Steamed pudding is like a sweet, jammy hug in a bowl. I love it. It’s a special favourite in our little country. I was recently introduced to a New Zealand specialty steamed pudding which is the queen of both steamed puddings and now of my heart…burnt …
You can tell the state of the economy by the price of a lime, or so the saying goes. What it’s meant to tell you, I’m not sure, but I can reliably inform you that limes in these here parts cost a small fortune at the …
This idea came to me by accident, really. I’m always a fan of shortbread, so any excuse for that. But the orange part happened when a lonely orange, languishing in the fruit bowl, happened to cross my field of vision whilst I was enjoying a Sunday morning browse through Nigella’s How to be a Domestic Goddess.
I happened to spot Nigella’s cute little Lemon Gems and immediately wanted to create similar little dollops topped with something rich and citrus-y. Lacking the vegetable shortening required by the recipe, however, and not feeling much inclined to go out hunting for some, another hearty biscuit was needed.
Shortbread is the heartiest of the hearty in my opinion. My friend the internet tells me that shortbread is so named due to its texture, as an old meaning of the word ‘short’ was ‘crumbly.’
My go-to shortbread is recipe is the trusty Edmonds’ and so I very naughtily used it here…and I say naughty, as I’m using not using Edmonds as part of my Edmonds Challenge, which reminds me that I am due some more excitement with that particular endeavour. And so, I mixed things up by deviating from the recipe slightly with the addition of ginger.
Edmonds asks the following, and I have added my ginger tinkerings…
Cream 250g butter and 1 cup of icing sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. Sift 1 cup of cornflour and 2 cups of flour together. If you’re me, at this point also add 1.5 teaspoons of ground ginger and 1 tablespoon of grated fresh ginger to the flour and cornflour. Mix the dry and creamed ingredients together, knead and roll out to 0.5cm thickness on a floured board.
At this point, I transferred the shortbread to an oven tray and it into rectangles. I used a (clean!) fingertip to make little craters in the biscuit and popped them into a 150 degree celsius oven.
And now for the curd. Seeing as I was having a Nigella day anyway, I used her recipe for lime curd, replacing the lime juice and zest with the juice and zest of my orange, along with a quick squeeze of lemon juice.
When my indented shortbread had become pale golden (which took about half an hour) I removed it from the oven and filled the little craters with the orange curd.
It was a creamy, custardy curd which was rather pleasant with the shortbread. And the whole lot went at work the next day, so they can’t be all bad.
Lucky me, to receive this lovely baking book for my birthday from my similarly kitchen-obsessed little sister. Alice Arndell’s Alice in Bakingland is a treat for the eyes as much as anything, full of pictures of dainty plates, matching teacup-and-saucer sets, all showing off delightful …
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am fortunate to have parentals who kindly bring me ingredients from their travels, with which I can then experiment. And so today, I’m going to tell you all about my fun with a bottle of …
Who doesn’t love a bit of maple syrup? The indigenous people of the Americas were the first to harvest maple sap. One legend credits the humble squirrel with its discovery, telling of a young boy who watched a red squirrel nip at the bark of a maple tree and lap up the sap. How cute is that?! I love squirrels and I’m well willing to believe it.
My husband came home from work recently, deeply enamoured of some maple syrup cookies, an office treat from a workmate’s holiday in Canada. Not one to be outdone by holiday biscuits, I decided to rise to the challenge of making some maple cookies of my own.
I based my biscuits on this lovely recipe, with the addition of some spices as I fancied a little kick.
To make these spiced maple biscuits, you will need:
Begin by melting the butter and once melted, mix in the sugar and leave it to cool. Melt the butter in a reasonably-sized pot, as the beauty of this recipe is you can make the whole lot in this one pot. And what’s not to love about less washing-up?
Once the butter and sugar are cool, add the egg and mix in. Follow with the maple syrup and the vanilla.
Sift in the flour, salt, baking powder and spices and mix to combine.
This will leave you with quite a gloopy mixture (as demonstrated below). Do not panic! It now goes into your fridge for at least an hour to chill.
Set your oven to 180 degrees during this time.
Once chilled, scoop teaspoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking tray. The mixture is quite pliable and you can easily shape the biscuits with your fingers. Sprinkle with some caster sugar and a little cinnamon if you fancy.
Bake them until golden, about 10-12 minutes in my oven, and transfer to a rack to cool. The mixture makes about 36, if you use teaspoon-sized dollops of the raw dough.
Because I was feeling creative, I topped mine with a little heart-shaped dusting of icing sugar….pretty easy to do, although I warn you, the icing sugar gets everywhere. If you wish to try this at home (although I understand if you cannot be bothered), I simply cut the shape out of a piece of stiff cardboard slightly larger than biscuit size, placed the cardboard over the biscuit, and sifted on the icing sugar. Remove the cardboard and there you have it, a cute little heart plonked on your biscuit.
These go down nicely with a cup of tea!
Who knew that the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia was a hot bed of macadamia nut growing? I for one did not, and yet, I find myself in possession of a packet of macadamia nuts from Nutworks, thanks to my parentals and their recent visit …
Albert Squares are the next instalment in my Edmonds challenge series, following Afghan Biscuits in the index section of the Edmonds Cookbook. Although not strictly – there is an entry for Afghan Slice hot on the heels of Afghan Biscuits. However, the recipe for Afghan …
As I’m sure you’ve all noticed, the cupcake craze is well and truly in full swing. Although I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon hook line and sinker, every now and then I get the urge to bake and decorate some little morsels of cupcake prettiness. When this urge takes me, I never go past Nigella Lawson’s cupcake recipe from her fabulous book How to be a Domestic Goddess.
The thing I love about this recipe is that it’s so simple – you pretty much throw the whole thing in your food processor, whizz it up, put it in the tins and off you go. It’s funny how something so dinky starts off looking gloopy like this.
But what do you know, a few short minutes later and you have little mounds of golden-brown cakey goodness. Does anyone else find their cupcakes form little peaks like these ones?
Not that I’m complaining, because then you can cut those bits off and dip them into the icing without having to wait until all of the cakes are ready (which is one of the best things about baking cupcakes).
Now, the fiddly piping bit is not really a strength of mine, but I like to think I’m getting there. I set to with my piping set and my icing, or as the Americans like to call it’ ‘Buttercream frosting.’ I did some googling for suggested recipes for the icing and put together my own version, consisting of:
1 cup of icing sugar
1 cup of softened butter
A squeeze of lemon juice – personally, I find this helps cut through the sweetness a little.
And, Bob’s your uncle…there you have it, a plate of iced pink-and-white goodness to make one feel proud and enjoy with a cup of tea. Or, as my darling sister once proclaimed, ‘those cakes look like a fairy threw up on them.’ Charming.
Enjoy!