Malted Chocolate Cake from Mary Berry

Last weekend I had planned to make something cake-like from Mary Berry Everyday – toffee cupcakes, walnut brittle and coffee cake or orange drizzle (layered) cake anyone? However they will need to wait for another day, as I wanted to bake with my Missy and she chose this Malted Chocolate Cake from Mary Berry’s Absolute Favourites by Mary Berry.

It was good too, I am used to making Nigella’s Malteser cake, and this one made with Ovaline (no endorsement, just what I used)  has slightly different flavours. First couple of bites I needed to get used to it, but after that it was lovely. Such is the nature of expecting one flavour in your mind and getting another. Anyhow, all gone now, and we had great fun making it.

Penang Chicken and Rice Stir Fry (Mary Berry)

Supper a couple of nights ago was this, Penang Chicken and Rice Stir Fry. It comes from Mary Berry Everyday by Mary Berry, out last Thursday.

Very good it was too.  I followed the recipe, essentially honey chicken with a curried veggie laced rice, with the exception that I used low salt soy, which I do routinely now. Will make this one again, nice (and easy) for a flavourful everday supper.

It’s a good book, exactly what it says in the title, number of delicious looking cakes too! More from this one soon.

Gizzi's A Kind of Tartiflette

Well, I don’t know about you, but January tends to see me attempting to use up the ingredients that I had bought in December for Festive Christmas and Holiday Cooking. The only problem being that often December supper times see me so exhausted that the said festive delight doesn’t make it to the table. Really though anything suitable for Christmas Time is a good dish for Wintertime too. So January usually sees some delicious cooking. Whislt feeling like good husbandry in terms of using up food that I already have in the pantry or Freezer.

This recipe is a case in point, I bought the cheese and bacon, which I subsequently popped in the freezer. Only to come back to life last night as kind of Tartiflette from Gizzi’s Season’s Eatings by Gizzi Erskine. Not as rich as some due to the use of crème fraiche and milk. SO good!

Dark and Sumptuous Vegan Chocolate Cake

My ol' blog has been very neglected over the past couple of years, which has been mainly due to my Mum being very ill and eventually passing away last year. A heart wrenching life changing event. I now have more time on my hands again, and a few friends have said to me I must start blogging again. I pondered this for some time, but came to the conclusion “Why not?” I used to enjoy blogging.

So here I am, with my first tentative steps into the blogging world again. I’m going to start with a cake I made just after Simply Nigella by Nigella Lawson came out. Her Dark and Sumptuous Vegan Chocolate Cake.  It is a truly fabulous dark chocolate cake, much loved by my daughter, so much so in fact that she asked for it for her recent birthday, with some alterations! See below.  I must tell you that both times I’ve made it the icing has gone fudgey, not ganache like in consistency as it was when Nigella made it on the TV. Though we as a family like fudgy, so no big issue there.

You can find the recipe from the book on Nigella’s website here.

The bespoke birthday cake, filled with a small jar of Nutella and topped with Ferrero Rochers!

Gizzi’s Season’s Eatings

 

I love this book! Gizzi’s Season’s Eatings Feasts & Celebrations from Halloween to Happy New Year by Gizzi Erskine Mitchel Beazley 2016.

I’m quite a Gizzi fan, all the recipes of hers that I have cooked have been lovely. So, it was with much anticipation that I awaited this new book.  We went on a long weekend break the day this book came out, and it came with me as part of my holiday reading! I couldn’t leave it!!

Chapters are: Devilish Delights * Sparkle & Pop* Celebrating the Harvest* Festive Baking* Bring Back the Buffet* The Night Before Christmas* Christmas Day* Festive Foraging* and  Ring in the New.

The pictures are good, some a little dark to reflect the season, some simply bursting with Hygge. The graphics are fabulous! Cats, deer, trees, pumpkin and all things Christmassy. Good chatty intros to the recipes.

There are so many tempting recipes for cold weather food. I have made three so far, Old School Sausage Hotpot & Root Vegetable Mash, Tartiflette de Savoyard-(ish) and Epic Malted Hot Chocolate. All fab and will make them again. Next on my long list are: The Infamous Erskine Turkey Curry, Little Gilded Ginger Sponge Puddings, Blueberry & Spelt Cobbler, ‘Nduja Sausage Rolls (though I’ll use the alternative chorizo, as never seen ‘Nduja), Smoke-Roasted Treacle-Cured Salmon with Potato, Cucumber and Buttermilk Salad not to mention the fabulously indulgent Chocolate-Orange Cream Liqueur,  though I’m saving it for December!

So, to come full circle, I do like a good Christmas and winter feasting cookbook, and this one of Gizzi’s I just love. :)



Vegetarian

 

 

 

This is a fab veggie book!  Vegetarian by Alice Hart (Murdoch Books 2010).  I wanted to blog about it because Alice has a new vegetarian book our later this month, which I have high hopes for… anyhow, it seems right to do this one first.

I’ve bought a number of vegetarian books over the years, and really, an awful lot of them seem to find their way to the charity shop, more so now than before, as space has become very tight in our house, I expect it’s the compulsive book hoarder that lives here that is to blame….   (I’m only half kidding),  my point though, is that now with space at a premium every book must earn its place  - be it to cook from or as inspiration reading.

I do really like this book, it is the first book I’d come across that felt like it was vegetarian by default – just filled with very nice recipes.  I’ve made the giant couscous salad with roasted parsnips and peppers and a preserved lemon and charmoula dressing, which was very good, if portioned on the small side. Plus a sort of warm salad, quinoa with parsley, pesto, cranberries, roasted hazelnuts and mushrooms.    The recipe pictured here is cashew fried rice, which you serve with chilli tomato jam. I’ve never bothered with the jam, but have substituted sweet chilli sauce or sriracha.  It was the first time I’d made fried rice as the main event, and really loved it. A keeper.

Two other recipes that I am keen to try from this book are warm salad of slow-roast tomatoes, labne almonds, on mujadhara  and carrot and coriander fritters with a halloumi and sweet lemon dressing. Both of which look so good.

If the second book is anything like as good as the first, it’ll be a winner too!

An Old-Fashioned Christmas Sweet Traditions for Hearth and Home

I’m a sucker for most cookbooks, but even so, more recently I’ve been more selective than ever, which is partly financial and partly the fact that we are fast running out of space, the normal places for keeping books have long been filled and there are piles of books growing wherever I can fit them in.   I know I am due a clear out, but if I’m honest, I’m so dreading doing this that I’ve been putting it off… 

 

Anyhow, there are genres of cookbook that I have especially soft spots for and one of them is Christmas books and cookbooks. This book from the other side of the pond has a foot in both types, being a memoir of Christmases past with recipes.  An Old-Fashioned Christmas Sweet Traditions for Hearth and Home by Ellen Stimson (The Countryman Press 2015) I had not heard of this author, but will get her other (non-cookbook) in the New Year to read.

 

I just love the cosiness and wrap-me-up-in-a-warm-blanket with a roaring fire in the fireplace feeling it has.  Perhaps with snow falling softly outside. Ellen is a Christmas girl as she says, and she really is, she gets the very best feelings of Christmas and Winter, and can transfer them to the written word very well indeed.  When I first started reading this book I found it evocative of Laurie Colwin and Diana Henry’s writings. Which for me is a very good thing, though this lady has a voice all her own too.

 

There are her family’s stories and pictures of some of their precious Christmas tree ornaments or baubles if you prefer.   Of course there is also food, divided up into different sections  like Butter & Sugar, Cabin Food, Treats for Four Legged Friends, Party Foods, Christmas Eve Brunch, Christmas All Day Long and The Next Day.

 

I’ve not made anything from this book yet, but I had to share it with you now, before the big day arrives for this year. It’s an easy read, and could easily be binge-read (awful phrase, but you know what I mean), but I’m stretching it out in the evenings to last me up until Christmas Eve.