Let me tell you, Aunt Lilo’s apple cake is delicious and super easy to make. Try it warm with a wee dollop of Greek yogurt.
Although this feels like an Autumnal recipe, perhaps it will be just perfect for using up a couple of apples which are most definitely past their best. They’ve been lurking in our fruit bowl for just too long.
I feel a bit like those apples, as though I’ve been sitting around doing not very much for far too long. Perhaps my time to shine is about to come?
I’ve not been well for a few months, and it’s fair to say that our house move was not as straightforward as we might have wished. However, perhaps it’s the Spring in the air, but I really do think that I’m beginning to feel a whole lot better. I still can’t drive, due to the big blindspot I have in my left eye. And I still have a permanent headache. But honestly, this feels like good health compared with how I’ve felt for months.
Anyway, let’s go see what we can do with those slightly soft apples. And after that, there will be lots more wild garlic pesto to make. Such a good harvest this year. Top tip if you’re making wild garlic pesto – play about with it, make it how you like it. We made a batch with Bonnet goats cheese the other day and it was stunning. And we regularly add a chilli pepper to give it a bit of zizz.
***
Thank you for reading this.
Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.
They represent the efforts Past Loïs put in, to preserving the harvest although it’s not always my harvest (we’re not growing our own Seville oranges).
It’s so full of optimism – our cheese sandwiches will forever be improved with a dollop of chutney, there’ll always be a choice of marmalade or cinnamon apple jelly or jelly made from other garden fruits to have on hot buttered toast. My frangipane cakes will have a zing of plums in hooch.
So this afternoon I’ll be making more hot tomato chutney to make good use of my chillies. And because I’d hate a half empty shelf in October.
Future Loïs is always happy when Past Loïs fills the shelves
Where did I learn my joy of preserving the fruits of our harvests?
Mum made wee jars of mint jelly, rowan jelly and redcurrant jelly to have with roast meats, neither of which I have made successfully. And she made marmalade out of MaMade, a big tin of already processed oranges. Dad loved his marmalade on toast for breakfast.
We had a lovely old aluminium jeely pan, which seems to have disappeared, and was some years ago replaced by a modern stainless steel thing. I shall give the modern one to charity one day, as I have a lovely old-fashioned heavy bottomed jeely pan which I like to use when I’m making large quantities. My clearest memory of Mum’s old jeely pan was at Hogmanay when she would always make an enormous vat of pea and ham soup, to be served with buttered rolls in the early hours of the morning. The soup was ladled into large mugs. Mugs seemed a better option than bowls and spoons for our somewhat inebriated guests.
On the shelves under the stairs we always had a selection of jars of dodgy brownish-green goop, usually with a small label identifying what kind of chutney it was, with the month and year it was made (in my experience it was always some years ago). Mum’s shelves till contained many of these jars – did she just not eat chutney until it was vintage? Or did she have a chutney amnesty every 5 years when she’d throw out all the old ones? Anyway, I can’t be too rude about this trait as it is clearly inherited. You should see the boxes of jars of unidentifiable goop that has travelled to Galloway.
Making chutney in the jeely panJeely pan after making damson jellyJars of Apple Chutney
Do let me know if you’d like to see more recipes again on this blog. For now, why don’t you have a wee look at my Wild Garlic Pesto vague instructions, and go and forage for some leaves for supper.
***
Thank you for reading this.
Mostly I blog about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, so if that might be your thing, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments – I love to hear from you my lovely readers.
My wee plant has grown strawberries! How cute is that?
Also, after work today I cut out fabric for a top using the rotary cutter on a cutting mat. MisoCat supervised of course. But hey, why have I always used pins and scissors instead of stones and a rotorblade? I feel like I have discovered the secret recipe for Irn Bru. Yes, it’s that exciting!
Talking of secret recipes, would you like my most favourite secret recipe?
It’s not really a secret at all, but it makes the most amazingly tasty jars of goodness, which you can then barter for other things. Or just enjoy for yourself. So I feel like sharing again.
Anyway, it’s my Cinnamon Apple Jelly and when I first started making it I adhered to Thane Prince’s instructions and quantities, because although I might like to think that I rebel, really I conform and if someone gives me instructions I am likely to follow them pretty closely, or at least until I know where best to veer off successfully.
When I first started making this jelly, I didn’t have a whole lot of jam-making experience to draw on so wasn’t wildly confident about where I could tweak.
However, things have moved on, I have been making huge quantities of this every Autumn now for years. Mum gave us two apple trees which we planted in the garden – they are prolific and produce the perfect apples for making jars of Cinnamon Apple Jelly.
I seem overly prescriptive about how you go about it, so below is an update, with fewer instructions but more blether.
That Cinnamon Apple Jelly
Fire up your slow cooker
Throw some cinnamon sticks in its base, and then add some water, just an inch or so just now.
Now chop up some apples (give them a wipe first if they are fallen ones, you don’t want bits of actual dirt going in to the pot). No need to peel or core, just chuck the whole lot in. If you have other fruit, like brambles, feel free to throw them in too. Though I’m not sure I would combine brambles and lots of cinnamon.
Add some more water, you want the apples to be sort of floating, but not swimming if that makes sense? Honestly, it won’t really matter, but if you add too much water at this stage you’ll have a bit less flavour I guess.
Add other flavours if you want, but I generally don’t bother any more. Fresh ginger, lemon peel, juniper, cloves all work. Cardamom might be interesting, even a peppercorn or two. Don’t go too wild – part of the joy of this for me is that it tastes purely of apples and cinnamon.
Leave to cook in the slow cooker till it’s all a bit mooshy. Probably 5-6 hours, depending on your cooker and the apples. Mash them with a potato masher after an hour or so, just to help the apples all break down so they release their flavour into the liquid.
Now set up a jeely bag over a large bowl. Ladle the apple mixture into the bag and let it drip overnight.
Throw away the solid apple mix left in the bag (I tried to persuade my hens to eat it, but they have never been keen unless I cook it into porridge for them. And I have my limits, and it appears that this year that was it)
Keep the juice. You can freeze it at this stage if life is getting in the way. Or keep it in the fridge for a few days.
When you are ready for the final bit… measure out your juice into a large pan. A cauldron will be good if you have one, or a preserving pan, or a very large saucepan. Or not such a large one, depending how much juice you have made.
For every pint of juice you pour into the pan, add 1lb of sugar. Ordinary granulated sugar. Feel free to convert these measurements to metric for yourself if you need to. I prefer to remember ‘a pound for every pint’.
Now, this is the important bit. Do NOT stress if you are not very accurate with your measurements. It will all come right.
Bring the sugary appley juice up to the boil. If you have a jam thermometer, now is the time to use it. Pop it in the pan, in a way that it won’t fall in.
Pop a small plate into the freezer or fridge
Watch your pan of sweet appley juice – there is a thin line between happily boiling vigorously and boiling over and onto your hob and making a hideous mess. You want the former.
Your jelly will be set when it reaches 105C on the thermometer. Or use the wrinkle test with your cold plate – spoon a wee bit of the liquid on to the plate, wait 30 seconds and then push your finger through it. If you see wrinkles, it is ready. If it all just runs back to fill the gap you made, then it needs to boil a bit longer
Once it’s ready, use a ladle to spoon it into clean sterilised jars.
Delicious on hot buttered toast. Also known as Loïs On Toast.
I’m going to see Mum this weekend. She sleeps most of the time these days, but I might take a small jar of this jelly and a teaspoon and see if she enjoys the cinnamon-y apple-y taste. Eating delicious things was one of Mum’s last real pleasures. And seeing her family.
***
Thank you for reading this.
If you want to read more about my relationship with Mum and her dementia, then you could start here at Taking smock of the Situation. Or just dip in. After all, if I’ve learned anything this last few years it’s that chronology and time are less important than we might believe.
Finally, if it’s not too much to ask (I know, it is, apologies) I would really appreciate it if you could make a donation towards Alzheimer Scotland. They’re doing stuff that makes living with this more bearable for so many people. Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank yous.
More clothes pegs on a line. They maybe don’t look much like clothes pegs but they are, and I kinda like them. They might make more sense once the swallows are there too.
The bonus picture today is of the Duncan siblings, taken on the steps of Newlands during WW2. They all feature in Mum’s memoirs in different ways, but the biggest character is Newlands itself.. it was given to Norwegians during the war, to use as a hospital, while Gran lived in the Garden Cottage with her daughters, Jen and Mum. But more on that another day.
The Duncan siblings: Arthur, Loïs (my Grandmother), Walter, Lorna and JohnNewlands as a hospital, during the war
Mum was proud of her connections to Norway, first developed on her long journey back to Scotland at the start of WW11. On the ship were only a few passengers, and it seems that they were mostly Norwegian whalers, heading back to Europe to fight. Our Grandmother had a particular and long-lasting friendship with one, Kris Thoresen also known as Big Dog.
And Mum remembered with great fondness the young recuperating Norwegian soldiers who climbed trees with her on the Newlands Estate during the war. When she jumped into a large water tank and cut her foot (almost in half by all accounts!) on a broken jam jar at the bottom of the tank, she was carried up to the Big House which the Norwegians had turned into a hospital during the War, and there the kind Norwegian surgeons sewed her foot back together and the nurses bandaged it up.
In 2017 Mum contributed to a local project, gathering information about the connections between Dumfries and Norway from WW11 and beyond. The project is now all compiled here: Our Norwegian Story. There is oodles of information on the site about the many and varied ways that the Norwegians and the Doonhamers engaged with one another, including a section on Newlands (click through on the locations, and then on Newlands).
There were Royal visits to Newlands, by King Haakon in the 1940s and then King Olav in the 60s. As Mum’s mind started unravelling she became slightly obsessed with King Haakon, and with the plaque he unveiled at Newlands – she would suggest that we went for a visit to see the plaque, because no-one else would know about it any more, only her. There were days I would visit and she would tell me that he was coming to tea the next day, or that he had been there earlier, and now had thrown all his rubbish into that pile ‘there’ (pointing at the corner of the bed, where she regularly claimed there was a rubbish dump).
One of Mum’s other obsessions (for a while) was biscuits. She LOVED to have biscuits in her tin. And as fast as I could bake, and fill up that tin, they would all be eaten again.
And then I found a recipe for King Haakon biscuits! The joy! Of course I made a batch and took them to Mum, who declared that they had probably been made specially by the cook at Newlands, and that cook got the recipe from the King. I took that as praise indeed for my biscuits.
The biscuit recipe actually came from the WI Biscuit book, which is an absolute must for anyone who vaguely likes making biscuits.
And now I have a batch of the biscuit dough in the fridge, ready to be cut into slices and baked, so soon the kitchen will smell deliciously of sweet baking.
Do let me know if you make King Haakon biscuits. Or if you want the recipe for the Cardamom Cookies, which are sensationally good. One of these days I’ll get back to writing up more recipes again.
***
I started writing this series of posts here, with Taking Smock of the Situation, an embroidery project I started after I realised Mum might have dementia. There I was, embroidering her old fisherman’s smock with symbols relating to her life; while her memories were slipping away, like me at a party I don’t want to be at.
Before that I blogged about whatever I was cooking and you can find my recipes here.
Mum used to make us the thinnest of thin crepes, which we all (obviously) fought over. We only ever had them with a squeeze of lemon (which in the 60s and early 70s was always a squeeze from the plastic Jif Lemon, do you remember them? And what was the relationship between a Jif Lemon and Jif Cleaning products?)
Anyway, although I do love to share a recipe here, I’m not going to share the crepes recipe – there are plenty other places you can find them online, or in recipe books. But I’m going to share two other recipes for pancakes.
Mum’s sister Joyce made the best pancakes. I have such happy memories of sitting at the big farmhouse kitchen table at Marbrack, with my back to the Rayburn, where Aunt Joyce was turning out the most perfect fluffy pancakes. They were what you might call Drop Scones, or Scotch Pancakes, similar to American Pancakes. Once each pancake was cooked, she would pop it into a big bowl, lined with a clean tea towel, and then flip the tea towel over the top of them all to keep them warm. So good, warm with fresh butter.
We have Joyce’s pancake recipe in Mum’s recipe book.. the instructions aren’t today’s cookbook standard, but you can probably work it out, if you know what you’re looking for.
Aunt Joyce had compiled a collection of local recipes into a wee book to support Carsphairn Heritage Group in 1993; it was republished in 2017 after her death. It has a wonderful recipe for pancakes in it, though I doubt any of you will make it today. Do let me know if you do (click on the picture to see the whole recipe).
Whether you are sweet or savoury, crepes or fluffy, and whether or not you include very clean snow in your recipe, I hope you enjoy pancake day.
***
Most of my writing focuses on my relationship with Mum’s dementia since I first noticed there was something “not quite right” in January 2021. You can read about it here.
The Captain and I love the al fresco life. We have a terrace outside our bedroom, overlooking the Valley, and over the years we have gradually pimped the space. For the last few years we’ve had a chimenea fire and a barbecue, and we’ve had some wonderful evenings up there, with good food and a glass of wine as the sun goes down. But for a while I’ve been hankering after a wood fired oven, to extend my al fresco repertoire beyond barbecuing and smoking. And salads of course. I make pretty good barbecues and salads, but my dream was to have fresh pizza straight out of a wood fired oven on our terrace.
The good news is that dreams do come true. The Captain bought us a pizza oven for Christmas – after researching what was available and what would suit our space best, he’d chosen one from Ooni, and it is perfect for our needs.
Midwinter in Scotland might seem sub optimal when it comes to al fresco dining, but there is something just magical about wrapping up warm, putting out the awning (to protect from the inevitable rain) and huddling next to the fire, watching the moon rise and cooking and eating fresh pizza.
Parma ham, mushroom and onion pizza
And the other thing about going for it with pizzas at this time of year is all those leftovers! Don’t be boxed in by what you think of as sensible pizza toppings – see what you’ve got in the fridge, decide if you’d like them together and go for it. This is how I discovered the joy of a black pudding and brussel sprout pizza!
I’m not a purist when it comes to pizza dough – sometimes I make my own entirely by hand, on those days when 10 minutes kneading dough will help de-stress. Other days I pop the ingredients in the bread machine and let it do the work.
What I’ve discovered makes the most difference is making a really good pizza sauce – in the past I’ve zizzed up a tin of tomatoes, or used a passata… and while both of these are fine, they are a bit too watery and can make the pizza base go soggy. So my top tip is to take the time to cook some good pizza sauce while your dough is resting or rising or proving or whatever.
Everything prepped to make our first pizzas
If you don’t ‘have a wood fired pizza oven, don’t despair – home made pizza is pretty good made in any really hot oven.
Pizza dough
Ingredients
250ml water (or use slightly less water, and slug in some sourdough starter)
1-2 TBsp oil
1 tsp salt
2 TBsp sugar
about 425g strong white flour
1 tsp yeast
Directions
Put the ingredients in the pan of your bread machine in the order they are listed above and hit the button for pizza dough.
When it’s ready, take the dough out and separate it into 2 or 3 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, and place it in a bowl (which you’ve drizzled a wee bit of oil in the bottom). Cover each bowl with a damp tea towel, or a lid, or a plate, or cling film, or beeswax wraps, or whatever suits your environmental aesthetic, and leave for about half an hour. Don’t worry about timings too much. At the end of the time you’re going to turn each doughy ball into pizza.
Brilliant Pizza Sauce
Ingredients
2 (or more) garlic cloves, slightly chopped
2 TBsp oil
2 large tins of chopped plum tomatoes
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
your choice of herbs or spices – I like to add a wee bit of chilli, but mediterranean herbs would also be good
Directions
Put the oil in heavy based pan over a medium heat
Add the garlic and sweat for a wee minute. Don’t let it burn, just soften it in the oil
Add the other ingredients
Simmer for 20 minutes or so until it looks thick and bright dark red
Leave to cool
I make loads of this pizza sauce and keep it in a tub in the fridge – as well as pizza it’s found it’s way into the most amazing quiche (pizza sauce, caramelised onions, cheddar cheese and an egg/philadelphia cheese custard poured into a short pastry case), and also mixed in with pasta and some tuna as a midweek pasta bake.
You know how to make pizza, don’t you? I thought I did, but what I didn’t know well enough was that when you’re using a peel, to put the pizza into the oven, you need to make sure that peel has PLENTY of polenta on it, or you will never slide the pizza off the peel and onto the stone in the oven. The other thing I’ve discovered is that less can be so much more on a pizza – just a couple of good ingredients can be so much more satisfying than piling too much on.
Some toppings we like:
Black pudding and shredded brussel sprouts
Parma ham and mushrooms (and then add rocket once it;s out of the oven)
Goats cheese and beetroot
Blue cheese (preferably gorgonzola) and pear, maybe some ham too
Black pudding and brussel sprout pizza
Want more recipes? Perhaps a quick midweek dinner? Or easy peasy biscuits? Just head here and have a browse.
Wild Garlic Pesto is one of life’s absolute joys. You go out to the woods, pick a handful or two of wild garlic leaves (you’ll know them by their scent) and then come home and whizz them up with some cheese, nuts and oil. And you have just transformed your dull pasta dish.
If you’ve not made it before, you might not believe the pungency of the pesto comes from just those leaves, and that no real garlic has been added.
Anyway, if you’ve just come in from a walk down the woods, armed with your bag of leaves, here is your recipe. If you’re looking for precise quantities and directions, go elsewhere, and probably don’t forage.
Ingredients
several handfuls of wild garlic leaves, rinsed well (you know that wild garlic grows below dog-pee level don’t you?)
about 100g unsalted nuts (I’ve used walnuts, cashews, hazelnuts, pinenuts, and a bag of mixed nuts… all are good)
about 100g cheese. Parmesan would be traditional, but you can mix it up with another hard cheese, or try a soft goats cheese to mix it up a bit
a great big glug of oil – I use a mix of light olive oil and sunflower oil, but feel free to use your favourite oil (but probably not expensive extra virgin olive oil as the flavour will just get slapped by the wild garlic)
a wee squeeze of lemon juice
salt and pepper
Directions
Get your food processor out from whatever cupboard you keep it in. You can try making this with a liquidiser, or a nutri-bullet or one of those hand held soup zizzers. Or even one of those mini choppers. But you’ll probably kill the motor in anything other than a proper food processor with a big blade.
Roughly chop the cheese, and the wild garlic leaves. Feel free to roughly chop the nuts too, but you don’t really need to.
Throw everything in the bowl of the processor and press the button.
Keep adding more oil till you get the consistency you like. And taste it to see if you like the balance of flavours. Add more of what you fancy.
Pop in a jar and feel smug.
If you are making industrial quantities of the stuff, get yourself one of those silicone big ice cube trays, and freeze big cubes of the pesto. Once the cubes are frozen you can pop them out into a freezer bag and keep them all year. Then just nuke one in the microwave and throw into a bowl of pasta to feel smug all over again.
It’s Autumn. I’ve spent the day in the kitchen, mostly making things with this year’s harvest of pears, apples, tomatoes and chillies. It’s been pure pleasure. And having jars of hot tomato chutney, apple ginger (the amazing toffee apple flavoured syrup), pears, mustard fruit and apple chutney over the winter will mean tasty meals are guaranteed.
For supper tonight I made a pimped up corned beef hash – chillies go in almost everything these days, so I added some chopped chilli in with the onions, and then took a notion to add some fresh tomatoes and some chorizo too. The Captain’s verdict was that it was good, but he prefers it plain. I think I’d have got away with the chilli, but the chorizo was a pimping too far.
Anyway, afterwards I fancied ice cream and butterscotch sauce. I used to make a butterscotch sauce when I was wee – I couldn’t find my old recipe book, and can’t remember it exactly, so had a quick online search to see how I could make it. Most recipes add double cream, and I have none in the fridge, so I kept looking. And once I’d read a few, I headed for the kitchen, and improvised.
Butterscotch Sauce
1/3 cup soft light brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup milk
some vanilla essence
Put the sugar and butter in a small pan over a medium heat
Stirring constantly, melt the butter and sugar
Keep stirring and boil it up for a while
Take off the heat and add the milk, keep stirring
Stir in the vanilla essence
Cool slightly and serve with ice cream
You can add sultanas and brandy or rum if you want to zizz it up a bit.
I bought a new gadget recently. I’d been vaguely wanting it for a while and then found myself in the cookshop next to Glasgow’s Central Station with some time to spare, and my credit card in my pocket. I didn’t need my credit card though, did I, because this isn’t an overly expensive gadget,
It’s the Kenwood Mini Chopper. Some of you may be aware that I’m a fan of Kenwood, and would loyally buy their products over any other for no other reason than that my mother had a sturdy Kenwood mixer (1962 vintage) which I used when I learned to bake. It’s still going strong, although it gets little use these days (my mother occasionally uses the mincer attachment, because life might be too short to stuff a mushroom or to bake your own cakes in my Mum’s world, but never too short to mince your own meat. Go figure).
Anyway, you’d think that as soon as I got the mini chopper home I’d be chopping everything, wouldn’t you? But no. It just sat there at the edge of my vision for some weeks. And then it went into the cupboard under the drinks cupboard. You’d think that would mean it would never ever get used, but I think I was just waiting for the perfect moment.
My lovely new gadget – Kenwood mini-chopper
I didn’t have to wait for long.
Rick Stein created that perfect moment.
He has a new TV series out, From Venice to Istanbul. I only caught a couple of the episodes, but it included Paddy Leigh Fermor’s Moussaka, and I was smitten. This Moussaka was made for PLF by his cook, even though he had stated he didn’t like Moussaka. Of course he loved this dish and finished it all off and then asked what it was. Or so the story goes. Anyway, she puts potatoes in the bottom of the dish and whisks up the cheese sauce in a lovely light whippy sort of a way. Buy the book, it’s great. I did. Of course.
And I discovered this lush red pepper pesto. It’s seriously to die for, and I’m likely to use it in almost everything for the next few weeks, until I find the next thing I love most.
I’m reproducing the quantities for the recipe exactly as I find it, but with my own narrative.
Lush red pepper pesto
660g red peppers (I use those long pointy ones which have such good flavour)
50g tomato puree
1tsp cayenne pepper ( I’ve used sweet paprika instead)
1/2 tsp salt
30ml olive oil
Cut the peppers into big chunks and place them skinside up under a super hot grill till the skins are blackened. You may need to do this in batches
As soon as they are blackened, pop them in a bowl and cover with cling film, till they are cool(ish)
Using your fingers (there really is no other way to do this) slip slide the skins off the peppers and pop them in your mini chopper (the peppers, not the skins… the skins just get chucked in the bin)
Add all the other ingredients and zizz to your hearts content.
I’ll be honest, I have no idea if I have made this with 660g of peppers or not. I’ve used a couple of peppers with about an inch or two of tomato puree squeezed out of a tube, a good shake or three of paprika and a healthy old glug of olive oil.
Smoky roasted peppers ready for zizzing
Zizzing!
And what to do with this mixture? Well here are some suggestions:
mix it with mayonnaise and make a dip for crisps, chips or crudites if you’re doing the healthy thing
add it to any tomato-y stew or ragu to give an additional depth
spread it lightly on sourdough bread, and then add goats cheese
make sweet wee canapes with teeny tiny oatcakes, chicken liver pate and a wee dollop of this on top
mix with yoghurt to make a salad dressing
use it like a pesto
make savoury muffins, once you’ve made the batter add 2/3 into each muffin case, then add a dollop of red pepper paste, then add the final 1/3 of batter. Cook as usual. This works brilliantly with these Parmesan and Courgette Muffins
When I was wee we called them macaroons, but I’m going with the zeitgeist and will refer to them as macarons. Whatever you call them, they are the most scrumptious light almondy sweetie bonbons you will ever come across.
I always had this idea that macarons were tricky to make, that they wouldn’t rise properly, that they would just be too solid and not light and airy like they should be. Or that they’d be dry and crunchy instead of deliciously softly moist.
So, what changed my world view of macarons? Firstly it’s that I love them, and wanted to be able to make them. But mostly it was getting chickens. And then once we had so many eggs, I started making my own mayonnaise. And once you make your own mayonnaise you have a plentiful supply of egg whites. And I don’t like meringues much, so macarons were the obvious solution.
Don’t you love your life when macarons are the obvious solution!!
Basic macarons
175g icing sugar
125g ground almonds
3 large egg whites
75g caster sugar
To make these properly you need a few bits of kit. For starters, a food processor. You know, the kind that whizzes round and round and chops everything up really fine. You’ll also need a piping bag with a large plain nozzle. And your life will be a whole lot easier if you have either a food mixer too to whisk the egg whites.
Before you start, get your piping bag ready with the right nozzle in place, and prepare your baking tray (I line mine with non sticking baking parchment, but you could use rice paper, or a re-useable silicon mat).
Combine the icing sugar and ground almonds and pop them in the bowl of the food processor. Whizz it briefly. Well not too briefly, get it all a bit more powdery and mixed together
Put the egg whites into a scrupulously clean bowl (any hint of anything greasy and you will have a FAIL), and whisk them until you have soft peaks. Gradually whisk in the caster sugar, and get it all glossy and thick and gorgeous. At this stage I whisked in a few drops of orange essence.
Now get yourself a big metal spoon (or a spatula) and fold half of the sugar/almond mixture into the egg whites. Once they are combined, add the remaining sugar/almonds and fold them in to make a light smooth mixture. Don’t over mix or you’ll lose all the air, but try to get rid of all the lumps.
Spoon the mixture into the piping bag and pipe even sized circles of macarons mixture onto your baking tray.
Turn the oven on: 140C or GM3.
Now leave the tray of uncooked macarons at room temperature for about 15 minutes so the surface dries out ever so slightly.
Bake for 15 minutes, then leave to cool still on the tray.
Macarons out of the oven
Make the chocolate orange filling…
50g good quality dark chocolate
100g unsalted butter, softened
200g icing sugar, sifted
zest of an orange, and some orange juice
Melt the chocolate
Beat the butter, and add the icing sugar and orange zest. Keep beating
Fold in the melted chocolate and mix together
Mix in some orange juice or cointreau if you want an adult version – enough to make the mixture just squidgy enough
You know what to do now.. spoon (or pipe) some chocolate orange filling onto half of the macarons. And pop a second macaron on top of each, to make lovely macarons sandwich. YUMMY.
Shewolfinthevalley 