Charred Graffiti Aubergine stuffed with Quinoa and Puy lentils

As a bit of a change from the sweet treats (and anticipating an upturn in sugary confections in the run up to Christmas) I though the time was right to go back to basics with some good, old-fashioned hearty fare. When I spotted these lovely, stripy miniature aubergines in the local grocers recently, I was transfixed, and simply had to have some (it's the little things that make me happy!). A little while after coming up with this recipe I saw these cute stripy aubergines being used on an American cookery programme, and referred to as 'graffiti aubergines'. So I don't know if that's just the American name for them. But since it's very expressive, that what I've referred to them as here. 

This recipe will take about 50 minutes in total and serves 2 hungry people.

Ingredients:
2 hand-sized graffiti aubergines

1 cup puy lentils, thoroughly rinsed
1 sprig rosemary
1 cup quinoa
4 bay leaves
3 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
1 red onion, finely chopped
7 sun dried tomatoes, rehydrated and chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 des sp. paprika
1 tblsp sunflower seeds
1 tblsp pumpkin seeds
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes

Method:

1. Set the quinoa, lentils, bay leaves and rosemary in a pan with 4 cups of boiling water. Simmer for about 20 minutes until tender.

2. Meanwhile, halve the aubergines and dry fry (cut side down) in a non-stick frying pan for 5-10mins until charred, moving frequently. Turn and char reverse side for about 5mins. Allow to cool slightly and scoop flesh out of aubergine, roughly chop and set aside.

3. Fry off the onion, chilli, garlic and seeds until the onion is translucent. Then add the rest of the ingredients, including the aubergine flesh. Simmer gently for about ten minutes, adding half of the puy lentils and quinoa at the end of the simmering time.

4. Stuff the aubergine skins with this mixture and bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees celsius for about 10-15 minutes until crunchy on top. Use the remainder of the quinoa and puy lentils as a bed on which to set the aubergine.



Thanking the Green Fairy and Bananaman

The Thursday before last I had an opportunity to go to an exciting event at Chatham House on the role of political parties in Russian elections, and the powers of the presidency. Well, exciting to me, anyway.

The only problem was that all of my teaching is scheduled on Thursdays. Happily for me, two of my illustrious colleagues - the beautiful Green Fairy, and the heroic Bananaman - covered my classes for the week, and I was able to see one of my academic idols in action. I wanted to show my appreciation in the only appropriate way - with a showing of baked goods designed to suit them both down to the ground....

Absinthe Cupcakes (makes about 6)

For the cakes:

2oz caster sugar

2oz Stork

1 egg, beaten

2oz self raising flour

1tsp vanilla essence

12 drops angostura bitters

1tsp absinthe

For the frosting:

125g unsalted butter

125g icing sugar, sieved

5 des. sp. absinthe

green colouring (gel is best)

Method:

1. Cream together the sugar and the Stork until light and fluffy. 

2. Add the egg, a little at a time so that it doesn't curdle.

3. Add the vanilla, angostura and absinthe, and then fold in the flour.

4. Spoon into individual cupcake cases and bake at 180 degrees celcius for about 15 minutes.

5. Once the cakes spring back to the touch, set them on a wire rack to cool. Whilst the cakes are cooling, make the frosting. Whisk together all of the ingredients with an electric whisk until the mixture is light and full of air.

6. Use the icing to decorate the cipcakes - I used the spreading method rather than the piping method, as it uses less frosting, which is probably for the best when your frosting is as potent as this!

7. Add the finishing touches for decoration. I made green fairies and absinthe bottles from sugarpaste icing, and finished them off with green edible glitter.

Banana Buns (makes 8)

For the cakes:

2oz caster sugar

2oz muscovado sugar

5oz self raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2oz Stork, melted

3 small bananas, mashed up

4 des sp. milk

1 egg, beaten

For the frosting:

125g icing sugar, sieved

125g unsalted butter

1 des sp banana angel delight (controversial!)

Yellow colouring

Dried banana pieces, to decorate

Method:

1. Mix together all of the dry ingredients for the cakes.

2. Add the melted Stork and the milk to the mashed banana, then slowly stir in the egg.

3. Gently fold in the wet mixture to the dry ingredients then spoon into cupcake cases.

4. Bake at 160 degrees celcius for about 20-30 minutes, then set to cool on a wire rack.

5. Whisk together the frosting ingredients, and when the cakes are cool, decorate with frosting and dried banana pieces.

Pumpkin Party

So, Hallowe'en is now well and truly over, and what does that mean in the world of home baking?

It means several metrics tonnes of reduced pumpkins in the shops. And it would be rude to ignore that kind of encouragement.

After providing hours of carving fun times, our pet pumpkin, Reg, has now found his true, culinary, calling in life.

Now, although pumpkin and ginger soup is one of my all time favourite autumn comfort foods, we seem to have a lot of squash-related soup in this household. So, inspired by the success of the banana buns I recently made, and challenged by the other half's announcement that "I'm not really a fan of pumpkin in sweet things", I was keen to come up with a lovely moist tea bread with a pumpkinny element. I had the end of a packet of ground almonds that wanted using, and some stoned dates, inherited from a friend who left them in my rucksack, and surely couldn't have expected them to remain uneaten...?

I had fully intended to put a couple of ounces of Stork in the mixture. But then I managed to forget, and still the mixture looked pretty good, so I just rolled with it in the end - and no disasters ensued! Here's the resultant recipe.

Pumpkin, banana and date tea loaf

Ingredients:
2oz caster sugar
2oz dark muscovado sugar
5oz self raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2oz ground almonds
1oz chopped nuts
2 bananas, mashed
an equal amount of pumpkin, cubed very small (about 2 handfuls)
3 tblsp milk
1 egg
1tsp cinammon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
handful dates, roughly chopped

To finish:
1 tblsp honey
handful chopped nuts

Method:

1. Put the 2 tblsp water on the pumpkin, cover and microwave for about 3 minutes, stirring half way. This should cook the pumpkin through until tender. Allow to cool.

2. Mix together all of the dry ingredients

3. Mix the bananas, milk and egg together. Then fold this wet mixture into the dry mixture, along with the pumpkin. I was going to puree the pumpkin first, but I couldn't be bothered in the end. It actually worked out nicely, with pumpkinny chunks coming through into the final tea bread - yum!

4. Turn the mixture into a silicone loaf tin, and bake for 30-40mins at 160 degrees celsius. A skewer will probably not come out clean because of the banana content - but you should be able to see that it's only banana residue and not unbaked cake.

5. Put the loaf tin on a wire rack to cool for about 5 minutes, until it is cool enough to handle. Then turn the cake out. Warm the honey for about 10 seconds in the microwave, until it will drizzle easily over the top of the loaf. Finish off with a scattering of chopped nuts.

Obviously the best way to serve this is with a good cuppa - I realise this is my standard cake-related advice, but then again, if it's not broke, don't fix it!

An illicit culinary lovechild...

Have you ever played that game, where you can breed two imaginary animals together and come up with something completely new and original (and usually ridiculous). For instance, my favourite creation is a Peep - a pink wooly creature with a wet snuffly nose and curly tail - the offspring of a pig and a sheep. You get the picture.

So imagine if you applied the game to baked goods... a world of possibilities!

A friend of mine celebrated her birthday last week, and since her favourite cake is Battenberg, it gave me the perfect opportunity to make one for the first time. But then I thought: "It can't be an ordinary Battenberg, surely?! What would you get if you crossed a Battenberg with a Cherry Bakewell...?"

Coconut and Cherry Bakewellberg Cake

Ingredients:

For the cake:

4oz Stork

4oz Caster Sugar

4oz Self-raising flour

2 eggs
1oz dessicated coconut

1 oz ground almonds

10 glace cherries, processed with 1 tblsp water

Dash of red and yellow food colouring

For the frosting:

4 tblsp Stork

4 tblsp icing sugar, sieved

1 des. sp ground almonds

1/2 tsp almond essence

To decorate:

5 glace cherries, to decorate   

1 packet of natural marzipan, to decorate

 

Method:

1. Prepare (grease and line) a 6" x 4" cake tin, split into two partitions of 6" x 2". I am lucky enough to have recently invested in a square tin with removable dividers, which makes this stage all the easier. However, you can carefully fold foil-lined greaseproof paper to create a wall in the middle of your tin if you don't have one of these. Instructions can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/coffee_and_walnut_88342.

2. In each of two separate bowls, cream half of the Stork and half of the sugar together until pale and creamy, and gradually add one beaten egg to each.

3. Add the coconut, processed cherries, red food colouring and half of the flour to one of the bowls, and stir thoroughly. Add the ground almonds, yellow food colouring and half of the flour to the other bowl, and stir thoroughly.  

4. Spoon the mixtures into the prepared tin and bake at 180 degrees celcius for about 20-30 minutes, then allow to cool on a wire rack.

5. In the meantime, make the frosting. Mix together all of the ingredients, then whisk with an electric whisk for about 3-5 minutes until light and fluffy. Set aside.

6. When the cakes are completely cooled, stack on top of each other, and cut down the middle, to create four evenly-sized strips. It may be necessary to trim the tops slightly if they have not risen evenly.

7. Roll out the marzipan on a surface lightly dusted with sieved icing sugar, until it's nice and thin and the right size to cover your Bakewellberg. I then covered the marzipan in a thin layer of frosting - enough so that the cake would adhere to it nicely. I then stacked the four sections on top of the marzipan (sticking with frosting), before bringing the marzipan up and around to cover it. I am sure that the received wisdon probably warns against this approach, to avoid getting crumbs in the surface of your marzipan and spoiling the outer layer of the cake. However, if you're careful, I think this is definitely a better way of getting a nice, neat, smooth finish than trying to drape the marzipan around a Bakewellberg that is only held together by frosting.


8. For the finishing touches, slice of the very ends of the cake so that is appears nice and neat, and the traditional squared pattern is visible. I then crimped the top two edges of the marzipan with my fingers. As well as giving a nice decorative finish, this also means that if your marzipan isn't perfectly tight, you can take up some of the slack in the crimping process. Finally, I added some halved glace cherries on top, as further decoration and to warn my friend that this was no ordinary Battenberg.

Seriously rich....

So, the lottery winners Dave Dawes and Angela Dawes are making twenty of their friends instant millionaires after their recent £101million win. Perhaps with their entry into the high life, they'd be interested in this little beauty of a cake.

As someone who is not overly enthusiastic about chocolate puddings, this might seem like an odd choice for me. But then again, I believe if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well - and this cake definitely does that! It's superbly rich, chocolatey and moist. And best of all, it contains no flour, which made it perfect as a birthday cake for my mother, who's a coeliac, and not really a pudding person, so doesn't tend to get very excited about cake. However, I just knew that this would be worthy of excitement from even the most cynical cakeophobe.

The recipe is amended from a BBC Good Food recipe, with Baileys substituted for Cointreau.

Seriously Rich Chocolate Cake

Ingredients:

100g butter

140g good quality dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

6 large eggs, separated

140g ground almonds

1 tblsp Baileys

85g caster sugar

Icing sugar, ground almonds and edible gold glitter to decorate

Clotted cream, to serve

Method:

Grease and line the base of a 9in springform cake tin. Melt together the chocolate and butter in a bain marie, stirring until smooth. Leave for about 5 minutes to cool slightly.
Stir in the egg yolks, ground almonds, and Baileys. Whist the egg whites in a separate bowl until soft peaks form. Then, adding the sugar a little at a time, continue whisking to stiff peaks. Stir 2 tablespoons of the whites into the chocolate mixture, then carefully fold in the remainder until no traces of white are left. 
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake at 170 degrees Celcius for 30-35 minutes until the mixture has risen and is just firm to the touch.
Allow to cool in the tin. If the cake sinks slightly or cracks, it will still be fine. If you are not planning to serve the cake immediately, leave it in the tin and cover in a double layer of cling film until ready to serve (up to three days). According to the BBC website, the cake freezes well for up to one month.
To serve, remove the cake from the tin and peel away the lining paper. Sift the icing sugar liberally over the top and sprinkle with edible gold glitter for a touch of glamour. Although the original recipe recommends serving with crème fraîche, I found that the bitterness was just too much for the smooth decadence of the cake, and would suggest that a good dollop of clotted cream would be your best bet!

High tea through the looking glass....

A few years ago, when I was working in a library, I made one of the most important friendships of my adult life. This friendship was, and still is, based almost entirely on an overenthusiastic appreciation of tea, cake, and those marvellous mealtimes (some real, some invented) whose purpose is purely to combine the two. This is the reason that the library-based stage of my career saw me gain an extra stone of cakey insulation, built up steadily over time during an almost religious observance of daily elevenses.

So when this same friend informed me that a super-kitsch new tea room had opened in the heart of Manchester, I was filled with giddy excitement. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present.....

Richmond Tea Rooms

Picture courtesy of Richmond Tea Rooms website

First impressions of Richmond Tea Rooms were overwhelmingly positive. The decor is an Alice in Wonderland-themed mix of red and black 'Eat me' and 'Drink me' salutations set amongst beautifully upholstered regal wooden armchairs and perfectly grannyishly decked tables. There is even a small conservatory-type nook in one corner, though sadly it has been occupied on both our visits.

The selection of tea is admirable, with more than a couple that neither my friend nor I have tried (quite a feat) and the display of cakes, pies and buns is a thing of real beauty. The crockery is delicate and beautiful, and the overall attention to detail is quite astounding - perhaps explaining the slightly elevated prices. On our first trip we were blown away by just how delicious the chocolate torte was, and decided immediately that we'd have to trek back for one of their high teas. This we duly did, at the end of last week.

Once again I was blown away by the look and feel of the place - even the forties/fifites music selection is just perfect for setting the scene. The Queen's Tea was very exciting when it arrived, with the highlight surely being the fig and goat's cheese finger sandwiches. The selection of cakes and pastries was pretty wonderful too. The best bits were a lovely miniature meringue (divine), and a moist and mouthwatering coconut macaroon. The strawberry and custard tarte was nice enough, though the pastry was a little dry, but the fruit scone (something about which I am rather particular) was a little thin and crisp for my preferences. Having said that, I barely made an impact on the scone in any case, since I was so full of other sweet treats! The clotted cream supplied was delicious though, so I did make the effort for at least a couple of bites of the scone.





All in all, this place is well worth a visit - a kitsch little oasis of vintage music, decadent decor and very naughty confections.



Chocolate and Baileys cupcakes

I came up with this recipe a couple of weeks ago, and since then I haven't been able to stop myself cooking up batches of the stuff! The first version was a set of dainty little cakes bursting with decadent richness. Next up, I made a miniature heart-shaped cake to the same recipe for a friend's birthday, but decorated with giant chocolate buttons. And finally, next week, I am planning to make a violin-shaped chocolate and Baileys celebration cake for a 21st birthday. One taste and you'll know exactly why I'm so enamoured.....

Ingredients:
Cakes (makes 12)
4oz Stork
4oz dark muscovado sugar
2 eggs, beaten
good tablespoon Baileys Irish cream
4oz self raising flour

Frosting
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
125g icing sugar, sieved
good tablespoon Baileys Irish cream
100g good quality dark chocolate

1. Cream together the stork and the muscovado sugar until light and creamy, then stir in the Baileys.

2. Gradually stir in the egg, adding a little flour if necessary to avoid curdling.

3. Stir in the remainder of the flour. Spoon into 12 cupcake cases and bake at 160 degrees celcius for about 15 minutes.

4. Whilst these are in the oven, melt the chocolate in a bain marie, then leave to cool slightly.

5. Whisk together the butter and the icing sugar until light and creamy, then stir in the Baileys and the melted chocolate. Leave the frosting at room temperature, so that it stays easy to spread (it will set in the fridge).

6. Leave the cupcakes on a wire rack to cool. When they are completely cool, use a palette knife to cover them with frosting, and sprinkle with a little gold edible glitter for best effect.

7. Make sure you give the majority away before you try one, otherwise you risk eating the whole batch in one sitting and not even feeling guilty about it.