The Modern Housewife Series Vol. I

lemon banana loaf

It's somewhere inbetween a cake and a loaf. The outside is crisp and the inside tender but a bit denser than cake.

2 bananas, mashed

100g  Sunflower oil

175g light muscovado sugar (although caster it fine)

Zest and juice of a lemon

225g Self raising flour (sieved)

1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C and line a loaf tin

Cream bananas, oil, sugar and lemon (zest and juice) together.

Fold in the flour and baking powder and put in lined loaf tin.

Bake for 1 hour but check after 45 minutes. A skewer should come out clean.

Cool before slicing.

(Freezes well either whole or in slices and can happily be doubled up for batch baking)

crumble

If pastry making scares you then crumble is the place to start. It involves the beginnings of making a shortcrust pastry without the terror of making a dough. You get to practice crumbling the fat and flour together without being too concerned about whether you're being too hamfisted.

All your ingredients should be cold, the fat should be cut into diced pieces and rubbing the fat and flour together involves just the tips of your fingers. You shouldn't ever be squeezing or squishing the fat and flour together.

I prefer to use self raising flour in my crumble topping and if I don't have any will stir in a teaspoon of baking powder. I have no explanation as to why I do this, I just do. Plain flour would be fine.

For my fruit base I just use whatever I have to hand: apples, pears, frozen fruits (defrosted) etc. Just put them in your dish and sprinkle enough sugar on them so your lips don't pucker.

Crumble topping

200g flour (self raising or plain)

125g margarine (good quality, good tasting)

60g caster sugar

Rub the flour and maragrine together until it looks like rough breadcrumbs then stir in the sugar. 

(Variations:
Topping: replace some of the flour with ground almonds or any other type of crushed nut (pecan or hazelnut spring to mind). 

Can also be used for: sprinkling on/covering top of cakes and cupcakes.

Freeze? Yes. The crumble topping can be kept in bags/containers in the freezer)

Potatoes au gratin

Part of an over the top mid week meal. Thinly sliced potatoes cooked at 160C in a mixture of soya cream and vegetable stock, salt, pepper and garlic. It was covered until the potatoes were tender and then allowed to colour on top.

One recipe Three ways: Cookies

Tweak a recipe and it's possible to go from one to three recipes fairly quickly. They don't always work out as planned but that's part of the fun of baking!

The original recipe: Raisin oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup margarine

1 tsp Vanilla

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup oatmeal

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

Up to 1 ½ cups mix of chocolate chips/raisins/ walnuts 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil, margarine and vanilla together. Mix in oatmeal, flour, bicarb and salt. Fold in your choice of chocolate chips etc.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

Verdict: Always good! sweet but slightly salt, crispy but tender inside. Very good!

 Version 2: Peanut butter, chocolate chip and raisin

 

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup peanut butter

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup oatmeal

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Up to 1 ½ cups mix of chocolate chips and raisins 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil and peanut butter  together. Mix in cocoa oatmeal, flour and bicarb. Fold in your chocolate chips and raisins.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

 

Verdict: Very tasty but they don't spread out and are very delicate probably from altering the fat content. I should rename them peanut butter mounds and then they'll be just fine. Will make again.

 Version 3: Orange chocolate chocolate chip

¾ cup caster sugar

½ cup sunflower oil

½ cup margarine

2 tsp grated orange zest

1 tsp instant coffee powder

1 ¾ cups plain flour

½ cup cocoa powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

Up to 1 ½ cups of chocolate chips 

Heat oven to 180C.

Cream sugar, oil, margarine, coffee powder and orange zest together. Mix in cocoa powder, flour, bicarb and salt. Fold in your choice of chocolate chips etc.

Spoon on to baking trays (makes about 16-18) and bake for 8-12 minutes

 Verdict: OK. Not as chocolatey as I hoped and the cocoa powder really dried up the mix (absorbs more liquid than flour) so the end result was a very crisp biscuit rather than a moister cookie. 

An unexpected salad on an unexpectedly hot day

Well thanks glorious weather! You have completely ruined my menu plan. The thought of making and eating shepherds pie on such a hot day exhausts me just thinking of it. I want crisp cool salads and warm juicy fruit but it's March and summer sun missed fruits are nowhere to be found. (I don't count "imported from the other side of the world" or British grown "never seen daylight just UV light" foods).

Fortunately there were plenty oddments of vegetables that were unessential to the rest of the weeks menu languishing in the fridge. The last of the lettuce, a handful of spinach, some old broccoli stems I had been saving, celery, a few spring onions and a homemade mayonnaise made a light and creamy salad. All that was missing was that mouth pleasing crunch of croutons.

Quick fruit cobbler recipe

Pudding at the end of a meal makes it oh so much more satisfying. However, if I've been cooking a meal and dirtied lots of dishes I don't really feel like making dessert unless it is extremely easy. This cobbler fits the bill nicely. No idea where this recipe comes from as it was in my mum's little, brown, handwritten recipe book. She possibly got it from an American friend while living in Africa but who knows. I could ask her but I'm sure she won't remember. You can use any kind of fruit - fresh, frozen or tinned. My mum used to make it with a big jar of morello cherries and bake it in a fairly small pyrex bowl. I made it with a small can of pineapple rings and some frozen raspberries as that's what I had. If you use sweet fruit or like less sweet desserts, cut down the sugar a bit.

Quick Fruit Cobbler

Serves 6

Combine:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Pour into a 9"x9" greased pan. (Or a deep pyrex bowl or a pie dish)

Add 2 cups fruit, fresh, frozen or canned.

Bake at 180°C for 40 minutes. (Mine was ready after about 35 minutes. The batter should be set and golden.)

chocolate cake recipe

While you are reading this i will be baking birthday cake number two and preparing for the arrival of the in-laws.  I'm fairly sure a one year old needs no came rather than two of them.

Yesterdays cake was a complete and utter success. Small children clamoured for the sickly chocolatey goodness. It tastes extra chocolatey because of the coffee I added to both the batter and the icing. I may or may not have mentioned this to the parents. Yeah, I didn't. I had the foresight to use decaffeinated coffee in the batter but negated that by putting ground up instant coffee in the icing. It really makes a difference and I know this because I did frequent taste tests.

Sponge
200g caster sugar

2 heaped tbsp dark cocoa powder

100g self-raising flour

200g Plain flour

1 tsp salt 

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

150ml sunflower oil (I like cold-pressed)

2 tsp cider vinegar or lemon juice

250ml  milk (I use soya)

150ml brewed cooled coffee

Pre heat the oven to 180C and grease, line and dust with cocoa powder  two shallow 8 inch cake tins). Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and put all the wet ingredients in a jug. When the oven is hot mix the wet ingredients into the dry.

Pour the mixture into the greased cake tin (or divide equally between the two tins). Bake for approx 40-50 minutes if using one tin (20-30 if using two smaller cake tins). The times are a bit vague as I have found that different ovens vary hugely and different batches of ingredients differ. The cake should be light and springy and an inserted skewer or sharp knife should come out clean. Leave in the tin to cool slightly then turn out onto a wire rack to cool

 

While the cake was in the oven I also made big fat delicious cookies because it was a shame not to once the oven had heated up. They are too good. Using a food mixer for these made all the difference when mixing the sugar, margarine and sunflower oil. Do it by hand and you get a disgusting, curdled, separating mess. The machine emulsifies it all  nicely. I thought I had posted the recipe for these somewhere but I can't find it right now. I might share it.

(I was going to do a post tomorrow all about giving birth a year ago but quickly realised that no one needs to know about episiotomies. Or what they sound like when you get one. I'm more or less recovered now but sometimes, late at night, I can still hear those scissors!!

Notes to self: mostly food related (and an eggless frittata)

 

My life has revolved excessively around food this last week:

• I make the eggless frittata/Spanish Tortilla (shown above) at least once a week. It always contains onions and potatoes and then whatever needs used up. In this case peas and leeks. The base of it is simple: one packet silken tofu, heaped tablespoon gram flour and a heaped tablespoon of nutritional yeast (optional). Then blend and scrape and blend until smooth and mix it in with the cooked vegetables. Whack in the oven at 180C for about 30 minutes. I prefer it at room temperature, the texture is better.

 

• I've been making garlic flatbreads excessively using this "magic dough" recipe (The pizza dough recipe is essentially the magic dough). Easy to make, ready to use quickly (in terms of bread products), tasty. I blame/thank Hannah for my excessive consumption because she mentioned it's deliciousness to me.

 

• On/in this flatbread has gone...puy lentil, roast parsnip and rocket salad, carrot hummus, dal, cannelini bean hummus... Most of this has come out of the Veg cookbook. I got this book for Christmas and was initially dubious (it being written by renowned carnivore Hugh Fearnley Whatshisname but, but...damn, it's good. Most recipes are vegan or very easily made vegan and all are vegetarian and the recipes are seasonal, use what I normally have in anyway, aren't lengthy, don't use difficult to get hold of ingredients and are delicious. I have many, many recipe books (a whole bookshelf at least) of omnivore, vegetarian and vegan cookbooks and most of them I use for inspiration. This book I use.

Blog posts I've enjoyed:

• I got caught out by this organisation post at Modern Parents Messy Kids big time! I wanted to know how, how do I have this life! So I've started at the top and I'm working my way down. A list of all the meals i regularly make is being compiled and a cheat sheet is getting typed up of basic recipes I use fairly frequently and end up searching for each time (white sauces, crumble toppings etc). Its not the full recipe really but just a list of the ingredients. Its the proportions of things i need to look up rather than how to do it. There is one sweet and one savoury. They will probably get laminated as otherwise they will become instantly illegible as I paw them with my doughy hands. I'm not convinced I'll end up a menu planner as we tend to buy seasonal British good looking fruit and veg (except lemons and bananas they just have to be good looking!) but it's still handy to have a comprehensive list to delve into when I'm feeling completely uninspired.

 

DIY blackcurrant liqueur and sloe gin

1. Put your frozen fruit in a kiln jar
2. throw in some sugar and ...
3. fill it up with gin. 

Couldn't be simpler so I'm not sure why it has taken me months to do this. It took, oh, less than a minute.

I used 600g fruit in a 2 litre jar with 1 litre of gin and a reasonable whack of caster sugar. I like my alcohol on the dry side so If you like your alcohol more like syrup then add a little more sugar.

Rum would be an excellent substitute and I have used bags of frozen mixed fruit in the past with great results.

Breasts, crochet and another, different, red pepper and walnut pate

 On Tuesday I got my breasts out in the local church hall.

...


Oh, you want more? An explanation for my heathen behaviour? While I don't, as a rule, go around exposing myself in religious establishments I was in a room full of other women who were proudly getting their breasts out. Finally the BfN (Breastfeeding Network) have set  up a local group and I no longer have to be regarded as unusual or eccentric for breast feeding my baby. Up until now I was the only person I knew who chose to breast feed in my local area. The only one! Its been a surprisingly isolating experience on some levels but I'd never change it.  I'll be back next week to talk with people who don't react with disbelief and horror at terms such as 'attachment parenting', 'baby led weaning' and *gasp* 'co-sleeping'.

Other stuff:

Small successful crochet projects have included these balls:

I'm pleasantly surprised at how much baby enjoys them. Usually she'll chase them around the room like a cat but we also play throwing and rolling games with them. Homemade hippy type entertainment right there! Oh! Maybe I could turn my granny squares into stackable cubes for her?!

For my next crochet project I have my eye on a tutorial from (a different) Lucy at Attic 24 for covering containers.  So many amazing free projects and her instructions are incredibly clear. She also has the most homely looking house that I have seen. I want to move in now. Thank you.

Finally, after yesterday's post I was reminded of a red pepper and walnut pâté that we made constantly over the summer when we had a 3kg bag of walnuts.  It contains pomegranate molasses which everyone has in their cupboards right?  You bought it from an Asian/Middle Eastern grocers didn't you? Yeah. I thought so.

 

100g walnuts

50g fresh bread (crust removed)

1 roasted red pepper (skin and seeds removed)

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses*

1/2 tsp ground cumin

pinch of cayenne or a splash of hot sauce (optional)

4 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil

Pinch of salt

Put everything in a processor and blend until desired texture. It gets thicker the longer it is blended as the walnuts turn to a nut butter. If you want it more of a dipping consistency add some water a tablespoon at a time and adjust the seasonings.