ramtops

I know, I know, it’s shocking, but sometimes you just get carried away in the moment …

Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of slow cookers, and own three of varying sizes. I belonged, briefly, to a slow cooker group on Facebook, but mostly the members used theirs to put in meat and a couple of jars of cooking sauce, and that isn’t really what I do. However, for some of them, slow cookers seemed almost a religion. They tried *everything* in them. One person – honestly – was cooking full English breakfasts overnight in theirs. It seemed somehow grounds for excommunication if you didn’t buy into this, and I left.

But I was intrigued by using a slow cooker to bake a cake. Apparently, it couldn’t be just any cake, it had to be a Wright’s cake mix. I have no idea why. Caught up in the religious zeal,  I bought a ginger cake mix from Aldi – I think it was about £0.80 – but sanity prevailed and it stayed in the cupboard.

And then, the other day, the oven was on for something, and there was no cake in the cake box, and I thought “why not?”. So I mixed it up with the mandatory oil and water, and then chopped up some dates and added them, and then I baked it.

The first slice off was quite dry, but we didn’t worry – it could easily be turned into a sticky toffee pudding. But then, on the second day, it was really not bad. And by day #4, yesterday, it was actually nice.  Not nearly as nice as I could make myself, but then a lot cheaper and easier. As I am shortly off to Aldi for some bits, I may invest in the other varieties.

But I’m not doing them in the slow cooker, because really …

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Inspired by A Girl Called Jack’s recipe, I make a loaf of this most weekends. It keeps well, makes lovely toast, and never goes wrong. But I have tweaked it a bit. so here’s my version.

250g wholemeal flour
400g plain flour – or strong white flour, or even a mix of the two
7g packet dried fast action yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
400ml warm water (*not too hot*)

You can jazz this up with, e.g., fennel or pumpkin seeds if you like.

Put the flours into a large mixing bowl (or you can use a mixer with a dough hook, but it’s not as much fun), and add the yeast, sugar and salt. And the optional seeds.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the water. Too hot will kill the yeast. And if you want to prove the bread overnight, you can use cold water. Stir it all in gently, then tip it on to a clean, floured worktop and start kneading. Plenty of tutorials on YouTube if you don’t know how. It’ll knead^H^H need about five minutes or so of working.  Take a tiny piece of dough, stretch it and hold it up to the window – if you can see through it, it’s ready!

Pop into a clean bowl (you can grease it if you like, but I often forget), cover with clingfilm, and leave to rise for a couple of hours, or even overnight. When it’s about doubled in size, tip it out, knock it back, and form it into something loaf-shaped – I generally do a sort of sausage because it’s easier to slice, but it can be round if you prefer. Put it on a baking sheet, floured if you’re very confident of its non-stickness, or greased if not, make a couple of deep slashes in the top, and sprinkle some flour over the top.

I usually leave it another 40 minutes or so before baking for about 50 minutes at Gas4/180C – preheat the oven, of course! It it’ll be done if it sounds hollow when you tap it on the bottom.

Then wait for it to cool before eating – that’s the difficult part.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I had a party to go to last night, and wanted to make a contribution to the festive board. Looking at the ingredients in the fridge and freezer,  I settled on squash and red pepper filo parcels. There was no feta in the fridge, but no matter – I hurtled up to Jacksons to buy a block, to find that the normal budget one had been replaced with an oak-aged one, at over twice the price. Still, time beggars can’t be choosers, so I paid me money.

The squash went in the medium slow cooker for about 5 hours, with a heaped teaspoon of Ras el Hanout, and about half a glass of white wine. A brace of slightly wizened peppers (one red, one yellow), were sliced thinly, together with an onion similarly sliced, and placed in the baby slow cooker for about three hours. I added some olive oil and cumin seeds to these. The filo pastry was removed from the freezer.

At about 5.30, I descended to the frozen wastes of the kitchen to make the things; I mixed the ingredients together, with about half the block of the fairy dust feta cheese, diced into small cubes. I oiled a baking tray, opened the filo, and started. And darlings – a disaster. The pastry had been in the freezer a fair while (understatement), and had completely dried out. Pete hurtled back to Jacksons, but filo had they none. Indeed, ready made shortcrust had they none. By now it was 5.50 – scream.

So into the food processor went 8 oz plain white flour, a good pinch of salt, 2.5oz of baking marg and 1.5oz of Trex (I really do recommend Trex for pastry, it makes a lovely short crumb). Added a tiny dribble of cold water, then summoned Pete to roll it out. as he is much better than I at such things. In the meantime, I beat a couple of eggs and stirred them into the squash mixture, along with some black pepper.

Into the oven (preheated to 180C fan) went about 20 baby quiche, and we watched them with some trepidation. They had about 20 minutes, so I even got time to cool them a bit before our lift arrived. And readers – they were gorgeous. I shall make them, or something similar, again.

Although they weren’t the filo parcels I was hoping for …

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Neither Pete nor I are especially fond of bananas in their raw form, but I bought some for the GrandToad’s visit a few days ago. He didn’t really want them either, so there were five bananas going brown in the fruit bowl. Not a problem – banana cake!

I use a basic recipe refined over the years:

200g plain flour
100g baking marg
some brown bananas, peeled (quantity is not that relevant, really 2-3 should do it)
60g sugar – anything will do; caster, granulated, brown
1.5 tsp baking powder
a slosh of vanilla extract
2 eggs

Put the lot in a food processor and blitz. Pour into a 2lb loaf tin, bake at 180C for 40 minutes, then 160C for 30. I always use a parchment loaf liner, as it makes it easier to turn out.

This is a remarkably tolerant recipe, and can take other things. Add some walnuts, or sultanas, or a splash of bourbon whisky if you’re feeding it to grownups. One of the nicest thing to add is chocolate chips – I use Bouchard, which I buy from Amazon. And last night, choc chips were deemed to be what we fancied.

So I got the tub out of the baking cupboard, and tipped some into the food processor. Except some turned out to be almost all of the 50% or so left in the tub, as they had presumably melted together into a large ball during the hot summer. Those that didn’t go into the food processor went on the floor.

I shrieked, and Pete came hurtling downstairs. He swept up the floor, while I rescued as many bits of chocolate as I could from the Magimix bowl, which was quite a few, but not really enough for the batter (which was looking severely over chocolated). Still, what could we do? I baked the cakes (I almost always make two at a time, because they freeze beautifully), and we ate a piece while it was still warm. And it was really rather nice.

And as the oven was on, we had sausages and cauliflower cheese, so as not to waste the heat.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We try not to use big supermarkets much. My usual haunt is Aldi, but if I must go elsewhere, we generally do Morrisons. And there are some “treaty” things we get in Morrisons, so when Pete cycled off there on Saturday with trailer in tow (after the car debacle), he was going to get some.

I’m diabetic, so I have to watch what I eat, but I love the Lindt plain chocolate with sea salt, and their Intense Coconut too. And Kallo plain chocolate ricecakes are very low cal/carb, considering. So imagine mine and Pete’s disappointment when none of these three items were to be found on the shelves in the Anlaby Road store. He asked where they were, and the assistant said she assumed they’d been dropped, and was apparently surprised, because the Lindt bars were a good seller. I do wish supermarkets wouldn’t do this – three less reasons to visit Morrisons now.

I was miffed at this, so when he got back, I walked down to the big Great Satan Tesco Extra in Hull. It’s only 2km away. I really do try not to use Tesco, although we had bought diesel there that morning (always happy to knock them for a 5p/gallon discount – and before you ask, we got the voucher from a friend!). I found the chocolate easily enough, although they only had a single, solitary bar of Lindt Intense Coconut, so I wonder if that’s going to be dropped by the manufacturer …

In wandering about, I found some blackberries. *Blackberries*! Three quid a punnet, if you please, which makes me weep; we used to get pounds off the brambles on the drive at our old house [sob].

In the end, I did a sort of experiment – made a basic upside down batter, laid the blackberries on the bottom of the cake tin, and poured the batter over it. It was absolutely lovely, although I should probably have made some sort of coulis or something. We just had it with cream

Blackberry cake

batter:
300g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
200g marg or butter
about 2 tbsp milk

some blackberries

22cm springform cake tin, greased and the bottom lined with parchment.  Although you could use any tin that size.

Preheat the oven to 180C Gas 4.

Line the bottom of the tin with the blackberries.

Now, you can do this like I do – I just put all the batter ingredients in the Magimix other than the milk and whizz it up. Or you cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and flour and baking powder bit by bit, stir in the vanilla essence, then the milk. Up to you entirely.

The milk I leave to the end because you want a sort of dropping consistency, and it’s better to add it bit by bit.

Pour the mix over the blackberries, bake for 45 minutes-ish. The blackberries all rise through the cake. It’s lovely.

Leave it to cool for about half an hour, then turn onto a plate. It made eight quite generous portions, and I don’t know how well it would keep. So we sent half of it over to some friends that Pete was visiting last night, and they seemed to like it too!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I made brownies last week, for a gathering of friends. I always use this Nigella Lawson recipe, which makes a huge heap – I find a huge heap of brownies generally to be the right amount, as people rarely refuse, and they keep well.

I cooked them in the oven, and baked a couple of banana and coconut cakes as well, so as not to waste the electricity. However, like a fool, I forgot to set the timer for the brownies, and so took them out of the oven just a little bit too early. Once I’d scored them into squares, I discovered that the ones round the edges were fine, but the very middle was still far too raw. Nothing ventured, nothing gained – I dumped them in the big Remoska, still on their baking parchment, and gave them about 12 minutes. And they were absolutely fine, which is something I shall remember for the future.

This weekend I plan to make a batches of shepherd’s pie filling, meatballs, and coriander chicken. That’s the plan, anyway.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We were invited to a picnic on Sunday afternoon, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I decided to make some brownies, and some focaccia, and we took fruit, cheese, cold meat, beer, as well. The weather was not delightful, but a pleasant time was had.

But oh dear – I came close to disaster with the brownies … I used this Nigella recipe, from her Domestic Goddess book, one of the few which lives in the kitchen, rather than on the dining room bookshelves.

I have these whizzy electronic scales, where you can push a button to switch between oz, ml, g, fl oz, etc. I weighed out the butter, and thought “that looks an awful lot”, then weighed out as much chocolate as I had, which was nowhere near 325g, but no matter – I could and did bung some cocoa powder in with the flour. I put butter and chocolate in a pan, then into a *bigger* pan, started it melting, and returned to the weighing of ingredients. And realised that the scales were on ml instead of g! Nothing to be done but soldier on – when the mix was melted, I just weighed out 750g of it, and decanted the rest into a jug. It’s currently in the fridge, and moar! brownies! will be made later this week.

So no great hassle, really, but it could have gone horribly wrong if I hadn’t noticed. But they were delicious – I sprinkled some flakes almonds on the top before they were cooked, just because really, and dusted them with icing sugar before they went to the party.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

A few weeks ago, Nigel Slater made a soda bread loaf, which he cooked in a cast iron casserole. We make lots of soda bread here, and it seemed like a good idea, so I gave it a try; but it was hopeless – you couldn’t turn it out to see if it was done, so I decided to just carry on using a baking tray as before.

On Saturday, I decided to bake a couple of Guinness soda breads; I scaled up the recipe carefully, but something went wrong, and even after adding a bit more flour, the mix felt very wet, so I bunged it in my huge and ancient Le Creuset and baked it in that.

Calamity – the inside was raw. Still we carved the ends of for Saturday night supper of bread, cheese and apple, and planned to surgically remove the remaining decent bits for toast for Sunday breakfast. However, the discovery of half a bag of cranberries in the fridge led to an outburst of fresh cranberry muffins instead, meaning the bread was left for Sunday supper.

Just as well, really. I opened a tin of tuna for the Tribe as a treat, only to discover once it was de-lidded that it was in fact crab; no idea what it was doing on the cat fud shelf.  Far too nice to give to the cats, we located the errant tuna and gave them that (it lasted about 3m 20s, I think), and put the crab in the fridge.

Then last evening, I mixed in some mayo, some lemon juice and some paprika with the crab, and we had it on the soda bread. It was really very nice indeed, not least because it was so unexpected.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I run a community recipe site called Nibblous, and if you Google for banana cake, you’ll find my friend Jaqui’s recipe is the number one hit, which I’m quite pleased about! I’ve long used a similar recipe to that myself for banana cake, but I’ve refined it quite a bit over the years, and I change it around almost every time I make it.

I’m a fairly recentlly diagnosed Type 2 diabetic, and I try to avoid white flour, so I thought I’d have a bash at a wholemeal banana cake.

6oz wholemeal flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
4 ripe bananas – the riper, the better
4oz butter or margarine
4.5oz granulated sugar
a good grate of nutmeg
2 eggs
a generous teaspoon of vanilla essence

Now, I’m lazy – I do this in a food processor. I start with the bananas and whizz them up till they’re all mashed, then I bung in everything else, whizz some more, and it’s done. If you don’t have a food processor, or want to do it the long way round, see Jacqi’s recipe above for mashing and creaming and folding :)

Decant into a well greased 2lb loaf tin (I always cheat and use those pan liners which I get from Lakeland – less trouble) and bake for 40 minutes at gas 4, then 30 minutes at gas 2. Leave to cool in the tin, or if you’ve used a liner, then it comes straight out with no hassle and you can cut a test slice pretty quickly :)

I always double it up and make two cakes, as they freeze remarkably well.

I was really pleased with this wholemeal version – it’s slightly nutty, and the nutmeg was a new addition this evening, and it worked really well.

You can bung anything in this – chocolate pieces, mixed spice, currants, chopped apple, walnuts; it’s a really great basic cake recipe.

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

This is a classic Irish recipe – we used to eat them a lot, but sort of forgot about them; I made some for breakfast this morning, and thought I’d share.  It’s an ideal way to use up leftover boiled potato, too!

In a food processor, blitz 6oz cold cooked potato, 4oz flour (I always use plain, but self raising would do), and 2oz of butter or marg.  Once you have a dough, remove it from the processor and knead a little on a floured work surface.

Now, you can be diligent, roll it out with a rolling pin, and cut the dough into rounds – or you can do what I do, which is to divide the dough into 8, and pat it into rough roundish shapes.

Also, the recipe recommends frying in a little butter on a griddle, but I’m afraid I stick them on a greased baking tray at gas 6 for 15 minutes.  And I don’t peel the spuds either :)

These are just utterly delicious straight out of the oven, spread with butter, and also work really well as part of a great British fry up.

If you don’t have a food process, mash the potatoes as is (no milk or butter), rub the fat into the flour and add the spud, then continue with the rolling (or not).

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Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.