Rose Cookies

When I fancy a sweet treat that doesn’t rely on the addition of chocolate, this is one of my favourite options. Light and fragrant and very moreish. Pretty quick and not to tricky to make either. Will leave your kitchen smelling sweet and calm.

So here goes:

Ingredients

• 225g soya spread
• 225g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 2Tbsp. soya milk
• 300g plain flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1Tbsp. rosewater
• icing sugar (to decorate)

Baking steps

1) Preheat oven to 190°C

2) Grease and line two baking trays



3) cream that soya spread and sugar together until light and fluffy







 
4) stirr in egg and soya milk and rose water until just combined












5) combine and sieve the flour, salt and baking powder into the mixture and stir in with a metal spoon





6) place heaped teaspoons a few centimetres apart on the baking trays







7) cook for about 10 minutes until just turning lightly golden

8) leave to cool on a cooling rack



9) dust with icing sugar and enjoy with a nice cup of tea. Yummy!

Broccoli and Tomato Pasta

Saturday afternoon, still slightly drunk from friday night (yes - apparently I can't drink that much) and craving something healther than the previous days melted cheese fest, I opened the fridge to find.... not a lot. So after pulling a head of broccoli, a few tomatoes and a mountain of garlic from the fridge there was only one option, pasta! This created a really tasty lunch for 2 hungry people and took less than 30 minutes.

Ingredients:

1 small head of broccoli
2 ripe tomatoes
2 small cloves of garlic
a small handful of parsley
butter/olive oil
pasta
juice of 1/2 a lemon
black pepper
salt

Method:

Put on a large pot of water to boil. Pick small florets from the head of broccoli and steam for 3-5 minutes over the water (use a sieve or colander over the pot of boiling water). Keep the water boiling after steaming the broccoli, salt and add your choice of pasta and cook as the packet instructs. Meanwhile finely slice the garlic cloves and add to a cold saucepan (big enough for all the ingredients) with a slug of olive oil and a large knob of butter. Put over a low heat to infuse the oil and cook the garlic. Chop the tomatoes into small chunks and tear the parsley leaves from the stems.

Once the garlic is starting to fry add the steamed broccoli and turn the heat to a medium-high, and sauté, tossing the garlic and broccoli together every few minutes. Next add the tomatoes and toss everything together. Just as the tomatoes begin to soften (around 3 mins) add half a cup of the pasta water and a good pinch of salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper, let cook for 2 minutes then add another knob of butter (or glug of oil), the fresh parsley and cook for one minute more. Drain and add the pasta and toss everything together.

Serve with a few sprigs of parsley and a drizzle of chilli oil.

Banana Soy Shake

This is another great way to use up ripe bananas. It’s quick and easy to make and goes well with a home-made cookie or cake.

Icy, yummy goodness!

• Chop one ripe banana into food processer
• Pour soya milk on top until just covered
• Add 2 Tbsp. plain soya yogurt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 5 ice-cubes, 1 tsp. honey
• Whisk until the ice has broken up (the clanking noise of the ice begins to disappear)
• Drink straight away!

Apple Choc-nana Cupcakes

Moist chocolaty mouthfuls packed with fruity goodness. This is my very own cupcake recipe, loosely based on an old Polish apple cake recipe that I found scrawled on a brown piece of paper: it was being used as a bookmark in a copy of The Man Who Smiled that I borrowed from the local library. The bananas in my kitchen had turned spotty surprisingly quickly – it’s not like we’ve been having hot and humid weather- and I wanted to make cupcakes that would be fun to share. This recipe makes around three dozen, so definitely good for sharing. It seems like a lot of cakes but they won’t last long. I took 12 to the pub quiz and carried the empty box home. Even the quizmaster was keen to try one, though he first wanted to make sure that I hadn’t laced them with anything too fancy. Who, me?

Let’s start with the...

Ingredients:

• 200g plain flour
• 75g cocoa
• 1tsp. baking soda
• 1tsp. bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1tsp. cinnamon
• 1tsp. nutmeg
• 2 eggs
• 100g soya spread
• 225g castor sugar
• 1tsp. vanilla essence
• 4Tbsp. soya milk mixed with 1Tbsp. vinegar
• 2 medium-sized very ripe bananas
• 2 medium-sized apples

Baking steps:

1. Preheat oven to 190°C and line cupcake trays with cases





2. Sift the dry ingredients together a couple of times, ensuring that the mixture is well combined and aerated





3. Cream the soya spread and sugar until light and fluffy


4. Beat the eggs together and slowly add to the mixture

5. Add the vanilla essence and soured soya milk






6. Mash the bananas and grate the apples (if you like you can squeeze a little lemon juice over the top to prevent the fruit going brown whilst you finish the cake mix)







7. Fold in flour mixture until just incorporated into the wet mix








8. Fold in fruit






9. Half-fill cases and bake for about 15 minutes, or until nice and springy on top







10. Cool on rack










Serving suggestion:

Eat accompanied with a freshly made banana soya-shake

Fresh plum, raspberry and pistachio cake

I recently visited my like-named friend in Cambridge for a much enjoyed catch-up. Aside from our Christian name, we share other things in common: the same undergrad. degree, beautiful singing voices (ehem) and a love of freshly baked cakes. We decided to make a cake that neither of us had ever tried... and browsing on bbcrecipes the recipe we plumped for was the very hairy bikers fruity pistachio cake. It seems to include many addition ingredients to your average spongy cake, but because it used the all-in-one mixing technique it really doesn’t take that long to make. The subtle lemon and pistachio flavours compliment the fresh fruit simply beautifully.

To start with you’re going to need:

• 50g shelled pistachios
• 175g dairy-free spread (we used pure sunflower)
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• 400g fresh plums, stones removed, flesh cut into quarters
• 400g fresh raspberries
• icing sugar, to dust
• soya cream to serve

Time to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line cake tin (ours was a 9inch which worked pretty well)

2. Roughly chop the pistachios




3. Whisk together spread, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon zest and juice. (By putting the flour in the bowl first you’ll reduce the chances of it billowing up and all over your work top and face... not that my work surface ever gets too messy... hmm




4. Stir pistachios into mix


5. Spoon half the cake batter into the tin, scatter half the plums and half the raspberries on top of the batter then top with the remaining cake mixture followed by the remaining plums and raspberries (you may want to keep a few pieces of plums and a few of the raspberries back for decorating).




4. Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes, or until golden-brown and the cakes springs back when pressed lightly.

5. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then gently transfer to a wire rack.




6. Sprinkle the top of the cake with icing sugar




7. Garnish with fruit and serve with soya cream. I also added some roughly chopped dark pistachio chocolate. Yum! I think this cake would also work well warm... an excellent dinner-party desert. Either way, it's best eaten fresh.

Olive Oil Cake

Infused with thyme, rosemary, lime and lemon zest, this cake became my little project of experimentation last weekend. I wanted to make an olive oil cake, but after searching for the recipes, unless I gashed myself to bleed into oranges, magically transforming them into blood oranges, it wasn't going to happen (this is the love hate relationship with living in a country that sells seasonally available produce). Anyhow, without enough plasters to actually contemplate making my very own blood oranges, I decided I only needed the citrus element, and what better way to introduce some herbs than with olive oil! The herb part came after I made a joke about a Rosemary and Thyme cake to which my other half thought i was deadly serious, and let me tell you he is on this occasion within reason. The light citrus, grassy, slightly savoury but just sweet enough cake that came out of this experiment was indeed, rather tasty.
Oh and it was very easy to do too!

Ingredients:

• 175ml of olive oil (the better the quality, the better the cake)
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Zest of 1 lime
• 150g plain flour, with 1tsp of baking powder and 1tsp bi-carbonate of soda
• 5 egg yolks
• 4 egg whites
• 1/2tsp salt
• 150g sugar
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tbsp fresh rosemary needles, finely chopped
• 1 tbsp fresh thyme, leaves pulled from stems

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180ºC. Mix the zests and flour in a bowl until combined and set aside.

Beat the egg yolks with 100g of the sugar until thick and pale, mix in the olive oil and herbs and beat until combined. Next add the flour and zest mix and beat well until all ingredients are mixed. At this point the mix will become very thick so be careful not to over beat and dont worry too much as you will thin it out later.

Take a clean bowl and add the egg whites and salt and whisk until light and foamy, then add the rest of the sugar (50g) a little at a time while constantly whisking until all the sugar has been added and the egg whites hold soft peaks. You want this to stiff enough to hold its shape, but not overworked. You can use an electric whisk for this but I did't have that luxury, however I do now have some cracking muscles!

Fold a third of the egg whites into the yolk mix (to thin it a little) and gently add the rest of the egg whites, taking care not to knock the air out. Fold well until no white streaks show. Pour this mix into a greased/lined tin and bake for around 45mins or until a skewer comes out clean.

Before starting this I remembered how I had thrown away my springform tin, so I needed to improvise a little, I used a terracotta earthenware dish instead, lining the bottom with a circle of greaseproof paper then oiling the sides. For an easy way to remove cakes from tins/dishes like this, simply line 2 strips of greaseproof in a cross at the bottom of the dish, this means you have something to lift it out with without it crumbling everywhere!

To serve I simply added a fresh sprig of Thyme and a generous scoop of delicious raspberry sorbet! (bought from the best ice-cream shop in Barcelona)

Thai Style Mussels

Living with a Mussel freak (and not the gym kind!) means that they have become a regular feature on the dinner menu and at 2 euros a bag I can't really grumble. But I do tire of constantly eating the same things over and over, so when Moules Mariniére appeared a few times in a row the hunt for a new recipe was on. Thanks to BBC GoodFood we found this delicious, spicy, aromatic and coconut broth to douse them in. With lots of fresh coriander, chilli, garlic and ginger you certainly can't say it's lacking in flavour.

Ingredients:                             Serves 4 as a starter or 2 as a main course

• 1kg mussels, cleaned
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1tsp minced lemongrass (you can use 1 stalk of fresh but I cannot find it here!)
• 2 cloves of garlic finely sliced
• 1 green chilli finely sliced (add more if you like it spicy)
• 1 large bunch of coriander with stalks
• 1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled
• vegetable oil
• 400ml coconut milk
• 2 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1 red chilli finely sliced

Method:

Finely chop the lemongrass, ginger, garlic, green chilli and coriander stalks (pick off the leaves and set aside for later) creating a rough paste.

Gently fry the onions in a large saucepan (big enough to hold all the ingredients and with a lid) over a low heat, when they start to soften, about 3-5 mins, turn up the heat to medium and add the paste. Fry for 1 minute then add the coconut milk, fish sauce, lime juice and bring it all to a simmer.

When nice and frothy add the mussels and cook for 5-7 minutes covering with a lid.
Serve the mussels and scatter with the coriander leaves and sliced red chilli (I forgot to pick up red chilli's so mine were decorated with green - very spicy indeed!), don't forget to pick up some nice crusty bread for that delicious sauce!

Mint Chocolate Cookies

The chocolate cookies I made a couple of weeks ago didn’t sit in the biscuit tin for too long. The boy I live with demanded more... but asked for them to be minty as well as chocolaty. The threat was that if I didn’t comply he would be bringing home mint chocolate clubs from Morrisons to satisfy his very specific craving. Gah! That would be bringing the temptation of dairy chocolatey goodness/badness within my grasping range. And so I set out to make cookies that would taste even better than mint chocolate clubs, and I think I’m not far off. These probably aren’t the world’s greatest mint chocolate cookies, but they’re pretty damn tasty nonetheless.

Ingredients

• 240g soya spread
• 340g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp good quality peppermint extract (using ‘flavouring’ simply won’t be as good)
• 225g plain flour
• 100g cocoa
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 200g good quality dark chocolate (cut into rough chips)


Ten basic baking steps

1. Preheat oven to 180°C

2. Line 3-4 baking sheets with greased baking paper (if you only have 2 you can just reuse on round two

3. Whisk the soya spread and sugar together until light and creamy

4. Slowly beat in the eggs and peppermint extract, adding a spoonful of flour to prevent curdling.

5. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt together and repeat the sifting process a second time to ensure the ingredients are well combined and aerated.

6. Slice the flour mixture into the batter until blended.

7. Stir in the chocolate







8. Spoon the mixture onto the prepared trays. It depends how big you want your cookies to be. I used large-mounded teaspoons as a measure. Leave a small gap between each cookie dough to allow for spreading




9. Bake for around 9 minutes (this will depend on the size of your cookies and on individual ovens... ) The cookies are done when the edges begin to firm up. Wait for 5 minutes and then carefully remove onto cooling rack. The cookies will further harden as they cool on rack.

10. Eat with or without a lovely cup of tea. I found dunking them very enjoyable.