Bórbon y borbón

After Costa brought out their amazing huge Bourbon creams, I decided I had to make my own (normal sized ones)

Fast forward, what, a year? And I finally got round to making some. 

Here goes:

50g unsalted butter/stork

50g soft light brown sugar 

1 tbsp golden syrup

110g plain flour

20g cocoa powder

pinch salt

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 to 2 tsp milk

2 baking sheets covered with grease proof paper.

Cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the golden syrup until smooth. Sift the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture. Add the milk a bit at a time, until you get a soft even dough. It should be a bit crumbly then tip out onto a lightly floured surface and bring together to a dough. 

Roll out with a lightly floured rolling pin 

to about 1/2 cm thick. Cut out into rectangles if you wish but I made an unclassic round version. If you like you can dot holes into the dough with the end of a skewer/fork. Sprinkle with caster sugar and then carefully lift onto the prepared baking sheet with a metal spatula, leaving some space in between the biscuits.

Bake at 150c for 8-10 minutes and leave to cool on the trays 

50g unsalted butter, softened 

75g sifted icing sugar 

1 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted

To make the filling, cream the butter together with the icing sugar, cocoa powder to give you a fluffy evenly coloured mixture. Spread a heaped teaspoon onto each of half the baked biscuits and then top with another one, pressing down lightly. Repeat until all the biscuits are filled. Store in an airtight container.

Enjoy!!

On a few of mine I decided to use my stamp 😝

As light as air

Angel cake with lemon curd

After watching GBBO this week and seeing the technical challenge, the recipe popped up in my Facebook newsfeed. Mum and dad have a deluge of eggs from the hens so as this recipe uses 10, it seemed logical to bake it.

I don't have the angel cake tin recommended but a few google searches proved you don't need one. I have a bundt tin and read the trick is to ensure it's clean and don't grease it. The idea being then that the cake can grip to the side so it rises (as this cake uses egg whites as a raising agent).

Here's the recipe, I won't right it out this time but just to note I used I my 8 eggs and calculated the other quantities accordingly. This made a nice size cake. I also substituted the lemons for vanilla.

I made the lemon curd but personally it's not my favourite curd recipe. I'll try and remember which my favourite is lol!

I also didn't cover the outside with the cream as it ideally then needs to be eaten the same day and this wasn't going to be.

While making the recipe, I can say that it feels like you're making a meringue then adding flour. I didn't actually expect it to turn out like this, it looked far to mallowy/meringuey but it looks great once cooked. Max even had 4 slices!

I even think Mary and Paul would be proud, but who knows!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/angel_food_cake_with_04002

A surplus of eggs!

The parents have chickens and most are now laying so there's about 4 or 5 eggs being laid a day. There's only so many omelettes they can get through so as family baker I can have a fair few.

I brought some home the other day

Lovely lovely eggs

But there's still loads left at their house. As I often cook or bake on a Friday, with a chilli for my grandma already in the aga, I decided to use up some eggs. 

First thing that came to mind was an egg custard tart. I don't like them personally but have always fancied making one.

There's tonnes of freshly grated nutmeg on the top and I loved grating up a whole nutmeg. Love that smell!

So here's the recipe. It's a combination of three different recipes, you should know me by now. The only issue was there was a fair bit of custard left after I'd filled the case. You could either use this for custard on another dessert or just use a bigger pie tin (I had enough dough left to make a bigger case I reckon)

Pastry:

150g plain flour

65g softened butter

Preheat oven to 180c.

In a food processor, mix the flour and butter together then add enough water for it to just come together. It should still look quite loose, therefore short. Tip out, knead into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Line a 7" tin (1" or more height - probably the higher the better then you might not have any custard mix left over like I did) and use baking beans

Blind bake for 15 minutes then remove the baking beans and bake for another 5 minutes or so until it looks cooked and starting to colour. Reduce the oven temperature to 150c

Custard: 

1 nutmeg grated 

3 eggs plus 2 yolks

140g golden caster sugar

300ml double cream

300ml full fat milk

Mix the eggs with the sugar. Heat the milk and cream gently until just simmering then pour over the eggs while mixing thoroughly to avoid scrambling.

Place the pastry case on a baking sheet and place into the oven, then with the door open and shelf out, pour in the custard filling and sprinkle with nutmeg

Bake for 50-60 minutes until it doesn't wobble. Cool and serve 

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Biscuit Tuesday - Oat & Raisin cookies

Normally I bake biscuits on a Monday but we only got back from our amazing cruise on Monday afternoon so no time to whip anything up.

I got my copy of the Hummingbird Bakery back from my mum's. She's had it for ages as the two things I've made from it didn't turn out as well as I'd expected but I thought I'd give it another bash so got it out to see what biscuit recipes it had. Even though I've made oat and raisin loads before (last blog entry was a chocolate version), I had all the ingredients in, so off I went to start.

I used half the recipe which makes enough for 12 cookies. Randomly however I got 15 out of half the recipe so I guess the ones they make are bloomin huge!

This is half the original recipe amounts:

135g Stork

80g caster sugar

80g soft dark brown sugar

1 egg

190g plain flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

55g rolled oats

80g raisins 

Preheat the oven to 170c

Put the butter and sugars in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment and cream until light and fluffy. Add the egg mixing well and scraping any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Add the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and oats and to the butter mixture and beat until well mixed. Stir in the raisins until evenly dispersed. 

Arrange equal amounts of cookie dough on the prepared baking trays. I used a very heaped teaspoon for each. Make sure that the cookies are spaced apart to allow for spreading while cooking. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes, or until golden brown and firm.

Check them regularly to make sure they are not burning. When you are happy that they are cooked through, remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a wire cooling rack to cool completely. 

They puff up while cooking but settle back down a bit when cooled and harden up slightly.

And the best bit ...... Max actually likes them!

I'm not going to give this book away yet. These are lovely, it's a nice recipe and I'll try something else again from the book soon