James Martin's Easter Biscuits

A few weeks back, the Mothership put in a request for Miss A to forgo her weekly gingerbread baking ritual in favour of making Easter biscuits. Not being a fan of anything containing dried grapes I only agreed because a) it would count towards the blog and b) I'd score brownie points on the home made gift front.   I selected a recipe by the lovely James Martin.

Like most biscuits, the recipe is really simple to follow. I must admit that I missed the instruction to only put in the yolk of a egg and not the whole thing.  But with my sous-chef being in charge of egg-related activities there's no way I'd've gotten a separated egg anyway!

I had to add another 50g flour to compensate.  The egg white is used to stick the sugar to the biscuits part way through baking. Luckily I had a spare one kicking around from another recipe that I'd been wondering what to do with.

Because of the extra liquid from the egg, I also didn't need the milk that James recommends.  I guess for thriftiness, following the original recipe is best so that you don't have to waste an extra egg yolk by using a whole egg in the mix and needing a white for the glazing part.

 As my mum doesn't like mixed peel I left that out and replaced it with extra currants. If I'd been making them for me I'd've gone with a chocolate and ginger combo like yesterday's buns or maybe sour cherry and apricot. There's always another time I guess.

I would also say that whoever wrote the recipe must've used tiny cutters.  We used a large round fluted cutter and a butterfly cutter and managed twelve biscuits.  The recipe specifies 20-25 biscuits so do consider this if you need to share them around with family and friends.

They've not been taste tested yet as we are all fit to burst after a huge tea of meatballs and spaghetti and  birthday cake (on separate plates!) but they've passed the eagle-eyed sight test of my mother, the ex professional chef.

If she likes them then I guess that's another tradition to add to my list.  Apparently her grandma used to make them for her as a child. Who knows why the tradition petered out but I'm happy to re-instigate it for Miss A.

Updated 8th April 2012 - Well the biscuits got the Mothership's seal of approval.  She said they were nicely spiced and they had a nice soft texture without being too crunchy.  I think if I made them again I'd probably zest an orange and a lemon into the mix to replace the candied peel.  And even I enjoyed mine despite not being a fan of squashed fly biscuits.


Ingredients

• 110g/4oz caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 110g/4oz butter, softened at room temperature
• 1 free-range egg, separated
• 225g/8oz plain flour, sieved
• good pinch mixed spice
• 55g/2oz currants
• 30g/1oz candied peel
• 3 tbsp milk

1. Preheat the oven 160C/325F/Gas 3. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg yolk until well combined.
3. Fold the flour into the mixture, then stir in the mixed spice, currants and candied peel. Stir in enough milk to form a stiff dough.
4. Roll the dough out onto a floured surface and cut out the biscuits with a fluted cutter. Place onto the baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.
5. Remove the biscuits from the oven, brush with the reserved egg white, sprinkle with sugar and return to the oven for 5-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown.
6. Remove the biscuits from the tray and set aside to cool on a wire rack.

@EversNanaJules Chocolate and Stem Ginger Hot Cross Buns

Making hot cross buns on Good Friday morning with my mum is one of those treasured childhood memories.  From the mixing and kneading to the sizzle of the bun glaze on oven-fresh buns there was nothing that I looked forward to more every Easter.

Of course, you grow up and life changes.  She got married and moved away (we lived with my grandparents and I chose to stay with them).  She still made buns but I got them at teatime when I visited.  I left home and visits were on Easter Sunday for the traditional turkey lunch instead.  If I was lucky I got a toasted two-day-old bun.  But it was never the same as ones that were fresh from the oven.

I figured that this year, as part of the challenge, I should make my own.  That way, when Miss A is old enough, we can make them together and hopefully she'll remember the tradition with fondness and a little lump in her throat when I've long since departed from this earth.

Anyhoo, in general, I don't like things with  currants, sultanas or raisins in.  Don't get me started on the subject of fruit scones.  I do make an exception to this rule for seasonal items (Christmas cake and pudding, hot cross buns etc) but you'll usually find I've meticulously extracted all the fruit to play Tinker, Tailor... on the side of my plate.

So when Jules tweeted about her recipe for Stem Ginger and Chocolate Hot Cross buns, I knew I had to try them.  My beloved Grandma would have loved these as ginger and chocolate was one of her favourite flavour combos.  When she passed away, something weird happened and I suddenly found myself eating all the things she used to like such as smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwiches and chocolate ginger biscuits - things which during her lifetime I would've turned my nose up at.  It wasn't quite that spooky though as I still won't touch Branston Pickle, Piccalilli or Frys Turkish Delight!


Jules created the recipe based on one from the Fabulous Baker Boys.  I love that in her blog she specifies the criteria she was looking for in the finished bun - with lovely soft innards being at the top of the list.  Recently, the Weekly Bake Off challenge was for Mary Berry's Hot Cross Buns but the picture in the book put me off - hers looked like small, round rocks.  Jules in contrast were large and pillowy.  I was completely sold.

Skipping my morning run this morning in favour of bun making (I seriously have to do more of the former and much less of the latter before I turn into a weeble), I opted to make the buns by hand rather than with my mixer because I didn't want to wake the rest of the house up.  It was really satisfying to bake by hand.  I've gotten so used to letting the Kenwood take the strain unless I'm doing a Dan Lepard recipe (plus it makes it easier with a toddler underfoot) but I really think it takes the joy out of baking some days.

I was tempted to try Dan's method of knead for 10 seconds, rest for 30 minutes, repeat several times but I was impatient to have my first bun of the year so did one ten minute knead.  My kitchen was really cold today so it took ages for them to rise but they got there in the end.  I also loved that Jules uses proper crosses.  Why on earth anyone would want a pastry cross on top is beyond me.  It seems plain weird.  My only tip would be to be careful about how much you snip off the end of your piping bag.  What I thought was a small hole actually made really big crosses and on a couple of the buns, the cross melded into itself leaving a big white patch in the corner.  Ah well, you live and learn.

The finished buns were beautiful.  The mixed spice gives a lovely flavour throughout the soft crumb.  The chocolate and ginger is a welcome surprise.  Miss A polished off a half before they were barely out of the oven and announced that they were 'Yummy scrummy in my tummy'.  A little later, we were out perusing cars and I'd taken one along with us for an emergency snack.  The lady garage owner ended up asking me all about them because she said they looked amazing and she's going to give them a go too.

You can find Jules' recipe over on her blog.  Thanks so much for sharing Jules.  Will definitely be making these again!

Dan Lepard's Vanilla Cupcakes

Picture this little recent snippet of my life.  It's a bright sunny, blue-sky kind of day (so not today with the gales and snow that are lashing the UK).  I'm being taken out to lunch by a tall, dark, quite-handsome-for-an-old-guy* man (who isn't my husband) in his super-fast sports car.  Despite the fact that I'm packing a few more pounds than I would if this were a fantasy situation, it's all going really well.  We banter back and forth.  I laugh in the right places, am feeling reasonably witty in my replies and my usual social-ineptness has disappeared despite the situation.  The car falls into a comfortable silence for a few moments before the next topic arises.

Season-appropriate accoutrements

And suddenly I realise that we've hit that time when you've spent far too much time with someone.  Because the conversation has neatly segued onto the oh-so-hot-topic of the fat content of milk.  I kid you not.  If this was a film script, the early part of this scene would have played out against some cheesy easy-listening music from an LP.  The reason for an LP?  Because at the point of the conversation turning to milk, the needle would've scratched across the surface of the record before the stunned silence of my realisation that the conversation had degenerated to such a level.

So how does this little vignette relate to today's recipe of choice?  Well as always, it's a bit of a tenuous link but in some ways, I'm starting to spend a little too much time in the company of the fair Mr Lepard as well.  It seems that whenever I need a recipe that requires baking these days, Short and Sweet is my bible of choice.  I've tried many cupcake recipes with varying success and so far, Hummingbird Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes have been my recipe of choice (incidentally, that recipe calls for full fat milk, but it works perfectly well with skimmed - see what I did there?). 

But tonight when I had a need to bake to distract myself from the melee in my head and cupcakes appeared to be the answer, rather than, in the spirit of this blog trying out recipes from the many other baking books I own, I chose Short and Sweet because I knew I wouldn't be disappointed with the results like I was with Mary Berry's vanilla cupcakes (and I don't need any further disappointment today thank you very much).

Lepard's recipe has a simple ingredients list.  His cupcakes are based on a standard pound cake recipe.  Which funnily enough was how I used to make my cupcakes before I discovered the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook courtesy of my neighbour.  But in true Lepard style, not only does he give you instructions on how to bake with a mixer, he also tells you how to mix them by hand.  Which was perfect because I'm not allowed to use my mixer after 7pm if the husband's in (which is probably 99% of the time).  And so I am now an expert on hand-mixing cake.  Well okay I can make a pound cake by hand.

I love the tips like warming the bowl with hot water before starting beating the butter and sugar together.  And his instruction that sifting the flour is really important.  I'm sure that I read  somewhere that either Dame Mary or St Delia said that you didn't need to bother these days but if Dan says to sift, then sift I must.

The best bit of all was because the recipe is pound cake (equal weight of butter, flour, sugar and eggs), the batter is thick and easy to manouevre into the cake cases.  I get really frustrated with the runny consistency of the Hummingbird batter.  It makes a great cake but I just end up dripping it everywhere - and putting it in a piping bag is no good as it just runs out of the other end far too quickly.  It makes great cakes but it's so hard to work with.  Or at least it is if you're as cack-handed as me.

Pre-decoration

Lepard's recipe makes eight generously sized cupcakes.  I'm sure if I'd scraped the bowl clean and been a little more economical about sharing between the eight cases (and weighed the mixture so each case was evenly filled!) I could've eked out nine or ten.  Instead I got the eight cakes that the recipe suggested and plenty of bowl-licking activity for me.  This is why I am packing a few extra pounds in the little story at the start of this post!

They're now out of the oven and cooling ready for icing.  I must confess as this was a last-minute choice of recipe, I didn't have the wherewithal to make the suggested frosting which uses butter, icing sugar, condensed milk (check, check, check) and double cream (no check).  So they were decorated with a swirl of plain vanilla frosting and some Easter themed goodies ready to be taken in to work.

You'll have to wait until tomorrow for the verdict but based on past experience with anything from Short and Sweet, they're going to get a huge thumbs up.  Watch this space.

And of course, as always, I will insist that you buy yourself a copy of Short and Sweet.  I'm in no way sponsored for this evangelism. But it is probably now my favourite ever book.  Alongside The Elves and The Shoemaker....

Or you can find the recipe over on The Guardian's website

*it would be thoroughly inappropriate of me to describe this person in any other way!  I'm not wanting to offend with my choice of words but I equally wouldn't want anyone to misconstrue the situation if I phrased it differently...