It’s new year, new , new ...

Tim and Jane's Tasty Flavours has moved to a new location in the Food Hall in Doncaster Market. Fortunately, the new stall is less than 50 metres from the old one and the range of baking ingredients to make Grandma’s traditional homemade recipes is as wide as ever.

Grandma Abson’s Recipe of the Month board has pride of place. Tim says the recipes are very popular with his savvy customers who snap photos with their smart phones. We link each month’s recipe to whatever is in season that month and mainly use ingredients from Tim and Jane’s emporium. We’re also keeping Grandma’s legacy of homemade baking alive with easy recipes which taste just scrummy with few ingredients.

To start the New Year, January’s Recipe of the Month is St Clement’s Pie. This famous pie is eaten whenever there are bells to ring out. Just as in the nursery rhyme, it’s made with oranges and lemons.

St Clement’s Pie

8oz /225g Shortcrust Pastry (8oz/225g flour, 4oz/110g butter)

Zest & juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange

4oz /110g caster sugar

5 tsps cornflour

2 eggs (separated)

½ pint/ 275ml water

Make Shortcrust Pastry.  Line a pie dish with the pastry and bake blind for 10 minutes. Put the lemon and orange zests, juice and 2oz/50g sugar in a pan. Heat until the sugar is dissolved.  Mix the cornflour to a paste with 6 tbsps of water. Stir into the mixture with the rest of the water until blended.  Let it cool a little. Add the egg yolks and mix gently till blended. Pour into the pastry case. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and add the rest of the sugar. Spoon the meringue on to the filling and make swirls. Cook in a preheated oven for 30 minutes. (300F, Mark 2, 150C)

Grandma’s tip : Bake it Blind This describes cooking pastry before adding a filling. Line the dish with pastry. Then line the pastry with baking paper. Cover with dried beans or peas.  Bake and remove the paper before adding the filling. Keep the beans or peas to reuse for baking blind.

Meryl says : This pie is delicious to eat hot or cold. I love it when the mixture is still hot, just set and the meringue is freshly peaked from the oven. 

Happy New Year #KeepBakingalive! 

Ring out the bells

As the bells ring in the New Year, I’ve lots of memories to cherish. Talking about Grandma’s recipes has brought me more forgotten recipes for me to share; demonstrating Grandma’s simple baking skills is inspiring a whole new generation at events for various charities including Teenage Cancer trust to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with Grandma’s Doncaster Butterscotch recipes. 

The Gamesmaker experience at the London Olympics 2012 was one of my most memorable moments including the Olympic Orange Cake for our final evening’s shift. How fitting that the start of the London 2012 Olympics began with the now Sir Bradley Wiggins ringing the bell. It reminded me of the popular nursery rhyme we used to play in the school playground. This starts off with ‘Oranges and Lemons say the bells of St Clement’s....’  The citrus fruits were unloaded in the quaysides close to the city of London and the churches nearby.

Scrumptious St Clement’s Pie

Grandma had a recipe for St Clement’s Pie, perfect for a New year dessert. She made it just like her Lemon Meringue Pie but used both oranges and lemons in the filling. She would line a pastry base with baking paper and dried beans or peas, bake it blind and then pour in the filling. When this cooled a little, she would whisk up the egg whites for a sumptuous meringue.

Bake it Blind

What will next year bring? I’m finding new ways to share Grandma’s baking all the time. The ebook version of  Grandma Abson's Traditional Baking is now ready with more recipes so I hope that you’ll be downloading it right away. I’m  excited about filming some of Grandma’s signature baking with students from the University of Huddersfield and sharing more experiences of traditional baking across the country.   

It only remains for me to wish you all a very Happy and baketastic New Year! 

Thanks for the Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin Pie with an apricot twist

Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday in November and has its roots in cultural and religious traditions. It’s a public holiday in Canada too but on the 2nd Monday in October. The most popular Thanksgiving dessert is Pumpkin Pie and Grandma had a recipe for this with dried apricots amongst her collection of old magazine cuttings.

Pumpkin Pie 

Shortcrust pastry

Filling

2-2 ½ lbs/1kg pumpkin

3 level tbsps golden syrup (warmed)

3 tbsps caster sugar

1 oz/25g butter

2 tbsps milk

2 eggs (well beaten)

1 tsps of cinnamon, mixed spice & ground ginger

1 tbsp lemon juice

12-15 dried apricots (soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes)

Peel, remove the pith and seeds and cut the pumpkin into small pieces. Steam for around 20 minutes. Make the Shortcrust pastry and line an 8½ inch/22 cms ovenproof dish with the pastry. 

Bake it blind

Place greaseproof or baking paper on the pastry with a layer of dried beans or peas on top. Bake for 10 minutes in a hot oven 2ooC, Mark 6, 400F.  Mash the pumpkin in a basin, add the other ingredients and mix well. Take the dish out of the oven and remove the paper and dried beans/peas. Pour in the filling, decorate with the strained apricots and return to the oven to bake for about 35 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

Pumpkins are much more popular in here too to make soups and other savoury vegetarian recipes but this is a pleasant way to serve a sweet dish for Happy Thanksgiving Day!