Fig Bars and flu

I haven't done any baking for a while, firstly I was busy stripping the foul pink floral wallpaper off of our bedroom walls so I could decorate it and then this week The Tarts household was struck with plague. Well, flu. So cooking has been limited to toast and canned tomato soup, which is the only food I've been able to taste, and indeed been able to cook thanks to the time limit on my standing upright ability.

I made these fig bars before all of the above nonsense struck after managing to get a glut of beautiful black figs. I ate alot of them just as they were- fresh, sweet and jammy, wrapped in parma ham or with a little piece of sharp feta or creamy, tangy gorgonzola. As I had so many a few became a little too soft for my liking so went about looking for a recipe to use them up, with my love of fig rolls in mind. Fig rolls with their sweet, jammy filling wrapped in a crumbly golden stodge that is neither pastry nor biscuit are really rather heavenly, and I don't know if it's jst me but there's something very war time retro about them.

Anyway, I found this recipe for Fig Bars which seemed to be a happy mix of traybake and fig rolls. The flour based mix forms both the base and the crumble topping (so one less bowl, which is always good) and the figs are jammy, sweet, slightly spicy and wonderfully warming. Truly lovely.

Sunday Baking- Stem Ginger Cookies

I don't often bake cookies and I've no idea why, but I'm on course to change this, starting with these stem ginger cookies. I hated stem ginger as a kid and I blame my mum's favourite- ginger jam, which assaulted my senses when I tried it as a child. Things have changed and now I don't quite feel complete unless I have a jar of syrup drenched amber globes of ginger stashed somewhere in my kitchen, and liking stem ginger feels to me like a very grown up thing to do. I like ginger snaps but sometimes find their tooth snapping qualities a little undesirable, so these soft, chewy and slightly crisp on the edges, cookies are a perfect balance. Highly recommended.

Amber gold
Stem Ginger Cookies

Makes 30 small or 20 medium cookies

350g self raising flour

pinch of salt

200g golden caster sugar

1 tbsp ground ginger

1tsp bicarbonate of soda

115g unsalted butter

90g/generous 1/4 cup of golden syrup

1 large egg, beaten

150g stem ginger in syrup, roughly chopped

-Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C and line 3 baking sheets baking paper.

-Roughly dice the butter and place in a small saucepan with the golden syrup (add a bit of the preserving syrup from the ginger if you want) and heat gently until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat and allow to cool until just warm.

-Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl, add the salt, caster sugar, ground ginger and bicarb. Stir to combine.

-Pour the melted butter and syrup mix over the dry ingredients, then add the egg and two thirds of the stem ginger. Mix with a spoon to combine and then use your hands to bring the dough together completely (it will look like there's not enough liquid, but be patient and when yo mix with yor hands it will come together, honest).

-Roll 20-30 balls (for rough measurement I'd say a well loaded teaspoon will produce a small cookie and a scant dessert spoon will yield a medium one. For super mega big cookies, a good tablespoon) of the dough and place on the baking sheets, with plently of room for them to expand, I'd say no more than 2 rows per sheet. Flatten slightly with your hands and then sprinkle each cookie with a little of the remaining stem ginger.

-Bake for 12-15 minutes, dependent on your chosen size of cookie, until light golden in colour. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the sheets until firm enough to transfer to a cooling rack.

-Store in an airtight container, but only after scarfing down enough warm, spicy cookies to make you feel sick.

And for the love of all that is holy, if you finish up a jar of preserved stem ginger, DO NOT throw away the syrup. It is divine drizzled over ice cream or pancakes or use it to sweeten herbal tea, or hot water with some lemon juice and some of the syrup is wonderfully warming. Can also be used in place of normal sugar syrup in cocktails. Anything! Just don't waste the nectar of the gods!

TSR Bakers September Bake - Scones

Scones are one of those sweet treats that have something of the nursery about them. For me they're not really associated with high tea and oddly cut sandwiches but sunny days in the garden, eaten with soft salty butter and runny strawberry jam. Despite this, I don't tend to make sweet scones, prefering savoury cheese ones, mainly because Mr Tarts doesnt particularly like sweet treats, but cheese scones always go down well.

So this month's bake was a good choice, courtesy of Cakecuccino. The recipe makes 8 so I divided the mix and made 4 sweet scones and 4 cheese. Recipe can be found here for 8 sweet scones.

I often find scones can be quite dense, but these were soft, crumbly and delicious. I suspect the addition of double cream instead of milk is responsible. Will definitely be making these again!

Blackberries

It's feeling distincly autumnal here at the moment and there's no complaints from me. I wasn't awake to experience it but apparently last night we had a storm of biblical proportions that caused some flooding in places. Hooray for living at the top of a hill! For me, one of the best things about autumn, aside from cooler weather, is blackberries which I love, and as my sister and me discovered last week, less than a 1 minute walk from my house is a huge patch of brambles! We picked 3 plastic tubs worth of beautiful berries, some big and small, some sweet, some sour, but all delicious and completely free!

For a Sunday teatime treat I made blackberry and coconut squares which were super easy to make and absolutely delicious. The base becomes a soft, moist cake, topped with juicy blackberries and a lovely crunchy top plus you only need one bowl to make it, which for me is a great pleasure as I don't own a dishwasher. They seem to keep pretty well too.

Blackberry and Coconut Squares

250g self-raising flour
25g oats
280g soft brown sugar
200g cold butter , cut into pieces
75g desiccated coconut
2 medium eggs, beaten
350g frozen or fresh blackberries

-Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Tip the flour, oats and sugar into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mixture using your fingertips until only small pea-size pieces remain. Stir through the coconut, then fill a teacup with the mixture and set this aside.

-Stir the eggs into the bowl of mixture, then spread over the bottom of a lined baking tin (31 x 17cm), or a 21cm square tin. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon, then scatter over the blackberries. Scatter over the reserved teacup mixture and bake for 1 hr-1 hr 15 mins until golden and cooked through (if you poke a skewer in, it should come out with moist crumbs but no wet mixture). Leave to cool, then remove from the tin and cut into squares.

You could probably throw in some diced apple for a twist and raspberries would make a more summey version. And for all of those among you who have an irrational hatred of coconut...

Shame on you.

TSR Bakers August Bake - Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookie Bars

This is a little bit late, but you'll have to forgive me as I was working all weekend (boo to working weekends!) and it takes me a good two days to recover from it. Yes, I hate my job that much. Anyway, this month's bake was Chocolate Chip Pretzel Cookie Bars as chosen by The White Cat Baker. I love pretzels, both the crunchy kind and the soft doughy kind, but had never thought of baking with the former, but these are a lovely treat indeed. Whilst still warm from the oven, they are almost cake like, soft and slightly crunchy and chewy roun the edges. Once cold and after spending a day stored in a cake tin, they are denser, chewier and more like a square inch thick cookie, with the chopped up pretzels within having more the texture of shortbread biscuit. Truly lovely.

Recipe can be found here.


I couldn't find good quality chocolate chips or mini pretzels (that didn't have sour cream and chive flavouring on them) so I substituted them with these lovely chocolate buttons I found in a deli and giant pretzels and they worked just fine too. Still, would be nice to get my hands on some good quality chocolate chips, so if anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them. And I've no idea what all this bittersweet/semisweet stuff is all about, so I used the dark chocolate buttons for the majority and a handful or so of the milk and that seemed to give the right balance.

Right, back to applying for jobs. Meh.

Baking instead of applying for jobs

I hate going through the rigmarole of applying for graduate jobs. Bloody baby boomers had it easy and now they're intent on making their children's generation as difficult and miserable as possible. So what better way to make yourself feel that you're doing something productive whilst simultaneously putting off what you should actually be doing than a spot of baking?

Case in point- Snowy Mountain Cupcakes, which are chocolate sour cream cake topped with pillowy, silky marshmallowy icing.

These are from Cupcakes! By Elinor Klivans which is a book I've had for ages but I've yet to bake from, until today. It's an american book so everything is measured in cups and sticks which is probably why the cake didn't turn out quite how I expected (I don't trust cups and sticks of things, I need grams!!), the cakes sunk quite dramatically once out of the oven. Fortunately I had a lot of batter left over, so I put some more in the oven this time filling the paper cases to the very top and baking them for more than the 20 minutes recommended. It didn't matter too much, as icing hides all sins and they do look quite heavenly.

I'll share the recipe later as it's quite lengthy (and lengthy, complex recipes are the best when you're putting off something you dread doing). In the meantime, make like myself and drift away from the worries of the world by gazing at the silken points of the icing on these cakes.

Sunday Brunch in the garden with Jack

Ahh Sunday morning, get up, do nothing for 3 hours then decide you're hungry and in the mood for pancakes. Leisurely whip up pancakes-drench in maple syrup, caramelise some apple slices to go with the pancakes, boil up a pot of a coffee and then transport yourself into the sunshine in the garden to be joined by Jack.

Jack

Jack is a cat we've been semi-looking after for a while now. We noticed him hanging around more in the autumn last year. He looked in a bit of a sorry state as his long fur was quite matted and he was rather thin, but he seemed bright and friendly enough. We tried to give him some of the food that our own cat eats but no matter what it was he didn't seem interested. We kept an eye on him, we weren't, and still aren't sure if he belongs to anyone. We called the RSPCA to ask for advice who told us there wasn't any room for him at the local shelter where we adopted our cat (Poppy) so they couldn't help us, but if he appeared and we could keep him in we could call out a collection officer and if one was available they could come out. Unfortunately by this time Jack was only appearing in the small hours of the morning, so frustrated by the RSPCA we've tried to look after him. We took him to a vet that didn't need an appointment and got most of his matted fur shaved off and got him checked over. The vet wasn't able to give any medication/vaccination as we had stated that he wasn't our cat, merely a stray we were concerned about. Anyway, that's roughly Jack's story. Some days he'll turn up serveral times and some days we won't see him at all. I worry that he's either a stray that's just about coping with being semi-feral, or if he's some old person's cat who can't look after him properly, or worse he's just neglected. He's decided he likes Go-Cat so that's what he's fed on mainly, and he now lets himself in at 4/5am through the catflap to help himself. We can't get him to stay of his own accord so I think we're going to have to keep him in a room until he realises that he can live here. Our own cat Poppy is an anti-social little bugger and hisses at him if he gets too close, but she's learning to accept him and we love him to bits. I just pray I'm not robbing someone of their pet, but if I am they should take better care of him.

Jack's sad story aside, if you would like to make your own American style pancakes and eat them lazily with a fork in a sunny garden or in front of a window, then here's the recipe:

225g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

pinch of salt

1 tsp sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

30g butter, melted and cooled (I leave this out when I can't be bothered with it)

250-300ml milk

butter, for frying

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl, mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and then combine the two with a whisk.

Drop ladlefuls into a hot, buttery frying pan, turn and when golden brown and serve with whatever you want.