Abigail's Strawberry Shortcakes

When I was a child, I remember Hanna Barbera's "Wait til your Father gets home" being on the telly.  I'm sure it was entertaining but literally, all I can remember is the title.  The meaning was slightly lost on me at the time as I never had the fear (or joy) of my father coming home.  But now it resonates as I've become that parent coming home to face the needs of Miss A.

I can pretty much guarantee now that whenever she's been subjected to Daddy DayCare, at some point, he will have used the 'Wait until Mummy gets home and then you can...' line on her.  Having a child generally makes crap days at work (like the one I had today) worthwhile.  But boy, I could've done without coming home to 'but Daddy said we could make Strawberry Crown' when I finally got in after a twelve hour day.

The fragrant Katie of 'I Can Cook' fame is to blame for this one.  We're going through a princess phase at the moment.  Yesterday this was a bonus as I managed to get Miss A's hair brushed twice without tears because I've been telling her for months that princesses have their hair brushed 100 times.  She finally succumbed to this yesterday, but I paid the price tonight because princesses must eat Strawberry Crown for pudding when they've been good all day.

Not being in the mood for soothing another tantrum (that's all I've done all day today - and I've had a few of my own too!) I gave in way too easily and soon we were in a happy, sticky, floury mess of a kitchen.

Cooked by my favourite chef!

In essence, it's a shortbread biscuit, topped with jam and strawberries and baked in the oven.  I never realised you could bake strawberries and they'd still come out pretty whole.  So I've learned something today.  It also got Miss A to eat something green because the jam is sprinkled with basil.  Okay so it was a tiny bit of green stuff but it was a new taste sensation for her.  And if I can convince her that lettuce is a kind of basil tomorrow then I'm getting somewhere.

Because I couldn't be bothered to dig out the original recipe, I just made my own base up and used almonds to give the shortbread a better texture.  Of course, they don't do that on the telly because of nut allergies.  I think it works well, but you can always substitute them with extra flour.  And to top it off, it's sprinkled with Demerara sugar.  I can't believe that Miss A was able to work out that soft brown sugar was not Demerara sugar when we were getting the ingredients out of the cupboard.  She's two.  This is slightly scary. If I'd not used up all my glitter stars making Dan Lepard's sparkly plum jam the other day I think we'd have used those instead as the 'gold' melted on cooking so we had to sprinkle more for decoration before serving.

Even the husband liked this one.  It's a great one for kids to make pretty much by themselves with a little bit of guidance.  If my two year old can do it, anyone can.

Serves 4 (adapted from I Can Cook)

100g plain flour
50g unsalted butter, cubed
50g ground almonds
25g caster sugar
8 strawberries - hulled and halved
4 generous teaspoons of good quality strawberry jam (we used Bonne Maman)
6 basil leaves, torn
Demerara sugar or edible glitter

Preheat the oven to 220c/200c fan
Put the butter and flour into a bowl and rub together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.  Stir in the almonds and sugar and bring together to form a soft dough.  You may need a little extra flour if the mixture is a little soft.
Divide the mixture into four.  Shape into balls and then flatten to about 1.5cm thick.  Place on a baking tray.
Make a dip in the middle using your knuckles and spread a teaspoon of jam into the centre of each biscuit.
Sprinkle the basil over the jam then top with the strawberries.
Bake for 12-15 minutes until the biscuit is starting to go golden brown.
Leave to cool then sprinkle with Demerara sugar or edible glitter and serve with creme fraiche, yogurt or ice cream.

Apricot Pancakes with Basil and Strawberry Butter

Despite all my good planning, the blogging schedule has been interrupted already.  For all the best reasons but this post is technically about a recipe I tried yesterday and I'm making yesterday's pre-blogged recipe tonight.

The interruption was very welcome - the lovely Allison Patrick hosted a special meeting of the Edinburgh Cake Ladies because I was holidaying very close to her house.  Because I'd intended on making the husband try something different for tea, I switched to a new breakfast recipe for myself and Miss A yesterday and let the hubby have a (rather dodgy) lunch in a chippy.  And then I went out and ate lots of cake and had a really good time.

Rocky would give it a thumbs up if he had any

The recipe for today (yesterday) was inspired by a BBC Good Food recipe.  Pancakes used to be staple weekend fayre for Miss A to help me assuage the guilt of not being with her for breakfast Monday to Fridays because I'm already at work when she gets up.  She then got fussy and stopped eating them.  Since then, I've tried a number of recipes to try and tempt her but she's having none of it.  And today's recipe met with a similar reception.

Personally, I liked this batter.  It was the perfect consistency, simple to make and produced light and fluffy pancakes.  Abigail took hers from her plate, turned them into drums, pounded on them for a while, picked out the apricots and then fed the remains to her stuffed toy rhino Rocky.

Because I had no honey (probably a crime in Scotland!) I made use of the leftover basil from Monday's dinner and some strawberries to make strawberry and basil butter.   This gave them a lovely fresh taste, despite being packed with dried fruit rather than fresh.

Recipe - serves 4 (or three plus a hungry stuffed toy rhino) - adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe

• 140g plain flour, sifted
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 25g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 150ml milk
• 50g dried apricots, chopped
• a little butter for frying

• 100g lightly salted butter, softened
• small handful of basil leaves, torn
• 50g strawberries, finely diced

• extra strawberries to serve

1. Mix the basil into the butter then carefully press the strawberries into the mixture.  Mould into a log shape, wrap in cling film and pop in the fridge.
2. Mix the flour, bicarb, baking powder, sugar, egg and milk together to make a thick, smooth batter.  Fold in the apricots.
3. Heat the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat.  Once melted, drop tablespoonfuls of batter into the pan, leaving space to spread.  Cook until firm and browned on the bottom then flip over and cook for a further two minutes.
4. Once all the pancakes are cooked, remove the butter from the fridge and carefully slice into circles then use to top the pancakes.

Strawberry and Rhubarb Pavlova

I've just been reprimanded by my mother for licking my plate.  She actually slapped me.  I'm thirty-five years old and taller than her.  And she still slapped me and called me a savage.  She then threatened to post about it on Facebook so I am trying to beat her to the jump and admit to it on here instead.

Plate-lickingly good

A few weeks back, I asked her if she would allow me to bring a Jubilee Bundt and if I could make a pavlova for Sunday lunch.  Unfortunately, my grandfather scuppered that plan by not paying attention to the meal timings, and turning up six hours early.

I'd originally intended to make it a bit of a tropical affair but then foraging in mother's garden yesterday, I happened across some rhubarb.  With some inspiration from Olive Magazine on the BBC Good Food Website, the plan was amended to individual strawberry and rhubarb pavlovas.

To make it even more English, we abandoned the Dutch Esalanta strawberries and went to a local Pick Your Own with Miss A to get some 'gawbies'.

I was really pleased with the combination of flavours - I'm not normally a fan of meringues as I find them too sweet and only picked the recipe as a technical challenge but the sharpness of the rhubarb and the mellow vanilla cream really balanced the sweetness out.  Will definitely be making this again - probably as a full size pavlova next time.  And I'll most definitely be licking the plate again.

Freshly foraged

Recipe - Serves 6 (adapted from Olive Magazine)

• 4 extra large eggs (mother buys these from a local eggery)
• 200g caster sugar
• 1 tsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tsp cornflour

• 400g young rhubarb, cut into 2 inch chunks
• 100g caster sugar
• 200g small strawberries, halved.
• 3 tbsp grenadine

• 568ml pot double cream
• 1 tsp icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste

Picking gawbies

1. Preheat the oven to 180c/160c fan/350F.
2. Draw circles with a diameter of around 15cm onto two sheets of baking parchment, sized to fit baking trays.
3. Whisk the egg whites until they are stiff and will not fall out of the bowl when it is inverted.  Whisk the sugar in one tablespoonful at a time until the meringue is thick and glossy.  Then whisk in the vinegar and cornflour.
4. Use a tiny bit of meringue to secure the corners of the baking paper to the baking tray to stop it slipping around.
5. Place the paper upside down on the meringue blobs (so the pencil markings are face down on the tray).  Spoon a layer of meringue onto each circle and shape to fill the diameter of the circle.  Divide the rest of the meringue between the six circles.  Make an indentation into the middle of each circle then use a palette knife to build up the sides of the pavlovas.
6. Turn the oven down to 120c/100c fan/250F and bake the meringues for 1 1/2 hours. Remove from the oven and leave to go cold.
7. Meanwhile place the rhubarb and sugar into saucepan with a tablespoon of water and simmer until the rhubarb is softened and the sugar is syrupy.  Leave to cool.
8. Heat the grenadine in a small saucepan until reduced by half.  Take off the heat, stir in the strawberries and leave to go cold.
9. Put the cream, icing sugar and vanilla into a large bowl. Whip until slightly thicker than clotted cream then refrigerate until ready to assemble.
10. When ready to plate up, fill the centre of the pavlovas with generous spoonfuls of the cream. Top each with some rhubarb compote and strawberries then pour over the remaining grenadine syrup.  Serve immediately.

Strawberry Meringue Ice Cream

My sous chef

My daughter is currently going through an obsession with 'I Can Cook' on CBeebies.  Before, she'd just watch whatever was on, but now we have to rely on Sky Plussed episodes of the Fragrant Katie and her band of merry helpers.  I feel like I've done nothing this past week but watch 'I Can Cook' (I've only seen about three episodes, but it feels like a hundred).  So I figured that alongside the weekly ritual of making some small biscuits or cake, we'd give the Strawberry Meringue Ice Cream a go.

Of course, it not being strawberry season, we stumbled at the first block with the strawberry mashing.  Miss A was given a large bowl, four strawberries cut in half and the potato masher.  They just got chased and chased around the bowl until I turned my back to whip the cream.  Less than thirty seconds later, the bowl was nearly empty and I had a suspicious looking toddler with strawberry juice running down her chin.  As fussy as she is, my daughter adores her fruit.

Broken whisk :(

We ended up squishing the strawberries by hand.  An activity in hindsight that I wouldn't do again as once frozen, the lumps were very icy.

During this escapade, my expensive (well £11) dishwasher-proof, hard-anodized-saucepan-safe whisk decided to fall apart.  Not a happy mummy.  Still, the cream was just about whipped.

I'm not sure if I'm a fan of no-churn ice-creams or not.  I've made them before from a recipe on the Good Food website.  The first time I made it, it was okay.  The second time, using the exact same recipe, I found it greasy.  Today's effort was a little greasy, but the fruit and meringue helped detract from it.  It was a rich, easy recipe that did what it said on the tin.

In essence, it's really just frozen Eton Mess.  With the mood I was in this morning, it was lucky to make it to the freezer.  The recipe says to freeze it for two hours and then temper in the fridge for half an hour.  I found it was still soft enough to scoop after two hours without the need to temper.

Finished ice cream with Waitrose choc chunks

All in all, not bad.  For a quick, simple, faff free ice-cream, I'd probably do it again if I didn't have time to nip to our local farm shop for some.  But in lieu of an ice cream maker (I'd so love a proper CuisineArt one), the next best thing to proper home made has to be Marshfield Farm ice cream which is made just down the road from here.  I'm not sure where it's stocked nationwide, but if they sell it near you you so have to try it.  Especially my favourite - blackcurrants and clotted cream.  Slurp!

As for Miss A's opinion?  She absolutely steadfastly refused to touch it.  But she ate the rest of the strawberries :)

Recipe - serves 2 to 4 (or one!)

• 125ml double cream
• 2 heaped dessert spoons natural yogurt
• 2 level dessert spoons icing sugar
• 4 large strawberries
• 1 meringue nest or 4 mini meringues

1. Whip the cream then stir in the yogurt and icing sugar.
2. Mash the strawberries and crush the meringue.  Swirl through the cream mixture.
3. Pour into a freezer proof container and freeze for at least two hours.
4. Temper in the fridge for 30 minutes before serving (although you may not need to do this step)

Mango, Pineapple and Strawberry Smoothie

Okay, okay this is a dead easy recipe and you could accuse me of being very lazy today.  Yep.  You got me.  It's not that I couldn't be bothered.  Just got beaten by plain, old-fashioned exhaustion.

I've been off on an overnight 'jolly' with work on a 'non-course' which was actually used to highlight all my worst points and then tell me that if I pull my socks up, I might get to do something different one day. I don't think baking cakes all day long really figured in their plans for me.

If I'm honest, it was far more than just looking at the negatives that need work, it also celebrated the positives and had a dash of the 'ministry of the bleedin' obvious' about it too.  Sometimes you just need a little nudge to remind you of long surpressed ambitions or to be elbowed in a direction that you'd not really considered before but is acutally quite appealing.

Anyhoo, after a day in the kind of hotel that leaves huge-mongous jars of sweets (sour apples, double lollies, cola bottles...) and custard creams near the water coolers and serves not-too-bad meals and awesome pastries at breakfast, all I wanted was something simple and healthy for my tea.

Please Santa, can I have a camera?

When I arrived home, the fridge was overflowing with the BOGOF fruit I got from Ocado last week that I've not gotten round to eating.  So I grabbed my well used copy of 365 Smoothies and Juices and off I went.

I got given the book several years ago (or maybe I bought it??) when my family gave me a juicer to celebrate moving into our new house.  As I was working from home full time then, I diligently juiced every morning - my favourite being apple, ginger, orange and beetroot.  Cleaning it was a pain in the backside, but the earthy-purple juice with a spicy kick made me feel like I was being the healthiest person in the world despite it being one of my 'fat' periods.

One day, it just turned up its toes and went to the big appliance heap in the sky and I've not touched the book since.  When I got my new Kenwood over a year ago, I never really thought to get making smoothies again with the piles of fruit we get through every week thanks to the child but will definitely be experimenting as part of the challenge.

I don't think you can go far wrong with smoothies.  They always taste pretty good and this one was refreshing and filling.  Only change I'd make would be to add a twist of lime but I didn't have one anyway.

Ingredients - Serves 2

• Half a fresh pineapple, cubed
• 1 mango, cubed and frozen
• 8 frozen strawberries, plus two fresh to decorate
• 400ml orange juice - fresh or frozen
• juice of half a lime.

Throw all the ingredients into a blender.  Blend until smooth.  Serve in glasses decorated with strawberries - and if you have it, a sprig of mint or some candied lime zest.