Picnic Sandwiches and Krispie Treats

 In the time when I wasn’t blogging, I discovered Teighan Gerard and her Half Baked Harvest website.  Her recipes are so good. She has a couple of excellent cookbooks, which I’ll get to in another post, but even if you don’t have her books, her website is wonderful. She is the blog I follow every post, and have done for coming up two years now. 

Anyhow, I’ve made a couple of her website recipes recently. The first Picnic Style Brie and Procuitto Sandwiches is a really treaty lunch. I swapped in ham and salami for procuitto, but really just use what you like. Perked up our Monday lunch time. 🙂

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The second is one I’ve been meaning to try for ages, Chocolate Covered Brown Butter Krispie Treats (also has peanut butter and pretzels in them!). A fab little no-bake recipe, that is so cute with the pretzels on top. Yum 😋 

Donal’s Char Sui Sausage Rolls

This is an online recipe from Donal’s Asian Baking TV series (Foodnetwork UK website). Char Sui Sausage Rolls. Such a fab recipe, different enough to be intriguing, but familiar enough to be comfort food. Delicious either way! Some salad and your supper is done.

Christmas Gingerbread Men Reindeer Cookies

A couple of years ago a mum at my daughter’s school Christmas Fayre made the red nosed version of these. Search for ‘upside down gingerbread reindeer cookies’ to see them.  I tried to find the original idea for these online, but I couldn’t.  I’m not going to use the picture without crediting it, hence the what-to-Google bit above.

Anyhow, I made these for my daughter’s party bags one year, and other times beside.  The gingerbread recipe in the link  here works like a dream, and is gingery enough, without having an off-putting level of spice for children too.

They are very cute. You need a sort of rounded gingerbread man cookie cutter, but I found mine easily and cheaply online.  A few smarties and some white and black icing and you are ready to create. It’s a fun and easy little project for Christmas-time.  There is only one red nosed reindeer in my picture, and this is because I was told in no uncertain terms that there is only one Rhudolph! =)

Ree Drummond Raspberry Tiramisu

For quite a while now I’ve been having a bit of a Ree Drummond Pioneer Woman recipe obsession.  This recipe is a dessert I made this last weekend as a trial for having friends round later in the Summer. I know one of them can’t go past Tiramisu on a dessert menu, so I had to try this raspberry tiramisu to make sure it was good!

It was gorgeous, the raspberries add a nice fruity edge to the Tiramisu.  Now, I have a slight confession to make, I don’t really like mascarpone in sweet things, so I used light cream cheese, and it worked out just fine.   At the time of posting this it is not in any of Ree’s books, but you can find the recipe for the raspberry tiramisu here on the Foodnetwork website.

Sally's Soft Gingersnap Molasses Cookies

Here is a little bonus before the proper Sally's Baking Addiction Cook Book review in a few days.

A recipe from her fabulous website.  I printed off this one (and three more while I was looking!). My friend Jodie of Jo Blogs, Jo Bakes ( http://joblogsjobakes.wordpress.com/ )  pointed me in the direction of these, a couple of days ago, and loving ginger as I do they had to be made!  Here is the link for Sally's recipe. 

http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/11/26/soft-gingersnap-molasses-cookies-4-ways/

Chocolate Heart Sandwich Cookies with Maraschino Cherry Frosting

Chocolate Heart Sandwich Cookies with Maraschino Cherry Frosting

So, for years I’ve been collecting cookie cutters, not in a big have-to-have them-all kind of way, but just picking them up here and there if I see some that are cute – they’ll be useful someday I always think.

I wasn’t brought up in a home where decorating cookies was something that happened. In fact I don’t think I can remember my mum making roll out cookies ever. I’ve always been interested in decorating cookies, it’s the kind of kitchen job I love to potter round with. So recently I found Glorious Treats and Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle - both thoroughly recommended. I’m not sure how I found them but I’m really glad I did as they are both fabulous blogs, the respective authors having both taste and flair, a winning combination.

So, St Valentine’s Day is coming and I thought I would try a roll out cookie, to see how it came out. I plumped for one from Glorious Treats, and the chocolate dough is great, easily made, easily rolled and very well behaved in the oven. They are sandwiched together with a maraschino cherry buttercream and decorated simply, but effectively with sugar crystals. They were loved by all, just the thing for your sweetie. For the post and recipe link within it go here to Glorious Treats.

Now I’ve found a roll out cookie I like I’m going to give iced cookies a go too, I can hardly wait!... and you know what? These cookie cutters I’ve been hoarding for years may well come in useful after all. Happy Valentines!

Next Review Up: Tea & Cake

Custard Cream Button Biscuits

Custard Cream Buttons

I’ve been following Ed’s blog for a while now. He won the British Bake Off competition on TV in 2010. He also has a cookbook due out later this year. A few weeks ago he posted about custard creams that he had made, and they looked fabulous. Now, I have made custard creams before but they included cheap white fat, and I really didn’t like the mouth feel that this gave at the end of the biscuit. Ed used all butter in his, and I thought why not? – I’ve been meaning to play around with the white fat issue for ages now, because I do like a custard cream. In fact just typing this I fancy making them again – right this minute!

In Ed’s pictures the biscuits look like little button discs, one of the commenters on his post said so, and I thought so too. So I took this one small step further and marked them to look like actual buttons with a round cutter and a cocktail stick (pick) for the ‘holes’. The following recipe is the one Ed has on his blog, with the exception of some milk that I added to the filling. To see Ed’s neater piped filling, and quite honestly better pictures than mine do have a look at his post here. We really enjoyed these.

Custard Creams

225g plain flour

50g custard powder

30g icing sugar

175g unsalted butter, chilled and diced

1/4 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Filling

50g unsalted butter, room temperature

200g icing sugar

2 tablespoons custard powder

25ml milk

(1) To make the biscuits place the flour, custard powder, icing sugar into the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. Add in the butter and vanilla bean paste and pulse until the mixture begins to come together. Tip the mixture out onto the work surface and bring together into a uniform mass with your hands. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

(2) Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll to a thickness of 3-4mm. Cut out small rounds about 3cm in diameter, place on a Place on a baking parchment lined baking tray. Next mark half of them with the tines of a fork two or three times, not going all the way through. Now, to make the ‘buttons’ take a smaller circular cutter and press into the unmarked rounds, again not going all the way through. Finally take a cocktail stick and make 4 button holes in the center of the ‘buttons’. Refrigerate the trays for 15 minutes or until firm. Whilst chilling preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/350F. Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes or until just starting to colour around the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

(3) For the filling place the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer and beat until light and creamy about 5 minutes then slowly incorporate the icing sugar and custard powder and beat in high until smooth and fluffy. Beat in the 25ml of milk, if you think it needs it. To make it smooth and spreadable

(4) Spread the butter cream with a knife onto half of the biscuits, the plain half! Sandwiching them together with the top ‘button’ biscuits. Or Place the buttercream into a piping bag fitted with a small plain and pipe the filling instead.

Next Review up: Taste Le Tour

Cuban Cure Black Bean Soup

This comforting and delicious soup was shown on Nigella Lawson’s Christmas Special (UK - BBC 2006). It’s not in any of her books, although I would have thought it’d have fitted right in with Nigella Express, but who am I to say what should go in and what shouldn’t.

Anyhow, I can remember Nigella making it in a darkish kitchen as a pick-me-up-and-feed-me after a night on the razzle dazzle! I thought at the time that it looked good, and have a thing for chorizo sausage generally, but it must have become lost and forgotten in the midst of the Christmas celebrations last year. Recently I saw my friend Lisa raving about how good it was and thought I really must make it. Particularly since I managed to find some black beans a little while ago.

It tastes like so much more than its ingredients, a really truly comforting soup, delicious with the sausage, slightly spicy with the cumin, and zingy with the lime and coriander (cilantro) – and then there’s the beans. Perhaps because black beans are new-ish to me, I discovered then 12 years ago, they seem so non-pedestrian and special. I even like the name black turtle beans, although for no particular food based reason, just that I am very fond of turtles (live turtles that is!).

I served this for lunch, and will be making this one again for sure. It’s also quite light, energising but not jading. Thanks Lisa for prompting me into making it, I’d have been missing a great fast soup! My little one ate this as well, which was an added surprise bonus! More Nigella Express next time.

Cuban Cure Black Bean Soup
By Nigella Lawson recipe from here.

150g/5oz chorizo cooking sausage

2 spring onions
½ tsp ground cumin

425g/15oz tin black beans, rinsed and drained

1 fresh tomato, roughly chopped

500ml/17fl oz chicken stock (from fresh or concentrate)

1 lime, juice only

2-4 tbsp chopped, fresh coriander

1. Slice the chorizo sausage into slices about the size of one-pound coins. Slice each of the chorizo discs in half.

2. Place the chorizo pieces into a large saucepan over a medium heat and cook over a medium heat for five minutes, or until they start to become crisp. Remove the chorizo with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper.

3. Slice off the green parts of the spring onions and finely slice them. Set the green parts of the spring onions aside.

4. Finely slice the white part of the spring onions and add the pieces to the frying pan the chorizo was cooked in. Add the ground cumin to the pan, and cook over a gentle heat for two minutes, stirring the mixture.

5. Add the black beans, tomato and the chicken stock. Stir the mixture in the pan and simmer for ten minutes.

6. To serve, ladle the soup into two clean bowls. Add the chorizo pieces and the finely chopped green spring onion to the bowls. Add some lime juice, to taste, to each bowl and sprinkle the chopped coriander on top.

Yummy Salads

Here are three side salads and one main course chicken salad.

I have been making this potato salad for a good number of years now, and it is easily one of my favourite potato salads. I’m a girl for potatoes, and always try a potato salad at any party, I hope this is not judgemental, but there are some really horrible versions out there, especially mass catered ones; and potato salad is so easy to get right. Whether it’s tossed with dressing and bits or with sauteed bacon and shallots. This one comes from Sheila Lukin’s U.S.A. Cookbook. She describes it as the salad that blew her own top potato salad out of the water.

Lone Star Creamy Potato Salad
My variation on Sheila Lukin’s recipe from USA Cookbook. I added in the chives and spring onions, and use a tomato based sweet pickle.

1 ½ lbs potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
3 hard boiled eggs, coarsley chopped
2 tablespoons snipped chives
8 spring onions, stems only, chopped
1/3 cup red pepper
¾ cup cour cream
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sweet pickle relish
salt and pepper

Cook the potatoes until tender 15 – 20 minutes. When they are cool enough to handle chop them into approx 1 x 1 ½ inch cubes. Place in a bowl and add the eggs, chives, spring onions and red peppers. Mix everthing else in a bowl for the dressing them add to the bowl with the potatoes, egg and vegetables then toss gently until thoroughly combined.

Tomato and Feta Salad

The next two are from Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa at Home.Tomato and feta salad has only come to me recently in her newest book, and it’s a clear winner. I leave the cheese on top because I like the pristine look of it, and if there is any left the cheese fairs better not tossed in. It’s a really good, well balanced salad. It just screams Summer as well. Although I made it first in Winter when it was a very cheery sight.

Couscous with Pine Nuts

This one also comes from Barefoot Contessa at Home, and comprises couscous mixed with butter, shallots, salt, pepper, taosted pine nuts, currants and some parsley. I like fruit and nuts in savoury dishes, so it’s right up my street. Even good cold as well!

Honey Pecan Chicken Salad

I made this one after seeing it on Cookie Baker Lynn’s blog. I mean honey and pecan nuts and chicken – how good does that sound! It’s a gorgeous chicken salad. This is my variation on Lynn’s salad. I used sweet onion relish. If you like honey, pecans and chicken you've got to make it!!

Honey Pecan Chicken Salad

(adapted from Cookie Baker Lynn) Serves 3-4.

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup sweet pickle relish,

2 Tbsp spring onions, finely sliced

1/2 Tbsp honey

salt & pepper

scant 1/2 cup chopped celery

scant 1/2 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped

4 cooked chicken breasts (about 2 cups)

Mix together the mayonnaise, relish, onion, honey, salt and white pepper in a bowl and mix well. Stir in the celery and pecans. fold in the chicken. Check the seasoning. Chill, covered, in the refrigerator.

Ari’s Pasta or Baked Rigatoni with Red Wine Vegetables and Creamy Sauce

Ari’s Pasta or Baked Rigatoni with Red Wine Vegetables and Creamy Sauce

After I read Ari from the wonderful Baking and Books story about her cooking of this dish for her Mother I just really wanted to try it. Her recipe is adapted from The Pasta Bible.

It’s a subtle yet complex dish, with aubergine, courgettes, onions and celery. These are cooked in a little butter and aromatically flavoured with thyme, tomatoes and red wine. The almost cooked pasta is mixed with the vegetables and wine and placed in a baking dish. A topping of cream, Parmesan, egg, parsley, rosemary, nutmeg and seasonings are mixed together and poured over the top of the waiting pasta before baking.

What you get is a lovely fragrant, subtle yet well flavoured vegetable pasta. I really like aubergines and courgettes with the red wine background taste. The dried rosemary worked really well, indeed fresh would have overpowered this gentle dish, and I say this with some surprise and I have never (so far) been a fan of dried rosemary, but I live and learn!

Thank you Ari for passing on this lovely recipe, if you would like it too you will find it here at the end of ’ Ari’s ‘Hot Sauce Incident post – which is worth reading even if you don’t cook the pasta, but I was sold on it when I read it.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies

From Martha Stewart online (link Below). I was given Martha’s ‘Cookies’ DVD for Christmas (thank you – you know who you are !), and I so enjoyed watching it. Here in the UK we don’t get any of her TV shows. From the moment I started watching I felt myself propelled into the kitchen at high speed to bake cookies!

I have never really thought of myself as a cookie maker. Although I like cookies I would have generally in the past wanted to bake cupcakes or muffins to fulfil an individual portion requirement.

Now although the cupcake maker in me is alive and well, I am just so into baking cookies, I love the way the dough makes lots, and how it feels somehow like a production line, especially when they are all lined up cooking or cooling. I’ve recently bought a couple of American ice cream scoops (from Ebay.com) where the sellers send to the UK, just so I can have perfectly shaped cookies like Martha or Tish Boyle (The Good Cookie) or whoever. Not that I needed them here, as these are rolled and flattened.

I have often read or heard from friends that they would like to own a tea room or coffee shop, and I have never thought of that as something I would fancy as a job. I wonder though if there is a bit of wanting to feed people on a catering scale present in me deep down, because seeing rows of cookies brings out a joy so tangible in me that I can hardly believe it!

This is a very simple cookie recipe, but they are really yummy. Unlike so many other cookies they taste just like the uncooked dough –and it was good too! The recipe makes 48, the first time I made this I halved the recipe but I won’t make that mistake again - they disappeared very quickly. If you want to make half the recipe, break the egg into a measuring jug and beat lightly, then pour half of the measurement out to leave half an eggs worth in the jug, well at least that’s what I did.

http://www.marthastewart.com

Peanut Cookies
1 ½ cups crunchy peanut butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
½ cup (1 stick) 4 oz unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg
1 ½ cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Preheat oven to 350 C (170 F). In a bowl whisk together the flour and baking powder, set aside.
In a kitchen aid etc beat the peanut butter, butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in egg. Gradually add flour mixture, beating to combine.
Pinch off the dough by the tablespoon and roll into balls. Place 2 inches apart in parchment (or magic carpet) baking sheets. Using a fork press balls twice to make a criss-cross pattern. Bake for 18 – 22 minutes, rotating half way. Cook on a wire wrack. Makes 48.