Cranachan Burns’ Night special

Fiona's Cranachan

My friend, Fiona who is Scottish, and an amazing cook shared her family dessert for Burns’ night last year Prune & Whisky Tart. But the most popular dessert which follows the Haggis is Cranachan. It’s a mixture of whisky, cream, honey and toasted oats and the consistency is more like a mousse. Here’s Fiona’s family recipe.

Cranachan

2 oz (50g) medium oatmeal or rolled oats

2 tbsp of malt whiskey

2 tablespoons of runny Scottish honey

½ pint (300mls) double cream

6 oz (175g) raspberries 

(or other soft fruit such as blueberries or blackberries. 

If frozen allow time to thaw.)

Toast the oatmeal/rolled oats under a hot grill for about 2 minutes. Whip the cream until thick and stir in the honey and malt whiskey. Add the raspberries and fold in the toasted oatmeal and spoon into small glasses.

You can serve with biscuits such as Shortbread. 

We like Oat Ginger biscuits or Flapjack.

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! 

“Heaven, I’m in heaven ....”

Ivy made our fabulous wedding cake

Christmas always has a tinge of sadness when there’s a well loved family member no longer around to celebrate the festive season. And so it was this year for us, when Grandma Abson’s niece, Ivy, passed away in early December 2013, aged 88.

Ivy followed in our great family tradition of baking. She would bake countless Christmas Cakes for family, friends and neighbours, all liberally laced with brandy, adopting the family method of letting her hand slip.  But her prowess extended well beyond producing tasty cakes, puddings, pastries and pies. She followed various cake decorating courses assiduously to develop her skills and became very proficient in sugar craft cake decorating and design, producing numerous wedding cakes with great artistry.

Ivy and Ron’s wedding 1950 

But as well as her culinary expertise, I’ll always remember Ivy for her great sense of fun in everything she did.  She loved dancing and was an ardent  'Strictly' fan, having spent her younger days travelling from her home in Manchester to enjoy the dancing spectacle at the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. It hit just the right note when we heard Frank Sinatra singing ‘Dancing Cheek to Cheek'  as we remembered her with much affection at her funeral. So, I’m dedicating this post to Ivy and raising a toast of celebration (a glass of your favourite Chablis) and thanks for her long life. We’ll miss you! I bet you’re baking cakes up there in cake heaven.

Ivy celebrates Queen’s Diamond Jubilee 2012

And, just a final note to the end of the year, in the grand tradition of family baking, I’m delighted to say that Ivy has passed her skills down the generations onto granddaughter, Rachel, who now also excels in cake making and decorating. Long live home baking! 

Happy New Year. Let the baking continue!

Make a special Christmas Gift

What a brilliant idea! That’s what the customers said when they saw the basket of homemade edible gifts I was demonstrating at Grandma Abson's  Christmas Bake-in at Cook N Dine baking emporium. 

 I started off with Grandma’s homemade Mincemeat and soon the scent of cinnamon, mixed spice and nutmeg were wafting through the store. Once potted up and decorated, the jars make very attractive gifts.

I moved onto to Cranberry & Apple Chutney. This tasty recipe is proving to be a real hit this year and it’s recipe of the Month at Tasty Flavours in Doncaster Market.

Next was Aunty Emma’s Christmas Plum Pudding and a chance to stir the mixture and make a wish for next year. I showed how to microwave it to cut out hours of steaming.

 Mouth-watering Shortbread biscuits, using Christmas shaped cutters – stars, angels, bells and Christmas trees were simply decorated and wrapped up in small gift bags proved a popular choice.

Any Almond paste or marzipan, left over from decorating the Christmas Cake can be turned into exquisite Chocolate Marzipan balls in a the twinkling of an eye. Dip the balls in melted chocolate and top with a simple edible Christmas decoration to make a very attractive gift.

 Finally, old fashioned Peppermint creams – so easy to make with icing sugar, peppermint extract and lemon juice (I just use lemon juice and a splash of water to bind them) .

It all goes to show that making a special homemade gift is easy and it’s a perfect Christmas gift!

Happy Christmas everyone
Enjoy baking with Grandma Abson

Tis the season for Christmas Cranberry & Apple Chutney

 We've already got fresh Cranberries on the market so it's time to begin Christmas preparations with this easy Cranberry and Apple Chutney. It’s based on Grandma’s Apple Chutney recipe. The sumptuous red of the cranberries give it that real Christmas colour and the smells will get the Christmas season going. 

Cranberry & Apple Chutney
2 lb/approx 1 kg apples

1 lb/450g onions

250 ml white wine vinegar

¾ lb/350g cranberries

1 lb/450g demerera sugar

5 peppercorns or freshly ground pepper

2 tbsps ground ginger or 

1 piece fresh ginger sliced and finely chopped

Chop up the apples and onions finely. Place in a large pan with the white wine vinegar and bring to the boil. Then simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the apples and onions are soft. Add the other ingredients and mix together. Bring to the boil then simmer for about 1½ hours, stirring until the ingredients are tender. Allow to cool and remove the peppercorns. Spoon into clean jars and cover.

Grandma’s tips : To test if the chutney was ready, she would draw a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan. If it’s ready, the chutney must not flow back into the gap left behind by the spoon. If not, then check every 5 minutes or so until the gap is clear.  She said that Chutney needs to cool slowly so the spices infuse and flavour the fruit. You can add more ginger and cinnamon to make it even spicier.

Meryl says : We love this recipe and serve it instead of Cranberry Sauce on Christmas Day. If you make a few jars and decorate them with ribbon, they'll make lovely edible Christmas gifts for friends and family. Let me know if you try it. 

Spice it up

Spicy Apple Chutney

With more of us interested in growing produce, there’s always the age old problem of what to do with gluts of fruit and vegetables. Grandma never had a problem with what to do. She often made chutneys and pickles to last through the winter as a perfect side dish with hot and cold dishes.

So, when I was given a bag of ‘fallen’ apples, I dug out Grandma’s Apple Chutney recipe. Grandma served this spicy chutney with pork pies and cold meats at Christmas.

Apple Chutney

2 lb/approx 1 kg apples

1 ½ lb/675g onions

1 lb/450g dried apricots

1 lb/450g sultanas

1 lb/450g demerera sugar

2 oz/50g garlic

1 tbsp salt

2 tbsps ground ginger

1 tsp mustard seed

1 quart/ 1150ml vinegar

Chop up the apples, onions and apricots. Add the other ingredients and mix together. Place in a large pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 1½ hours, stirring until the ingredients are tender. Allow to cool. Spoon into clean jars and cover.

Simmer the ingredients

Grandma’s tips : Chop the fruit and onions finely or put them through a mincer so the final consistency of the chutney is thick and smooth. To test if the chutney is ready, draw a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan. If it’s ready, the chutney must not flow back into the gap left behind by the spoon. If not, then check every 5 minutes or so until the gap is clear. Chutney needs to cool slowly so the spices infuse and flavour the fruit. You can add more ginger and other spices such as mustard seed, coriander or cumin to make it even spicier.

 A gift of homemade Chutney

You could pot it up with decorative ribbon as a homemade present for friends and family!

Ma Bailey's Luscious Chocolate Brownies

Chocolate Brownies a la mere Bailey

Chocoholic Sara is one of my friends from our Leeds University days where we studied languages. From time to time, we meet and have fun reminiscing as if it were yesterday. We still feel 19 years old in our heads! 

Sara is a keen baker and regularly sends me recipes. She writes “I discovered this recipe - now called 'Ma Bailey's Brownies' - when my boys were at school. The tradition continued and I made them each time they set off for university and for each visit during the term. The chocolate chunks stay sort of gooey in the brownies. These brownies have also been to Ireland, Lapland and Iceland. I am trying to see how far round the world I can get them!"

Ma Bailey’s Chocolate Brownies

125g/5oz butter

200g dark chocolate

175g/7oz soft brown sugar

2 medium eggs, beaten

A few drops vanilla essence

50g/2oz plain flour

5ml (1 tsp) baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C, Gas mark 4. Line a baking tin 18cm /7" square with greaseproof paper. Melt the butter with 50g/2oz of the chocolate in a heat proof bowl over a pan of hot water. Put sugar, eggs and vanilla essence into a large bowl, then sift in flour and baking powder. Stir in the melted chocolate and mix well. Chop the remaining chocolate into rough chunks and stir into the brownie mixture. Spoon into the tin, spread evenly and bake for about 40 minutes until the cake begins to shrink from the sides and the centre is firm.

Sara’s baking tips :

"Melt choc in microwave then add butter and CAREFULLY finish melting them  together. Today's bake took an extra 10 minutes but has been known to be longer so don't panic! I cut the pieces in half again as it's rich and is for sharing! I still work in ozs but for the first time I just followed the metric today. These homemade brownies are really easy - the hardest part is waiting 40 minutes for it to come out of the oven!”

Thanks, Sara. We did and they are chocotastic! I hope they go round the world as you said!  It's Chocolate Week so check out all Grandma's Chocolate Recipes  from biscuits to cakes which one are you baking this week?

Of Rice and Romans

 Being interested in all things Roman, I was delighted to chance upon an amazing archaeological site in the village of Vieux La Romaine in Normandy, France. Our visit coincided with ‘Les Journees du Patrimoine’  September Heritage weekend and a special ‘Salon de The’ was put on by the members of the ‘Comité de Jumelage de Vieux et Otterton’. A tempting array of savoury and sweet flans were on offer to visitors, all served up with a smile and a cheerful explanation of each dish.  

Most impressive was the famous local Norman speciality -  La Teurgoule – a rice pudding flavoured with cinnamon. It’s absolutely stunning to taste. The ladies explained that they make it in a large pot for special community festivities and the crusty topping is the best bit! Here’s the recipe for a smaller family celebration.

La Teurgoule

600ml/1 pint milk (whole not skimmed)

75g/3 oz pudding rice

2 tbsps sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Knob of butter

Grease an ovenproof dish with butter. Mix the rice, sugar and cinnamon in the dish. Add the milk and stir around. Dot the top with butter. Place in a preheated oven (150C/Mark 2/300F) for about 3-3 ½ hours. Test with a knife to see if the mixture has thickened and is creamy. Allow to cool and serve ‘tiede’ i.e. warm

Meryl says : This recipe reminded me so much of Grandma Abson’s luscious rice pudding slowly cooked in the coal oven range. We loved scraping the crusty bits around the edge! 

If you have ever wanted to imagine life in the Roman Empire, then this place is a ‘must see’. The Head of Archaeology and her small team of experts and volunteers are doing a fantastic job. With 3 major excavation sites, as well as a well designed museum containing a huge amount of artefacts, this location deserves a must see place on the Roman archaeology trail.

Be sweet without the sugar

Mixing a cake with less sugar

Grandma Abson lived though the hard grind of life in service in 1900s. Then she lived through the depression of the 1930s, when she became a widow with two teenagers, followed by rationing in World War 2. So she learnt to be very resourceful in times of shortage. 

Part of her baking philosophy was about turning out something tasty from limited resources. The weekly ration of sugar for an adult from 1940 was 8oz, the equivalent of 225 grams. This sounds quite a lot if, like me, you don’t have a sweet tooth. Sugar was rationed till 1953, so it’s not hard to see why many of Grandma’s recipes use less sugar. In 1953 when the coronation took place, sugar and butter rations were doubled for a short while so people could enjoy a Coronation bake. All food rationing ended in July 1954.

However, Grandma cut down the amount of sugar in her cake, pudding and biscuit recipes and used between one third and one half of the quantity of sugar you might see in modern recipes. She would flavour her baking with cinnamon, ginger, mixed spice and later used honey or golden syrup as an alternative.  

Ginger Cake

I'm following her example and don't overload my baking with sugar and enhance the flavour with spices and natural products. Stay healthy by reducing the sugar. Enjoy your baking and let me know what you’ve baked this week.

A wedding cake with substance and style

A flurry of butterflies gave the final touches to Becca and Rob’s wedding cake on their special day. Most wedding cakes are traditional fruit cakes but the couple wanted a simple 3 tiered sponge wedding cake. There’s always the question of how to create a stunning masterpiece from sponge cakes and stack without an elaborate structures of dowels. ? Well, our secret’s out! I used ultra light polystyrene moulds for the top 2 tiers. These rested securely on the large bottom tier of chocolate cake. And, ready to serve for the guests, I made 3 more large cakes, decorated in the same way for the evening ‘celebration’.  They just had to remember to cut into the bottom tier for the photos!

Countdown to the Big Day

In the weeks before the wedding day, I made test cakes with various fillings for Becca and Rob to try. In the end, they chose :

Victoria Sandwich with Chocolate Butter Cream filling
Toffee Cake  with Butterscotch Cream filling

Chocolate Cake with Butter Cream filling

Wednesday (3 days to go)

I made the 4 large 10 inch/25cms cakes : Victoria Sandwich, Toffee ( x 2) and Chocolate Cakes. 

Meryl’s Tip : I used Grandma’s basic recipe for each one and baked them in 10 inch/25cm cake tins for each cake with the 3 eggs and their weight in sugar, butter and flour for each layer of individual cake so each cake was made with 6 eggs. I used soft brown sugar for the Toffee Cake and Toffee Butter Cream filling instead of caster sugar.

Thursday (2 days to go)

I made Butter Cream in the various flavours to go with the cakes. I covered each cake with Butter Cream to form a base for the Ready to roll Icing. I rolled out the Icing and iced the cakes.

Friday (1 day to go)

I delivered the cakes to the venue, tied the themed green ribbon round each cake, and stacked them. Becca placed the butterfly decorations as she wanted. Hey presto!

Saturday 

Cake cutting (the bottom tier!) and lots of fantastic feedback from the newlyweds and their guests about the stylish look and most importantly the taste of all the cakes! It all worked perfectly so it was both substance and style. It was fantastic to be part of such a wonderful day! Becca and Rob even took it in the car to the airport for their honeymoon - what a great start to their life together!