Natural Peanut Butter

With a course coming up this week, I'm going to be really tight for time in achieving my blog target.  Luckily, I've been banned from running for at least two weeks to I will just have enough time spare each morning to do the recipe thing.

A pale imitation of the 'real' stuff

My usual breakfast on days when I'm in the office is a protein bar.  One of my colleagues swears by them and after a lot of subtle hints persuaded me to try them.  I must say that whilst breaking my preferred ethos of knowing exactly where my food has come from, I'm actually addicted to a specific brand of chocolate and peanut butter ones and would happily eat them all day, every day.


Most of the bars are ridiculously chewy and you can spend a good half hour masticating and ruminating like a cud-chewing Friesian.  This is probably why they keep you full up to lunchtime and beyond (perfect when your work life is so manic that your boss has to remind you to go get lunch).  But I can work with the Supreme Protein ones.  They've saved me from ending up with a jaw as square as Arnie's*.

Of course, there are downsides to extended satiety.  Firstly the expense.  Secondly the contents.  Dealing with these issues in turn, you can expect to pay between £2 and £3 per bar if you buy them singly.  They're cheaper by the boxful on the internet but I still shell out £13 per 9 bars.  And as the husband eats two a day, this is causing a bigger dent in my finances than his previous red-wine habit.

The ingredients list includes things like Niacinamide, Vitamin A Palmiate, Ferric Orthophosphate and Pyridoxine Hydrocloride.  All of which I'm sure you can't buy from Ocado.  So I decided to look for a recipe to make my own.

The recipe I settled on (see tomorrow's blog) seemed pretty simple.  Whizz up some oatmeal, whey protein, natural peanut butter and a cup of milk.  First problem.  Exactly what is natural peanut butter?  Time to make my own.

Further research revealed it to just be peanuts whizzed in a blender with some oil and optionally salt mixed in at the end.  Or you can buy premade stuff.  Which is good because I already buy Whole Earth PB and this fits into the natural category.  I've always loved PB since I was a child and had a fad where I only ate crunchy peanut butter packed into the groove on celery sticks for months on end (much to my mother's eternal despair as she likes neither of these things).  As an adult, I eschewed the plastic Sunpat of my youth (the equivalent of Skippy for my international readers) in favour of the sugar-free Whole Earth brand.

Perhaps a waste of good peanuts?

I now eat the organic smooth variety as Miss A thinks the crunchy one is dirty (they blend the skins in to it for colour but in the crunchy version, it's mottled with red flecks - hence it being dirty).  But with a blog to write, I thought I'd give homemade a go as I've read several other foodies blogs on the subject.

This was supposed to be the simplest recipe I've made so far with just three ingredients.  Take some peanuts, blend, stir in some oil and salt.  Voila, home made peanut butter.  Research told me that it was better to do this in a blender rather than a food processor.  Those people obviously don't own a cheap old Kenwood Prospero.  Ten minutes of blending and scraping and blending some more and all I had was chopped up peanuts.  Should've gone for the food processor in the first place to save on having to wash both bits.

I then realised that if I wanted crunchy, I should've blended part of it til it was totally smooth and kept some back to make the crunchy bits.  So the texture was a bit choppy - like badly blended hummus.  But the taste was okay.

As for the expense, it cost me £1.44 to buy 250g Waitrose unsalted roasted peanuts plus a tablespoon of sunflower oil and a pinch of sea salt.  Let's call it £1.50 for 250g vs £2.68 for a 340g jar of Whole Earth.  So homemade is 60p/100g and shop bought is 78p/100g.  Makes you think, doesn't it?  But for the enjoyment factor and the ease of not having to wash my blender up, I will probably stick to shop-bought.  If I had the time and the space to store loads of jars and access to humungous bags of peanuts then things might be different.  But when I offered Miss A the choice of the two crackers in the picture, she went for the one on the left.  That made my mind up once and for all!

*As it used to be back in the eighties when he was Mr Universe.  I can probably rival his current more jowly look.

Banana, Maple Syrup and Pistachio Bread

With my mind on the idea of having a picnic, I totally disregarded the local weather forecast's doomsaying that it was going to be at best cloudy in Wiltshire today.  I have mentioned my love of picnics before.  It's another one of those family-oriented activities that the husband can't stand.  He gets twitchy the moment I mention the idea and I'm sure he prays for the weather to turn before we make it out the door.

Completely unfazed by all the potential pitfalls, I chose to have a go at Jamie's Banana Bread.  I should've stopped when I read the name 'Jamie Oliver'.  I have had zero success with his recipes this year (aside from Mulled Cider, which doesn't really count).  I should also have re-read my Mulled Cider post about how pictures of his recipes on the web look nothing like they do in reality - even factoring in the fact that I don't cook for a living.

Tin-bound

I came across the recipe when researching breakfast recipes for this week.  I'm on a pretty intensive course and have been warned by my boss that it's going to be a tough week and if I don't do well and have spent the week responding to work email, tweeting and blogging then I won't be very popular on my return to work.  So I have decided to go with breakfast recipes to get things over and done early in the day, short posts like I did on holiday and blind panic that I'm going to fail and it will all go horribly wrong.

Anyhow, this recipe looked like the perfect picnic food.  Soft banana bread, studded with nuts and glazed with honey.  Not being a honey fan, I replaced it with maple syrup and used pistachios instead of almonds for the lovely green colour.

If you look at the picture on the website, the bread actually looks like one of those soft mini bread rolls that you might buy from M&S or Waitrose.  The husband likes really soft bread and I was slightly ignorant of the fact that basic bread doesn't bake into a finished product like that.  To do soft rolls properly, you need to use something like Dan Lepard's Soft White Baps

My finished bread was slightly grey inside (understandable with the banana content, but not at all visible in Jamie's picture) and soft, but not all spongy like the picture seems to indicate.  I also have issue with the size of the bread in the picture.  Jamie says to use his basic white bread recipe and divide it into ten balls.  I used half of the bread recipe and managed eight gigantic rolls.  With his cheeky chappie 'bish, bash, bosh' approach to writing, he also neglects to mention what size and shape tin to put them into.  I put my eight into my 9" springform tin and they filled it nicely.

The taste was okay even if the texture was a little disappointing based on the picture on the website.  But it was chewy, they are nice warm, Miss A loved them and I think they'd work well in the winter with a big mug of hot chocolate.

I like the concept and will try adapting the recipe further in the future - but from now on, I'll stick to Dan's baking recipes.  As pretty much everyone I know who has tried a recipe from Short and Sweet or his Guardian recipes will tell you - quite simply they do what they say on the (baking) tin.  Stick to real food Jamie and leave the baking recipes to the experts.

Stir Fry Vegetables with Cashews

"What's exciting about this?" I hear you ask.  I never professed that these recipe choices would set the world alight (especially when I have to get through 366 different ones on 366 consecutive days).  My personal challenge was to broaden the food horizons of my family.  As you know, I struggle with (but haven't totally given up on) the husband and the child, so most days it's just me trying out new recipes on me.  That said, the child actually ate chicken today, which is another first so she's getting there slowly but surely.

Anyway, after a day where I spent most of my time sneakily grazing on bad stuff  (I worked from home today and was unusually working downstairs ie near the kitchen, making face stuffing far easier than when I'm banished to the study on the second floor of our house) so I felt the need to compensate somewhat with a healthy choice for tea.

Earlier in the week, with virtuosity in mind,  I'd bought some pak choi with the intention of doing a prawn ramen soup.  Except I forgot to check that I had all the necessary condiments and so rather than have prawns and chinese cabbage in boiling water, and having failed to find any mention of pak choi in 95% of my recipe books (they're either too old for something so trendy or about cakes) I settled on a BBC Good Food recipe.

It's a really simple stir fry that most people just whack together of an evening.  And once you've made this recipe, you'll probably never refer to the website again and just make it up as you go along.  But sometimes, we all need a starting point and for me this the start of a new veggie stir fry.  I had a really good chicken and cashew stir fry recipe that was a staple of our weekly diet until the husband decided on consecutive weeks that he didn't like the carrots (too orange), then he didn't like the bamboo shoots (they make the kitchen smell like stargazer lilies which in turn smell like burnt saucepan handles), then he didn't like the mange tout (too squeaky), then he didn't like the peppers (too crunchy), and finally he didn't like the nuts (too nutty).  So we were effectively left with chicken and rice.  Of course the rice was home cooked basmati rather than Uncle Ben's Express so that got the chop too (okay this bit is poetic license, it didn't quite get that bad!)

And I miss the once a week ritual of eating all five of my fruit and veg in one sitting.  And hoping that by having fruit salad for pudding I can store up extra fruit n' veg points for other days of the week when I forget to eat more than two or three.  So this works really well and is great for assuaging any giant-chocolate button-snorfing-induced-guilt that may be hanging around.

Your five a day in one healthy meal!

Incidentally, I happened across an article on the Guardian website today that 'analysed' Nigella's eating habits based on her Twitter feed.  Apparently she eats quite unhealthily with a lack of wholegrains and vegetables.  What the author chose not to highlight until right at the end was that she only had the meals that Nigella chose to post to base her opinion on.  Hell, if she read this blog, she'd probably think I lived on nothing but cake and only ate vegetables about once every three months.  What a slanderous judgement to make (although thinking about it, it might actually be true!)  Anyway, if you want to read about how the Domestic Goddess herself indulges her Twitter audience, you can do so here.  Interestingly, there was no mention of the bacon brownies that I know Nigella tweeted about last week...

I adapted the recipe slightly by adding a teaspoonful of ginger which gave a lovely subtle flavour to the leaves of the pak choi.  I also used chilli olive oil instead of vegetable oil - something I always use for stir frying as it adds a little heat to Chinese dishes without blowing your head off.  And finally, I roasted my cashews first as this gives them a more intense flavour and a better crunch.

Ingredients - serves 2

• 2tbsp chilli olive oil (or plain vegetable oil if you prefer)
• 1 red onion sliced
• 1 red pepper , sliced
• 200g mushrooms , sliced
• 2 heads of pak choi , cut into quarters
• 1 garlic clove , crushed
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
• 100g cashews, roasted
• soy sauce , sesame oil, chilli oil to drizzle (optional)

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a wok or large pan. Add the onion and cook for 2 minutes. Add the red pepper and mushrooms and cook for 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the pak choi, ginger and garlic, mix well and cook for 2 more minutes. Finally, add the cashew nuts, mix and serve with a drizzle of soy, sesame oil or chilli sauce if you like.

Updated: Rhubarb and Almond Loaf

Here it is, Valentine's day.  And am I baking for my beloved? Am I heck!

My master plan was to do one of those Dine for a Tenner things (we're not posh enough to have a M&S out here in the sticks).  So all the hubby had to do was take plastic lids off of things, stick them in the oven and arrange them on a plate.

Unfortunately, my first mistake was to assume he wasn't even capable of making it to the shops to purchase said food.  I stocked up on Sunday.  Got home.  He got grumpy and then finally showed me the note in his iPhone reminding him to go out and forage for an M&S meal today (I'm still not quite sure what he would've done when he realised our closest branch is now in Bristol).  So he wanted nothing to do with unwrapping the food I got in Sainzlebobs.  He was happy enough to eat it and even happier to down the bottle of red by himself, but cooking it?  No way.

Pretty pink swirls in the batter

Anyhow, it meant that for once I got a vaguely decent meal without having to cook.  This of course then left me with the dilemma that I hadn't tried a new recipe today.  So my lucky lucky work colleagues are being treated again tomorrow with emergency cake, purely because of this now silly challenge I set myself.


I'd decided on either Melting Moments from the GBBO book (I adore Viennese Whirls and wanted to try the pretty red-tinged ones that Mary-Anne made) or the Hummingbird Bakery Rhubarb and Almond Loaf from Cake Days.  I offered my project manager the choice and he plumped for the rhubarb, citing that it will give him one of his five a day tomorrow.

And in an interesting spooky turn of events, I was twittering away with my good twitter chum @DickyBundock and it turned out that we were both making exactly the same cake today.  Small world!  And to make things seem even more spooky, out of all the recipes she could have chosen, our lovely twitter buddy @KateSelwood1 also picked a Hummingbird recipe today.  If you're on Twitter, give them both a follow.  They are both lovely tweeps - if a little uncontrollable at times ;o)xx

It's an interesting bake.  The compote is very runny.  Whether it's because of the type of rhubarb that I used or something, but I was expecting slightly firmer chunks.  It's also far paler than the rhubarb in the book (although I expect the picture has been photoshopped) so I have a feeling when I cut into it, it won't have the lovely pink marbled effect which will be a shame.

Ready to feed the hoardes

There was a lot of leftover compote as well.  Which isn't a problem as I love it on my porridge in the morning.  I even used more than the recipe said and still had loads left.  I gave a tiny taster to the child and now 'RooBAH' is Miss A's favourite fruit.  Or is it a vegetable?

Judging the cooking time was also hard because with the rhubarb swirled through the middle, trying to tell whether the skewer is damp from uncooked cake mix or just because it's hit the rhubarb motherlode proved difficult.  Even after an hour and fifteen minutes (20% more cooking time) it still had a soggy bottom.  As pretty as the swirled effect is, next time, I'd consider putting a small layer of just cake mix in the bottom of the tin before swirling the rhubarb through the rest in the hope that the bottom was a bit more stable.

The sponge tastes really great with the cinnamon and ginger giving it a lovely spicy note, but I have a feeling that this will detract from the taste of the ground almonds in the batter and the almonds sprinkled on the top.  Of course, this is the problem with large cakes.  You can't taste test them in advance if proffering them as a psuedo-gift to someone.

So I await my project manager's feedback.  I have my personal development review coming up next Monday so I will be interested to see if my baking skills have improved this past year.  Oh and whether I'm any good at what I'm paid to do too.  There's a fair bit riding on this cake so wish me luck!

Update: 15th Feb 2012 - well I was disappointed when I cut into the cake.  Nary a trace of pink, unlike the (probably over photoshopped) picture in the book.  Wondering if it's because the rhubarb is early season forced rhubarb?

I did read another blog about this loaf where the baker faced the same problem with the lack of pink inside. She suggested adding red food colouring to the rhubarb next time.  I don't think I'd go that far personally.  Would rather have a natural looking cake with pale colours than one that looks like it's dripping blood :)

It also wasn't tart enough for me so next time I'd reduce the sugar in the compote, but that's personal taste.

Saying that, my project manager said he really liked it.  I'm rubbish at taking compliments and blustered on about how I was unhappy with it and he said 'well I'm a man who just likes cake, I'm not fussy so what would I know?'  I think he's afraid that if he ever disses one of my cakes I won't ever bring another one in....

Recipe

2lb loaf tin, greased and dusted with flour

Ingredients:

for the stewed rhubarb

1. 5 long stalks of rhubarb, chopped into 2cm pieces
2. 70g sugar
3. 20g butter

• Place the rhubarb together with the sugar and butter in a large saucepan, add 50ml water and cook on a medium heat until the rhubarb is soft. Set aside and let cool. 

for the cake

• 190g butter, softened
• 140g plain flour
• 190g sugar
• 3 eggs at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 50g ground almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 25ml milk
• 50g flaked almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C (150°C Fan) 325°F or Gas mark 4.
2. Put the butter and sugar in a large bowl and cream with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. 
3. Add the eggs one at a time and mix until well incorporated. Scrape down the sides after each addition to make sure everything is evenly mixed.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder, almonds, ginger and cinnamon together.
5. Add half of this mixture to the batter and mix well until combined.  Add half the milk and mix until well combined.  Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
6. Swirl 100g of the rhubarb through the batter.
7. Pour into the prepared tin.
8. Sprinkle with the flaked almonds and bake for about 50-60 minutes.
9. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out the cake on a wire rack and let cool completely.

Updated: Weekly Bake Off Apple and Almond Dessert Cake

After saying I wasn't playing earlier this week, I decided to make a last minute entry into the Weekly Bake Off.  The main reason being that because I was a complete and utter numpty on Friday night when I was making marmalade and used up an entire bag of caster sugar, and then didn't replace it when I went to Sainslebob's this morning, I couldn't make the rhubarb and almond loaf I'd planned for today.  My work colleagues will be disappointed tomorrow!

So how did I manage to make a cake without sugar?  Well mes amis, I made today's entry with Xylitol.  And very nice it was too.  What's Xylitol, I hear you cry?  Well it sounds like some nasty chemical sweetner, but in fact it's a natural sugar substitute, extracted from the skins of fruit and vegetables.  It is used in many 'sugar free' products and is a marketed as a good alternative 'sweetener for those with diabetes and hyperglycemia'.

It has a lower Glycemic Index (GI) than regular sugar, coming at 13 for Xylitol vs 60-65 for standard sugar meaning the familiar cake sugar rush is more subdued.  It also has roughly one-third less calories than normal sugar, making it a good option for dieters.

I'd been aware of its use in things like sugar-free gum and mints, but never realised that it was a totally natural product until I read about it being used in cakes on the BBC Good Food website the other day.

The husband is diabetic and has the world's sweetest tooth.  Sweet stuff causes him all manner of problems which is why my work colleagues are treated to my baked goodies so often.  So I decided to buy some Xylitol and give it a go.

It's not cheap at £2.79 for 225g - enough for one large cake because you literally substitute it gram for gram with sugar.  I've tried baking with fruit sugar before with mixed results so I was naturally a little sceptical for this cake, but in the spirit of trying new things, I went ahead.

Low GI cake :)

And I was really pleased with the final cake.  It rose just like it should - it was helpful to see the other bake off entries to confirm I had a comparable rise.  As for taste, I found the cake a little sweet but that could just be the way everyone else's cakes are anyway.  I would've liked my apples a little tarter - but you can't control that in a cake.

All in all, a pretty good cake.  Not sure how it would be cold, but it's great slightly warm with creme fraiche or ice cream.  Just the thing to have after a big fat Sunday roast dinner - but in our house, it came after the usual chicken tikka.

Not had the husband's verdict yet.  He announced earlier, in total seriousness, that the rice krispie cakes that I'd made with Miss A this afternoon were far nicer than any other cakes I've ever made.  Miss A wasn't even round at the time so it wasn't like he was paying her a compliment.  Whilst I have a soft spot for krispie cakes, there really is no accounting for some people's tastes.  Another reason why my work colleagues often get cake - they're so complimentary.

Another good bake - but then it's from Dame Mary Berry so why wouldn't it be??

Updated - 13th Feb 2012 - Just a side note on the xylitol thing.  Apparently (I now have proof of this) it can cause a bit of belly-aching if consumed in large-ish quantities.  This only happens in a small percentage of people and apparently disappears over time after the body becomes used to it.  The husband was absolutely fine on that score so it's obviously just me.

It's also not good for dogs and can cause hypoglycemia in them so make sure you don't leave your cake where your four-legged friends can partake of a slice or several.

Hokey Pokey Coffee Cake - Take Two

Today's plan was (again) interuppted by my gorgeous girl.  I was working from home and had planned to join the Weekly Bake Off again.  Then reading the recipe, it suggested the cake was best served warm.  Not really one to take into work then.

A quick rethink turned up the Rhubarb and Almond loaf from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book which I've been meaning to make for one of the guys at work for yonks.  He was a big fan of my rhubarb and custard cupcakes long before the idea turned up in countless recipe books.  He is still in awe of how I managed to get the rhubarb compote inside them.  For someone who is so flipping brainy that it hurts, I'm continually amazed at his lack of practical common sense.

An outfit appropriate for freezing conditions (c) LCC Photography

I didn't, however, factor in Miss A's adamance that at 3pm she didn't want to get dressed and go out to buy rhubarb from the farm shop.  After a half hour battle, I finally prised her out of her pyjamas (the husband has stopped getting her dressed in the mornings because he just can't stand the drama) and spent the next hour trying to coerce her into something practical to face the cold.  She ended up in her Christmas outfit, minus tights, accessorised with satin lady bird slippers and a string of giant wooden beads.

I gave in.  Rooted through the cupboards.  Leafed through 100 Cakes and Bakes and decided to reattempt the Hokey Pokey cake I tried the other day.  Okay so technically it's not a new recipe.  But pretty much every other coffee cake recipe I read through uses the same two ounces or 50g of flour, butter and sugar for every egg.  With four times that filling my eight inch pans.  Self-raising flour and one tsp baking powder for luck.  The same as Mary Berry's Victoria sponge recipe.  Just with some coffee thrown in to flavour it.  Stick all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk for 2-3 mins with an electric blender.

In fact, it's pretty much the coffee cake recipe that I use all the time.  Even the butter cream ratio was standard and the same weights as say, the Hummingbird Bakery uses.  The new bit to me was making the hokey pokey bit (pecan praline).   I never got that far last time I tried the recipe.

So much as I, like every other baker in the country without exception, have a soft spot for (Dame) Mary.  But isn't she stingy with her buttercream?  And the syrup used for the praline too.  Or maybe that's how she's managed to stay so trim with years and years of home baking under her belt.  Because she doesn't really subscribe to the modern tooth-rotting phenomenon  that is a cake that can give you diabetes just by looking at it.

Ooooh...the Hokey Pokey....

Personally, I should know better as the husband and several of my relatives are sufferers.  Instead I furtively delight in licking out icing bowls and try to ignore the fact that I inhabit a high-risk group, what with my afro-Caribbean heritage on the one side of my family (I got all the crap stuff from my father - my horrible frizzy hair; my huge nostrils which are too big for my English nose; my ginormous backside and thighs; a higher risk of things like diabetes, heart disease and passing on sickle cell anaemia to my children)

But with Dame Mary, there's no room for spare butter cream.  Every last morsel has to be scraped from the bowl to fill and top the cake.

And the tiny bit of caramel that went into making the praline meant that I couldn't successfully isolate whole praline-d pecans for the top.  If I was making it again, I'd make double the caramel and then lay out individual pecans and smother them with the spare syrup.

Another top tip.  Make the praline on a buttered tray.  She recommends this or parchment.  I chose parchment.  But then spent a good ten minutes picking stuck parchment off the bottom of my nuts.  My pecan nuts!

So I used the praline in the butter cream and then made a little pile in the centre of the top of the cake.  Hopefully it tastes okay.  My taste team will give their verdict tomorrow with any luck.  I think they're enjoying having me on this secondment!

Recipe is from Mary Berry's 100 Cakes and Bakes.  £4 or so on Amazon.  Definitely worth buying!

Update - 8th Feb 2012.  Well my colleagues really liked it (although I think they just like being given cake in general) but it certainly isn't my favourite coffee cake recipe ever.  The hokey pokey in the middle was a fun touch but I think the lack of icing and the fact it was a bit coffee-less was disappointing.  Also forgot to add a touch of salt as I use unsalted butter in all my cakes.  Would I make it again?  Yes-ish.  I'd just make my own butter cream next time.  Then again, I have a feeling that I may enjoy some of the other coffee cakes in this book even more.

Update 10th Feb 2012.  According to my husband, this ranks amongst the worst cakes I've ever made.  He's definitely a man who calls a spade a spade.  Just never ask him if your bum looks big....

Peanut Butter Cookies

I have a new rule in my life.  I only eat cake or sweet biscuits if they are home made.  It's part of my new healthy eating regime and would work really really well if I didn't bake myself.  Because I've mentioned before that nobody I know (except my mum on rare occasions) bakes.  And by people I know, I mean people in the physical world, not the two-hundred odd baking tweeps that I follow in Twitterville.

One of the things that (still) irks me is that some people don't appreciate how much home-baked goodies can cost.  In fact, often two or three times as much as buying cake from a shop (depending where you shop!)  The husband is attuned to this fact and often chides me for baking for my colleagues, telling me it would be cheaper just to buy a couple of bags of Tescos doughnuts for £2 and that the guys would still be just as happy as they would with home made.  Deep down, I know he's right.  But the rule also extends to proferring cakes to people too.  If it aint home made, I'm not giving it to them.

Lots of cookies :)

The cost of food was the subject of a recent conversation I had with an acquaintence.  This chap is a friend of my husbands and I bumped into him outside our local Tesco Express last week as I was running late for a presentation.  Formalities dispensed, we somehow got round to a recent conversation this chap had had with my hubby about food bills.  This guy spends £50 on his weekly shop for three, including all his cleaning and personal hygeine products.  He then spends another £20 on beer.

He was horrified when my husband shared how much our food bill is (or at least how much the husband thinks we spend - we have separate finances and food and household shopping comes out of my bank account).  This budget doesn't include the 2-3 bottles of wine my husband drinks a week.  It does include nappies (yes, I'm bad.  But something had to give and cloth nappies was the one bit I didn't do).  Some of the extra spend has been on things I've needed for this challenge; but mostly the difference in bills is because every night I cook three separate dinners.  I can't think of one common meal that all three family members will eat.

This chap then proceeded to lecture me in how to reduce my shopping bill.  "I scour the supermarkets for the best deals on crisps.  My budget is to spend no more than 12p per packet on crisps.  Last week, I got a really good deal and I got them for 8p per pack.  So I bought enough to last until 2014.  You should go to xyz supermarket and stock up" he said.

"But we don't eat crisps" says I.  He eyed my less-than-svelte figure rather suspiciously, scratched his chin  in the manner of a super-villain stroking a white cat and uttered "Yee-eeeesssss"  Okay, I'll admit that we do eat crisps.  Except because I love crisps so much, I just can't have them in the house.  I will eat through a tube of Pringles just like that.

The husband, although he denies it, is just as bad.  When I first met him, and I'd just bought my own house and I'd bought a couple of multi-packs of crisps for my housewarming party.  He came to stay the night before the party.  Next day, getting ready, I hunted high and low for those 12 packets of crisps.  I figured I was going mad and must've left them in the supermarket or something.  Putting the rubbish out post-party, I discovered twelve empty crisp packets in the bin.  He'd eaten them all with the bottle of wine he'd had after I'd gone to bed.

So now we have a rule.  One small pack of Kettle chips each.  Only on Friday nights.  Only when it's a Big Brother Eviction night (he watches it, not me!).  Roughly 13 packets each per year.  Although they probably cost me as much annually as Mr One-Pack-A-Day-Every-Day-For-8p's do.

Anyhoo, back to the recipe.  My no shop-bought sweet biscuit policy doesn't apply to Miss A who mostly eats ludicriously expensive, tasteless organic biscuits or if she's lucky, mini malted milks.  But once in a while, we bake our own gingerbread men or cookies.  Today's cookies of choice were Great British Bake Off Winner Jo Wheatley's Peanut Butter and Choc Chip Cookies from this month's edition of Good Food Magazine.

I adore peanut butter and am so glad that Miss A likes it and isn't allergic to it.  I was really bad and ate it all the time during pregnancy; but I now understand that that, coupled with breastfeeding when the mum scoffs lots of peanut butter can minimise the risk of peanut allergy.  Phew!

I do buy Whole Earth Peanut Butter now as it has no added salt, sugar or preservatives.  And to be honest, my adult palate prefers it to some of the other, more commercial brands these days.  We do also only buy smooth as I used to worry about her with the nuts in crunchy.  It's a shame because the cookies were lacking that little bit of bite you'd've gotten from the crunchy variety.  I also wish I'd added a pinch of salt to the mixture.  I use unsalted butter and I just think the mixture needed it as there was no salt coming from the peanut butter either.

We only had dark chocolate chips in the cupboard.  I think they worked well for me because I feel the high sugar content of the biscuits with even more sticky sweet white chocolate would've been a little too much.

Abigail's cookie before she got her mitts on it

Mr "Crisp" would be horrified as they were expensive, Waitrose Belgian chocolate chunks that cost loads of money.  I'm sure he would've hand cut a bar of Sainsbury's Value Chocolate instead.  But after running 8 miles this afternoon, I really couldn't be bothered with the faff.  Besides if you're going to make something a treat, it needs to be a top-notch treat!

I also loved Jo's tip about banging the tray mid-way through cooking to expel the air and make them chewier.  The first tray, I banged with a little too much vigour.  The second one, less so.  I think I preferred the look of the 'more banged' ones.

A lovely little recipe.  Worth buying Good Food Mag this month if you don't already for the other recipes from the lovely Jo.  Will make again with a few little tweaks.  Miss A's opinion was 'Mmmmmm....niiiiiiice....'  High praise indeed from a nearly-two-year-old.

Chocolate, Cranberry and Macadamia Brownies

I'm still on a thrifty drive, trying to use up Christmas leftovers rather than just erm...disposing of them.  Obviously I try to use everything up ordinarily and any meat based products that are past their best are usually well received by our two dogs.  But every year, I buy cranberry jelly.  Every year, the husband has one spoonful with his Christmas dinner.  Every year, I put the jar in the fridge with the intention of using it for something else.  Every June, I have a mass clear out of the fridge and discard it because the back of the jar says to only keep it for two weeks after opening.

Finished brownies - sorry for the poor lighting!

But this year, given the current challenge, I thought I'd do something different.  I had a little yesterday with my baked Camembert lunch.  I then leafed through several recipe books looking for something to do with it, but all the recipes wanted dry or fresh cranberries or just served the sauce on the side.

So back I went to BBC Good Food.  They're really good at recipes for recycling Christmas leftovers and they recommended a fab recipe for post-Christmas pie to me the other day which you can find here.  Would have loved to make this, but the husband doesn't like any meat-based pie that doesn't come from the chippy - classy!

A quick look at the rest of their post Christmas recipe collection turned up Cranberry and Macadamia Brownies.  Result.

Despite struggling to fit into my jeans and having not run for a week because of a nasty cold that's been kicking around, I had plans to make brownies today.  My hubby is a photographer and was doing a shoot for Miss Laura Mai, professional singer and one of our regular models tomorrow.  She (and lots of other people) say I make the best brownies ever and I promised her I'd make some next time she was in.  Sadly she crashed her car today (she's fine thankfully) but I'd just taken the brownies out of the oven when she texted to say she couldn't make the shoot so I'm being good and popping them into the freezer for the lucky guys I work with when I go back in the New Year.

Jewel red cranberry sauce going in

I did have a little taster when I cut out a piece to take a picture for the blog (the picture's rubbish because of the poor light in my kitchen this time of year) and the edge piece was lovely and soft, with the sharp taste of cranberry complementing the sweetness of the brownie.  I also loved the buttery crunch of the macadamias (my favourite nuts).    I don't often use nuts in my brownies for various reasons but really should experiment with nuts a bit more - pistachios being one nut I'd love to try out.  Once cut, the inner sections also had a very promising fudgy look to them.  Perfect.

The original recipe can be found here on the BBC Good Food website

I made a couple of modifications to the method based on my own brownie recipe.  It worked well for me.

Cuts into 16 (original recipe says 12)

• 150g dark chocolate , broken into chunks
• 200g butter
• 200g soft brown sugar
• 150g self-raising flour , sifted
• 40g cocoa powder , sifted
• 3 large eggs , beaten
• 50g dried cranberries
• 100g macadamia nuts
• 60g cranberry sauce

1. Heat the oven to 180C/ 160C fan/ gas 4 and line a 20cm x 20cm baking tin with baking parchment. Melt the dark chocolate with the butter in the microwave or in a heatproof bowl over just simmering water.  Leave to cool slightly.
2. Using a mixer, whisk the eggs and sugar until thick and creamy and the raised beaters leave a trail on the surface for 3-4 seconds.  This may take anywhere between 3 -8 minutes so perserver.
3. Fold the cooled chocolate into the eggy mousse and fold in using a spatula in a figure of eight motion.
4. Fold in the flour and cocoa powder, again using the rubber spatula and a figure of eight motion until combined - take care to not overmix.
5.  Stir through the dried cranberries and macadamia nuts, then swirl through the cranberry sauce.
6. Pour into the tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 25 - 30 mins. Allow to cool before slicing.

Lyn Bone's Bakewell Tart

Well this particular post isn't a new recipe for me (that post is coming later tonight), but I just wanted to blog about it because it's rather dear to my heart.

I've never really been a fan of Bakewell because I find it ridiculously sweet.  The jam never tastes of anything other than red, sticky stuff and its usually got icing on the top too.  Another one of those tooth-rotting recipes.  Plus sponge and pastry together.  Sometimes I'm a bit fussy like that.  In the way that I still, at thirty-something years old, won't eat pudding and custard in the same bowl.  An indulgence my grandmother started and my mother still despairs at to this day.  In some ways, that's a bonus because having gained a sweet tooth with the birth of my daughter, I'd probably be more likely to eat pudding in the canteen at work but they won't indulge my pecadilloes.  It's pudding with custard or go hungry.  Some people are so harsh!

Bakewell tart

Anyhow one day when I was expecting, I was at my mum's and she had the spoils of the cakes left over from her contribution to some do or another.  She proffered a piece of her bakewell and despite my initial reticence, I gave in to baby's will and ate it.  It was amazing.  What makes the difference is that she uses Polish cherry jam from Lidl.  That's jam from Poland.  Not jam made from polished cherries.

Because the jam is so fruity and sharp, it cuts through the sweetness of the sponge.  And my mum doesn't ice her Bakewell - topping it instead with baked almonds.  And she uses almond sponge rather than frangipane.  All of which goes to making a delightful Bakewell.

A while later, my boss was on a no-chocolate kick and we had a bake sale at work so I chose to make the Bakewell to make sure he stumped up and bought some.  He had the first slice, declared it the best Bakewell he's ever eaten and it sold out in about two minutes flat.

Polish Plum Jam

Since then, it's been a regular request from the people at work and I'm baking it today as part of my birthday celebration.

Somehow though, I've managed to mislay two jars of the prized cherry jam between here and Winchester so I had to buy an emergency jar of Polish Plum Butter from Tesco this morning.  Again, amazing flavour - I had a little taster out of the jar just to check I shouldn't plump for Bonne Maman blackcurrant instead.

As for the recipe, this is my version.  I've tweaked it a little by adding ground almonds and a little almond essence to the sponge, but it will always be my mum's recipe.  Her topping recipe is based on the weight of three eggs.  You weigh the eggs and use the same amount of sugar, flour and butter.  I find that three eggs-worth is always a bit to much but two eggs-worth is not enough if you're using a nine-inch tin.  So for the sake of simplicity, I've put the actual weights in the recipe as my eggs weighed 175g today, but do try the egg-weight method.

Makes a 9" tart

• 1 qty shortcrust pastry - I used Dan Lepard's recipe which you can view here
• 175g softened butter
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs (rough weight 175g)
• 175g self raising flour
• 50g ground almonds
• 1tsp almond essence
• 2tbsp milk
• half a jar of Polish cherry jam or other flavour of your choice
• 50g flaked almonds

Essential equipment - 9" loose bottomed flan tin

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/gas 4
2. Roll the pastry to 5mm thick and large enough to cover the base and sides of your flan tin.
3. Line the tin with the pastry, prick the base over with a fork, add a circle of parchment weighed down with baking beans and bake for 25 mins.
4. Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy.
5. Beat in the eggs one at a time, adding 1tbsp of the flour with each addition to prevent curdling.
6. Add in the almond essence then beat in the almonds and flour and 2tbsp of milk.
7. Remove the baking beans and parchment and bake for a further 10 minutes.
8. Remove the pastry case from the oven, cover the base with the jam and then top with the sponge mixture.
9. Sprinkle the sponge with the flaked almond.
10. Change the oven temp to 190c/170 fan/gas 5 bake until golden and springy to the touch - approx 25 minutes.
11. Leave to cool in the tin until completely cold then transfer to the serving dish.

Almond croissants

On days when the husband is in charge of the child, I they have to have a snack they can share.  This usually involves malt loaf or lots of grapes, Cheddars or croissants.  This week, I picked up some croissants from the local Tesco Express, only to be met with refusal from both of them.  The child's been fussy because she's poorly and the husband (who is just plain fussy) declared that they were too sweet.

I'll admit, they were the horrible, bog-standard supermarket type of croissants stuffed full of additives to keep them fresh, but they'd probably also turn their noses up at home made for being to crisp or buttery or something.

I'm not a fan of supermarket bakes, but when you live in a provincial town, sometimes that's the best you can do.  I refuse to buy cake any more (save for malt loaf) but I've still yet to master the art of croissant dough - that's next Sunday's task.

One of the things that I love about being in France is that pastries found in supermarkets, McDonalds (a long story) and even petrol stations (another long story) is of bakery standard.  Fresh, crisp and buttery.

I had planned to try another Dan Lepard bake today for a workshop I'm attending on Tuesday at Super-Spy HQ but still feeling rough as a badger's backside, I figured I'd have a look for something easy and comforting to do with the leftover croissants instead.

There's a croissant in there, somewhere

The very first recipe Google returned me was from Not Quite Nigella, an amazing food blog that harbours many delights, including the very yummy sounding Bacon Jam.  Yes, that's right.  Bacon Jam.  Definitely one to try before the end of the year!

NQN explains that almond croissants were first invented exactly to allow people to use up stale croissants.  They are dipped in sugar syrup, stuffed with almond paste and topped with flaked almonds before being baked and dusted with icing sugar.

As a little side experiment, I also tried melting a 25g of marzipan with a teaspoon of water in the microwave to see if it would make a decent enough almond paste.  And it did, so you could make the recipe even quicker and easier.

I think it would be better made with proper bakery-standard croissants or leftover home-made ones but it was good enough to go well with a latte and Mamma Mia for an indulgent afternoon :-)

The almond croissant recipe can be found here.  And if you don't believe me about bacon jam, check it out here.

Pistachio and Cranberry Cookies

I'm still trying to get ahead with stuff for Christmas hampers.  So far, I have lemon curd and mint chocolate truffles.  I found these cookies in (surprise, surprise) BBC Good Food Magazine as part of their Christmas hamper series.

The biscuit mixture is a pretty standard shortbread cookie mix but I've never used pistachios in baking before - they just don't last long enough to get into anything! - so I thought I'd give them a whirl.

Having no cranberries (thanks Ocado!), I used dried cherries.  I'd planned to stick some white chocolate chunks in as well but when I rooted through the baking cupboard, I discovered that a couple of mice (one 6ft, one just under 3ft) have been scoffing all my chocolate.

Need to work the fruit and nuts in a little more evenly!

I only ever buy unsalted butter and such was my haste in making these, I forgot to add some salt, which I think these needed to take the edge off of the sweetness.  Vanilla bean paste rather than essence gives a far better flavour to shortbread in my humble opinion.  And I had a little trouble cutting them once they came out of the fridge as some of them cracked through the middle - I'd probably leave it out for 5-10 mins before cutting next time.

Cooking took much longer than the recipe said but that may well just be me not having gotten the measure of my new oven just yet.

One other tip is that the cookies aren't as big as they look in the recipe picture at first glance.  Note how it's been cropped to make them look big but then you realise they're next to a pepper grinder so they're actually relatively small.  It's all about perspective.  See I have learned something being married to a pro-photographer.

Now thinking up other flavour combos to bake ahead.  Stem ginger and macadamia dipped in plain chocolate sounds like a winner.  Any other suggestions are welcome!

Recipe can be found here.

Chocolate Mint Squares

When I tasted the butter cream for these, I honestly thought 'Mrs JoyOfBaking.com, what on earth were you thinking?'

The recipe calls for two tablespoons of custard powder to be added to the buttercream - I'm guessing as a stabiliser.  I was convinced it wouldn't work as I've previously experimented with putting uncooked custard  powder into buttercream frosting for my Trifle and Rhubarb & Custard cupcakes but it just gives a nasty cornflour after-feel (not taste) to the mixture.

From full to empty in thirty seconds

Previously, I've only tested the custard on small bowlfuls of buttercream but as Mrs JoyOfBaking.com has a fantastic reputation, I just sheepily followed the recipe to the letter, trusting her judgement.

And do you know, it actually works once it's sandwiched between the chocolate base and top.  Maybe it's because you're so busy noticing the lovely chocolatey-ness of the rest of the cake that you don't pay too much attention to the buttercream.  Or maybe the gravelly texture of the base helps to scrape the cornflour-fur off of your tongue?  Who knows.  And those musings make these little squares sound less than savoury.

But the tin was cleared faster than I could shout 'I have homemade cakes here' so they must be good!

One word of warning - don't add the egg to the hot chocolate mixture when you have a toddler and two dogs underfoot.  Chocolate scrambled egg is...well...erm....an interesting tasting experience.  Thankfully, once it was added to the biscuits and nuts, you couldn't tell that it was a lumpy mess just a few minutes earlier.

The recipe does say that it's no cook which isn't strictly true - it's not baked, but I'd say that avoiding chocolate scrambled eggs does involve some vague degree of cooking.  But I'll let you off this once Mrs JoyOfBaking.com as it's yet another lovely recipe.

Recipe can be found here.  Enjoy.