Tag Archives: tray bake

Crunchy, tasty, sweet and salty.

3 Mar

I’m one of those people who likes their sweets to be slightly salty.

Tasty homemade snack bars

Tasty homemade snack bars

I don’t cook with a lot of salt, preferring to use herbs and spices. I’ve bought into the ‘fact’ that too much salt is bad for you. However, there was a credible article in the Sunday Times the other week, highlighting new evidence which showed that the low sodium diet was as damaging as the high sodium one. My father has always just tipped the salt pot upside down and sprinkled it liberally over his plate, often then creating a small salt mountain on the side of the plate to dip forkfuls of food into. He’ll be 95 in a couple of months, so his super-high salt diet hasn’t exactly limited his life too much.

Anyway, although I like my sweets salty, I’m less keen on my savoury dishes being too sweet. I’m not a big fan of putting fruit into a stew or casserole. My exception is good redcurrant or rowan jelly with a roast meat. Or a not-too-sweet apple sauce with roast pork.

But back to the salty sweetness. When I was in the US last year, with a work colleague, we discovered Nature Valley’s Sweet and Salty Nut Granola Bars. It was love at first bite for me. They aren’t available here in the UK, although there’s a huge variety of similar products. But I can’t be trusted in a sweet shop, so have to confess I haven’t tried terribly hard to find a suitable substitute.

I hadn’t thought of making my own. Why hadn’t I? I must be entirely mad.

Anyway, once the thought came to me, I flicked through all my recipe books and scoured the internet for the perfect sweet and salty crunchy nutty bars. And then I adapted. This isn’t entirely true. I can’t lie. What really happened is that I came across a recipe on Half Baked Harvest’s blog and decided it was time to get experimenting. This recipe is adapted from hers. It is the perfect crunchy, sweet, salty, nutty snack. But it’s not as healthy as eating an apple, so although they are addictive, try to ration them.

Crunchtastic sweet and salty nutty bars

  • 250g / 3 cups porridge oats
  • 35g / 1 cup rice krispies (or any puffed rice cereal)
  • 40g / 1/4 cup roasted salted nuts (peanuts is fine, but mixed nuts would work just as well)
  • a pinch of salt
  • 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 125g honey
  • 130g peanut butter
  • 30g butter or coconut oil (I prefer to use coconut oil these days)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F or GM4. Line a 9″ x 13″ baking tray with greaseproof paper. Leave an overhang of paper over one long side of the tin (to make it easier to remove the bars later)

  1. Mix porridge oats, krispies, nuts, salt, and bicarb of soda in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the centre
  2. Put the honey, peanut butter and butter (or coconut oil) in a small pan and warm gently till all the ingredients are melted
  3. Add the vanilla
  4. Stir the melted ingredients till they are all combined into a sweet and goopy sauce
  5. Pour all this melted mixture into the well in the centre of the dry ingreds.
  6. Stir well to combine it all together. Try to make sure there are no dry bits left in the bowl
  7. Pour this into the prepared tin. Get a big metal spoon (or a metal measuring cup) and lightly oil the back of it, then use this to press all the mixture down into the tin
  8. Put in the oven and bake for about 20 mins, or until golden brown. Watch out, it can go from perfect to ‘slightly burnt’ quite quickly.
  9. When you take it out of the oven, try to slide the whole lot out of the tray onto a heatproof surface, and then walk away from it for at least half an hour. (I’m only telling you to do this so that you don’t end up trying to cut the bars when they are still in your baking tray, and you end up ruining your tray, with knife scores across it)
  10. Once it is cool, try to cut it into pieces. You’ll need a sharp knife, and some of it might crumble a bit. Any extra crumbs left, pour into an airtight pot and use for sprinkling over yoghurt, or ice cream or in a crumble.
  11. Keep the bars in an airtight tin, for as long as possible. You may need to put them on a very high shelf, out of your reach. Or to give them to friends.

Suggested adaptations – you could add dark chocolate chips, or dried fruit (cranberries, chopped up apricots, raisins). Or desiccated coconut. Or, cinnamon would be nice, Or chopped dried apples, with some cinnamon, a pinch of cloves and some ginger. You could probably replace the honey with agave syrup, or golden syrup, although I’m not sure why you’d want to do that.

And apologies if you don’t have digital weighing scales. I was old-school for YEARS, but bought a digital set recently (so I could weigh out my 7g of yeast to make home made bread) and it has entirely changed how I bake. Just pop the bowl on the scales and add the next ingredient. Easy peasy. They’re not expensive and take up hardly any room in your cupboard. Isn’t it time to treat yourself?

Want to find more of my recipes? Take a look here: Shewolffe’s Recipes. If you like this, you’ll probably like my salty nut brittle, but go see what else is in there.

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Blondie

23 Jan

The first record I bought was Abba’s Arrival. The second was Blondie’s Parallel Lines. I was a little in love with Debbie Harry. Weren’t we all?

Blondie has stood the test of time. But these days Blondie is less of an aural treat and more of an oral one for me. I have at last discovered the Blondie (as opposed to the Brownie). It’s a squishy tray bake, like a chocolate brownie, but with a caramelly buttery flavour, almost like butterscotch. And of course the regular blondie can be pimped up, by adding all manner of bling. In this recipe I’ve added dark choc chips, brazil nuts, ginger and dried sour cherries. And they rock.

Pimped up blondies

  • 100g butter, melted
  • 150g dark muscovado sugar, bashed to get rid of all the lumps (or use a soft brown or light muscovado sugar)
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 140g plain flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp bicarb of soda
  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • pinch of salt
  • 50g crystallised ginger, chopped into wee nibs
  • 50g dark chocolate, chopped into wee nibs
  • a handful of brazil nuts, chopped
  • a handful of dried sour cherries (or cranberries)

Grease and line an 8″ square baking tray. Pre-heat oven to GM5.

  1. Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ginger and salt. Leave to one side.
  2. In another bowl, whisk together the sugar and melted butter – this is easiest with an electric beater. Don’t worry if it’s still a bit bumpy and grainy.
  3. Add the egg and vanilla and keep beating – it’ll change colour to a much lighter tan and will become fluffy and almost moussy.
  4. With a large metal spoon stir the flour mix into the buttery mix. Fold it in, without beating, or you will lose the lightness of the mix.
  5. Add the ginger, nuts, chocolate and cherries (or whatever you are pimping the mix with) and stir through.
  6. The mix will be relatively thick. Spoon it onto the baking tray, and spread it out.
  7. Bake for about 25 minutes, until the blondies are smelling too good to leave for a minute more, and they look golden brown.
  8. Remove from oven and cool for about 20 mins before removing from tray and cutting into slices.

Perfect with an afternoon coffee. A proper real strong coffee.

Other ways to pimp your blondies:

  • Add smarties or M n Ms
  • Add any dried fruit
  • Try salted nuts if you enjoy that sweet-salt hit
  • Gobs of peanut butter stirred through once the mix is in the tray
  • Coconut
  • Chopped up mint toffees
  • Oh, just raid your cupboard, or the sweetie drawer (what you don’t have a sweetie drawer?) and see what inspires you

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Apricot upside down cake

23 Jul

When life gives you apricots, you should just eat them. But when you still have more apricots than you know what to do with a week later, and they are in danger of going off, you should make cake with them.

A soft, caramelly number would be perfect. Perhaps with some ground almonds to give a hint of marzipan and add extra moistness.

And if it was served with vanilla ice cream it would be just about perfect.

So, that’s what I intended to do yesterday, with some urgency once I discovered that the Captain’s daughter was coming over for lunch with her 2 year old daughter too. But we had no butter. So the Captain was instructed to get a pack of butter when he picked up the papers. And it had to be real butter, not some spread masquerading as butter.

He returned with a plastic tub, which did not bode well. But he proclaimed that it was Lurpak, so it had to be ok. It was Lurpak Spreadable, in my mind not quite the same as butter. And when I looked at the ingredient list, it was clear it wasn’t actually butter – it is only 69% butter, with 25% vegetable oil. That’s what makes it spreadable, adding a product which is liquid at room temperature.

However, on closer inspection it said that it could be used in baking, so I gave it (and the Captain) the benefit of the doubt.

Upside down apricots in a cake

For the upside downy bit:

  • Some apricots – at least 6, preferably about a dozen, Or of course you could substitute all manner of other fruit – pineapple, peach, apples, cherries would all be nice
  • About 2oz Lurpak spreadable, or softened butter
  • About 2oz soft light brown sugar

For the cake mix:

  • 6oz Lurpak spreadable (or use softened butter)
  • 6oz soft light brown sugar
  • 3 medium free range eggs
  • 5oz SR flour
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 2oz ground almonds
  • A splosh of almond extract (optional)

Butter the sides of an 8” square cake tin. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5.

  1. Beat together the 2oz sugar and ‘butter’ until nice and soft and spreadable
  2. Spread this mixture on the base of the cake tin, in an even layer
  3. Cut the apricots in half and place them cut side down on top of the sugar-butter mixture
  4. Beat together the remaining butter and sugar
  5. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition, then beat in the almond extract
  6. Mix the flour, baking powder and ground almonds in a bowl and then add to the buttery mixture, and beat all together
  7. Dollop the cake mixture into the tin, on top of the apricots, and spread it into the corners. Ideally, create a small well in the middle, which will keep the cake from rising too much in the middle.
  8. Place the cake tin on a baking sheet, in case some of the caramel overflows. Bake for around 30 minutes, or until the centre of the cake feels firm, and no longer wobbly. You may need to cover the cake with a tin foil hat for the last 10 minutes or so, if it looks like it is getting too brown (burnt).
  9. Leave to cool for 10 minutes or so in the tin. To turn the cake out slide a palette knife around the edge of the tin, to loosen the cake from the sides, then place a plate on top of the tin and carefully, but swiftly, turn it over so the tin is now on top of the plate. If you’ve buttered the tin properly it will glide out. If not, you’ll be having jigsaw cake with the bits all vaguely squidged back together. It’ll still taste nice though.

If you’ve managed to plan your day well, then this will be delicious served warm with some thick greek yoghurt, or crème fraiche. Or the aforementioned vanilla icecream.

And who knew? Substituting butter for Lurpak spreadable works perfectly well – this cake was more moist and much lighter than I expected (perhaps also due to the addition of baking powder). The flavour of butter and caramel was strong enough to come through the dominant almond-ness, but as a fan of marzipan that really worked for me. And the apricots? Well, they looked great, and the sliver of soft fruit melted in the mouth and eased my conscience, contributing towards my five a day.

All in all, a success.

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Bacon maple brownies

11 Dec

Thank you Nigella.  They’re in the oven, so I don’t know yet if they are to die for, or a waste of some perfectly good ingredients.  The constituent parts were scrummy (well, I had to lick the spoon after scraping the brownie batter into the tin, and the baconny-syrupy scraps on the plate were just asking to be licked up).

But really?  Bacon in chocolate brownies?  I totally see where you came from with this – bacon and maple syrup pancakes are divine.  And as a child I remember the treat that was bacon with fried bread and honey. Now, whatever happened to fried bread?  Did the health Nazis get rid of it for good? Possibly not the worst decision ever made, but still divine in my childhood memory.

Anyway, Nigella sent me a recipe for Bacon Brownies.  Well, she didn’t just send it to me, it was sent out to anyone who subscribed to whatever style thingy she’s guest editing this week.  And now I’m wondering if it was all just a big hoax, to see what muppets would actually make it.  Well, here I am, prize muppet! I give you Bacon Maple Brownies, inspired by Nigella, but not exactly the same.

Bacon maple brownies

Preheat oven to 190C / 375F / GM5

(OK, now I see why my finished brownies seem even gooier than they should be, I had the oven not quite hot enough).

Grease and line a 25cm square brownie tin.  Or Nigella does it in a throw away tin, of course she does.  Her hands aren’t made for washing up.  And it’s so much easier to take a gift of brownies when you pop in to your neighbours if they are in a throw away dish!

100g thin rashers of streaky bacon, snipped or chopped into teeny weeny pieces

2tsp maple syrup (or golden syrup)

150g unsalted butter

250g soft light brown sugar

75g cocoa powder

150g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

4 large eggs, beaten

150g chopped chocolate (dark, or milk)

  1. Heat a heavy frying pan and then add the bacon bits, and fry till they are just going crispy
  2. Add the syrup, and mix quickly, then pour the whole bacony syrupy mixture onto a plate to cool
  3. In a large heavy pan melt the butter over a low heat.  This is the pan the whole batter will be made, so make it big enough
  4. Once the butter is melted, remove from the heat and stir in the sugar with a wooden spoon.  Bash out the sugary lumps (unless you anticipated this and sifted it in advance).
  5. While the butter was melting you should have put the flour, cocoa and bicarb into a bowl and mixed it.  And cracked the eggs into a bowl and beaten them.
  6. Once the sugar and butter are mixed, add the flour mixture and stir it in
  7. Add the beaten eggs, and stir all together
  8. Throw in the chopped chocolate, and then use your finger to nudge all the bacon off the plate into the chocolate batter. Lick your fingers.  And wonder if this was all a hoax and you should have just made ordinary brownies, and had maple syrupy bacon bits as a separate snack.
  9. Mix all together
  10. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 25 mins or so.  It will still be slightly wobbly, so you have ultimate gooeyness in your brownies.  But if you cook it at the right temperature it shouldn’t be too gooey.
  11. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove and cut into pieces.  Not too small, but not too big pieces.  You know, a couple of decent mouthfuls.

Don’t tell anyone what is in them

Mine are out of the oven now and I’ve decided it’s not a hoax – they are divine.  That sweet yet salty hit of a wee nubbin of bacon is just perfect in the rich gooeyness of the brownie.  They may not be glamorous, but oh my god they are tasty.

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Sophisticated chocolate brownies

25 Sep

Brownies seem to be endlessly adaptable.  I’ve made them with ginger, with nuts, with more and more and more chocolate. I think I must try them with mint.  And possibly orange, although I’m never quite sure about chocolate and orange, and thoroughly disapprove of orange anywhere near milk chocolate.

But this weekend it’s all about the sophisticated flavour combo of cardamom and chocolate.  I have to credit both The Times and West London’s favourite provider of baked goods: Cocomaya. So, thank you.  And I hope you don’t mind me re-producing your recipe here.

I’m looking after my nephews this weekend, so am cooking in a less familiar kitchen, although having a Rayburn to bake in is a delight and reminds me of happy happy childhood weekends, baking scrumptious goodies for the family.

Posh chocolate brownies in a Le Creuset dish

Cardamom chocolate brownies

250g unsalted butter (I used slightly salted as that was what was in the fridge)

15 green cardamom pods

100g plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

350g dark chocolate (at each 70% cocoa solids)

250g muscovado sugar

50g caster sugar (I used a combination of soft dark brown and soft light brown sugar)

4 large eggs

1/2 tsp salt

15 x 20cm cake tin… I couldn’t find the right size, so ended up using a le creuset oval lasagne style dish, approximately the right size

Oven 130C, GM2.  The Rayburn was on medium, which is probably slightly higher than recommended

  1. Grease the baking tin
  2. Slightly bash the cardamom pods and extract the black seeds, throw away the green dry husks
  3. Put the butter and the cardamom seeds into a small pan and melt.  Set aside for a few hours.  If you have an Aga or a Rayburn  then leave it on the side where it can remain liquid.
  4. Sift the flour and baking powder into a small bowl
  5. Place the chocolate in a bowl and strain the butter onto it. Place over a pan of simmering water to melt
  6. In a large bowl mix the sugars together and squish out any lumps.  Add the eggs and mix.  Don’t beat, you don’t need to add air to this mixture (although I was reading a Hugh Fearnley Whatsisname recipe last night which says you beat for 4-5 minutes at this stage to incorporate lots of air. I didn’t and it worked out REALLY well).
  7. Add the chocolate-butter mixture and stir through
  8. Fold in the flour, followed by the salt
  9. Pour the batter into the prepared tin – spread into the corners if you need to.
  10. Bake for about 45 minutes.  The recipe states only 20 minutes, and in the end I baked it for just over an hour and it still has the lovely squidgy gooey-ness.
  11. Leave to cool and then cut into pieces.  I note that Cocomaya decorate theirs with gold leaf.  Feel free to do the same if you have any spare gold leaf hanging about in your cupboards.

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Energy bars

13 Jul

Energy bars.  Just the new name for flapjacks really, if slightly uppity flapjacks.

Uppity flapjacks

So, I’m on a low carb diet and I’m busy trying to get rid of all the bad stuff from my cupboard.  Thomas got a box of Kraft Cheesey Pasta today.  And everyone else will get uppity flapjacks tomorrow.

These are based on a recipe ripped out of a weekend paper, I think it was the Scotland on Sunday, and it was Tom Kitchin. I know the recipe was designed for women who had just done the Moonwalk through the night in Edinburgh.  And a wet night it was too.

Anyway, I’ve adapted the recipe, to fit what I had in the cupboard.

Energy bars

100g butter

120g dark brown sugar

2 TBsp honey (I used maple syrup last time)

150g porridge oats

100g of ‘extras’ made up of a mixture of the following:

sunflower seeds

pumpkin seeds

sesame seeds

dried cranberries

dried blueberries

raisins

dried banana

chopped pecan nuts (any nut would do)

  • Using a heavy bottomed pan melt the butter with the sugar and honey
  • Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly together
  • Tip into a lined square baking tin (about 9″ square)
  • Bake for 30 – 40 mins at 150C or Gas Mark 2.

Full of energetic goodness (if you like your carbs)

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Millionaire’s Shortbread

24 Jan

This is surely one of Scotland’s greatest culinary triumphs? Hey, I think of it as Scottish, but perhaps it’s not?  Does anyone know? Also, I note that it is called Caramel Shortbread or Caramel Slice these days.  Do millionaire’s have such a bad press nowadays? Or is it some trades description ruling gone mad?

Anyway, the exquisite combination of smooth creamy chocolate, squishy sweet caramel and crisp shortbread is a true winner.  Traditionally it is served in decent sized slices, but I prefer to cut them into canapé style bite-size squares.  That way you can have one as a wee treat and it’s not toooooo calorific. OK, it is. It probably contains the total recommended calorie intake for a rugby team for a week, but surely that’s what treats are all about?

I wasn’t in my usual kitchen this last week, staying at my Mum and Dad’s, so I didn’t have access to my usual recipe books, or to an easy internet connection to look up recipes online.  I found a shortbread recipe, which I adapted, in a charity cookbook.  And I guessed with the caramel, and it seemed to work well.

Millionaire’s Shortbread

6oz butter

3oz caster sugar (I used vanilla sugar, out of the jar)

6oz plain flour

1oz custard powder

For the caramel

1 large tin of condensed milk

about 2oz butter

about 2 oz caster sugar (vanilla sugar again will give it a lovely subtle vanilla-y flavour)

a wee bit of milk if necessary

A very large block of Dairy Milk chocolate

So, I started the night before, making the caramel.

  1. Put the condensed milk, butter and sugar in a heavy based pan and warm gently.
  2. Stir constantly for a good ten minutes, or possibly more until it is a delicious golden toffee colour. You could test it at this stage, by dropping a wee bit on a cold saucer and seeing if it’s a squishy consistency when it cools. Once it seemed ready, I walked away and spent the rest of the evening watching Brideshead Revisited on DVD.
  3. Now for the shortbread – Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  This will be oh so much easier if you start with soft butter, so if you have a cold kitchen you might want to leave it in a warm place for an hour or two, or soften it in the microwave if you have such a thing.  Being at home, I left mine beside the Rayburn overnight, and it was perfect.
  4. Now add the flour and custard powder.  You should probably add a wee teeny pinch of salt too, although I’m not sure it’s entirely necessary and in these days of trying to reduce our salt intake it probably is no longer recommended.
  5. Mix all together to form a dough.  Don’t be over vigorous about this, as I think it makes a better crisp bisuit if it’s not over-worked.
  6. Press into a buttered tin, and prick it all over with a fork.  Cook in a moderate oven (it was a Rayburn, I don’t have any more precise details than ‘moderate’) until it’s golden and ready. Yes, I said “until it’s ready”, probably at least 30 mins, possibly longer.
  7. While it was in the oven you could turn your attention back to the caramel.
  8. Here’s the cunning bit – as the caramel is now cool, you will be able to tell if it has the right consistency.  If it is too solid, just warm it gently (really gently) in the pan and add some milk to loosen it.  Stir it well once it’s warm. If it’s too runny then you’ll need to boil it up for longer (but this wasn’t an issue with me).
  9. At the same time you could be melting the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of water.
  10. When the shortbread is ready bring it out of the oven, and leave it in the tin. Spread the warm caramel over the shortbread.
  11. Leave it for a few wee minutes to cool slightly and then pour the melted chocolate over the caramel. Give the tin a wee shoogle to settle all the chocolate evenly and smoothly.
  12. Leave in a cool place, and carefully cut into bite-size chunks.

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