Rosemary, lemon and white chocolate cookies

I received the Flavour Thesaurus by Nicki Segnit for Christmas and I was thinking about making cookies with a savoury twist so I looked up flavour combinations with rosemary. We have lots of rosemary growing in the garden (I moved it to a new location yesterday – I hope it survives the move!) so I went and picked a bit and added it to these delicious cookies. No cookie would be complete without chocolate, and according to the flavour thesaurus, lemon goes with rosemary and chocolate – so that is how these cookies were born (with a little help from a Hummingbird bakery recipe, to form the basis of the cookie batter)!

Rosemary, lemon and white chocolate cookies

Makes 10–12 cookies


135 g unsalted butter
80 g caster sugar
80 g soft light brown sugar
1 egg
190 g plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
zest of half a lemon
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
100 g dried cranberries
70 g white chocolate chips
3 sprigs of rosemary (about the size pictured), finely chopped.

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Farenheit) and line to baking trays with parchment or greaseproof paper. Cream together the butter and both sugars, then break in the egg, add the lemon zest and rosemary and mix well.

Sift together the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda, then add to the creamed mixture in two batches, mixing thoroughly until a dough forms. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Break off pieces of the dough (about 2 tablespoons in size) and toll them into balls before placing them on the baking tray. Allow about six cookies per tray and space them as far apart as possible. Place in the oven and bake for 15–20 minutes until the cookies are a light golden on top. Leave on the sheet for about 10 minutes to cool and set (if you can resist it!) before transferring to a wire rack.

Cardamom and cocoa cookies

The Christmas hampers were well received! I had great fun making them - it was a great week of cooking. We still have to wait and see how the chutney turns out but everything else was scoffed in record time (even considering all the other Christmas goodies tempting everyone).

The cookies I included in the hamper are a favourite of mine. The recipe is from Anna Hansen's book, The Modern Pantry. We visited the restaurant for brunch recently too (in fact, we couldn't go without trying a bit of everything, so we had a three-course brunch consisting of pastries followed by a hot main dish and finished off with some of their lovely truffles). It goes without saying that it was all delicious!

Cocoa and cardamom cookies

Makes 16 cookies

80g unsalted butter
175g soft brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
200g dark chocolate, melted
110g plain flour
40g good quality cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon salt
150g macadamia nuts, lightly toasted and chopped

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then gradually beat in the egg, followed by the melted chocolate. Sift the dry ingredients together and fold them in, followed by the macadamia nuts. If the dough is too soft to handle, chill it in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, until it is manageable, then roll it into 16 balls.

Arrange them 5 cm apart on baking trays lined with baking parchment and place in an oven preheated to 150 degrees Celcius. Bake for 15 minutes, until just firm, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool.

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.

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.

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.