E.L.F

This SATURDAY 23rd February

 NEVER EAT WOBBLY JELLY

 is popping up in a

POP-UP Cafe in Stoke Newington!

I will be helping out at E.L.F Cafe, which is situated inside East London Furniture's shop. 

So you have the added bonus of sitting on and testing out furniture which if you like you can buy! Gotta love "test before you buy". Oh and you even get the added bonus of seeing the furniture being designed

and created in the back of the premises.

Chance Kellner, the creator of the CAFE inside E.L.F, will be dishing out fresh coffee made with NUDE coffee beans and homemade cakes and treats. It is a 'true' pop-up venture and you could easily walk past it without realising the hidden gem is inside.

I'll be rolling up my sleeves, helping out, baking a few treats and most probably getting to grips with the washing up!

I shall be doing a post about the cafe and my day helping out soon. But please do pop in, it will only be there till the end of March - SO DON'T MISS OUT!

E.L.F Cafe is open 10am - 4pm on Saturday, and I shall be there from 12noon to 4pm - so do pop by and pop in to the pop-up!

E.L.F

197-199 Stoke Newington High Street

Here are few links:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/112511792263159/permalink/117841668396838/

http://www.wearepopup.com/p/meanwhile-in-stoke-newington/

And a bit about East London Furniture:

http://www.eastlondonfurniture.co.uk/contact.html

Linzer Biscuits

So even though I made a large batch of Flapjacks for the office, they were all eaten in one day!? So as it's turned out, I did end up baking some more 'Christmas-y' biscuits (Well they have red in them).

I made these last year and I think they went down well, I was too busy eating them myself! They are individual hazelnut shortbreads with raspberry jam in the middle - a posh jammy dodger if you will.

Ooo I do like a jammy dodger and a cuppa tea (yes there is an 80yr inside trying to get out)
Anyway, my Dad very kindly made me some boxes this year - He runs a box company - makes boxes for the Queen, don't you know! ;) It's quite funny actually, recently I was near Green Park with a friend. You know near Buck Palace. It dawned on me that there might be a Buck Palace gift shop near by. So mid conversation, I yelped with excitement (I do make myself laugh)  and proceeded to drag the individual over the park into the shop. It was full to top with all my Dad's boxes!?

Now, even though I've known he's made boxes for them for a while, to see them on display in the shop, in Central London, Outside Buck Palace!!! Well was rather RUDDY exciting! Ha! It was like having a famous box making Dad!! (Took me a while to explain my sudden surge of crazy antics) LOL

(Just had re-read what I had written, cause couldn't remember how I got from biscuits to Buckingham Palace - lol) This will be down to the fact I was up till 1.30am baking last night (got a bit carried away - as I always do).

So yeah, the boxes. My Dad, originally designed me these beautifully fabric coated, bright coloured boxes, that if I wanted could be lined with fabric, so on and so forth. They were truely great! So he was a bit perplexed when I asked for basic basic boxes, just brown, no coating inside or outside. But I do love a classic brown box. There is a true beauty in the simplest of things.

Thanks for the boxes Dad ;)

I gave a couple of Boxes to one of our clients, Tim and his crew (also gave him a box of flapjacks, as he mentioned how much he liked them). A box to the Touch Crew (my work) and another to Anne at FUSS (it's her birthday this weekend).

Get such a buzz from baking these biscuits. I think it's because they look so smart when you put them together. Hmm. It's just such a great feeling that in a short period of time you can create something so delicate and pretty that will consequently be eaten and then gone forever.

Flapjack Cookies revisited

Did you know that the main reason people visit my blog is to read one of my first posts on my Mum's Flapjack Cookies recipe 239 people to be exact!?!

I haven't been home for a while and even though Christmas is on the horizon ( & tempted to make Christmas-y looking biscuits) I felt compelled to make a few home comforts. Ahh my kitchen smelt just like back-home when I was baking them. I grew up on these and will always consider them as proper flapjacks and not the slice variety that everyone else are used too.

This lovely new batch of flapjacks were for my clients and work colleagues.
Half the tin was eaten by midday!?

Victoria's Famous Flapjacks

170g Traditional whole rolled oats
140g Sugar
140g Plain flour
1 tsp bicarb of soda
2 tbsp Boiling hot water
170g block butter
1 tablespoon Syrup
(makes around 34 biscuits)

Preheat oven to 180oc

Mix the oats, sugar and flour together in bowl. In a separate bowl mix the boiling water and bicarb of soda, then mix into the oat mixture.

Melt the butter & syrup in a bowl over boiling water. once melted add to the oat mixture.
Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray covered with baking parchment, press two fingers into each blob. Make sure they are too close together as they will spread. If you're using one tray, do it in three batches.

Pop in the oven for around 12-14 mins, they won't take long.
leave to cool on the tray a bit to crisp-en up, then onto a wire rack to fully cool.
Package up and hand out to people to make yourself smile ;D

A blog called Constellations have blogged about my mum's recipe too, and it looks like they went down well. Lets just hope that the office and my clients like the oaty variety treats to the jammy linzer biscuits I made last year.

Questions is ... how should I package them?
Hmmm will post some photos once I decide.

Ginger Spiced Flapjack Cookies

 As we're nearing spring I thought what a better time to use up ingredients in my baking cupboard - the first one on the list was stem ginger! Black treacle and rice flour to be used up next, so all ideas welcome :)

So these are a slight twist to mum's original recipe for Flapjack Cookies I did previously on the blog. Whilst mentioning my mum's Flapjack recipe, did you know that is one of the main reasons people end up finding / reading my blog!?! It's because they type in 'flapjack cooie' into google and my link shows as the forth one down (yes just below the BBC - Ha!!)

Right sorry went off on a bit of a tangent then, back to the old recipe :))

Ginger Flapjack Cookies

100g Stork or Softened butter
1 tbsp Golden syrup
100g  Caster sugar
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp Ground ginger
2 tbsp Finely grated stem ginger
100g Plain flour (if you wanna be ubber healthy use wholemeal flour)
125g Porridge oats

Pop the butter, syrup and sugar in a small saucepan and heat gently until just melted. Remove from the heat heat and add the bicarbonate soda, ground ginger and the grated stem ginger.
In a separate large bowl put in your oats and flour, mix. Then pour in the warm ingredients from the saucepan - mix well.
Now at this point I wrapped  the dough in cling and popped it into the freezer for half an hour to an hour, just to make it easier to work with. Roll into small balls and place on prepared and lined baking trays. Pop in an oven preheated at 180oc for around 10mins - I ended having to do this in three batches as only have 2 trays. Leave to cool on the trays once out of the oven for 1-2mins before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Oats & ginger? They must be healthy!?! :)

Cookies The Size of your Hand!!

February is here already and I'm desperate to see signs of spring...summer soon..please!!
Now I realise the start of the year is time for 'detoxing' and diets. Well personally I think that January and February are better known for being miserable and dowdy months... SO! I am encouraging "re-toxing" to help with the February blues :) Re-toxing as i read on another blog is a term used for eating foods that make you happy!! Now who could deny happiness!?
On that note I present the BIGGEST cookies I've ever made, courtesy off The Humming Bird Recipe Book.

White chocolate and Pecan nut Cookies Recipe
250g Unsalted Butter (yes I know - A whole block!?)
100g caster sugar
200g Soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
11/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
400g Plain flour
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Baking powder
100g white choc, chopped
100g Shelled Pecan nuts, chopped

Put the butter and sugars in a bowl and using a handheld electric whisk, cream until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well and scraing any unmixed ingredients from the side of the bowl with a spatula after each addition. Turn the mixer down to slow speed and beat in the vanilla extract.

Add the flour, salt and baking powder and mix well until a smooth dough is formed. Stir in the chocolate and pecan nuts until evenly dispersed.

Divide the mixture in half and shape each half into a roll 15cm in length and 3cm in diameter.wrap the rolls in cling and put them in the freezer to set completely for a couple of hours.

Preheat the oven to 170oc.

Get the rolls out of the freezer and take off the cling. Cut the dough into disks around 2cm in thickness. Arrange the cookies on prepared baking trays with parchment. make sure the cookies are well spaced as they will spread to around double the size when baking. Bake in the preheated oven for around 10-15minutes, or until golden brown around the edges and quite flat. Leave the cookies to cool slightly on the trays before turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

The cookies should be soft and slightly chewy :)
See if you can resist eating one warm with a glass of ice cold milk!!!

Enjoy!
I plan to do these again but using dark choc and hazelnuts, it has to be done and tried :D

 

BOURBON BRILLIANTS

So as it turns out my fav biscuits are bourbon biscuits and so I decided to have a go at making my own. Using the brilliant World Wide Web I found a recipe...which I followed...then tweaked by adding random handfuls of extra flour / sugar and an egg. In other words this recipe could be a little off.

I plan to make them again as they were a HIT. 

I promise to double check the measurements and post accordingly. But until then you'll have to do with this 'guess' of a recipe.. yeah sorry about that!! But hey who said 'creating art' was a precise science!?!

Note I say 'art' - I'm sure by classing anything as 'art' you don't have to follow any rules as it ruins your creative streak!! (well this is what I'm going with anyway - and who's gonna question that!?!??)
RECIPE:

125g Plain Flour
60g Caster Sugar 
25g Cocoa Powder
1/2tspn Bicarbonate of soda
50g Stork or Butter
1 Egg beaten
1 tbsp syrup

75g Icing sugar
50g unsalted butter - room temp
1 tbsp Cocoa powder
1 tbsp Camp coffee essence
50g of 70% dark chocolate to decorate

METHOD:

Pop the oven on at 170oc or 160oc for Fan assisted. Get out as many baking tray as you have and line with baking parchment. Prep done!Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.Place the butter/stork in a saucepan with the syrup and heat until melted. Pour into the melted concoction into the the dry ingredients and stir. Then add the beaten eggs. Now get your hands in there and mix up up into a good ball of tasty dough.Pop in the oven for 12-18 minutes until golden brown. Once ready pull out the oven but leave them on the hot baking trays until the tray has gone cold, which at this point you can pop them onto a wore rack to finish cooling. *really important to leave on the hot baking tray as this will make sure they'll have that crunch!Once cooled you can melt off some delicious dark choc in a bowl over a pan of hot water. Then using a spoon or spatula, get some of the melted choc and squiggle over the top of the biscuits. Leave to set on the wire rack.

I've decided that is actually COMPULSORY to have a glass of ice cold milk whilst eating these. It makes the experience much more IMMENSE!
Enjoy & Merry Christmas for tomorrow. Hope you all have a festive food filled feast!!xx

Ginger Biscuits

These again are made using one of mum's fab recipes. My sister and I used to make them as kids...well get to the stage of eating loads of raw dough anyway...

Here is Victoria Tunstill's (my mum's) secret recipe for her famous ginger biscuits:

RECIPE:
 (this makes LOADS you may want to do just half the recipe to start with)
1 1/2 lb Plain Flour
1lb Caster Sugar
5tspn Ginger Powder
2tspn Bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt


1/2lb Stork or Butter
2Eggs - beaten
8 tbsp syrup
And if you're feeling extra naughty... 200g of 70% dark chocolate to dip them in after they've cooled.

Pop the oven on at 190oc or 180oc for Fan assisted. Get out as many baking tray as you have and line with baking parchment. Prep done!

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Place the butter/stork in a saucepan with the syrup and heat until melted. Pour into the melted concoction into the the dry ingredients and stir. Then add the beaten eggs. Now get your hands in there and mix up up into a good ball of tasty dough. *

* This is the point I end up eating most of the raw dough mixture...*

Pull off small blobs of dough and roll into balls - no bigger than a 50p piece.
Place spaced out on a baking sheet and press your finger gently on the top to 'squidge it'. They will spread whilst cooking, I usually fit 12 on a square baking sheet.

Pop in the oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Once ready pull out the oven but leave them on the hot baking trays until the tray has gone cold, which at this point you can pop them onto a wore rack to finish cooling. *really important to leave on the hot baking tray as this will make sure they'll have that crunch!

Once cooled you can melt off some delicious dark choc in a bowl over a pan of hot water, and one by one dip in the biscuits and then leave to set on the wire rack.

DELICIOUS!!!

TOUCH Christmas Treats

I decided to take some of my baked goods to share at work this year... as you can see by the time I got round to taking photos, most of the biscuits had been eaten already!?!

Ginger Biscuits and Linzer Hazelnut Dodgers and the usual load of juicy clementines.

Off to bake more tonight to replenish the jars, and will be posting the recipes up soon.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Cook-athon Part 2 - Millionaire Shortbread

As I'm yet to become a millionaire or be whisked away by a millionaire, Millionaire shortbread seemed to be the only option!
This was the traditional treat until it was transformed into the choc bar known as TWIX. Oh and before i continue don't get any clever ideas of trying the toffee before it's cooled!! It's like ruddy lava and stay hot for ages - thus I now have burnt fingers, that'll teach me...

Recipe

Shortbread:
125g Butter (salted is better)
50g caster sugar
175g plain / rice flour

Topping:
125g butter
100g sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
200g condensed milk - usually sold in tins of 397g, so roughly use half a tin.
200g milk chocolate

Grease a & line a 20.5cm x 40.5cm baking tray (or one roughly rectangle and a bit deep :) Preheat oven to 150oc/300oF/gas 2.

Rub all the ingredients for the shortbread together as if you were making crumble, but keep going until it starts to form a very stiff, crumbly dough. Don't add any liquid!!

When the dough forms press it evenly into the baking tray using your fingers (rustic look!) - as it cooks it tends to level out. Bake the shortbread for 20minutes then set aside and allow to cool.

Heat the butter and sugar in a saucepan. When the sugar has dissolved add the syrup and the condensed milk. bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. it will thicken and go a toffee colour. As soon as this happens spread it over the shortbread and allow it to cool.

Now melt the chocolate with 4 tbsp of water, either in a bain Marie (bowl over a pan of hot water) or in a microwave. As soon as you can, pour it over the toffee and biscuit and even it out with a knife. The reason for adding the water to the choc is so that it makes it easier to pour & also prevents it from going brittle (next time may use less water, as it quite nice for it to be a bit brittle).

Allow it to chill / cool for at least an hour, then cut it into whatever shapes sizes you desire. Once made it will keep in the fridge for up to a week. So by next sat you may have won the lottery and be paying me to make some of this shortbread!! lol!!

Peanut goowey bars

Some people just aren't breakfast people and can't do early morning food. This I can't really relate to, when I wake up the first thing I think about is what I should have. Pete is one of those breakfast missers and could very easily skip it completely... until I made these that is!!

For his birthday his mum gave him Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall new cook book - "River Cottage Every Day", which is where I found the recipe.

RECIPE

125g unsalted butter
150g soft brown sugar
125g crunchy peanut butter
75g honey
Grated zest 1 lemon
Grated zest 1 orange
200g whole rolled porridge oats
150g dried fruit, such as sultanas, raisins, apricots
150g mixed seeds, such as pumpkin, sunflower, poppy, linseed (I used pumkin, sesame, poppy seeds)

Grease and line a baking tin, about 20cm square.
Put the butter, sugar, peanut butter, honey and citrus zests into a deep saucepan over a very low heat. Leave until melted, stirring from time to time.
Stir the oats, dried fruit and most of the seeds into the melted mixture until thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture out evenly into the baking tin. Sprinkle the remaining seeds on top, plus a drizzle of honey.
Place in a preheated oven (160C/gas mark 3) for about 30 minutes, until golden in the centre and golden brown at the edges. Be careful not to leave it too long. Golden brown edges, not black.
Leave to cool completely in the tin. Be patient – it cuts much better when cold and easily falls apart when warm. Turn out and cut out into squares with a sharp knife.

Eat when an energy boost is required.

 

Pete's been eating them for his brekkie, not necessarily the healthiest option but not the worst either. They are full of healthy oats & seeds after all.

aMAZEing Biscuits!

These were the biscuits we devoured before entering the maze. I was so busy taking photos the girls even tried to loose me!! Can you believe it :-O 

Linzer Biscuits

Originally, Empire biscuits were called German biscuits or Linzer biscuits.  But because of WWII, it was renamed to Empire biscuits.... Or you might know them similar to Jammy Doggers! 

50g Chopped hazelnuts

225 plain flour

75g Golden caster sugar

150g Butter, diced

Zest of 1/2 lemon

1 Egg yolk

4 tbsp Seedless jam

Sifted Icing sugar

Place the nuts in a food processor and process with half of the sugar from the recipe until finely ground. Set aside.

Put the flour and sugar in a mixing bowl or a food processor. Add the butter and rub in with your fingertips or process until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the ground hazelnuts and lemon zest (make sure the lemon zest is nice and fine), then mix in the egg yolk an bring the mixture together with your hands to form a firm dough.

Divide the ball into two and wrap in cling - place in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour (Trust me this will make your life easier!).

Lightly roll out one half of the dough on a lightly floured surface (or even better on the cling film it was wrapped in) until it is around just under 1cm thick. Stamp out 5.5cm circles using fluted round biscuit cutter. Transfer to a parchment covered baking tray. Use a small heart / star shape cutter to remove 2.5cm hearts or stars from the middle of half of the biscuits.

Bake in batches at 160oc for around 10-12 minutes each, or until pale golden brown, then repeat with the remaining dough.

Leave the biscuits to harden on the baking sheets for 2mins once out of the oven. Then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool.

Place all the top halves (with the cutouts) together and sieve icing sugar over the top of them. Put the seedless jam into a small saucepan (you might want to add more jam, it's up to you) and heat slightly so in becomes a bit more runny. Divide the jam evenly between the centers of the base biscuits and spread thickly, leaving a border of the biscuit showing.

Cover with the icing coated top halves, being careful not to mess the icing sugar up too much.

Enjoy!!

Pete's Chocolate chewy morsels

These are quite simular to the chocolate fingers on a previous post I did, but these are very different and are Pete's fav. He says it's cause they are more chewy :)

So again dead easy to make...

Recipe:
200g Digestive biscuits
100g Butter
3 tbsp Golden Syrup
2 tbsp cocoa powder
50g raisins
100g dark choc

1. Butter a tin (can be whatever you have about - cake tin, bread tin ) an 18cm sandwich tin is good. I used a bread tin to help with the square edges.
2. Now the best bit, all that pent up anger - take it out on those biscuits. Put them in a bag first & bash into uneven crumbs.
3. Melt the butter and syrup in a pan. Stir in the cocoa and raisins and then the biscuit crumbs. Spoon into the tin and press firmly.
4. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water and then spread over the biscuit base.
   
5. Chill for at least half and hour. Cut up and serve!

Chocolate Brandy Fingers

These chocolate brandied currant fingers, really give you that cocoa choc hit!
And are also really easy to make:

75g currants
60ml Brandy
250g plain choc biscuit digestives
85g unsalted butter
330g dark choc chopped
190ml pouring cream

Place the currants and brandy in a small saucepan over a low heat and cook until the brandy is absorbed. Set aside to cool.

Place the biscuits and butter in a food processor and process until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Press mixture into a 10cm x 35cm loose bottom tin.

Put the choc and cream in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until the choc has melted and smooth. Add the currents, pour over the base and refidgerate for 2 hours until firm...

can serve as a pud with cream and rasberries......

Mum's Flapjack Cookies

So this weekend I decided to make a batch of my fav flapjacks!
Now these aren't the average flapjacks, these are made using my mums recipe, which is more of a cookie than a slice.

They are sooo moreish and not too bad on the hips :o)

Victoria's Famous Flapjack Recipe:
6oz Traditional whole rolled oats
5oz Sugar
5oz Plain flour
1 tspn bicarb of soda
2 tbsp Boiling hot water
6oz block butter
1 tablespoon Syrup
(makes around 34 biscuits)

Preheat oven to 180oc
Mix the oats, sugar and flour together in bowl. In a seperate bowl mix the boiling water and bicarb of soda, then mix into the oat miture.

Melt the butter & syrup in a bowl over boiling water. once melted add to the oat mixture.
Roll into small balls and place on a baking tray covered with baking parchment, press two fingers into each blob. Make sure they are too close together as they will spread. If you're using one tray, do it in three batches.

Pop in the oven for around 12-14 mins, they won't take long.
leave to cool on the tray a bit to crispen up, then onto a wire rack to fully cool.

Make a large cuppa tea and enjoy!