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So, it isn't like we needed more cookies just before New Year, but for Science, it was necessary to make a control batch of these using the more traditional ground almonds rather than the ground Hazelnut variety of Cinnamon Stars I made last week. I had also found that the chocolate variation was too chocolatey and needed to be toned down a little, so I wanted to try them out with only a dash of cacao instead of a full third of the powdered sugar being replaced by cacao. I was a numpty and sent the hazelnuts back to my house before making this batch at my parent's so both the standard and the chocolate variety were made using almonds this time around. I had a bit of an oven problem, so they came out softer than usual, but this was a hit with the family. I also increased the cinnamon content in both varieties, which was also a popular move. Ingredients: For the plain ones: 3 egg whites a pinch of salt 1 1/2 c powdered sugar 3 c ground almonds 3 tbsp cinnamon 2 tsp kirsch For the chocolate ones: 3 egg whites a pinch of salt 1 1/2 c powdered sugar 2 tbsp cacao 3 c ground almonds 3 tbsp cinnamon 2 tsp kirsch 2 tbsp sugar for rolling Optional: 1 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted 1) Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt to form stiff peaks (check out my beautiful, stiff, hand-whipped peaks!). Fold in the powdered sugar and set aside 2 tbsp for the icing. If using, fold in cacao at this point. 2) Mix in the nuts, cinnamon and kirsch to form a stiff dough. Roll out 1 cm thick on a sugared surface and cut out shapes. 3) Lay out on a cookie sheet (preferably greased or with a silicone sheet) and ice with a little dollop of the icing. If using, add a few flaked almonds on top of the icing at this point. 4) (Optional: Allow to rest for 5 hours or overnight. I skipped this step this time) Bake at 240°C for 4 minutes. The consensus, seeing as these were the control batch to the experimental hazelnut cookies from earlier in the week, was that both types of nut work. If you prefer almonds generally, then you likely prefer the classic variety of these cookies (which I will continue to call Cinnamon Stars even though all of these were circular). If you prefer hazelnuts generally, you will probably prefer the hazelnut variety. Just swap out the nuts in a 1:1 ratio. The increased cinnamon was a hit, and I think I've hit on the right proportion of cacao. These were now cinnamon cookies, with almond and a little chocolate, rather than chocolate cookies with some nuts and a little cinnamon. If you want chocolate cookies, check out the classic Basler Christmas Cookie recipe instead (which I like as well), or the orange variation that I tweaked this year. For this type though, I am delighted with these ones. The flaked almonds were an idea of my dad's as we had some left over from the Chicken Tagine the day before.

Ravioli recipe number four for the Ravioli Challenge that my sister set me. This has a different pasta to the others, but a simple filling and it sticks with the lemon sauce from the Lemon and Garlic Chicken Ravioli on day 2. The first batch of these had purple basilic from my balcony mixed din with the Fromage Blanc (homemade!), but thanks to Little Bit's gardening efforts there wasn't much of that. The rest was made (unfortunately) with dried basilic. I also experimented with a little garlic powder in some of the filling. I used date syrup in the sauce, but I suspect that honey or molasses would do just as well, the flavour would just be a little different. Ingredients: For the pasta: 3 beets, roasted until soft 3 c flour 2 eggs For the filling: 2 1/2 c fromage blanc or other cream cheese A large bunch of fresh basilic, minced (purple if possible. In a pinch dried will work too Salt to taste (Optional 1/2 tsp garlic powder) For the Sauce: Zest of 1 lemon Juice of 1 lemon 4 cloves garlic, crushed 2 tsp date syrup 2-3 tbsp olive oil Salt and pepper to taste 1) Mash roasted beets as smooth as possible. Place flour in a large mixing bowl, make a well in the centre and crack in the eggs. Beat them into the flour gradually, then add the beets and mix to form a soft, elastic dough. 2) Make the filling: mix the cream cheese with the basilic (fresh or dried), the salt and the garlic powder if using. 3) Pass fist-sized pieces of dough through progressively higher settings on a pasta maker until thin. Use a ravioli mould to make hollows in the sheet of pasta and place 1/2 tsp of filling in each. Place a second pasta sheet over the top, seal and cut. (Alternatively use a ravioli cutter). 4) Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the ravioli and boil for a few minutes before draining them. Careful: fresh pasta cooks fast! 5) Make the sauce: Over low heat, mix all ingredients together. Stir and allow to cook for a few minutes. Drizzle over the top of the ravioli. I really liked the flavour combos in this one (like I didn't in the others?). They seemed fresh and zesty and not too heavy. Four types of ravioli in a week was a bit of a challenge, especially with Little One around, but it was fun and really interesting to challenge myself to come up with the different flavour profiles while sticking within the parameters my sister set me for the challenge. And having sat and thought on ravioli quite a lot for a week, I have a few more ideas I want to try out! Watch this space! In case you want to try making these but don't have a pasta machine , pasta tree or a ravioli cutter, click on the links to get one of your own! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Due to Covid quarantining we could not be with all the family for Christmas, so I am waiting on the last 3 days of Christmas cookies until we are all together. And in the mean time, something a little different... It sounds a little strange I know, but give it a chance. The arrival at this dish was a little peripatetic. We had peeled a pomelo for breakfast, excited for Little Bit to try another new food, especially a citrus, and we are both very fond of pomelos. We discovered with disappointment though that it was not very juicy, and was too dry with a bitter aftertaste. Fine then. I'll make it into a smoothie. SO I peeled it and prepped it, then spotted a beet in the fridge and decided that the acidity, mild bitterness and sweetness of the pomelo would play nicely with the earthy sweetness of the beetroot. I therefore peeled the latter and chucked it into the blender with the pomelo. I added some orange peel and some spices for good measure, then had to go do something else and left it there on the counter. The plan for dinner at this stage was spiralised sweet potato in a creamy mushroom sauce. When I came to make dinner though, having spiralised the sweet potato I spotted the almost purple smoothie sitting on the counter, and decided that tonight was a test night. Let's see what happens if we use the almost smoothie as a sauce for the sweet potato spirals, with the mushrooms chucked in. So that is what we did, and with a little tweaking it worked. The bitterness from the unjuicy pomelo still came through, but less so when sopped up with bread, so we decided to have the leftover sauce with cheesy gnocchi a couple of days later and it sang. Ingredients: 1 pomelo 1 beetroot 1 - 1 1/2 tsp dried orange peel 2 tbsp lemon juice 1/4 tsp cloves 1 tsp cinnamon 2 tbsp honey 2 tsp Aloha Spiced Cacao Salt and pepper to taste 1) Blitz the ingredients together ( if you prefer a mellower flavour for your beetroot, steam or roast it first. I used raw beet and it worked well though.) 2) Heat slowly in a saucepan, stirring gradually, 3) Add to spirals of veg or to cheesy gnocchi or pasta. The first night the bitterness from the pomelo was a bit much. The dish had promise but needed some tweaking. We found that the starch helped counter the bitterness though and so cooking it with gnocchi, heavier in starch than the sweet potatoes with a less delicate flavour of their own, With a pomelo that was perfectly ripe though, instead of one we needed to use in something rather than just eating, I don't know if we would have encountered the same problem. This is definitely going to stick around though, it was so tasty! EDIT: After making mozzarella of my own for the first time, I used the sauce in puff pastry pockets with the mozzarella and dates. They were beautiful (and tasty!) The sauce also works well as a pink base for pizza.

So this is a bit of a spin on last year's Potato and Cabbage Pie, using sweeter root vegetables and some greens. It is still quite dense but packed with flavour and super satisfying. Sweet potatoes and squash were on sale so they were the base for this pie. I like the cabbage leaves as the pie casing, steamed and then roasted with the pie. We put bacon over the top of this one, but really it would have been just as good without it. Ingredients: 6-8 cabbage leaves 4-5 sweet potatoes, chopped 2 apples, chopped 3 carrots, chopped 1/2 butternut squash, chopped 3 eggs 1/2 - 1 c cheese, grated 1 tsp thyme 1 tsp oregano 1/2 head broccoli, chopped 2 tbsp butter 1 tbsp chutney (I used last year's Green Tomato Chutney) 6-8 strips of bacon Salt and pepper to taste 1) Steam the cabbage leaves until pliant. Boil the sweet potatoes and apples until tender, about 10-15 minutes. Roast the butternut and carrots with the butter at 180°C until tender, about 20 minutes to a half-hour. 2) Roughly mash the veg together, and mix in the eggs, cheese, and herbs, salt and pepper. Add broccoli and mix well. 3) Butter an ovenproof dish and line it with the cabbage leaves, reserving one for the "lid". Fill with the vegetable mix, spread chutney over the top and close it with the cabbage leaf lid. Lay the bacon strips over the top and bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes. This came out very tasty. Next time I would put the bacon on before the cabbage leaf lid though so that it can cook and melt into the veg rather than just larding the top. I might add a bit of a zingier flavour to it too, but not necessarily. It was very sweet and could have done with a dash of acid of some kind but was very tasty and filling as is. Certainly an idea worth working on though!

The bacon could be skipped for a vegetarian version of this.

I started making my own apple pectin last year, and have used it a couple of times for jellies (like my Lemon and Ginger Chilli Jelly). Apple pectin is entirely naturally occurring in apples, and in the presence of sugar, it helps gel things. I wondered if it would be possible to use pectin instead of gelatine in other things, like Panna Cotta. I do like panna cotta and like playing around with flavours for it occasionally (like my lemon-topped one, or my savoury lemongrass and coconut one!). I was a little worried that the pectin would both flavour and colour the panna cotta as it is a pink colour. As for the flavour, I decided to run with it and pair it with applesauce. The idea has been bouncing around for a little while and I finally decided to try it. Recipe Cook time: 20-30 minutes + chill time 4 hours to overnight -- Portions: 4 -- Difficulty: Easy Ingredients: 2c cream 2 c apple pectin 3 tbsp brown sugar 1 c apple sauce 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp allspice 1) Pour cream and pectin into a saucepan and heat slowly. Stir in sugar. Bring to a slow simmer and cook for about 15 minutes. 2) Mix the cinnamon and allspice into the applesauce and spoon it into the bottom of 4 or 5 glasses. Gently pour the cream mixture over the top of the apple sauce and chill overnight in the fridge. This worked. Ish. Better than I had feared but not as well as I had hoped. I initially started with 1 c pectin, but while the cream did thicken, it didn't gel. I poured it all (apple sauce included as I couldn't seem to get just the cream) back into a saucepan, and added the third tablespoon of sugar and another cup of pectin. I cooked it again and chilled it again. This time it worked! The cream was the right consistency for panna cotta, and absolutely delicious, with little bits of apple and lots of spice caught in it. The only problem was that the cream was a solid layer on top of a layer of juice. I don't know if it was from the apple sauce or from the pectin, or a little of each, but as soon as we started eating the panna cotta, the juice seeped up and mixed with the cream, and it was all a liquidy mess. Next time, I think I need to reduce both the apple sauce and the pectin a bit further to prevent that. It was still tasty though! So very tasty! Science experiment successful though. Pectin works to gel things other than jellies, as a replacement for gelatine. With some caveats! The other issue with using homemade pectin, scientifically speaking, is that it is not going to be a uniform strength. What took 2 cups of pectin this time might take 1 1/2 or 3 next time, there is no real way to know... I guess I will just have to play that one by ear. Luckily, that is how most of my cooking happens, so I'm ok with that. Also, it didn't turn pink, but was a little coloured by the spices. I will have to try this one again, with reduced ingredients, to see how it goes then. Served in little glasses, I think this could work quite nicely as a party food!

We went up to my parents' for the weekend last week, and neither Hubby nor I managed to remember to bring the bread from the bread box. As a result, when we came back five days later, we had multiple stale loaf ends. What to do with so much stale bread? With leftover tomato sauce from a pizza-making stint, I decided to make a savoury bread pudding of sorts, layering tomato sauce with the bread. Little Bit was calling this "bread pizza", which I am not sure about, either as a name or as an accurate descriptor, but it came out tasty either way. The tomato sauce can be plain, with or without meat. Ours had mushrooms in too, and some cream as it was a little too spicy for Little One. Ingredients: 6-9 slices of stale bread (depending on their size and the size of your dish) 1/2 c white cooking wine 4 ish cups tomato sauce 1 c cheese, grated (I used aged Gruyère) 1 sweet potato, sliced 1 onion, sliced 1 tbsp butter 1) Butter a shallow baking dish. Place the bread slices inside in as near as you can get to a single layer. Douse in white wine and toast int he oven at 180°C for about 20 minutes, until the bread is winey inside and beginning to toast outside. 2) Remove from the oven and place the bread on a plate. Spoon one third of the tomato sauce into the baking dish. Spread it out evenly and place half the bread slices over it in a single layer. Spoon over another third of the sauce, sprinkle on the onions and the sweet potato slices, and sprinkle over half the cheese. Add another layer of bread, the rest of the sauce and then the last of the cheese. 3) Bake at 175°C for about 45 minutes to an hour. Serve hot. This came out very tasty, but due to a slight miscommunication between Hubby and I, the temperature was turned down a bit early so the sweet potato and the onions came out a little under done. Maintaining the right temperature for a bit longer should do it though. The sweet potato and onion could be left out. It was definitely better on the first night than reheated, but it still worked reheated a day or two later. And there you have it. Pizza Bread.

In the new cookbook I got for Christmas, Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, there is a double page of 10 vegetable soup recommendations with topping suggestions, but no recipes (or I'm simply blind and missed them). One of the suggestions was Aubergine Soup with Harissa. As Aubergines were on sale and we seemed to have an endless supply of them, and because it sounded good, I decided to try it. Somewhere along the way I wasn't sure I would be able to get what I needed for the Harissa though and noticed that I had a jar of frozen nettles, so I thought of trying to make a spicy nettle sauce to top the soup. I did end up finding what I needed for the Harissa in the end, but still added the nettles. And then I remembered that I had Queso Blanco left over from my cheese making efforts. I decided I would top the soup with some of this too, and at the last minute added some of this to the harissa too - although at this point I don't think it can any longer be called harissa, but I don't know what else to call it. The soup came out beautifully with a deep, rich flavour, offset but a dash of lemon and the not-too-spicy Nettle Harissa. I found that the queso blanco certainly added something to the soup, but it would have worked well without for anyone wanting to make it vegan or keto friendly. Ingredients: For the soup: 4 aubergines 1 tbsp olive oil 1 onion, chopped 1/2 head garlic, minced 2 - 3 c vegetable stock 1 tsp sumac Juice of 1 lemon Salt and pepper to taste Queso Blanco (or other fresh cheese) to serve For the Harissa: 3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 3 dried chilis, chopped 3 - 4 sundried tomatoes 2 tsp cumin seeds 2 tsp coriander seeds 3 - 4 tbsp olive oil 3 - 4 tbsp nettles (mine were briefly steamed then frozen) 1 tbsp queso blanco juice of 1 lemon 1) Roast the aubergines in the oven under the broil setting at 200°C, turning regularly, until they are soft on the inside and browning on the outside (you could even let them get some char marks) - about 45 minutes to an hour. Cool and then chop. 2) Heat oil in a heavy bottomed soup pot. Sauté onions and garlic until soft and translucent. 3) Add the aubergine and the remaining soup ingredients except the cheese and cook for about 10 minutes. Blitz until smooth and set aside. 4) In a small frying pan, dry roast the cumin and coriander seeds until the first few begin to pop. Stir the pan around a few times to ensure even roasting. Remove from the heat. 5) In a blender, combine all the ingredients except the nettles and the queso blanco. Taste test, then add the nettles and blend again. Taste test, then add the cheese. 6) To serve, ladle soup into bowls. place dollops of the queso blanco around the perimeter of the soup then place briefly in a warm oven (100°C roughly) for a few minutes to encourage the cheese to melt a little. Remove and place a dollop of the harissa in the centre of the bowl. I loved this and will certainly be coming back to it! Hubby and Little Bit liked it too. Little Bit is getting better at using a spoon, but after a few spoonfuls he gave up and started stuffing soup into his mouth by the fistful. Not a bad endorsement! On a different note, I noticed recently that all of my cooking happens either while wrangling Little Bit, or while listening to and Audiobook. When linking the Broccoli and Cheese Scone recipe to the post about making mascarpone to pair with sweet scones, I suddenly had a vivid image in my head of a sedan chair being carried through rice paddies. It took me a second to place it, but then I realised that it was from WS Maugham's The Painted Veil which I had been listening to when I made the scones. After realising this, I scrolled back through older posts and for a fair number of the recipes I could effortlessly conjure up which part of which book I was listening to while making that recipe. This being the case, I have decided to start including a note on what I was listening to at the time on some posts. While making this soup, I was listening to an early part of The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer. It is a gritty muder/spy mystery taking place in the late '40s in Eastern Europe. While playing around with my nettles and aubergines, our young beleaguered inspector is following clues in a prominent murder case which he realises he has been given to fail... It's been a while since my last crime book and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

This could easily be made with vegetable stock, making this vegetarian, and for a fancier look, it could

Some curries are vegetarian while others are unashamedly carnivorous.