Pie and Cake

Food is comforting in the Tarts household and as we're dealing with post-holiday -oh dear god we're back in Britain-misery, I decided to cheer us up with a round of pie and brownies yesterday evening. Bacon, mushroom and cheese pie with lovely buttery shortcrust pastry. I've now taken to always using the Nigella Lawson pastry recipe from Feast. 450g plain flour, 225g butter (rubbing in the butter to this massive amount of flour would take ages so I just bung it in my food processor) and 3 eggs. Makes enough pastry to make 2 pies so I wrap one half up and store it in the freezer. Much cheaper and nicer than the ready made stuff and less hassle than walking to the shops to buy the damn stuff anyway. As for quantities for the filling, I just go by eye really. I always seem to make just the right amount. It's become quite a talent in a way.

Here be pie. No particular reason for the dinosaur decoration other than it makes us smile:

And for pudding: brownies and ice cream. I decided to use the blocks of Willie's Supreme 100% Cacao I bought from Waitrose a while ago. They are interestingly packaged, very tactile and aesthetically pleasing and reassuringly heavy. I tasted a little bit that broke off and can only equate it with eating a teaspoon of coffee granules. Intensely bitter and it dries your mouth. It certainly isn't chocolate to eat 'raw'.

I tried the brownie recipe from the chocolate maker's book Willie's Chocolate Factory Cookbook. I've never found a recipe for brownies that required so many eggs, 8 in total; 6 whole and 2 yolks. There is satisfaction to be had in using so many eggs, although I'm not entirely sure why that should be.

Brownie recipe:

250g cacao, grated

300g unsalted butter

6 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

300g golden caster sugar

80g plain flour, sifted

Preheat the over to 180 degrees C (fan oven) and line/grease a brownie pan

Melt the cacao and butter in a bowl over simmering water.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale.

After allowing the cacao and butter to cool slightly, pour into the eggs and sugar and mix, then fold in the flour.

Bake for 25-30 min

And then you get this:

My only complaint would be is that the brownies actually rose, rather than remaining intensely gooey. I would put this down to too many egg whites in the mix and the whisked mixture was certainly very frothy. Still delicious though.

And finally a pic of some of the goodies I brought back from Rome: Sombrero hat pasta, which I don't intend to eat but rather just display in a nice jar, Limoncello (of course), this variety is from Sorrento, and a big tin of tiny Amaretti biscuits that I'm trying to construct a cake recipe around. They are truly moreish. We also brought back packs of speciality Italian biscuits, but those have been largely scoffed. Shall have to go back to Rome to get some more.

Easter! Simnel Muffins and Brownies

Dieting over Easter is tricky. So instead of baking a large simnel cake as I have done in previous years, I made a few simnel muffins to share around my family. I've got several books with recipes for simnel muffins/cupcakes but I settled on the recipe from the Crabapple Cupcake Cookbook and tweaked it slightly to suit my own tastes, mostly removing about 100g of the dried mixed fruit and replacing it with glace cherries ad secondly using marzipan and sugarflowers to decorate the top instead of icing and a chocolate mini egg as I loathe the combination of dried fruit with chocolate. Ergh. These muffins were wonderfully moist, no doubt due a ball of marzipan in the centre of each cake. Just a note on the recipe, it says it makes 11 but I managed to get 12 very generous muffins out of this with plenty of batter left in the bowl to eat raw. It's important to point out that this is no bad thing.

Makes 11 cakes.

Ingredients:

100g shop bought marzipan, plus extra for decorating (I used M&S's as its all natural etc)

1.5 cups plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 teaspoon mixed spice

pinch of salt

200g softened butter

1 cup soft brown sugar

3 eggs

425g mixed fruit (or in my case 325g mixed fruit plus 100g glace cherries, syrup rinsed off)

2 tbsp milk

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with 11(or 12) papercases.

Roll the marzipan into 11 small balls a set aside.

Sift together the flour baking powder, mixed spice and salt.

In a separate bowl, cream the butter and the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, ensuring each is well mixed in before adding the next, but do not overmix.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat on a low speed until just combined the add the fruit and the milk.

Put a tablespoon of the mixture into each of the muffin cases and then place a marzipan ball in the centre and then add enough of the mixture to cover the marzipan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes (although some of mine needed about 35/40 minutes). Leave to cool before decorating.

To decorate:

The marzipan I used was sticky enough to adhere to the top of the muffins without any aid, but you may need to use apricot jam if this isn't the case. Roll the marzipan out to thickness of the £1 coin and use a scone cutter to cut out. Place on top of the cooled muffins. To ensure the sugar flowers stayed in place I used a little bit of liquid icing, such as writing icing. Just dot a little on the top and press the sugar flower on. Mine turned out like this:

And for those in my family who don't like simnel cakes, I made chocolate brownies. I shan't reproduce the recipe as everyone has a recipe for chocolate brownies, indeed, I have at least 15, but the standard one I use is a recipe I clipped out of a copy of Olive. Its meant to have nuts in it, but just as dried fruit is a ruination of chocolate, so is the inclusion of crunchy nuts in the middle of smooth, gooey chocolate brownie. Such pleasure should not be interrupted by a lowly nut. There's plenty of that nonsense already.

I did cut this into squares and pressed solid mini chocolate eggs into each one but I failed to capture the beauty of them before they were all gone. Always a good sign.