Search Results

I've always really liked peanut butter cookies. When working in Greece, I entered into a bit of a relationship with tahini. Hence the idea to try a cookie variant using tahini and sesame seeds, but aiming at a similar consistency as peanut butter cookies. Little Bit came through after his nap with his kiddy baking book asking to bake, and then after deciding on peanut butter cookies with me, he promptly lost interest (toddler attention spans, anyone?), leaving me free to experiment. Here is the result. Ingredients: 3/4 c tahini 1/2 c butter 1/2 c dark brown sugar 3/4 c light brown sugar 3 tbsp milk 1 tbsp vanilla extract 2 tsp almond extract 1 egg 1 3/4 c flour 3/4 tsp baking powder a pinch of salt 1/2 c sesame seeds (I used toasted sesame seeds, but you could use regular ones too.) 1) Beat together the tahini, butter and sugars until fluffy. Work in wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients gradually. Stir in sesame seeds. 2) Drop by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 190°C for 8 minutes until golden brown. I was really pleased with how these came out and the overall flavour. What I might try next time though is to replace at least some of the brown sugar with honey as tahini and honey is a flavour I really like. Alternatively, adding in some chocolate, either mixing in cacao powder or chocolate chips, might work nicely as a combo. In any case, having the sesame seeds in the cookies worked very nicely, adding a little crunch.

Inherited, I think, from my grandmother, one of my favourite flavour combinations is maple walnut. As I have been playing around with making bagels, I decided I wanted to try to apply that flavour combo to bagels, although I have never seen that before. I didn't however, want to make a sweet bagel, so rather than using maple syrup or maple sugar to impart the maple flavour, I decided to use ground fenugreek, often used as a maple substitute. Ingredients: 2 c whole meal flour 2 1/4 c white flour 1 1/2 tsp fenugreek powder 2 tsp maple syrup 1 1/4 c water 1/2 cube yeast 1/2 tbsp salt 1/2 c walnuts Cornmeal Maple Syrup 1) In a small saucepan, heat the water to about body temperature - it should be warm, but still cool enough that a (clean) pinky finger dipped in it is comfortable for 10 seconds. Dissolve the yeast in the water with the maple syrup and leave for a few minutes. 2) Combine flours, fenugreek and salt in a mixing bowl and make a well in the centre. Add yeast and water and stir together, gradually incorporating flour from around the well. When the dough has come together, knead on a clean, floured surface for about 10 minutes until the dough is homogenous and elastic. Towards the end, knead in the walnuts as you go. 3) Place in a clean bowl and leave to rise, covered, in a warm spot for an hour, or until doubled in size. 4) Knock back the dough and divide into 8 roughly even balls. Here you have two options. Either: roll into snakes, then join the ends of these to make rings or: Roll into balls, then poke a thumb through the balls. With your thumb in the hole, gradually widen it, working the dough around so as to have an even, uniform thickness to the dough with a round hole in the middle or: create a ball and push it down over a bagel mould. 5) Place rings on a baking tray sprinkled liberally with cornmeal, cover and place in the fridge for 8 hours or overnight to proof. 6) Remove the rings from the fridge. Fill a heavy-bottomed pot with water. Stir in maple syrup. There should be enough maple syrup for the water to look like moderately strong tea. Place a test ring in the water. If it floats, you are ready to go. If not, dry it off and allow the bagels to come to room temperature. 7) When the water comes to a boil, reduce the heat to bring the water to a simmer. A few at a time, poach the bagels for about half a minute on each side, then fish them out and drain on a wire rack. 8) Sprinkle the baking tray with fresh cornmeal, then place the drained bagels back on the tray and bake at 240°C for 15 - 20 minutes until golden. These came out very nicely, and I was very pleased with the way the flavours came out. This is definitely one to make again, especially with homemade cream cheese and honey, or even just butter, to melt into hot bagels... I was channelling my grandmother and must thank my sister for getting me into making bagels with a gift of moulds for Christmas last year. (I forgot to take a picture of the baked bagels, so here are some everything bagels instead).

experimenting with using sahlep, I started playing around with different flavour combinations and potential recipes I tried a first iteration of this recipe with my sister when she was visiting after Littler Bit's birth The recipe seemed good, but our macarons fell down on execution. I have seen quite different cooking times in other recipes, from 7 to 25 minutes, so I'm not sure if The base recipe for this, before much alteration, came from Michel Roux's Eggs.

After delving into making my own versions of mayo and ketchup, I figured it was time to start making my own mustard too. After reading a few different methods and about mustard making generally, I decided to give it a shot. At its root, making mustard requires mixing ground mustard seeds with water. The colder the water, the sharper the mustard will be. Allowing the mixture to chill in the fridge overnight is supposed to do away with the bitterness from the mustard seeds. That's it. Anything else is extra, and all down to personal choice and flavouring. Here's what I did. I opted for warmish water as Little Bit really likes mustard but not if it's too strong. I made two different flavours: mix spice and orange tarragon. Ingredients. 2 c yellow mustard seeds 3/4 c warmish water 1/2 c apple cider vinegar 2 tsp olive oil salt to taste For the mix spice variant: 1 tsp mix spice a pinch of brown or maple sugar For the orange tarragon variant: 1 tsp dried orange peel 1 1/2 tsp dried tarragon 1) Coaresly crack about 3/4 c mustard seeds. Set aside. More finely grind the remaining mustard seeds. How finely ground these are and how many are left coarser will affect the final texture of your mustard. Combine all the mustard in a bowl. Add salt and water. Stir. Add vinegar and olive oil, then refrigerate overnight. 2) Check the texture of the mustard and taste test. Add a little more water or vinegar as necessary. Then divide the mixture in half and add the remaining ingredients for each variant to one-half of the mustard. Allow to sit overnight again for flavours to develop. 3) Taste test and serve. To test these out, I made Clair Saffitz's brioche pigs in a blanket, along with a fresh batch of Beetroot Ketchup and some rosehip vinegar mayo. I was thoroughly pleased with these two mustards, and delighted to have finally gotten around to making my own. I can't believe how easy it was! I even got help grinding up my seeds in the mortar and pestle from Little Bit, who was very proud to have helped. The whole time I was making these, I was thinking of my grandmother who passed three years ago. Ahe loved mustard and took great delight in finding and trying new flavours and varieties. This is something we had talked about doing together but never got to. To try making your own, order mustard seeds for yourself here, and if you need a mortar and pestle for it, click here.

Planning on going away for a week, we had potatoes left which needed using up, and I wanted to bring easy picnic-ables with us, so hit on the idea of making tattie scones. A left-over half tin of tomatoes and some mozzarella also needing to be used up led to these two variations on traditional Scottish Tattie Scones, often eaten with a full Scottish breakfast. Tomato Tattie Scones Ingredients: 400g potato 3c flour 3 tbsp tinned tomatoes 1 tsp pepper Salt to taste 3 tbsp butter Mozzarella Tattie Scones: Ingredients: 400 g potato 2 1/2 c flour 1 mozzarella ball, grated 1 1/2 tsp basilic Pepper to taste 2 tbsp butter 1) Boil the potatoes until soft. Mash in butter (peeling or leaving the peels of the potatoes as you prefer). For the tomato scones, add tomatoes now, and mix well. For the cheesy scones, add the basilic in now. 2) Mix in the flour to form a dough- enough for it to be non-sticky but not so much as to make it dense. For the mozzarella scones, knead the grated cheese in at this point. 3) Roll out the dough to about 1 cm thick on a clean, floured surface. Cut into large circles (I used a soup bowl) and score quarters on the surface. Melt a little butter on a griddle or frying pan and cook over medium heat on both sides until golden. Some of these I cooked through right away, others I cooked only partially, froze them and then finished cooking when we defrosted and ate them, which worked well. We did cheat occasionally and pop the defrosted tattie scones in the toaster instead of on the stovetop. We also discovered that the scones made good picnic food, alongside our vegetarian Scotch eggs. Overall, thoroughly pleased with these as variations on a food I really like, and looking forward to trying them again.

This recipe was a mistake, but it worked out both for savoury and sweet purposes so I thought I would I was preparing the ingredients for the onion rings recipe from Ottolenghi's Flavour cookbook, and I failed to read the recipe through before starting to mix things. I was working on the assumption of a batter, but as it turns out the recipe was for egging then flouring I set aside the batter I had begun and instead followed the recipe as it was actually written.

I really liked the first Rose Cake recipe I came up with in versions 1 and 2, but I wanted to try again

Having said that, the batter did rise to about twice its original size and was very light.

I made pickles for the first time in the autumn. Bread and butter (sweet) cucumber pickles and spiced beetroot pickles. I made each a couple of times and was delighted to discover how easy it was to pickle. Based on those experiences, I decided to try my hand at an idea of my own, namely spiced pickled carrots. I had a hunch, so I read up a bit more on the pickling process and went for it. I made these in the winter sometime, but then they needed to sit for 3 weeks to mature, and then other things came up, so here they are now. Ingredients: 1 - 1,5 kg carrots 3 1/2 c apple cider vinegar 1 tbsp mustard seeds 1 c sugar 1 tsp salt 8 cloves garlic, sliced 2 1/2 - 3 " ginger, sliced 2 black cardamom pods, crushed 1 tsp turmeric 1) Place the vinegar and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add other ingredients and cook until the carrots are tender. 2) Meanwhile, sterilise your jars. Bring a big pot of water to the boil, and keeping it at a rolling boil, submerge the jars and their lids for at least 15 minutes. 3) Spoon the carrots into the jars, pour the vinegar over the top, wipe the rims of the jars and seal. Place the jars upside down until cool, then store in a cool dark place for about 3 weeks before opening them. When these were ready to go, I pulled them out at my parents' place first. They have been on the side of a quite a few meals since then and have proved a hit. I am pleased with how the spicing came out, and in general the idea worked as well as I could have hoped! Now for more pickling ideas...

Next on this winter's odyssey of marmalade batches is a lime one (and yes, I say "a lime marmalade" as I plan on making another one), and for this one, I decided to add gin and almond extract. Not sure exactly why I decided on this, but I am glad I did. I am afraid that with night shifts and a teething toddler (how many molars does one kid need?!) who is now in a big boy bed (woohoo for sleep disruptions again!) I opted for the easy, lazy method again. Ingredients: 1,5 kg limes (about 20 limes), halved 1,5 l water 3 c sugar 2 tsp almond extract 1 c gin 1) Squeeze the limes and place them and the water in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Bring to a boil and cook for about an hour until the limes have softened and the contents of the pot has begun to reduce. 2) Blitz and add the other ingredients. Continue cooking until the marmalade thickens to desired consistency. Taste test to check for sweetness and gin content. 3) Boil jars for 15 minutes to sterilise them, then spoon the hot marmalade into the jars. Wipe the rim clean, seal and place upside down on a tea towel to cool. This came out really well. No tonic in the jam, but it still tastes like a G+T (sort of) so I am sticking with the name. Unfortunately, the almond flavour doesn't come across much, but the lime does, and it proved a very popular spread when I brought a jar up to my parents' house for the weekend. Let me know what you think if you try it!