Candied orange peel

Continuing with my Christmas hamper preparation, I made candied orange peel. It was a lot more simple than I thought it would be and they taste delicious! Remember those little cake decorating jellied citrus slices? They kind of taste like those, but they're real fruit! There is some discussion about how many times you need to boil the peel (each time reduces the bitterness). I boiled them three times using navel oranges and they turned out well - sweet but with a slight bitter twist in the rind. I originally thought the pith would be the bitter part, but that turns wonderfully sweet and the rind retains the orangey bitterness.

I must have a thing about oranges... (chocolate orange creams and chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates). I had to resist covering these in chocolate too!

Candied orange peel

3 navel oranges
3 cups caster sugar (plus extra for rolling the strips in later)
1 cup water

Score the oranges into quarters and peel. Reserve the peel. Cut the oranges into halves and squeeze out the juice (we had this fresh orange juice with breakfast the next day - yum!). Cut the peel into strips and add to a pan of cold water. Bring the water to the boil and boil for 5-10 minutes. Drain off the water. Repeat this blanching process three times to reduce the bitterness in the pith.

After draining the last lot of water, add the sugar and 1 cup water to the pan with the piths. Try to avoid stirring, although it may be necessary to ensure that all the orange peel strips are covered. Bring the sugar syrup to the boil and simmer for 1 hour.

I found towards the end of the simmering that some of my oranges had stuck to the bottom of the pan and coloured a bit more than I would have liked (i.e. burnt slightly!) so check on them towards the end.

Drain the syrup off the peel into a bowl and after leaving to cool for a couple of minutes (any longer and they start to set and stick together) roll each peel strip in sugar and set aside on a cooling rack covered in greaseproof paper to cool.

Store in an airtight container for 4 weeks.

Chocolate orange creams

I can see that lots of readers have been enjoying the chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates post and it is my favourite flavour combination, so I have come up with another orangey chocolatey creation!

Thinking about Christmas gifts again (sorry family!), I thought that mint creams would keep well, since they're just icing sugar and water with a bit of peppermint extract. Then, I decided I would use the peppermint essence for the marshmallows and use delicious orange oil to flavour these creams. I think I made them a little big because I felt a bit sick after eating two in a row (or maybe that's just because I ate two in a row...). You could also make them any shape you like – holly leaves or star shapes would be suitably festive!

Chocolate orange creams


Icing sugar
A few tablespoons water
Liquid orange essence
Food colouring (if you like)
Dark chocolate (for decorating)


I know this recipe isn't very precise, but I find the best way to make them is to tip about half a box of icing sugar (which seems like an awful lot, and is probably about 500g) into a bowl and start adding water, slowly mixing to a very thick paste. I have found in the past that if I add the water too confidently, I have to add endless amounts of icing sugar, so I think it is best to just get started and see where you end up – do add the water slowly and very sparingly.

Add the food colouring and a few drops of orange essence. It will come together so that you can roll it out on a surface lightly dusted with icing sugar and then cut out into shapes. Leave the creams to set on a sheet of greaseproof paper for at least an hour. They will harden up over time.

Melt the chocolate (I used 50g to decorate about 10 creams, but ended up wasting a lot of it) and use it to decorate the creams. I think next time I'm going to cover the surface in chocolate, like a biscuit.

Minty marshmallows

In my effort to find a home-made Christmas gift that will keep well and look pretty (sorry family, this year's gift may not be a surprise!), I tried making marshmallows this weekend. I think they turned out very well – I say think because I don't actually like marshmallows. There's just something about the strange texture and intense sweetness that puts me off. Hubby enjoyed them very much, so they must be good!

I was intrigued by the process of making something out of egg whites, sugar and gelatine, that turns into marshmallow texture. It was a lot of fun to make.

There's a scary amount of gelatine in this recipe but it does make a huge amount of marshmallow, so I'm sure it all works out in the end. You may want to halve the recipe to make a smaller quantity (although I haven't tested that, so let me know how you get on if you try it!).

Minty marshmallows
Leaf gelatin and liquid glucose is available in Waitrose. Recipe adapted from here.

9 sheets sheets leaf gelatine

450 g sugar

1 tbsp liquid glucose

200 ml water

2 large egg whites

1 tsp peppermint extract

icing sugar

cornflour

Food colouring (I used pink and purple to get the colour shown)

Lightly oil a shallow baking tray, about 30 x 20cm and dust it with sieved icing sugar and cornflour. Soak the gelatine in 140ml cold water. 

Put the sugar, glucose and water into a heavy-based pan. Bring to the boiland continue cooking for about 12–15 minutes until the mixture reaches 127 degrees Celsius on a sugar thermometer. When the syrup is up to temperature, carefully slide in the softened gelatine sheets and their soaking water. The syrup will bubble up so take care not to burn yourself. Pour the syrup into a metal jug.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff, preferably with an electric whisk in a mixing bowl. Continue whisking while pouring in the hot syrup from the jug. The mixture will become shiny and start to thicken. Add the peppermint extract and food colouring and continue whisking for about 5–10 minutes, until the mixture is stiff and thick enough to hold its shape on the whisk.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth with a wet palette knife if necessary and leave for at least 1 hour to set.

Dust the work surface with icing sugar and cornflour. Loosen the marshmallow around the sides of the tray with a palette knife, and then turn it out on tothe dusted surface. My marshmallow did not want to come out of the tin, so I cut it into strips and coaxed each strip out of the tin. Cut into squares and roll in the sugar and cornflour. Leaveto dry a little on a wire rack.

Store the marshmallows in an airtight container  (I'm experimenting to see how long they last).

Cinnamon toffee apples

I had a brainwave this afternoon - why not make cinnamon toffee apples?! It's already an excellent combination, and toffee really is a lot easier to make than people make out. These turned out fabulously.

The past 2 years I've wanted to eat a toffee apple while watching fireworks and I searched high and low among the marshmallow and Haribo stalls (what's the world coming to? Not even candy floss was available!) at the fireworks/funfair and I could not find a toffee apple. This year Hubby managed to find them in the supermarket buried among Halloween things - perhaps it was because I was looking at the wrong time... Anyhow, now I have my beloved break-your-teeth toffee apples with a glorious twist!

Cinnamon toffee apples

I'm not sure I'd recommend using treacle but I had run out of golden syrup. I think the treacle would lower the boiling point so you'd have to guess when it's going to make toffee which perhaps isn't that safe!


Makes 4 toffee apples


200g caster sugar
50 ml water
1 large teaspoon treacle (but preferably golden syrup)
3 teaspoons cinnamon

Place the apples in a bowl or large pan and pour boiling water over them. Take them out and dry thoroughly. This helps to remove the natural wax coating on the apples, which enables the toffee to stick better. Stick a lolly stick (or in my case, a cake fork!) into the apples and place on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper. Mine stuck to the paper, so there's probably a better non-stick option. You could grease the paper but only put the apples on once they're covered in toffee.

Add the sugar, water and treacle to a pan and agitate (don't stir) over a high heat. When it is all liquid insert a sugar thermometer and watch the temperature creep up to Hard Crack (or just under 150 degrees Celsius). This will take about 10 minutes. While keeping one beady eye on your pan (and keeping all children and pets out of the kitchen – hot sugar really is very hot) fill a large bowl (or another pan) with cold water and set it next to your sugar pan. You can dip the base of the pan into this if the toffee gets too hot. Once sugar is hot, the temperature keeps rising until you cool it with something - otherwise it can burn.

Add the cinnamon and stir it in quickly. When the toffee has reached the right temperature, dip the apples in, one by one, and place on the baking sheet. Leave to cool for 20 mins.

Chicken salad

We've been having unseasonably warm weather recently (even though it's October, temperatures have reached 29 degrees celcius!), and I try not to complain, but it has been a bit too hot at times. I feel able to say this because I hardly ever complain about it being too cold in the winter (what's not to like about wrapping up warm in layers of clothing, and having an excuse to stop and get a hot chocolate, and having rosy wind-beaten cheeks and toasty feet in boots and curling up under a blanket to watch a film on tv at 4pm because it's already dark?). Mmmmm winter...

Anyway, I made this chicken salad because it was too hot to cook anything else. I was pretty impressed with the results, if I do say so myself. My inspiration came vaguely from Pret's Italian Chicken Salad and a Caesar salad (and whatever was in the fridge!). This recipe looks a little complex, with a lot of ingredients, but they're all things you will probably have in the house and once you get going it'll all come together nicely.

Chicken salad
Serves 2

2 chicken breasts
1 teaspoon sunflower oil
Juice of half a lemon
Black pepper


70 g quinoa with a little vegetable bouillon
1 little gem lettuce (and other salad leaves of your choice)
30 g butternut squash (or a couple of thick slices)
A handful of radishes
Cherry tomatoes
Olives
Parmasan cheese


For the dressing:
3 tablespoons low-fat yoghurt
A few teaspoons lemon juice (to taste)
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Add the quinoa to a pan of boiling water and cook for about 10 minutes (I didn't overcook it this time!) with a little vegetable bouillon.

Flatten the chicken (I cover it in clingfilm and then hammer it with a rolling pin) then add to a frying pan with the oil and lemon juice and a good sprinkle of black pepper. Fry until it is cooked through (5–8 minutes). The lemon juice caramelises beautifully on the outside of the chicken. You may need to turn the heat up at the end to get it really brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the salad. Slice the radishes (I used a mandolin, which my sister-in-law bought me before I even knew the fun that could be had with it!) and the olives and toss with the salad leaves – I did this in two serving bowls to save on washing-up. Chop the butternut squash and put into a microwaveable bowl with a little water and cling film over the top to seal it. Microwave on full power for 3 minutes. Add the butternut squash to the salad.

Drain any water off the quinoa and add the tomatoes (I have a thing about cold tomatoes from the fridge - I think it's to do with my sensitive teeth) to warm them up. Then add to the salad bowls.

Mix the ingredients for the dressing in a small bowl. When the chicken is done, place one piece on each salad, drizzle all over with dressing and shave parmasan on the top (I used the same mandolin again).

Sausage and mash pie

I love a good sausage casserole and sausages on their own are losing their appeal (maybe I've had them too many times? They're so easy and tasty though!). I used to use the word tasty so much when I was younger that it became a family in-joke: "How was dinner, Jessie?", "very tasty!". Like all in-jokes, they only really work when you're in the moment. It looks particularly unfunny written down!
So I had this great idea to combine sausage and mash into one dish (and serve with vegetables), like a shepherd's pie. It is a bit more work but it's really tasty!

Sausage and mash pie
Serves 4

8–10 good quality sausages
1 small onion
1–2 garlic cloves
1 carrot

1/2 pint ale (my husband always keeps a good stock of bottled ale in the house)

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

2 tablespoons gravy powder
500g potatoes (I used Desiree)
Dash of milk

Put the sausages into a hot oven on a baking tray. Slice the onion thinly and add to a large pan with a little oil. Cook on a low heat for 10 minutes with the lid on to really soften the onion. (I actually used a cartouche - a piece of scrumpled up wet baking parchment or greaseproof paper - because I was feeling fancy, but it's probably not necessary in this case!)

Peel and chop up the potatoes and add to a pan of boiling water (I usually boil the kettle before I start cooking to speed up this stage).

Thinly slice (or crush) the garlic cloves and add to the onions along with the carrot, chopped into small pieces. Turn up the heat and add the ale. Let the alcohol boil off for a minute or two, then turn the heat down again. Add the caraway seeds. Add the gravy powder and as much water as is necessary to make a rich gravy.

Take the sausages out of the oven and chop into pieces (I find scissors and tongs works well here), straight into the onion-gravy pan.

Finish off the mash by draining the water off the potatoes, adding a dash of milk, salt and pepper and mashing.

Tip the sausage mix into a dish (or two, in my case) and spread the mash on top with a fork. Drizzle with olive oil (and garnish with a sprig of rosemary, if you like). Place back in the oven under the grill for 5 minutes.

Serve with runner beans from the garden! Or any other greens you have.

Quinoa dinner

I really like the nutty flavour of this grain – quinoa – but I only thought to use it as the basis of a meal the other day (when we had eaten pasta too often!). Halfway through cooking, I had the idea that vinegar and honey would complement the flavour of the quinoa, and it worked really well. I added a bit of pomegranate molasses for extra zing (I think lemon juice would work equally well).

The only problem was that I overcooked the quinoa – so don't try and make it look like the picture! I'm also still using up my (wonderful) glut of tomatoes and runner beans, but you could substitute the vegetables with other ones. I think butternut squash and spinach could work really well.

Quinoa dinner

Serves 2

100g quinoa, rinsed

1 tablespoon vegetable stock (such as Boullion)

A handful of cherry tomatoes

6 runner beans

1 yellow or red bell pepper

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

2 teaspoons pomegranate molasses

Cook the quinoa according to the packet instructions (it's available in Waitrose, and don't let it lose its grainy-ness - mine turned into stodge quite quickly!). Add the vegetable stock to the quinoa and water as it's boiling and give it a quick stir. Add the runner beans, tomatoes and bell pepper towards the end of cooking. When the quinoa is cooked (you may have to drain excess water) add the vinegar, honey and pomegranate molasses, and season to taste. Serve hot with bread on the side (the bread in the picture is from a wonderful Turkish deli on Isabella street in Southwark).

Indian spiced pitta pockets

I was chatting to a friend at work this week and she told me about how her family cook Indian food. She was brought up in a Hindu home in Birmingham and explained that the base flavour of every curry consists of three spices: black mustard seeds, turmeric and ground coriander, and all the different variations of Indian dishes can be made from this base. I was inspired to try this for lunch today so I made this filling for pitta bread.  It had a nice, subtle flavour because I didn't add any chilli (which you could, of course, add if you like).

Indian spiced pitta pockets
Serves 2

2 pitta breads
1 chicken breast
10 cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon sunflower oil
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt

To serve:
Salad leaves
Mango chutney

Heat a frying pan to a medium heat with the oil and add the black mustard seeds. Heat until they pop, then turn down the heat and add the turmeric, ground coriander and salt. Chop the chicken into strips and add to the pan. Fry until almost cooked through and then cut each tomato in half and add them to the pan. Toast the pitta breads while the tomatoes are warming (I used our toaster, so much easier than the oven!). Cut open the pitta pockets and fill with the chicken mixture once all pieces are cooked through. Serve with salad leaves and a teaspoon of mango chutney on the side.

Fresh garden vegetable pasta

I've been watching green tomatoes grow all summer and now I'm finally getting a regular supply of tasty, red, ripe ones (it's almost September!), although I should be very grateful really, because these tomatoes grew without me realising when I used some of last year's tomato growbag to top up the pots on my patio. So instead of growing flowers, up came tomatoes! I didn't even realise they weren't flowers until they were quite big and had that tomato smell. Shame about the flowers. I also have some late runner beans, which my Granny gave me as little plants. They're enjoying the wet weather and beginning to grow some delicious beans. The rest of the vegetable patch contains some gladioli, which were going to be cut flowers but only one made it into the house, a cabbage from last year that survived the caterpillar attack and a forgotten pepper plant that might grow a pepper, one day. You can probably tell, I'm not that great at maintaining my veg patch, which makes me all the more grateful for this lovely pasta dish, the ingredients for which grew all by themselves!

Fresh garden vegetable pasta
Serves 2

100g spiralini (or your pasta of choice)
8-10 fresh cherry tomatoes
4 runner beans
A handful of capers, rinsed
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
A handful of marjoram (or oregano - I just happen to grow marjoram in my garden)

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the packaging. Chop the runner beans into short lengths, about 2 cm each and add to the pan with the pasta towards the end of cooking. Chop the tomatoes into quarters and the capers into smaller pieces (I find this distributes their salty flavour, especially the bigger varieties). When the pasta is cooked, drain most of the cooking water, but leave a few tablespoons of water behind in the pan. Add the tomatoes, capers, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and toss to combine. Sprinkle the marjoram on top to serve.

Home-made croissants

I embarked on an adventure this weekend and attempted to make croissants from scratch. I had lots of fun making the pastry - definitely the thing to do on a cold rainy weekend. Except it was a hot, sunny weekend so I missed out on the good weather! I didn't mind - what could be more fun than going back to the kitchen every few hours to do something more to progress the pastry?

I found that the proving step is very important (otherwise they're heavy and doughy, much like bread if you don't prove it), and it's important to keep it as cold as possible, as with other pastries.

I inadvertently made mini croissants because I hadn't quite worked out how long the triangles have to be to make ones of normal size. However, they were very cute and my colleagues certainly enjoyed sampling them!

I used the instructions from here. Annoyingly, the ingredients are on the first page and the instructions on the other pages, so had to keep going back to refer to the ingredients. Apart from that, I don't think I can improve upon the recipe, so I'll just leave you with a couple of photos.

Marrow and spinach lasagne

A friend of ours came round last week for a church meeting and she arrived holding a marrow! Apparently something had made it difficult for her and her husband to get to their allotment, so the courgettes they were looking forward to, had turned into marrows. I also had the lasagne sheets in the freezer left over from my pasta-making day, so I made it into a delicious lasagne. I used cottage cheese for this, which did look a bit ugly in the pan (a very lumpy cheese sauce!) but tasted good and wasn't noticeable once it's assembled. You could use ricotta, of course, but I couldn't find it in my little local supermarket. Low-fat soft cheese would also work well. This would be a good vegetarian dish if you omit the bacon.

Marrow and spinach lasagne
Serves 2–3

For the green part -
500g spinach
1/4 of a marrow, peeled and deseeded then grated (I used the trusty food processor for this)
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

For the white "sauce" part -
2 cloves garlic
1 small red onion
3 rashers smoked bacon, chopped
1 small tub of cottage cheese
4 tablespoons of vegetable stock (or a generous sprinkle of Boullion and water - you can mix it in the pan, which saves washing up!)
1 teaspoon English mustard


fresh lasagne sheets (I used mine straight from the freezer)

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Finely chop the red onion and soften in a pan with some oil. Add the garlic and after about 5–8 minutes, add bacon and fry until cooked through.

Grate the marrow and defrost (if using frozen spinach) the spinach. If using fresh spinach, roughly chop it. Use half the spinach to form a layer on the bottom of the dish, then add half the marrow on top. Spinkle half of the nutmeg and half of the pine nuts on top.

Add the cottage cheese to the bacon and onion mixture, then add the stock and mustard and taste for seasoning (It was pretty salty by this point due to the bacon and stock, which seasoned the whole dish nicely).

Layer lasagne sheets on top of the marrow, then add half of the sauce and more lasagne sheets. Add the marrow again with the rest of the nutmeg and pine nuts, with another layer of lasagne and sauce, followed by the final layer of lasagne. Top it off with the rest of the spinach and the parmesan.

Place in the hot oven for 20 minutes. I have a grill in my oven so I switched it to grill at the end to get the top crispy.

Enjoy with a fresh salad!

Pasta!

Today I decided to try out my MagiMix and new pasta machine so I made a batch of standard egg pasta. I used the recipe below.

Fresh egg pasta

300g "00" flour (or flour suitable for pasta making)
3 whole eggs

Whizz the flour in the food processor to work some air into it. Beat the eggs together and add about two-thirds of the mixture. Continue adding egg until you have a sticky breadcrumb texture. It may take more egg, or it may be less – it depends on the moisture in the atmosphere and in the flour. Mould the crumbs into a ball of dough and knead in your hands until it is all consistent and smooth. Wrap in clingfilm and leave for about 30 minutes. This helps the gluten to develop so that the dough is much more stretchy when you come to run it through the pasta machine. When it is ready, divide the dough into four and work with one quarter. Wrap the other pieces back in the clingfilm as you don't want it to dry out.

Run the pasta though the machine on progressively smaller settings to stretch it thin. I also tested out some other attachments which cut the pasta into taglietelli or linguini. It's supposed to be thin enough to read a newspaper through (or as the Italians say, thin enough to read a love letter through!).

I also made ravioli with a cheese and rosemary filling:

To store the pasta, toss it in bags with semolina (to keep the strands separate) and freeze for up to one month.

Leith's buttermilk bread

Days two and three of the Leith's cookery course were so much fun! We made sweet sable biscuits (using the magimix - I am now the proud owner of a MagiMix 4200!), buttermilk bread, beetroot and goats cheese tart, and most excitingly, we learnt how to fillet fish! I filleted a mackerel rather well, if I may say so myself. The last time I saw a mackerel was on the Parasites and Vectors module of my biology degree where we had to pick little (still live) worms out of the fish's gills and body cavity. It put me off mackerel for years. This time though, I didn't go looking for those, I just set about getting the lovely flesh off the bones. Sadly no pictures of that, but I do have the recipe for wonderfully sweet buttermilk bread, which was a lot of fun to make.

Buttermilk bread

15g fresh yeast
100ml milk, scalded (sometimes the proteins in the milk can react with the yeast so it is best to "scald" the milk - heat it until a skin forms but do not boil it)
1 teaspoon caster sugar
450g strong plain flour
2tsp salt
30g butter
190ml buttermilk
1 egg, lightly beaten
beaten egg to glaze

Dissolve yeast with a little milk and sugar in a small bowl. Sift the flour with the salt, then add the butter to the scalded milk. Stir the buttermilk into the scalded milk, add the yeast mixture and pour about two-thirds of the liquid into the dry ingredients. Mix vigorously and continue to add liquid until you have a sticky dough.

Lightly flour a worktop and turn the dough out onto it. Careful not too add too much flour or it drys out the dough. Keep your hands clean and free from bits of dough as you knead. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover with a piece of lightly greased clingfilm. Leave to rest in a warm place until it has doubled in size. If you like, you can leave it in the fridge overnight (it just slows down the rising action of the yeast).

When the dough has risen, knock it down and knead for a minute or two. Grease a 1kg loaf tin and shape the dough into an oblong and place in the loaf tin. Cover and leave to prove until it has nearly doubled. Brush the top with beaten egg, or dust with flour.

Bake the loaf for 30 minutes or until it is golden and firm.

Turn the loaf onto a wire rack to cool. It should sound hollow when tapped. If it doesn't, turn it over and put it back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

We all sat down to a delicious three-course lunch on the third day, consisting of bruschetta canapes (above) crab soup (with buttermilk bread), duck breast (where we learnt how to render the fat) with madiera sauce, followed by champagne and strawberry jelly. I'm not in this picture, as I took it!

Leith's cookery course. Day one: Citrus polenta cake

Today I started a cookery course at Leith's School of Food and Wine in Hammersmith. It's a 3-day course entitled Elegant Entertaining. I was so excited to be there that I almost cried several times during the morning demonstration! If you know me, you know that it's not unusual for me to feel like that, but it does indicate my pure joy at cooking beautiful food. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, which will be a whole day of cooking (today was half demonstration and half cooking). First we made this lemon poppy polenta gluten-free wonderfully moist cake. Then we made pasta! I expect I'll go on about that more later. I am now going to buy a pasta machine. And a MagiMix.

Citrus polenta cake
Adapted from Leith's Baking Bible


3 eggs
130ml sunflower oil
130g caster sugar
zest of one orange
zest of one lemon
105g ground almonds
75g polenta
3/4 tsp gluten-free baking powder
1 1/2 tbsps poppy seeds


For the syrup:
Juice of one orange and one lemon
55g caster sugar


Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease a 23cm cake tin and place a disc of greased greaseproof paper in the base.

Beat the egg yolks, oil, 110g of the caster sugar (or just reserve about a tablespoon from the original 130g sugar) and the orange and lemon zest until smooth. Add the ground almonds, polenta, baking powder and poppy seeds to the egg mixture. Fold to combine.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks in a clean bowl then beat in the remaining caster sugar. Fold into the cake mixture. Turn into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 35–40 minutes. A wooden cocktail stick inserted into the centre should come out clean when the cake is cooked.

Cool the cake in the tin while making the syrup. Place the orange and lemon juice in a small saucepan with the caster sugar over a low heat. Heat until the sugar dissolves then bring the mixture to the boil. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Pierce the cake all over the top and pour the syrup into the holes. Leave to settle for a few minutes before turning out of the tine and up the other way (so the holes are now on the bottom). If you wish, you could make more syrup to drizzle over the top.

It's really good with creme fraiche and raspberries.

Banana nutmeg waffles

The waffle story began, rather unexpectedly, in Iceland. Hubbie and I went there on holiday to look at geysers and the blue lagoon. When we awoke in our hotel on the first morning and went downstairs for breakfast, the smell of waffles wafted (I wonder if the smell of waffles has anything to do with the word "wafted"?!) up the stairs. We were very pleased to see a waffle iron and batter and made ourselves some waffles - we've been talking about them ever since and Hubbie bought me a waffle-iron for Christmas (romantic isn't he?). This morning I made banana waffles. It is a failsafe recipe and we always have bananas in the house.

Banana nutmeg waffles 

Makes 4 waffles. This recipe came from here and is in American cup measurements, but all you have to do is go and buy cup measurers, and it opens up a world of possibilities! I modified it slightly by adding wholemeal flour – I think it adds sweetness.


3/4 cup wholemeal flour
1/2 cups plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1 cup semi-skimmed milk
1 egg
2 ripe bananas, sliced


Preheat waffle iron. In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Pour milk into a jug or bowl and add the egg and sliced bananas. Mash the bananas into the milk using a fork and mix the egg. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir to combine. The mixture is much thicker than normal pancake batter so don't be tempted to add more liquid.


Spray preheated waffle iron with cooking spray. Pour two tablespoons of the waffle batter onto the hot waffle iron.  Cook until golden brown (about 2 minutes in my electric waffle iron). Serve hot with fruit and syrup.

Chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates

I experimented a bit making chocolates at Christmas but I've been wondering for a while if there is a way to make a creamy chocolatey centre to a chocolate without using cream. My brother and his family are vegan so I was primarily thinking of something they could eat. On the plus side, if the chocolates do not have cream, they will probably keep for a lot longer. Here are the results of my experiment!

Chocolate-orange-fondant chocolates


90g good quality dark chocolate


For the filling:
60g good-quality dark chocolate (this adds up to one 250g bar so you can just go ahead and melt the whole thing, then use about a third of it for the filling)
Zest of half an orange
3 tsp Cointreau or Grand Marnier
1 tsp orange extract

Melt all of the chocolate (I'm a bit naughty and use the microwave instead of a bain-marie, but if you do, just be careful the chocolate doesn't overheat and burn and use a low setting). Pour about one third of the chocolate into a mould and as it sets, stand the mould upright for a few minutes, then on it's side and keep rotating to try and coat the walls of each chocolate cavity. This way, the filling should be encased in chocolate all the way round and is not tempted to escape out of the sides. (I got my mould from Lakeland, but they're probably available online.)

To make the filling, transfer another third of the melted chocolate to a separate bowl and add the filling ingredients. The chocolate "froze" (when it changes texture and sets) when I added the alcohol so make sure you add it gradually. Although, having said that, I quite liked the change in texture. To try to unfreeze it, I just heated it a bit more – gently – then added a teaspoon or two of water and stirred vigorously (although it will never really go back to how it was once this has happened).

Pop a blob of the filling inside each chocolate cavity and then fill with the remaining melted chocolate, taking care that it makes it's way round the sides of each blob of filling. Place in the fridge and turn out when set.

I added gold dust to the top of my chocolates (actually to the bottom of the mould, with a clean paintbrush), which is available in Waitrose. I also bought edible gold leaf to decorate my chocolates, which is made of - you'll never guess - gold! Who would have thought that pure gold is edible? It doesn't taste of anything though...

Peppery Thai basil noodles

My husband and I went to New York in April and after visiting this church (we thought we might see Tim Keller! We didn't, but it was still pretty cool) we went for a late dinner in Greenwich Village. We only had four days in the city and we wanted to make the most of our time there, so a look at the Village area at night was better than nothing.

We came across a very good value Thai restaurant (our wallets were feeling a bit battered!). We chose noodle dishes and were both disappointed by our choices - mine was too bland and my husband's was too spicy. Once we had swapped, I was in heaven! He had chosen a very peppery basil noodle dish which I have attempted to re-create (I say "attempted" to be modest - it was pretty darn tasty!).

Peppery Thai basil noodles
To serve one


1 carrot
2 chesnut mushrooms
small handful of curly kale (or your favourite greens) 
40g buckwheat (or your favourite) noodles
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tsp red peppercorns
2 tbsp fish sauce (or nam pa)
3 tsp sugar
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh basil (I used regular basil but I'm sure it would taste even better with Thai basil)

Peel the carrot and chop into thin sticks. Boil a half-full kettle. Spray a wok with cooking spray or 1 tsp oil and add the carrots once the pan is hot. Chop the mushrooms and curly kale into thin slices and add them to the pan when the carrots are starting to char on the edges. Keep moving everything around the pan by flipping it, or stirring.

Add the noodles to a bowl with the boiling water from the kettle and leave for 5 minutes or until tender. Grind the peppercorns in a food processor or pestle and mortar. Drain the noodles and add to the wok with a few tablespoons of the water the noodles were soaking in. Add the peppercorns, fish sauce, sugar and basil and stir thoroughly.

Wholemeal blueberry pancakes

I fancied eating some yummy pancakes on Saturday and I had some leftover blueberries so I made wholemeal, American-style pancakes and ate them with leftover strawberries and golden syrup - yum!

I actually ended up making half this amount, because I'm trying not to be greedy at the moment. I did manage to use half an egg... Sadly, the other half was wasted, but at least it didn't go on my waist (haha!).

Wholemeal blueberry pancakes

This recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food website.

200g wholemeal flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

300 ml milk

Blueberries (as many as you like! within reason...)

oil for the pan

Mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Beat the egg with the milk, make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and whisk in the milk to make a thick smooth batter. Gently stir in half the blueberries

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Drop a large tablespoonful of the batter per pancake into the pan to make pancakes about 4 inches across. Make three or four pancakes at a time. Cook for about 3 minutes over a medium heat until small bubbles appear on the surface of each pancake, then turn and cook another 2-3 minutes until golden.

Carrot salad

I think this is a bit of an 80's salad but I have recently realised how wonderful this simple dish is. I remember my mother always making it for our annual family barbecue. And for me, the best thing about a barbecue is, by far, the salads. This one is winning for me at the moment. Carrot and vinegar make a perfect pair and the raisins add even more sweetness.

Carrot salad

200g carrots

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

30g raisins (it's even nicer if the raisins are soaked in water overnight first, but not essential)

Peel and medium-grate the carrots (make sure you reserve all the lovely juice). Add the raisins and vinegar and mix well.

I'd like to experiment with adding coriander (a classic flavour combination) or cumin for a more spiced version. I'll keep you posted.