duty glass jar)
a wooden spoon


I started off by attaching one of the shredder attachments to the food processor. After removing the nasty looking outer leaves and reserving one of the nicer ones for later use, I then cut the cabbage in half, removing the tough stalk, and then cut those halves roughly into quarts so that they would fit into the food processor. I then fed these chunks of cabbage into the processor until the entire cabbage was finely shredded.

The cabbage

Once this was done, I put the shredded cabbage into a large bowl and added the sea salt. I chose Cornish sea salt for this recipe, not through any great sense that this type of salt is superior (although it is supposed to contain mineral residues which presumably add to the flavour) but because I didn't want to detract from the natural taste of the cabbage by using a poor quality salt.

The sea salt

The next step was the massage the salt into the cabbage. This draws out the water and begins the fermentation process. This is done by grabbing handfuls of cabbage and squashing it. Once it starts to go limp and release liquid you then start to squeeze the water out, much like wringing water out of wet clothes. This is a very odd sensation, made worse by the fact that I almost always have paper cuts from work. When the volume of cabbage has decreased and it has the same texture as when steamed, the process is complete. The liquid which has been released will pool at the bottom of the bowl. This should be reserved as it will be used later.

Cabbage  pre-massage

Cabbage post-massage

The next step was spoon the cabbage in the jar. After every few spoonfuls I squashed the cabbage down to remove any air pockets. I continued to pack the cabbage in this way until I had nearly reached the top of the jar. I then topped the jar up with the remaining liquid until all the cabbage was covered and folded the leaf which I had put to one side earlier in four to make a lid. Once this had been placed on top I screwed the lid on and left the jar out at room temperature for three days. During the fermentation process the cabbage gave off a lot of gas, meaning that once a day I had to unscrew the lid to relieve the pressure so that the jar didn't run the risk of exploding.

Day 0

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

After three days I did a taste test. As this was my first attempt at making sauerkraut I decided not to let the fermentation continue any longer, putting the jar in the fridge to halt the process. There it sits, waiting to be brought out the next time I make a German-inspired meal.