Olympic Food Challenge: Chrov Plav - Kazakhstan

Out of all of my Olympic countries, I think Kazakhstan did best at the London 2012 Summer Olympics, gathering a haul of seven golds, one silver and five bronze medals.  Looking at the disciplines they got them in, I wouldn't ever want to mess with a Kazakhstani - they seem to excel at Weightlifting, Boxing and Wrestling (with a gold in Cycling and another in Athletics for a little diversity).

They've fielded seven competitors in three different disciplines at the 2012 Paralympics - some have already sadly not advanced, but they still have some hope left in certain categories.

Moving on to the food angle, their cuisine revolves heavily around horse meat and mutton.  Of course, eating horses is (thankfully) frowned on in the UK so I didn't have to go down that route.  According to the Beeb, the Kazakhstani team even tried to bring their own horse meat sausages with them as they believe that their protein rich diet is key to being amazing in the Powerlifting arena.  I couldn't find out whether or not the UK Borders Agency permitted to bring them in but based on their prowess from the stats above, either they did or maybe they'd have medalled (I hate myself for using that term!) even more than they did.

One of their most well-known dishes is Manti - or lamb dumplings.  Having already done the dumpling thin "in Nepal" a few weeks back and being tight on time, I went for a different, pudding based dish.  Chrov Plav.  I can't for the life of me remember how I happened across this particular recipe as most of my research turned up recipes in how to preserve mutton and lamb - very important to the Kazakhstanis  due to their historical nomadic lifestyles.  The ingredients for Chrov Plav reflect this with a heavy reliance on dried fruits and rice - all of which would transport pretty easily without spoiling.

Sadly, I'm not a fan of Chrov Plav.  I think it's because I probably wanted it to be like an English rice pudding - creamy and comforting.  The lack of full fat milk and/or cream and lashings of sugar probably makes this really good for you.  It is sweet, but the sweetness comes from the dried fruit and honey - I don't really like honey.  If for some bizarre reason I did try making this again, I'd probably throw some cardamom pods in to give it an additional flavour dimension.  I'd also think about swapping the honey for maple syrup and while I was at it, substitute the water for milk.  At which point it would be nothing like the Kazakhstan dish - and I'd probably just be better off making the Stovetop Coconut Rice Pudding I was so enamoured with earlier this year (ie a totally different dish).

If you want to make it, here's the original recipe.

Serves 4

• 1 cup Rice uncooked (it didn't say which kind of rice so I used basmati)
• 1/4 cup Chopped almonds
• 2 tbsp Currants
• 2 tbsp Raisins
• 6 each Prunes dried, pitted, & coarsely chopped
• 3 tbsp Dates chopped
• 4 tbsp Butter
• 1/4 cup Apricots, dried, pitted & cut into strips ¼"x1"
• 1 tbsp Honey
• 2 cup Cold water

1. Soak, dates, currants, & prunes in a bowl of warm water for 15 minutes. Then remove them, pat dry, and mix with the other dried fruits. 
2. Melt the butter in a large, heavy skillet over high heat. 
3. Add the fruit mixture and the almonds. 
4. Reduce the heat to low and stir for 4 minutes, stir in the honey, rice, and water. 
5. Raise heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes. 
6. Serve hot.

Dan Lepard's Plum Glitter Jam

Had I known about (and watched) Julie and Julia before starting this challenge, I never would've made it past the first post, let alone be just thirty more recipes from The Last Post.  I knew the name of the film and that it was about cooking, but that was all.  It wasn't until I met the lovely Edinburgh Cake Ladies in June that one of them told me about the plot and recommended that I watched it.   A few weeks later, one of the ladies at my cake club also asked if that was why I was doing this.  So I bought it on Amazon and finally settled down to watch it on Friday night.

Glittery jam

For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a real life story about a writer who challenges herself to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Or to put it another way 568 recipes in 365 days.  That's pretty serious commitment.  The rules for my own blog were pretty loose, but some of the highlights in the movie included boiling lobsters, making seven lots of things in aspic (nope, not going there - too much like pet food) and learning to bone a duck.

I was amused by the similarities.  Julie is apparently rubbish at housework and blames it on her ADD.  Her husband tells her she won't see the year out as she loses interest in things quickly.  Her mother doesn't understand why she's doing it when she has a full time job, a husband and a cat to fill her life.  She refers to childish and teary outbursts when it all gets too much.  Her husband calls her a selfish bitch at one point.  I sat there, transfixed, mentally ticking off each of these things in my own life.  Swap the cat for a toddler and two dogs and set the scene in Wiltshire and I am Julie.

Actually, I the 'selfish bitch' thing only came out on Friday.  I went up to bed and bumped into the husband (we generally only inhabit the same room at the same time when there's dinner on the table).  He asked if I'd enjoyed the film (I'm rarely allowed the luxury of the tellybox to myself in the evening). I started raving on about how spooky it was that it was just like the last eleven months of my life (the lobster episode is coming next weekend) and I said that the only differences were that a) my husband wouldn't rescue me from an exploding pot of boiling lobsters and b) he hadn't (yet) called me selfish.

"Oh yes," said the husband "you have been really selfish.  In fact I'd go so far as to call you a selfish bitch."  I missed the point there by excitedly replying "Yes, that's exactly what her husband called her" rather than taking the insult at the face value that it was said with.  In case you've not read any other posts, we have a few "issues" with each other.

Anyhow, here I am, counting down the days and realising that there are still so many things on my foodie bucket list that I won't tick off in thirty days.  To be honest, the doing something every day got boring about six months ago, but I'm determined to prove to the husband that I can actually see something through - especially if it means I can ignore the mounting housework.  So I'm looking forward to just doing something new once in a while and writing a slightly different blog.

Plus, I still have a small number of hurdles to get over before this year is out.  And when my grandad offered me 3lb of Victoria plums and a pile of Bramleys earlier this week, I couldn't refuse and didn't want to make plum and apple crumble so picked a couple of new recipes to try with them instead.

First up was the jam.  I had originally Googled recipes for Dan Lepard recipes for cakes using plums and Bramleys (I didn't have Short and Sweet to hand) but when the glittery jam recipe came back, I knew I had to do that.

Two years ago, I made my very first batch of jam and at the time had a glass thermometer which was housed in a test-tube style contraption (also glass).  As it neared setting point, the outer tube burst into my pan of jam, meaning I had to throw the whole lot away.  This time, with my trusty Heston Precision Thermometer, and a Dan recipe in my armoury, I knew it would work.

Some of the harvest from Grandad's garden

It's such a simple recipe - although I guess most jam is.  What I liked was not having to faff around with the 'wrinkle test' and to keep freezing tea plates, testing bits and then finding out it didn't wrinkle and starting again.  If you're going to do this kind of thing, I would definitely recommend investing in a decent thermometer.

And the glitter just makes the jam look that bit more special.  I used up the rest of the gold stars I had left from my Jubilee Bundt Cake.  I didn't realise, but not all edible glitter is actually really edible.  I've got several pots as free gifts from various places, all of which say that it's just for decoration.  Erm, what's the point of that?  You dust your cupcakes with it and then can't actually eat the frosting?  I guess it's good for people who are on a diet...

Having burnt my tongue licking the spoon just after putting the jam into jars, I then had to toast a piece of yesterday's eight strand plaited loaf just for jam testing purposes.  Perfect.  Just the right amount of cheek tingling sharpness.

I will definitely be doing some more glittery jam in preparation for Christmas.  The non-fruiting ornamental cherry tree we bought from B&Q when we first moved here also grows greengages (I swear it will be like The Faraway Tree in a hundred year's time) so when they're ripe, I will be harvesting them and using this recipe to start prepping for my festive hampers.

You can find Dan's recipe online here.

Dan Lepard's Saffron Peach Cake

There's a rumour going around that I'm writing a cake blog.  This is not true.  I'm writing a blog where I try and cook something new every day for 366 days.  The original idea was to attempt to broaden my family's food horizons.  I thought I was doing pretty well, having clocked up 322 different recipes on consecutive days.  In fact, sometimes I've made more than one new recipe each day, but they haven't always made it to the blog.  I've survived two weeks on holiday, Christmas with my fussy family, various bugs and so on and every day made something new and written about it.  And yet, everyone still thinks I'm writing a cake blog.

Summer in a cake

Admittedly, these opinions have come from two sources.  My best friend who has discovered the delights of baking and whom I have gone from talking geek-speak to, to discussing the merits of Willie's 100% Cacao and the joys of owning a bundt tin.  The other source of the rumour is from my work colleagues who have been the (lucky) recipients of the majority of the cakes I've made over the past (nearly) year.

This is probably because it's where my 'knack' (I hesitate to call it talent) and passion lie.  In baking.  I enjoy cooking from scratch but when you live with someone who has to eat a dish that tastes exactly the same every time you make it, the joy can be taken out of cooking when you fear the reaction if you happen to have run out of xyz and replaced it with abc just this once.  With cake, most people are polite/complimentary about it.  I can't remember ever giving anyone (apart from the husband) a bit of cake and them not at least saying thank you, but more likely they provide very positive feedback.

The one thing I've gotten from this year of cooking and blogging is the confidence to be a little more creative and experimental in the baking department although I still have much to learn.  The fabulous Great British Bake Off is back on our screens tomorrow night.  It was watching that this time last year that inspired me to do this rather strange challenge to myself.  The only way to progress in something is to practice and evolve.  I have learnt so much this year about cooking and baking and flavours and little twists that I feel I'm in a better place than I was a year ago.  I will be watching avidly this year to see what other gaps in my knowledge I should consider plugging once I get underway with my new blog.

Top of the learning list is that when you use something up, remember to put it straight into the Ocado shopping app so when you have the urge to bake, you don't wind up having to adapt and cut corners on certain recipes.  Or if you happen to be going to the shops for one ingredient, double check the cupboards before you go to make sure you've got everything you need.  Which is why I ended up making an almost almondless almond cake.

I still can't let go of the Olympic Food Challenge

I always always always have two or three bags of ground almonds in my cupboard plus a big jar that I pour all the ends of packets into.  Usually because I forget I've got some and then buy another bag when I'm baking something so build up a stock.  So when I picked this cake, it was with some confidence that all I needed to buy was saffron.  Not so I discovered when I turned all the cupboards out to find every permutation of nut (Brazils, macadamias, walnuts, pine nuts, pecans, pistachios...) but nary a bag of ground almonds to be found.  I'd put them all in my mum's chocolate and coconut birthday cake the other day and not replaced them.  Oops.

So I ended up flavouring the sponge purely with almond essence and replacing the almonds weight-for-weight with more flour.  It seemed to work okay although the little slice I tried was quite crumbly.  I'm sure the almonds would've made the sponge much moister.

But this is a fabulously cheery cake with it's sunny saffron hue and topped with sliced peaches.  The perfect antithesis for a miserable August day.  You can find the recipe in Short and Sweet or on the Guardian website.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Summer Pudding Cupcakes

My gorgeous cousin, @BridestockBride is getting married in less than a week.  Not one known for convention, she and her hubby-to-be are having a wedding festival.  In amongst all the excitement, she's planning on having a tea tent with a cake stall and has been buying vintage china like a demon for the last year.

You can just about see the hidden middle...

Any of the guests who are vaguely capable of baking have been asked to bring some cake with them.  I still haven't quite decided what I'm making, but I came up with these cupcakes as a potential option.

Summer pudding is something that we never had when I was growing up because my mum doesn't like the 'soggy bread' outside.  For the same reason, we rarely had trifle as she doesn't like soggy sponge.  But I love summer fruits and figured that you could do a pink-tinged hidden middle cupcake with a dollop of 'cream' on the top.  I Googled about for recipes but couldn't find one so came up with my own.

Yesterday I made a half batch of cakes for a trial run and decided to add it to the blog today - even though it means a double-blog-day with my Olympic Food Challenge meal coming later tonight.

Because I'm not sure what the weather is going to be like come Saturday, I went for a topping of Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMB) because it's firmer than standard English Buttercream and will hopefully stand up to a warm day better.  Having mastered Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMB) a few months back for my epic raspberry cake, I decided it was only fair to try IMB as well.  The end product for both SMB and IMB appears to be the same. I don't have any SMB to hand to do a true comparison.  But the cooking method is slightly different.  With SMB, you heat the egg whites over a bain marie with the sugar and then whip them.  IMB requires you to add hot sugar syrup to partially whipped egg whites.  In both cases, you then whip the meringue to within an inch of its life, throw in a huge pile of butter et voila, buttercream.

Girly cakes ahoy!

The recipe I picked for the IMB instructed me to boil my sugar for seven minutes and gave no temperature.  After four, it started to turn caramel in colour so I popped in my Heston thermometer and it told me it was 168c already.  Disaster.  A quick Google revealed that the syrup should be no more than 110c.  The second batch took just over two minutes from initial boil to being ready.

Rather than waste the first batch, I threw in some pink food colouring and made some sugar graffiti just for the fun of it.  I remember seeing Lorraine Pascale do this and I was just interested in how to work with it and how long you have between pouring it and being able to flex it onto things and the moment when it sets hard and will just fragment.

Whilst making up the cakes, I then thought the fragments of sugar would add an extra dimension to the finished cake.  I asked the husband for his opinion.  It wasn't polite (I must confess I was so deflated, I tweeted exactly what he said).  But I'm pleased with them.

Here's how I made them

For the sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery - makes 12-16)

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1/2 tsp rosewater (optional)
• 2 eggs
• red and purple gel food colouring

For the filling

• 200g frozen summer fruits
• 3 tbsp caster sugar

For the Italian Meringue Buttercream (makes more than you'll need for the cakes, but you can freeze it for later use)

• 5 egg whites
• 215g caster sugar
• 60ml water
• 340g butter, left at room temp for about an hour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

• Fresh summer fruits and mint leaves to decorate

• A sugar thermometer
• Cake cases
• 2 x 12 cup muffin trays
• Stand mixer with a whisk and paddle attachment

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and rosewater in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Add a little red and purple food colouring to the batter and beat well until you have a dark pinky-purple colour that you're happy with.  It's important to use gel colours as you don't need too much of them to get a good colour and they won't make the cake batter to liquidy.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile, make the filling by putting the frozen berries and caster sugar in a small pan and heating gently over a medium-low heat until the sugar has dissolved and the berries are in a thick syrup.
7. For the Italian Meringue Buttercream, put the egg whites into the bowl of the stand mixer and add the whisk attachment.
8. Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan with the thermometer and heat until boiling.  Just before the temperature reaches 110c, start the mixer going on high to whip the egg whites.  Once they have some volume and the sugar syrup is at 110c, remove the pan from the heat and slowly pour the syrup in a stream into the mixer as it whips the eggs.  Once all the sugar syrup has been poured in, continue whipping until the egg whites are cool to the touch.  This can take around ten minutes.  It's essential that they're cool or the buttercream will end up runny.
9. Once the meringue is thick and cool, start adding the butter in in small lumps.  It will take a while to add all the butter and the mixture may appear to go runny for a while but it will come back together right at the end when the balance of butter and meringue is right.
10. Finally, turn the mixer down to medium and add the vanilla bean paste, beating for another minute until it's all incorporated.
11. To assemble the cakes, use a small sharp knife to cut a deep cone shape from the centre of the cake (don't eat it, you'll need it shortly).  Take care to not cut right through the bottom of the sponge.  Add a spoonful of the summer fruit mix then trim the cone of cake to fit as a lid to cover up the fruit.  Pipe a swirl of buttercream over the top of the cake to cover up the cut but still show some of the pink sponge around the edges.  Decorate with the fresh summer fruit and sprigs of mint.

The spare buttercream will keep well in the fridge or freezer.  You need to bring it back to room temperature and then whip with the stand mixer for five minutes to return it to its original consistency.  You can find out more about my experience with doing that here.

Pimms Jelly

One of the most common questions I get asked about this 'odyssey' that I'm on is 'What do you do when you just want a pizza for tea?'  Well the simple answer is that I don't actually like pizza so it's not a problem.  I'll admit that I enjoyed making Dan Lepard's pizzas a while back, but still, I never crave pizza because historically I've not liked it so I can live without it.

It was actually set at this point...

Of course, pizza is just one of many things that could be substituted into that question.  I'm just being a bit pedantic.  If pizza was replaced by toast/poached eggs/spaghetti bolognaise/sausages and mash etc etc then the more accurate answer as regular readers will know is that I make cake.  Or a dessert.  Which I guess is a bit cheaty in the grand scheme of things.  But I made the rules so I can bend them to suit.  I've still tried - and blogged about - a new recipe every single day for the last 300 days.

Sometimes I've tried two new recipes in one day.  Sometimes I've written about them both.  More often than not, I've actually only written about the more worthy recipe.  I've not documented some of the failures I've had - like the time I tried to make Lorraine Pascale's Totally Naughty Mini Toad in the Holes for Miss A's tea.  They ended up looking nothing like in the book - God knows how she got the sausages to stand to attention (*snigger*) - and Miss A refused point blank to eat them - despite being on an exclusively sausage-and-fruit diet at the time.  The picture was just so rubbish that I ended up writing about the lovely Chilli Chocolate Cookies I'd also made courtesy of a recipe from Jaim's Kitchen.

Thursday is normally the day I crack.  If I was dealing with a more adventurous family, I'd probably be more inclined to make an effort.  But Thursdays and I have never seen eye-to-eye.  Once upon a time it was free paper delivery day - not fun if you're a 15st 15-year-old lugging 200-odd free papers plus assorted leaflets from door to door.  Then Thursdays became working-late-night-opening-at-Debenhams night.  A brief respite appeared in my mid-twenties when it was go-to-the-nearest-bar-after-work-and-get-hammered-on-one-glass-of-wine.  And now, in my mid-thirties it's the day of the week when the fridge is bare and my patience is low.  Couple that with a husband who rolls his eyes at anything I ever suggest for tea unless it's takeaway and you start to understand why I struggle with recipes on Thursday nights.  

Even Instagram couldn't save these

I've been thinking about trying a Pimm's jelly recipe since the weather was last bright and sunny.  Having waited endless weeks to do it, I was motivated into action after buying some cute jelly moulds for Miss A the other day.  I was determined that rather than just buying packet jelly, I'd make my own from scratch so I know exactly what's going into it.  So used the Pimms jelly recipe as an excuse for a bit of pre-production testing before the weekend when I plan to make fresh fruit jellies from scratch.  Plus it meant I could have a 'dirty' tea of scrambled eggs with tomato sauce and didn't have to worry about making something exotic like Thomasina Miers' Huevos a la Mexicana.  Good old runny 'eggy-scrambles' with a big splodge of Heinz 57 on a toasted English muffin.  Bliss.


I had a can of pre-mixed Pimms that has been lurking in the fridge for the last six weeks (I rarely drink) so it seemed like a simple task.  Melt gelatine, mix with Pimms, bung in fruit, chill, eat.  I was rather relieved that it set, although a little disappointed that the fruit floated to the top.  I removed it from the fridge for it's pic.  Left it on the side whilst we ate tea.  Went to eat it an hour later and discovered that I now had a glass of flat Pimms with very soggy fruit in it.  Major disappointment.  I'm guessing it has to be eaten pretty much straight from the fridge.


Plus, the fizz had gone from the lemonade so I'm not quite sure why all the recipes advocate using lemonade.  I would've expected it to have a mildly carbonated fizz to the jelly but not a hint.  All in all a waste of a damned good glass of Pimms and somes strawberries.  Even though I don't drink often, I still felt saddened at this lost opportunity.  I'm really glad I didn't crack open the bottle of Prosecco that Ocado kindly gave me for being such a loyal customer and waste that on Jamie O's jelly recipe.  It's definitely going in a glass for drinking and nothing more.


Pimms and cake, however, works really well together.  My Pimms cupcakes got great reviews from my work colleagues a while back and I'm thinking of making a Pimms bundt for the Afternoon Tea Tent at Bridestock which is now only two and a bit weeks away!  But because Bridestock falls in the middle of the Olympic Food Challenge, I'm going to have another few days of double-recipe trying.  Oh well, at least it means I can eat a lot of toast for tea!


The recipe I used for the Pimms jelly can be found here.  Don't take my word for it that it doesn't work.

Cooking for Kids: Fruit Skewers

When we get back from holiday, the husband is starting a new healthy eating regime, coupled with a stupidly intense exercise regime.  I've been handed the manual and informed that I am responsible for making sure that he has a six pack like Ben Shepherd's (if you've not seen him recently, check out these pics of him in Men's Health - shame he's a bit little)

Some of your five a day

I'm sure, if he puts his mind to it, he could get most of the way there.  When I first knew him, he used to lift weights every day and had really big arm muscles for someone who was pretty slim.  Since we moved to the countryside, he's become more sedentary and the dumbells are coated in a serious layer of dust in the garage.  But the biggest challenge will be the food.

It involves very little carbs, lots of protein and lots of fresh fruit and veg.  The only veg the husband eats is bell peppers when we have fajitas (chopped toms, onions and garlic made into sauce doesn't count in my book).  He keeps saying 'it's only eight weeks'.  I'm afraid we won't get past day two.  Every so often, he'll inform me I don't feed him enough vegetables.  I stock up on broccoli, asparagus, peas etc and by the end of the week, I'm making soup for me with it and he's back to no veg at all.

Miss A is just like him in that respect; but when it comes to fruit, she's like a little fruit bat.  I've never seen a child willingly eat so much fruit as she does - all varieties (except Dragon Fruit).  The husband, on the other hand, only eats bananas.  And apple turnovers.  Only if they're accompanied by ice cream.

So I figured that this would be a good, simple, sharing family recipe for holiday.  Chop up loads of fresh fruit.  Stick it on skewers.  Drizzle with maple syrup and melted chocolate.  Eat.  Job done.  Why did I not think of this before?

BBC Good Food Cinnamon porridge with banana & berries

After at least a week of unhealthy eating, I'm going to slowly start preparing the husband for his new diet regimen when we get home.  He's doing this new hardcore exercise plan (he'll last about a week) and it comes with one of those diet plans that revolves around oats and fish with brown rice and veggies.  None of which he'll eat.  So this morning, as we're in Scotland, I thought I'd try convincing him to at least give porridge a go.  I doubt that he'll even look at it.  Normally he can't bear to be on the same floor as it, let alone in the same room. And we're in a single storey log cabin, so he may have ended up sitting outside in the rain whilst I made this.

Will update with the tale of how it went later as I'm assuming we have no mobile signal and pre-authoring this post.

Loving the retro Blue Willow Ware china

Recipe can be found here

Updated: 05 July 2012 @ 19:58 

I must have been seriously deluded when I wrote the bit above, thinking that he husband would even be present at the breakfast table at the same time as everyone else, let alone that he might consider eating porridge.

Maybe he knew what I was thinking and purposely avoided getting up until Miss A and I had finished breakfast so that I couldn't try and force feed him porridge.  Or because he was on holiday, he got to have a lie in every single day where I was up at 6am, which I guess is a lie in for me as I'm normally up at 5 and off to work at six.

Enough of our marital discord.  There's not too much to say about this recipe.  I enjoyed it enough to make it two days on the trot.  The second day, however, I managed to burn the porridge to the bottom of the pan whilst dealing with a Cheerio-related crisis (I hate stainless steel pans on electric hobs) so I've not made it since.

Cooking the bananas in the porridge meant that it needed minimal sugar for sweetening - I normally use maple syrup - so it's a fairly good and filling diet option.  Definitely one for a weekend breakfast when I've got the time (and the non-stick pans) to make this.

Mary Berry's Fruited Tea Bread

This post was going to be about Mary Berry's Barabrith.  But then I figured I might get a few raised eyebrows from my Scottish followers because I'm holidaying North of the Border.  Thankfully, Mary saved the day because her 100 Cakes and Bakes book has a recipe for Fruited Tea Bread.  Which is exactly the same recipe as Barabrith, except for one using regular tea and sultanas, the other uses mixed fruit and Earl Grey tea.  The quantities for everything is absolutely the same.

Sadly not my lovely spotty tin

I picked this recipe as I needed something to sustain us on our journey tomorrow.  We're off even further up North and have a four hour car trip ahead of us (excluding traffic jams and pit stops).  So fruited tea bread seemed like something that would travel well.

Updated 5 July 2012 @ 20:11

I bought a bag of Tesco's luxury dried fruit to make this - in addition to the usual staples of sultanas and raisins it also included pineapple, apricots and cherries - and it makes for a more interesting bake than a regular teabread like the Barrabrith.  I know Morrisons do a similar bag of dried fruit as I use it for my Christmas cakes.  So do Waitrose although it's a fair bit more expensive.

The bake was a little paler than it should have been because I only had golden caster to hand instead of the required muscavado, but it didn't detract from the look or the flavour.  It took 50% longer to cook than stated, but it may be because I was using an unfamiliar oven and I was a bit paranoid about it not being a fan oven and burning the cake.

It was nice and moist with or without butter.  A good, solid crowd pleaser.  But then aside from the odd one or two, my family generally never complain about being given cake.

Our lovely land lady also popped by the day before this to drop off some homemade millionaire's shortbreads, presented in the lovely Cath Kidston tin in the picture.  I so wanted to take it home with me as it would be great for styling pictures for the blog.  Sadly I don't have any loveliness like that in my day-to-day life.  I must buy me some!

A couple of other asides.  When posting from an Android phone, it autocorrects 'fruited' to 'fried'  I had a few tweets asking about the novelty that is Mary Berry's Fried Tea Bread.  And sheep are very partial to slightly stale fruited tea bread.  As are chickens, peacocks and Shetland Ponies.  And toddlers who are given the stale fruit bread to share with the animal neighbours.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Pimms No 1 Cupcakes

I'm on a course this week and was a little disappointed that it meant that I wouldn't make it to the second meeting of the Bath Clandestine Cake Club for logistical reasons.  The theme this month was 'Alcoholic Cakes' and I'd been planning on making a Pimm's bundt cake.  After pondering the best way to deliver all of the fruit flavours associated with Pimm's, I found a fabulous idea on the Skin and Blister blog, where the bundt was drizzled with Pimm's and sugar and then had little sticks of fruit, artfully arranged on the outside.

Made the most of a tiny bit of evening sunlight

When I finally realised I wouldn't be able to make it to CCC (last night, when my usual journey of forty minutes, took an hour and forty!), I decided I'd save the bundt for my cousin's rather fabulous Wedding Festival Bake Off and not bake at all this week.

Depending on how you look at things fortunately (or unfortunately), my course colleagues kind of talked me into baking tonight anyway.  You know when you go on a course and they do that really annoying thing at the start where you tell everyone who you are and then one random fact about yourself?  Well for once, I had something interesting to say.  I told them about my blog.

It sparked a discussion over lunch as to whether I was actually cooking 'real food' or was doing 'beans on toast', 'beans under toast', beans with toast on the side', 'cheesy beans on toast'....  Thankfully, because I've blogged every night and for all apart from about two posts, I've managed to get at least one picture of the results (didn't think about doing it for the very first post, and one disaster went straight in the bin as I was so p'd off with it), I was able to direct them to the blog so they could explore for themselves.

This lunchtime, I got asked what was for tea last night.  I was secretly pleased that the ones staying at the local 4* hotel said that my dinner sounded better than what they'd had.  And then talk turned to what today's recipe was.  Because I'd already spoken about my love for baking and how my normal colleagues have been the recipient of many a cake, I kind of felt duty bound to do my usual Tuesday night activity of baking for work.

And so the Pimm's cupcake was born.  I had done a little research on this last night and was disappointed with the lack of inspiring recipes.  There's even one on the Good Food Channel website that has cucumber buttercream.  That's a step to far for me!

Ready for the oven

With this in mind, I set about creating my own recipe which I'll share with you tonight.  I'm not saying it's perfect.  I think they're okay.  There's probably room for improvement.  I think they're lacking something, but I'm not quite sure what.  So if you want to try the recipe and tweak it, let me know what you did and how it turned out!

I used the Hummingbird Vanilla Cupcake as a base as I was looking for a light airy bake.  A while back, I made their Mojito cupcakes for work, but because I was making bigger cakes this time and needed 14 of them, the vanilla recipe worked better with a slight adaptation.

For the filling, I reduced some Pimm's, orange juice and sugar and then added in halved strawberries and left them to cool.  The buttercream was laced with Pimm's, orange, lemon and lime zest.  I did a bit of research on this yesterday and found that the lovely Jacqueline over at Cake Boule had made Pimm's and strawberry buttercream for her gorgeous truffles.  I was pleased with her tip that she tweeted me that it makes a soft buttercream as I wasn't so worried when it came time to pipe it.  No big Wilton 1M swirls on these little beauties!  Again, if that's what you like, tinker with the buttercream recipe until your happy with the consistency.

I've tried one, purely for the purposes of telling you how it came out.  The rest are piped and now chilling in the fridge in my cake carrier, ready for a trip to the office tomorrow.  There was a small bowl of buttercream left to, so I'll be interested to prod it in the morning and see if it's set or not.

I'll update tomorrow with feedback from my colleagues.  Of course the trouble is that we have a 'Learning Contract' that we wrote on Day #1.  Amongst many things, it states that we are not allowed to criticise others.  Any rule flouting incurs a £1 fine.  So far, we've collected £7 (of which I contributed one for answering the phone to my boss).  So I'm sure they'll say the cakes taste amazing even if they don't really think so.

Recipe - Makes 16 (I use muffin sized cake cases)

For the Sponge (adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird Bakery)

Got a bit carried away with Instagram effects...

• 240g plain flour
• 280g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp table salt
• 80g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 240ml whole milk
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp fresh mint, finely chopped

For the strawberry filling

• 16 small strawberries, halved (or eight large ones, quartered)
• 3 tbsp Pimm's No 1
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp orange juice

For the frosting and decoration

• 500g icing sugar, sifted
• 160g unsalted butter at room temperature
• pinch of table salt
• 60ml Pimm's No1
• zest of one orange
• zest of one lime
• zest of one lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/325F.  Line two muffin tins with paper muffin cases.  If you only have one muffin tin, you can always bake in two batches.
2. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter into a bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat on a slow speed until it resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Mix the eggs, milk and mint in a jug.  Pour half of the milk mixture into the flour mixture and beat slowly until combined.  Scrape down the sides, add the rest of the milk mixture and then beat until you have a smooth batter.  Beat in the lemon juice.
4. Divide the mixture between the cake cases, filling them half full.
5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, then remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool.
6. Meanwhile make the strawberry filling by placing the Pimm's, sugar and orange juice into a small pan.  Bring to the boil and then simmer until the liquid has reduced by about a half.  Remove from the heat and add in the strawberries.  Toss to coat and then leave to cool.
7. When the cakes are cooled, carefully cut a small cone shape from the top of each cake - keep the cut outs, don't eat them!  Fill the hole in each cake with a couple of pieces of the strawberry and then replace the piece of cake you removed.
8. Make the frosting by beating the icing sugar, butter and salt together using an electric mixer until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Add the fruit zest, and continue beating.  Slowly pour in the Pimm's.  Beat until light and fluffy then spoon or pipe some onto the top of each cake, ensuring that the cuts in the top of the cake are covered.  
9. Finally top with a whole fresh strawberry.  Or if you're feeling extravagant/arty, use fresh mint leaves and twists of orange, lemon, lime and cucumber skin cut with a cannoli cutter.

Lil Ms Squirrel's Jubilee Lemon, Blueberry and Raspberry Bundt

Just after the last Clandestine Cake Club and my epic raspberry cake, I got really excited about the idea of making a bundt cake for my next CCC bake.  I think it was a bit of random, middle-of-the-night web surfing that lit the spark - a couple of the recipes I read were by lovely ladies who I follow on Twitter - @Roswensian of Roswensian and @Philosophobia of Cake and Feminism.

Jubilee bundt

Bundt cakes for the uninitiated are those big, doughnut shaped cakes you often see on the continent.  You can get some really fancy bundt tins if you're serious about this and willing to invest upwards of £30 in just one cake tin, but as I was fairly sceptical about my level of success with a shaped tin, I bought one for a tenner on Amazon and am currently hoping for the best as I type because it's down in the oven baking.

I've been planning this cake ever since I got the tin so that I can have a practise run before the next CCC.  You'd've thought with so much forethought that I'd've come up with a timed plan to actually make the cake, but no, here I am at 8pm on a Friday night rushing through the baking.  

I've had one of those weeks where I feel I've bitten off more than I can chew with keeping this blog up on a daily basis.  But of course now, I'm too close to the finish line to quit.  The day was written off first with work, then a party at Miss A's nursery to celebrate the Jubilee and finally a trip to the vets with the Little Dog for her boosters.

I managed to whip up the cake batter whilst tea was cooking and get it into the oven.  I have to write the blog now because I've still got work to do for work and I'm running the risk of falling asleep over my keyboard and burning the cake.  It won't get iced until the morning now.  I'm still not sure how exactly I'm going to give it a jubilee theme - and it may all go a bit Pete Tong.  But the good news is that the batter tastes bloody marvellous so hopefully it will still taste great even if it looks a bit pants (I've seen some stunning cakes on Twitter this past week).

Because Bundt cakes seem to be more popular Stateside and on the Continent than in the UK, I had a Google around for a recipe to try out.  Because I'd planned to use blueberries and raspberries (for the patriotic colours), I happened across a Martha Stewart recipe that seemed to fit the bill.  A recipe from the Queen of American baking to adapt for the Queen of England's Jubilee?  Check!

Creative icing

On the way home from work, I stopped off at Morrisons to specifically buy some sour cream.  I came away with a bottle of Pimms, a bottle of wine, an electric mixer, some Hula Hoops, some frankfurters, some Dettol wipes, some bananas and some mushrooms but no sour cream.  Mr Ocado then came with the weekly order and he didn't have any sour cream either (I'd forgotten to order it, hence the stop at Morrisons) and so I had to spuddle around looking for an alternative.

Luckily Greek yogurt fits the bill and I happen to always have a tub of it in the fridge (except for now as I used it all in the cake).  As it was low fat, I compensated with a little extra butter.  

I mostly followed the rest of the recipe, aside from the fruit.  Stewart folds her fruit into the batter but I wanted to try and get some distinction between the raspberries and blueberries so I layered the cake mix in three sections with the fruit in between - blueberries between layer one and two and raspberries between layers two and three.

My one other problem was being that it was an American recipe, all the measurements were in cups.  I finally bought a set of cups several months ago and fully appreciate this method was used back in the day before scales were readily available but I just find the measurements a pain in the pants.  And it must be harder if you're making your own recipe up.  Some volumes are just 'a cup', some are 'a firmly packed cup'.  Confusing.  And how do you measure a cup of butter without melting it?  The alternative measure was sticks.  FML! So I diligently measured out my cups- and packed cups-ful and weighed out each one so I can bring you the metric version of the recipe.

Which I'll post later.  When I know that the cake was a success even with my adaptations.  No point giving you a duff recipe.  In the meantime, you'll have to make do with a pic of me layering the fruit in and if you're interested keep an eye out on Twitter for the grand-turning out picture.

Gotta scoot now, before I fall asleep.  More tomorrow :)

Updated - 2nd June 2012 @ 07:37

At about 9pm last night I successfully retrieved my bundt from the oven.  It had risen and cooked through perfectly.  I was a little surprised as the cake was so huge but then I figured it was because of the greater surface area exposed to heat by the tube bit in the middle (geek alert!)

Bundts don't really lend themselves to much icing so I settled on a drizzled red, white and blue effect; scattered with gold star edible glitter - which is now attached to just about everything including me and my phone.

The cake is about to head out on a journey to Winchester so when it's finally been cut, I'll post a pic of the inside - hopefully with lots of red and 'blue' from the raspberries and blueberries.  Fingers x'd.

I'm entering this into the Homemade by Fleur jubilee competition, sponsored by Appliances Online

Lemon, blueberry and raspberry bundt (adapted from a recipe by Martha Stewart)

Out of the oven

Fills a 25cm (10") bundt tin

• 400g plain flour plus 1 tsp (reserve this for coating the fruit)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 250g unsalted butter, softened
• 200g light muscavado sugar
• 175g caster sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 300g low fat Greek yogurt (if using full fat, reduce the butter by 25g)
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 200g blueberries (I used Waitrose Essential Frozen Blueberries, defrosted)
• 200g fresh raspberries
• zest of one unwaxed lemon

For the icing

• 75g icing sugar
• Juice of half a lemon
• red and blue food colouring (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/350F. Use a small knob of the butter to butter the bundt tin well.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl.
3. Beat the flour and sugars together until light and fluffy.
4. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well in between additions.  Beat in the vanilla bean paste.
5. Sift in one third of the flour and mix until well incorporated. Mix in half of the Greek yogurt.  Repeat this process until all of the flour and yogurt are used up.  Add the lemon zest and mix well.
6. Put about a third of the batter into the pan and smooth down.
7. Mix the blueberries with half a tsp of the reserved flour and scatter on the top of the batter in the pan.
8. Add another third of the batter and spread evenly around the tin, ensuring the blueberries are covered. 
9. Coat the raspberries in the remaining flour then scatter on top of the batter in the pan.
10. Add the rest of the batter, smooth the surface.  Bake for 60-70 minutes until a skewer inserted comes out with only a few cake crumbs stuck to the end.
11. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
12. To make the icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and then add the lemon juice to make a runny icing.  You may need a little more liquid depending on the juciness of your lemon half but only add this a few drops at a time because the icing will change rapidly change consistency.  You can always recitfy too runny icing with a little more icing sugar.
13. To get the drizzle effect, I split the icing into three bowls, coloured two of them using red and blue gel food colouring (the liquid ones will change the consistency of the icing too much).  I then put a teaspoonful of icing into the corner of a ziploc bag, snipped the tiniest bit off of the end and then just drizzled it randomly over the cake.

Updated 6th June 2012 @ 19:55 

I've had a few requests for people to see the inside of the cake so here's a picture.

You'll notice that the fruit has roughly stayed put, although the raspberries on the left hand side are definitely lower (or higher depending on which way you class as up in an inverted cake!) than when I placed them.  It's most probably because I floured the blueberries before adding them, but forgot to do so with the raspberries.  I've also upped the quantities a little as a few areas were sparse in the fruit area.

The cake also kept well - the last piece was eaten four days after it was baked and was still beautifully moist.  The only downside was that by then, the glaze had sunk into the cake; leaving the outside striped with red and blue food colouring.

Will definitely be using the cake recipe again and adapting with a variety of fruits and glazes.

Balsamic and Black Pepper Nectarines with Lime Marscapone

The heat has gotten to me.  All I want to do is eat salad and not very much of it.  At this rate, I should be the size of Kate Moss in about a decade or so.  But of course, this is good old Blighty and the rain will come soon enough and I'll still be overweight.

I'd planned to do a Thomasina Miers Chicken Salad recipe for tea tonight but when push came to shove, I didn't have the energy to get the recipe book out.  Yep, I'm that lazy.  So as I was busy assembling a chopped green salad, a baked chicken breast, my favourite lime and balsamic dressing and reheating some of last week's lovely olive and sun-dried tomato foccacia I realised that I'd still didn't have a new recipe to try today.

I quickly Googled nectarines and marscapone because I've had a tub of marscapone sat in the fridge for ages and it's nearing its sell by date; and of course nectarines left over from last night's dinner.  Didn't get much back that was quick and easy and would serve just two people (plenty of gorgeous looking fruit tarts though).  Then I clocked the bottle of balsamic sitting on the worktop and wondered if it would work with nectarines.

Nectarines hiding under strawberries and marscapone!

From past research, I knew that strawberries and balsamic vinegar is a popular flavour combination.  My mum once made strawberry and balsamic ice cream.  I normally hate strawberry ice cream as it's a bit wishy-washy but it was honestly the best strawberry ice cream ever.  In fact, I'd pick it over chocolate or caramel if I had a choice.  A quick change of search and yes - the two flavour combos go together.

I found a really simple recipe on the Food Network website for peaches with balsamic and black pepper.  This was quickly adapted to include strawberries - only really because my I had white nectarines and they just look a bit insipid on their own.

Using the recommended quantities, I switched off my phone and set about making up my own version of the recipe, topped with some lime marscapone.  It's a great, last minute summery pud and I loved the balsamic syrup so much that I will definitely use this taste combo again.  The picture isn't brilliant as I put the nectarines in the bottom of the glass.  I'd also recommend halving the strawberries as I think they'd probably pick up the flavour a little more on the cut side - I left mine whole.

Recipe - Inspired by Mario Batali for Food Network

• 3 ripe nectarines or peaches, each cut into eight wedges
• 8-12 strawberries halved or quartered (depending on size)
• 4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tsp Demerara sugar

For the marscapone topping

• 4 tbsp full fat marscapone
• 8 tbsp low fat greek yogurt
• zest and juice of one lime
• 1 tbsp Demerara sugar plus extra for sprinkling

1. Place the fruit in a small mixing bowl.  Combine the vinegar, pepper and sugar and then mix gently with the fruit.  Refrigerate for twenty minutes.
2. Meanwhile, beat the marscapone and yogurt together until smooth.  Stir in the juice and zest of the lime and the sugar.
3. Divide the fruit between serving glasses and drizzle with any spare vinegar mixture from the bottom of the mixing bowl.
4. Top with a generous spoonful of the marscapone and sprinkle with demerara.  Serve immediately.

Grilled nectarine salad with roasted chicken, feta, rocket and peanuts

This evening I had what was very nearly a perfect meal for a perfect, summer's evening.  In fact, the meal was perfect.  There were just a few things that spoiled it.

Number 1.  My dogs.  They are intent on trying to burrow their way under the fence to Percy's house.  Percy is a scruffy little white dog who lives in our bottom-of-the-garden neighbour's house.  The need to burrow is accompanied by a lot of noise.  To the outsider, they sound fierce.  With insider knowledge of my two dogs, they just want to play.  Despite being five and four they both behave like mad puppies - even in this heat.  It's really quite exhausting - if I was a dog, I'd just want to laze on the patio.  Still - it saves me from having to dig up lots of weeds.

Number 2.  The absence of a perfect man to share the evening with.  Or in lieu of him, I ate alone as the husband is off shooting vintage pinup pictures in an oilseed rape field - yellow flowers, red-haired model, blue sky.  All very arty.  If I'm honest though, I didn't mind so much that he wasn't around because there was no face pulling that I had fruit, cheese, nuts and chicken all on the one plate.  Nor complaining that I had to take a picture of my dinner first.  Or that it was too hot to eat a cooked meal (he would've had chicken and Uncle Ben's rice with gravy because it's Wednesday).  So I sat and daydreamed about having perfect company in the absence of any.  Tall, dark, handsome, rich, well mannered, eats what's put in front of him and knows how to treat a lady.   A girl can dream.

My new favourite meal, ever!

Number 3.  A chilled glass of Chablis or Prosecco.  I generally don't drink (for no reason other than I'm a lightweight) and very rarely think of having alcohol with a meal.  And I'm certainly too old to drink on a school night.  But this dish and the beautiful evening was just crying out for a little drinky to celebrate the end of a lovely day.  Well it would've been lovely if I'd not been stuck at work all day.  But you know what I mean.

So why this dish?  Well thumbing through my Leith's Simple Cookery the other day, I happened across a recipe for nectarine, feta and rocket salad.  On the way home this afternoon, I had a sudden urge to sink my teeth into a beautifully ripe, yellow-fleshed nectarine.  And with all the other ingredients at home, I figured that would be a good recipe for tonight (I failed on the planning front this week so am just picking things randomly each day).

Then, when I looked online to see if I could find a link for the recipe to put on the blog, I happened across this recipe  by The Food Fox instead.  I was utterly sold by reading the post about the lucky, lucky person who can just drive to their local farm store and buy whole boxes of fresh-off-the-tree nectarines.  I was so jealous.  I don't even want to consider how many food miles my paltry tray of four nectarines travelled.

Nectarines are right up there at the top of my favourite fruit list.  During summer I will pretty much eat nothing else on the fruit front apart from nectarines and raspberries.  Until that very sad day when you bite into a nectarine and the flesh is all furry and you realise the season is over for another year.  I love peaches too.  I'm just not a fan of the fuzzy skin.  The only downer on the nectarine front was that I could only get white-flesh ones.  The taste is great, but the salad would've looked so much better with the juice-oozy yellow-flesh fruit in amongst the pale feta and chicken.

As the blog says, the dish is an assault on the taste buds and senses.  Salty, sweet, sour, crunchy and creamy.  Every mouthful is a different experience with the punchy mustard or the salty-smooth feta, teamed with peppery rocket and crunchy peanuts.  I would eat this every night for dinner throughout the summer and would never get bored.

It's so filling too.  Sometimes I feel a bit cheated with salads simply by their virtuousness and feel that they need some degree of carbs on the side - fresh bread, minted new potatoes in their skins, a little cooled, dressed pasta.  But with this one, I honestly felt absolutely stuffed afterwards, like I'd eaten a big, fat meal and it still came in at less than 500 calories - even with peanuts thrown in.

Now off to enjoy the last of the daylight once I've added it to my make again list.  Shame I can't have it for tea tomorrow!

Updated: Mary Berry's Malt Loaf

I made a bit of a schoolgirl error when doing the shopping this week.  I forgot to buy a malt loaf.  I'm a failure of a mother.  You see the routine on Sundays now is that Miss A and I (sorry, I don't care if it's grammatically incorrect - I was brought up to say whoever and I, whoever and me just sounds wrong to my ears) go 'fimming'.  She doesn't like getting out of the pool again so to avoid a tantrum, I have to warn her ten minutes before hand and then make a variety of promises to smooth the transition to home.

Promises include babyccino, doing craft when we get home, walking the dogs and most importantly the post-swim snack of malt loaf.  But of course, because I shopped in a real shop on Friday, I had nobody to remind me that malt loaf is something I should automatically put in my trolley like Ocado normally do.  Dilemma.  Even if we made it out of the pool tantrum free, a total melt down would ensue in the changing room if there was no malt loaf.  And that would just be me, from not having anything to distract Miss A with whilst I attempted to change from cossie to fully clothed in thirty seconds flat (about the time it takes her to work out how to undo the door lock and escape)

Thankfully, because it's summer and we have cream curtains in the bedroom (not my choice), I was awake the very second it got light this morning.  The curtains are a bone of contention.  We spent months trying to find some to complement our red colour scheme in our lounge.  Four months after finally settling on some, we went to buy a new sofa and the husband would only buy it in a horrible lime green colour so we had to redecorate the entire room.  The curtains got moved to the bedroom and now, allow light to pour in, unfettered.  Within the first day or so of this (two summers ago), I bought made to measure blackout blinds.  They're still in their box waiting for him to fit them (he doesn't trust me with power tools).

Just add lashings of butter

My theory is that it's a reaction to being born on the shortest day of the year.  I need total darkness to sleep.  If it's light, I'm awake. This will mean I'll manage about two hours sleep when we head up to Scotland next month as it barely gets dark that far north in the middle of June.

Luckily for the malt loaf situation, this meant that I was able to get up at stupid o'clock this morning, whip up one of Dame Mary's finest, stick it in the oven and as it takes an hour to bake, I popped out to the garage for a cheeky 4.5 mile run on the treadmill whilst it was doing it's thang.  Just don't tell the husband - he'll freak that I dared put the oven on and leave it unattended.

Freshly showered, I took the rather pale looking loaf (well paler than that well-known shop-bought version) out of the oven and set it to cool, just in time for Miss A to wake up ready for the day.  I hope that she doesn't take after me on the being awake the second it's light front!

The recipe says the loaf is best eaten a couple of days after making but as I had to use it pretty much straight away, I'm not sure it will last that long.  As I only have one 1lb tin, I only made half the quantity but will definitely invest in a second tin and bake double next time.  Miss A loved it, the husband loves it and the bit I tried was nice although I think it needed a touch of salt to cut through the sweetness.  One thing Ms Berry doesn't do is stipulate whether to use salted or unsalted butter so I figure next time I make it, I'll try adding a half teaspoon.

I would also like to try replacing a little of the flour with some wholemeal to make it healthier.   Of course, that will need to be finely tested because the whole point of malt loaf is that it's squidgy - which this was, although less so than the commercially produced version.

Having seen the banana malt loaves in the supermarket, I'm wondering if using one in this recipe might work.  Probably a good use of frozen bananas as they don't need to look good when they're baked into a malt loaf.  For more info on banana freezing, check out my recipe for Hellman's Banana and Raspberry Brownies from last week.  It would probably also work well with some different dried fruit.  I'm thinking of maybe trying cherry and apricots.  Definitely one for experimenting with.

You can find the recipe in Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes which is a great buy from Amazon at around £4.  And if you buy that, you can join the Weekly Bake Off too.  Alternatively, you can search on line for the recipe, however I can't condone the website where I found it based on my recent comments on posting full recipes online with little credit to the author.

Update: 14th May, 2012

So 'Malt Fwoaf' as Miss A calls it has proved very popular in the Crowdey household.  So much so that the tiny one lb loaf I made yesterday had vanished by 4pm today.  In fact, the husband ate the last two slices, causing Miss A to have a meltdown because she wanted more 'Malt Fwoaf'.  Still unable to deal with my child's meltdowns, I appeased her with the promise that we'd make another one.

Of course, only having one 1lb loaf tin and not enough capacity to bake two separate loaves, I hit on the idea of making one 2lb loaf instead.  I added an extra tsp of baking powder (and a pinch of salt as discussed above - this improved the taste) and baked it for 1h 15 mins on 130 fan.  It still wasn't set in the middle so I then put the temperature up to 150c fan for 15 minutes and I had a nicely set, still squidgy loaf.  Only downside was that the edges are a little crispy.  If I'd not needed to cook fish fingers for someone's tea then I'd've just left it merrily setting on the lower temperature.

Let's see how long this one lasts!

Lil Ms Squirrel's Hellman's Banana and Raspberry Blondies

I've written before about wondering how you can claim a recipe as being your own rather than someone else's.  I still don't quite understand the rules.  Having done a little research, opinion varies from website to website and person to person.  The most sensible advice I found was that if you change at least two ingredients (or quantities of an element - but not just doubling or halving the entire recipe) and then write the method in your own words, then technically you can claim the recipe as your own.

Cake for just 92 cals per piece?  Oh, go on then!

Of course, if you're a lovely and decent person, you might just want to provide references to books and if the recipe is online a link to it (or link to the book on Amazon or similar).  And if you're not lovely and decent then you probably should add references anyway - just in case the publisher comes a-calling with a nice shiny lawsuit.

I've tried to stick to this principle on my blog (although can't guarantee the earlier posts adhere to that because I never really thought about it at first).  And I hope that in doing this, the publishers have made the odd pound or two.  Certainly Fourth Estate who publish Short and Sweet have had lots of publicity from me on this blog now I've made 24 of Mr Lepard's recipes.  And given that I've since found the majority of them on the Guardian website where I could've gotten them for free, they were lucky to get £8 out of me.  Hell, I love it so much, I may even still buy the Kindle edition once my original copy falls apart.

Anyway, enough mentionitis about Short and Sweet.  On to my bake today.  Back in January when I decided to shed a few Christmas pounds, I found a recipe on the BBC Good Food website for 'Guilt Free Brownies' which I duly tried in this post.  I remember having seen this concept in an ad by Hellmans in a magazine and at the time thought 'Euuuuuw' but in my post Christmas desparation for something sweet and healthy and with a blog to write, I thought 'In for a penny, in for a pound'.  And they weren't actually that bad.  Less than 100 cals per piece and they freeze well too.

The cynic in me wondered if Hellman's had sponsored the recipe under the BBC banner given that the Beeb are now allowed to do product placement (I think?  Or is that just ITV).  But it was funny that the recipe specifically referenced Hellman's without saying 'Other low fat mayos work perfectly well too'.  And then I wondered if Hellman's had actually given the recipe.  But I've not seen it published in print since to compare like with like.  I just realised as I was typing I could check the Hellman's website - but I can't be bothered right now.

The not-so-secret ingredient.  Other mayos are available!

Moving on, now I've decided (again) that I need to address the amount of cake and other unhealthy stuff I eat, I thought this would be the ideal opportunity to make a recipe of my own.  I mean really make it.  Not just accidentally forget to add something that the recipe said I should and find that it either did or didn't really matter that I forgot.

So I decided to makeover the made-over brownies and see if they worked as blondies instead.  As blondies don't really appeal, the only recipes I've ever perused are in the Original Hummingbird Bakery book and Short and Sweet.  I couldn't tell you whether or not the Hummingbird ones contain banana, but Dan Lepard's do.  So I guess that this recipe could be kind of linked to his.  Except the only similarity is that they have bananas in.  Oh and whilst trying to figure out if I should use baking powder (like Dan does) or bicarb (like the Good Food recipe does) I noted that rather than mashing his bananas, he chops them.  So I did that too.  And, having spent several hours reading up on the pros and cons of bicarb vs baking powder vs the pH content of bananas in varying states of ripeness, I settled for baking powder.  End of similarity as I used more in the end.  If you want to make Dan's - which will no doubt work perfectly and taste amazing (but be full of calories), you can find the recipe here.

Chopped, not mashed.

In the end, I guess I cheated a bit by using the same quantities as the BBC recipe does for a lot of the ingredients.  At the end of the day, however, certain recipes always require certain components.  Like a Vicky sponge always having a ratio of around 60g of butter, sugar and flour to every egg you add.  Plus a bit of vanilla essence.  When I make these again, I may adapt the recipe slightly once more.  I might try a little more flour or a little less sugar.  I left out additional liquid as I was using fruit.  I used self-raising flour as it was all I had (poor planning!) and then I added extra baking powder after reading up on the need for cakes to be roughly pH neutral and that the riper a banana, the more alkaline it is - and the more chance you have of your cake not rising.

Interestingly, I also finally discovered why I detest things that have bicarb in them.  Apparently certain brands contain an aluminium component which some people can taste.  I must be one of them as many a good biscuit has been ruined for me with a slightly soapy taste, even when I've followed a recipe to the letter.

I digress.  Back to my recipe.  All in all, it worked out just about okay.  The brownies are a little too sticky for my liking. And a little damp underneath which I attribute to the raspberries.  If I make them again, I'd either use dried cherries or just serve the raspberries on the side of the plate with a brownie and a little dollop of low fat yogurt.  I doubt they'll keep for more than a day or two (they won't have chance to anyway!) and I won't try freezing them as I expect the dampness will spoil them when they defrost.

Defrosted bananas - not pretty!

I had also intended to use some bananas that I'd previously frozen and defrosted just for the recipe.  This is a really good thing to do if you've got bananas that are too ripe for eating - just freeze them and then use them in banana loaf recipes or for cookies (I used this technique for Dan Lepard's Banana Fudge Cookies).  But when I clocked the result of these ones, they looked so icky and brown on the outside that they just didn't seem to suit the blonde ethos so they have been used in another banana loaf for the hubby and I used fresh ones for this recipe.

But I did like them a lot.  The sponge is really lovely and vanilla-y.  I think next time I might use a little less vanilla, but it certainly wasn't offensive.  The chunks of banana were all lovely and fudgy when they were baked.  I also didn't get those horrid little brown streaks - so commonly seen in baked goods containing bananas.  Dan doesn't say if this is because the bananas are chopped rather than mashed, but I did read that it can be to do with the use of bicarbonate of soda causing a reaction with the bananas - another reason I went with baking powder instead as I think that's quite ugly, especially in a bake that uses white rather than brown sugar.

Having just polished off my third as I type, I realised that they actually taste just like a fruit trifle.  My stepfather would love them, with the vanilla being reminiscent of the custard and the sharp contrast of the raspberry representing the jelly.

And best of all, according to MyFitnessPal.com, they come in at just 92 cals per piece.  Even less if you use Hellman's extra light.  I cut mine into 16 pieces, which is plenty enough (I ate the three spaced over several hours).  But you could cut them into 12 for 123 cals each or be really greedy and cut them into eight large bars and it would still only be 184 cals.  Far healthier than some Lorraine Pascale Granola Bars I calorie counted the other day which tipped the scales at a whopping 504 cals each! (But the blondies are probably less healthy)

I would also consider using chopped macadamias - which I love - in place of the raspberries.  Using the same 75g quantity that Lepard uses in his recipe would add another 40 calories to the 1/16 blondie and if you went for making the toffee to encase the nuts, the extra sugar would add another 20 calories so you'd be looking at 152 cals per piece.  Still not bad for a small, sweet treat.  I am definitely going to try that on another occasion and will duly report back.

Well if you've gotten to here, you have the patience of a saint.  The recipe is coming up very shortly, but first, a couple of good links about the whole baking powder vs bicarb argument that I found whilst idly surfing at 4am this morning.

First is an excerpt from a book called The Farmer's Wife's Cookbook by Voyageur Press which came back as a Google Books search result (hopefully the link works for you).

Second is an article by Giovanna Zivny which delves into the chemistry a little more.

Finally (yes the recipe is coming!) I am hoping to get this included in Alphabakes, a monthly blog challenge hosted by Ros and Caroline.  Each month they challenge bakers to submit the product of baking recipes (of their own, or someone elses) that start with a particular letter.  I'm hoping to be cheeky and get these in under H for Hellman's.  Of course, other mayo brands work perfectly well!  Check out Caroline's great blog, 'Caroline Makes' where you'll find the round up of this month's challenge from the 25th onwards.

Right, on to the recipe!

Makes 16

• 85g white chocolate, broken into squares
• 85g self raising flour
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste (because I like the flecks, but vanilla extract is fine)
• 150g caster sugar
• 100g Hellman's light mayonnaise
• 1 egg
• 200g bananas, divided into four lengthways and then chopped into small pieces
• 100g raspberries 

Really - serve these as a side rather than baking them in!

1. Preheat the oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5.  Line a 20cm tin with foil backed baking parchment (I use Lakeland's - but regular baking parchment will do)
2. Put the chocolate into a medium sized bowl.  Add about an inch of water to a saucepan that the bowl will sit over (without the base of the bowl touching the water) and heat until simmering.  Place the bowl over the water and turn off the heat.  It's really important to melt white chocolate carefully as the low cocoa content can cause it to go grainy or burn.
3. Once melted, leave to cool for about five minutes.
4. Once the chocolate has cooled, beat in the vanilla and sugar.  It may go a bit grainy, but this is fine.  Beat in the egg and mayonnaise which will slacken off the mixture.  Don't worry if you have the odd small lump or two of sugar (but not loads!)
5. Stir in the banana pieces then sift the flour, salt and baking powder into the bowl and mix until combined.
6. Finally, carefully fold in the raspberries (or leave them out and just serve them on the side once the brownies are cooked).
7. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level out.  You will need to scrape every last bit out of the bowl as this is a low fat recipe and bowl licking is prohibited.
8. Bake for 30 minutes until well set but slightly wobbly in the middle.
9. Cool completely before cutting into sixteen and serving.