Custard Creeeeaaammmm

I plumped for custard creams today as I was flicking through Jo Wheatley's book but having made them twice before using Nigella's recipe, I decided to go back to good old faithful never let's me down Nigella.

Behold the goldeny custardy goodness that is a custard cream

Makes about 20

For the biscuits:
175g plain flour
3 tbsp custard powder
1 tsp baking powder
50g unsalted butter
50g vegetable shortening
3 tbsp caster sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk (or more, to bind)

Preheat the oven to 180c
Mix flour, custard powder and baking powder in a food processor. Add the butter and shortening in smallish cubes and mix to a crumbly mixture. Add the sugar and mix again.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg and milk, then add this to the processor and mix it until it clumps into a ball. You may not need all the liquid so go slowly, (or you can always add a little more flour, or more milk if it's too dry)
Form the dough into a ball, press it into a flat disc and wrap in clingfilm. Pop it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Flour a clean surface, and roll out the ball to about 4mm thickness. Use a 4 / 5cm cutter and cut out as many as you can, putting them on a lined baking sheet as you go along, and re-rolling the scrap bits of dough until it's all used up.

Cook on lined baking sheets for 15 minutes, or until golden.

Cool on the sheet or on a rack 

For the custard cream:
1 tbsp custard powder
100g icing sugar
50g soft unsalted butter
1 tsp boiling water

Mix the custard powder and the icing sugar in the processor. Add the butter and mix until you get a smooth cream. Add the teaspoon of boiling water and combine again.

Sandwich each biscuit with the cream by gently spreading a layer of the cream on one underside then wiggle a matching biscuit on top of it.

Voila!

That's a Scotch Egg!!!!

Anyone remember the Michael McIntyre Scottish joke where Scots take things and make them their own? Well, after that sketch, we can't say Scotch Egg in our house without a deep Scottish accent.

"You've taken the egg, you've put a bit of breadcrumb on it. That's a Scoootch Eeeg!"

But why make your own when Scotch Eggs are readily available and in certain different guises: Scotch Egg, party egg, picnic egg. Why not?!

One year at the Good Food Show there was a stall selling all different versions of a Scotch Egg with different ways of doing the meat and fillings. I remember enjoying mine a lot and have always heard home made are hard to beat.

So when you think about it, Scotch Egg doesn't actually comprise much and with another surplus of free range eggs at my mum's, I decided to have a go at my own.

Simples! 

However my dad then decided that not only did he want Scotch Eggs, he also wanted Picnic Eggs. Can you find a recipe for Picnic eggs. No! Well I didn't really want the recipe (doesn't take a genius to work it out), but I wanted to know if there was a certain method to making them. Who knows so I just made my own.

The smallest ingredients list in the world!

500g Sausage meat

6 Eggs

Breadcrumbs

Flour for dusting and 1 more egg for coating

Makes 7

Scotch eggs:

Boil 3 eggs for 5-6 minutes. Cool rapidly and peel.

Heat oil to 180c

Spoon out some sausagemeat (I actually added some salt and white pepper) into a roundish circle. Coat the egg in flour, put into the sausagemeat and bring the cling film up to cover the egg. Ensure the egg is covered with not too much or too little sausagemeat. Coat in the egg then straight into breadcrumbs. Fry for 8 minutes until golden brown.

Picnic eggs:

Boil eggs for 7 minutes, cool then peel. Chop up with white pepper and mayonnaise. 

Heat oil to 180c

Construct the eggs in a similar way just adding the prepared egg mixture to the spread out sausagemeat. Roll up the sausagemeat gently around the mixture, dip in the egg, coat in breadcrumbs and fry for 8 minutes until golden brown.

I've only got photos of the Scotch eggs and not the picnic eggs 

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 

Chocolate and Oat Cookies

• It's biscuit Monday and seeing as Max doesn't like my biscuits (or any non chocolate biscuit) I thought I'd try chocolate and oat. Max won't even eat chocolate chip biscuits. The biscuit itself has to be brown. I was dubious about the oats but thought I'd try it and if all else failed, I knew Hayden would eat them.
• 
  
• So here's the recipe:
• 100g plain flour
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 95g margarine or butter
• 95g dark brown soft sugar
• 85g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 90g porridge oats
• 
  
• Preheat oven to 180c
• Cream together the margarine/butter, and sugars. Add the egg then the dry ingredients followed by the oats

Drop in small spoonfuls onto baking sheets.

Bake for 10 minutes and leave on the baking sheets to cool.

Max asked for one (good start), ate it. Asked for another, ate it. Then had another later. Yaaaaay a biscuit with oats in that he'll eat :D

And of course Hayden likes them too 

I even got to use my new biscuit barrel