Cheese Biscuits

The most amazing chocolate shop has opened near where I work. It used to be a Peyton and Byrne so I was devastated when it changed to a rather weak cafe. I could no longer just grab some fabulous cupcakes as gifts for people. However the rather weak cafe has closed and in its place, intoxicating the air with the aroma of a saucepan full of molten chocolate, is paul.a.young.  

The smell dragged me in and I looked in awe at brownies, slabs of chocolates, delicate confectionary and the owner making chocolate tarts right in front of me. I was slightly interrupted from my blissful musings by a rather loud American going on about how wondrous the chocolate was but forgave her when I realised she had suffered a lifetime of Hershey's. Luckily a perfect excuse to purchase brownies was presented to me by the need to provide cake for a meeting. I saw four different types of brownies so said I'd have one of each. I'd seen that one was salted caramel so that was enough for me. 

When I got to the meeting much excitement ensued and the brownies were cut up to be shared. Then, shock, horror and more excitement - one of the brownies was Marmite flavoured. I hate marmite but it went down well with others which I suppose is the point of Marmite. The leftover pieces were taken into another meeting as a form of Russian roulette so it gave much joy. Now Marmite brownies are a fairly normal thing to dislike. Dislike of bread with cheese in, from a person who likes cheese, is just weird in my eyes. The Thew met today's baking with passionate distaste. Apparently cheese goes on bread - pizza is included in this - but not incorporated as an ingredient into it. Therefore cheese biscuits are wrong according to The Thew. I like it so I baked these, plus I had cheese to use up. These make a great Christmas gift accompanied by cheese and can be made thinner and larger if needed (just cook for less time). I was making them to have on their own so make chunky ones. 

Ingredients

175g strong cheese (I had 100g of blue cheese in the fridge so added 75g of parmesan. Aggressive cheddar would work on its own or mixed with others)

100g unsalted butter, softened (cheese can be salty so you can use salted butter but it could make it too salty)

1 egg yolk

175g plain flour (I used 125g white and then 50g of rye as I like the colour it gives)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1 egg, beaten (optional) 

1.    Grate the cheese if you can or crumble up. Basically you want small pieces.

2.    Mix the butter, cheese and egg yolk together in a big mush.

3.    Add the flour and pepper and combine to create a dampish dough.  Make into a disk, wrap in cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

4.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM6 and remove the dough from the fridge. If it’s been in for a while then just let it soften a bit as this will make it easier to roll.

5.    Roll out the dough on a floured surface to about 5mm thick and cut out shapes. I used a round 5cm cutter but you can do shapes if you want. Keep re-rolling until all the dough is used up.

6.    Place on a baking tray (they don’t need to be left far apart as they go upwards not across so you can get quite a few on at a time) and glaze with the beaten egg. If you want them matt, not shiny, then leave it off.

7.    Bake for 12-15 minutes (I turn mine half way through to keep the colour even) and then take out and cool. 

Makes about 25-35 depending on cutter size.

Chicken and Chorizo Pie

I’m disheartened by my complete lack of skill with pastry and am not looking forward to the energy I need to expend to get good. Most baking things I can master and I’m happy to ignore icing as I’m bad at it. Pastry though is a basic that I should be able to do. I have no idea what the issue is but I clearly need to practise more.

I decided to make a pie this week. I don’t watch Bake Off (shock horror) but I know that they made a picnic pie in the final so thought I’d give it a go. I should have bought the pastry but attempted a lard/butter short crust thing that should have worked but didn’t. It cracked, I had to piece it together in the tin, there were a lot of holes I had to patch up – a nightmare. It didn’t help that I was making a massive pie in a 20” springform tin so the rolling and transporting was a pain.

Anyway, the filling does rock so I’m happy with that. It tastes great and I should probably try making mini pies in a muffin tin before attempting a huge pie. The pastry tastes great but just looks shocking. I’m giving guidelines below so sorry for the ramshackle recipe.

Ingredients

800g short crust pastry - Recipes were saying 500g but unless you can roll it out ultra-thin (and who wants that in a pie) and transport it to a tin in one piece then forget it. Also if you can do that you’re super human in my eyes and should be saving the world! I’m not giving a recipe for this as mine clearly didn’t work. Just buy some ready to roll.

4 chicken breasts

1 x chorizo ring (about 225g)

1 x pack of pork sausages

1 heaped tsp of hot chili pepper

1 heaped tsp cayenne pepper

1 egg, beaten

 

1.    Preheat the oven the 180°c/GM4.

2.    Make the filling as I think it benefits from sitting together for a while before cooking. Chop the chicken breasts and chorizo into small pieces. Mix with the sausage meat that you take out of the cases. Then add the spice and mush together. Hands are best. I tend not to use salt and pepper as you’re using two meats that have already been prepared so there should be enough. If you’re not sure then just fry up a small amount and taste once cooked.

3.    Grease your tin with butter. Then roll out 2/3rds of the pastry to cover the bottom and sides of the tin. I’m not going to help with method but if it cracks or breaks use water to cement it back together. It will taste fine as its pastry.

4.    Put your filling in the pie and squish down (I didn’t blind bake the case as the filling isn’t cooked and I think you only do that if the pie is going in for about 30 mins or so – this does run the risk of a soggy bottom to the pie but once again its pastry – it will taste fine).

5.    Roll out the rest of rest of your pastry to make a lid. Use egg to wash the pastry in the tin that will come in contact with the lid. Then put the lid on. Cut off excess and squish the top and side pastry together. Wash the top with egg.

6.    Cover the top of the pie with foil and bake for 45 mins. After that time take the foil off and bake for another 45 mins. Cool and serve.

N.B. Cool in the tin and don’t attempt the remove the springform sides until it’s cool and you’ve run a knife around it. Otherwise you might find that half a side comes off leaving you attempting to stick it back on with egg wash, whacking the sides around it again, shoving it in the oven and begging for it to work (it does).

Luckily looks don't matter to those I work with. Serve with mustard and piccalili.

Rhubarb and Custard Tart

I won the lottery! Four numbers between four of us. Not quite the big time but heading in the right direction. My good friend Rachel has been managing our little syndicate for years now and every now and again some money will enter my account when we have a bit of cash to pay out. I have to do nothing, as my direct debit for my lines goes over automatically, so it make the small amounts feel like a little treat. Normally I do nothing about it but this time I thought I should get something with the money as I fancied treating myself. But what to get? Most of the shops a short distance from my work sell electronics or home ware. Therefore home ware was going to be the theme.  

This happily coincided with my thinking about what to bake this week. I bought some rhubarb last week but wasn’t feeling the whole rhubarbness so made caramel cupcakes. However it’s still in my fridge and pretty much begging me to do something with it. I love rhubarb and there were always a few plants at the end of the garden while growing up so it was used liberally. I don’t think it’s used enough as its slight tartness is welcome, even if you have to slather it in sugar to make it palatable. Surely that’s a plus? So I thought ‘rhubarb’, then I thought ‘custard’, but I don’t want a crumble – what about a tart?!!! 

So below is the culmination of my thought process, matched with winning the lottery and deciding to treat myself to a loose bottomed flan tin. My case split, and half the custard drained out while baking, but it rocked. I used a 25cm tin but you could use one slightly smaller, although I had custart left. It’s a really simple recipe and I’d say that you could use the custard as a base for any fruit tart that you like. Soft fruit would work well and I wouldn’t bother with roasting first. 

Ingredients

400g rhubarb

100g caster sugar

A vanilla pod if you have it but I chucked in some extract

350g short crust pastry (I used the ready roll but it just broke apart. I think the readymade block would be better and just roll it out yourself or buy a readymade tart case!)

75g soft butter

150g caster sugar

300ml double cream

3 large eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

1.    Preheat the oven to GM5/190°C.

2.    Chop up the rhubarb into chunks. About 3 - 4cm long and if it’s chunky cut in half lengthways. Cover with the caster sugar, drizzle on the vanilla extract, cover with foil and put in the oven for 15 minutes until soft. (Mine went completely mushy but it worked). Then leave it covered until you need it.

3.    If baking your case then roll out the pastry and line a buttered flan tin with it. Ideally loose bottomed but if you don’t mind prising the first bit out in a messy way then any tart style tin will do. Blind bake (so a large piece of baking paper down, cover with a load of lentils chucked on top to stop the pastry rising. Some people have specialist baking beads but screw that – lentils do) for 15 minutes then lift the baking paper out, with the lentils, and bake for about 7 minutes until the case is hard and starting to colour.

4.    If not baking your case, and you’ve bought one, then skip step 3 and feel smug.

5.    Turn the oven down to GM3/160°C. Put the soft butter (make sure it’s really soft), sugar, cream, eggs and vanilla in a bowl and whisk together. Custard done! See so simple.

6.     Drain the rhubarb, keeping the liquid as you could serve with some of this and cream. Fill half the case with custard, dot the fruit around, then fill the case with the rest of the custard. If you feel like it save some fruit to lay on top to look impressive. I didn’t do this!

7.    Bake for 35 minutes with a baking tray on the bottom of the oven to catch any stray custard.

8.    Fully cool before serving. 

N.B. You will have some pastry and possibly some custard left. So cut out rounds of the pastry, line a cup cake tin with them, adding the custard. Bake for 15 minutes and cool.

Hot Cross Buns

Sometimes making an effort is worth it. Sometimes it’s not. A specific example would be taking time over making your fringe look nice just before going outside into gale force winds. Not worth it. Training in the gym for weeks so you can keep some dignity during a brutal 10km course (that actually was 11.2km) is. Well kind of. It’s all a matter of balance and what is important to you.

 

Baking falls into this. It’s one of those things where the end product takes longer to make than to be consumed. I’m basically a feeder (I blame my Irish heritage and the compulsion this gives me to force food on people) so I don’t mind that everything disappears. In fact I’d panic if it didn’t! An interesting take on this time to make vs. time to consume was in ‘Rant’ by Chuck Palahnuik (well worth a read but prepared to have to read it about three times and then go on forums to work out what the hell just happened). The main characters mother is annoyed by how quickly her food is demolished without full appreciation of the taste, so she starts putting thumb taks, balls of tin foil and cherry pips in her food. People learn to chew carefully, take their time and ultimate appreciate the taste more. Now it’s not something I’m going to start doing but it makes you think about how all the traditions around those cakes that have a ‘prize’ baked in for the ‘lucky’ person who finds it in their piece got started.

 

Baking is full of tradition and the ones surrounding hot cross buns are huge. Take one on a ship to stop a shipwreck and hang one in your kitchen to stop fires. There are lots more but you can go on Wikipedia for that, let’s get on to the recipe. These are great and so light compared to the ones in the supermarket. I’m going to be honest though. They can feel like a lot of effort because of the crosses. Don’t ask me why but that extra step feels like forever to me. I think it’s because I don’t like piping bags so I use short crust pastry instead. However over the years I have found it to be less stressful and messy and the end result is pretty much the same – a cross on top of a bun! So these are more effort than picking them up on your weekly shop but the lightly spiced soft buns make up for it as far as I’m concerned.

Ingredients

Buns

250ml milk

75g butter

100g caster sugar

2 x 7g sachets fast acting yeast

2 large eggs

450g strong white flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

2 tsp mixed spice

Pinch of salt

150g mixed dried fruit

1 egg, beaten (in addition to the ones above)

Short crust

200g plain flour

100g butter

Pinch salt

1 egg

1.    Put the butter and milk in a saucepan and gently heat. You just want it warm so don't boil. I haven't put these down as ingredients but you can chuck a couple if cardamom pods and a clove in to infuse in the milk mix. I'm not certain it makes a difference but you feel fairly smug. Try some orange peel as well.

2.    Take out anything you added to the milk mixture and measure out 60ml. Add a 1 tbsp of caster sugar and the yeast to it, then just to one side.

3.    Add the flour, rest of the sugar, spices and salt to a bowl and mix well. Make a well in the middle.

4.    Beat the 2 large eggs into the left over milk mixture then mix in the yeast mixture. Add most of it into the flour mix. Now this is where you get your dough hooks out. (You can knead by hand but I really can’t ever be bothered). Mix for about a minute. It is a damp-ish dough but don't over add on the liquid.

5.    Add the dried fruit and knead with your dough hooks for about 5 minutes. You want the dough shiny and pulling away from the side of the bowl.

6.    Cover with cling film double size in a warm place (I can’t tell you the joy I had when I saw our flat for the first time and saw it had an airing cupboard).

7.    Then make the short crust or look up a recipe for the flour paste version. Flour, salt and butter in a food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add most of the egg, pulse, add more egg if it needs it but you want it to just come together. Put in the fridge for about 15 minutes and then roll out thin and cut out strips. Done! (You’ll only need about a 1/3 of this so save the rest for making jam tarts or just freeze until you need).

8.    Take your doubled in size dough and knead for 2 minutes. Then divide into buns about 45g in weight (I do weigh them but I’m weird). Put them on an oiled baking tray leaving space between them and wash with beaten egg, placing a short crust pastry cross on top.

9.    Leave to rise somewhere warm for about an hour and pre-heat the oven to 190°C/GM5.

10.  Once they’ve risen again put in the oven. After 5 minutes turn the heat to 180°C/GM4 for another 10. I find that these like to burn quickly so just watch them. Then let them cool and eat with butter.