Coconut Slices

I didn't run the race in the time I wanted yesterday but on the hottest day of the year so far, I guess I'll take it. And it helps me do better next time, given me a goal on which to improve.

The picnic, albeit shorten because of the race delay and the impending England v Germany game, was very nice as well. A lot of food (mostly carbs), nice sunshine and even better company. While not many ate the coconut slices I made (actually I was the only one), they got rave reviews (from myself and M, who ate a leftover later). 

The recipe originally calls for 375g frozen shortcrust pastry to line a 20cm square pan but I just doubled Eva's pastry recipe and used the leftovers for Saturday night's jam tarts. 

5 tbsp jam (I used Summer Berry jam I made earlier in the month but raspberry would be good too)

175g softened butter

175g caster sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

175g desiccated (shredded) coconut

40g self raising flour

Enough pastry to line whatever pan you wish to use.

Blind bake the pastry at 200c/gas 6 for 10 minutes. Remove foil and beans/rice and bake another 5 minutes. Reduce oven to 180/gas 4.

Spread jam onto the base of pastry.

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, coconut, and flour. Beat until evenly mixed. Pour gently onto the jam. Bake for 35-40 minutes. Dust with icing sugar if you wish.

This keeps really well in an air-tight container so it can be made the night before for a picnic or party.

Jam Tarts

After the fiasco of (attempted) cake decorating this week, I figured it was going to be a while until I got back into the kitchen. But nothing gets me back to the oven like a get together centered around food. 

Tomorrow, after the 10k race at Luton Hoo, we'll be having a picnic to take advantage of the lovely grounds at the estate. I'll post the recipe for that cake tomorrow but in the meantime, while jam tarts aren't the best pre-race snack, it's a nice way to use up the left over pastry from tomorrow's recipe. 

It's also a nice way to use up all the jam we have in the fridge. You'd be surprised to know how many half-used jars we have!

Picnic cake is ready to come out of the oven and I need to get some sleep in preparation for the race so it's good night from me and see you tomorrow!

Honey Whole Wheat Biscuits

Yes, Americans and Brits both speak English but sometimes it still feels like a different language. And it's not just tomato or tomato (doesn't make sense when you read it). Confusing pants and trousers is a social faux pas but forgivable. Confusing fanny pack with bum bag is morally unacceptable. 

When it comes to cakes, the grey area is a little less reprehensible but still confusing. What is a biscuit ex

actly? Cookie? Bread? Scone? I  grew up knowing biscuits as flaky, buttery rounds of dough, golden on top and eaten with just about every meal. Smothered in gravy with eggs and sausage for breakfast, broken into soup, on top of chilli, or used to sop up sauce with dinner. 

This recipe is a slightly sweeter, less flaky version of what I grew up with. Wonderful split in two and spread with butter, like a scone.

NOTE: Sorry, I didn't get a chance to convert this from cups to grams. If you want to try it out, pop me an e-mail and I'll do the maths for you and ping it back, englandfromscratch@gmail.com

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup plain flour

3 tsps baking powder

60g butter

1 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk

1 tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 450/gas 8. 

Mix flour, salt and baking powder. Cut in butter with food processor, pastry blender or by hand, until it looks like breadcrumbs.

Add milk and honey. Stir until it forms a dough. Place on floured surface and knead 20-25 times, adding flour if sticky. 

Roll out to 1/2 in thick. Cut into rounds (I used 2 5/8in). Place on greased baking sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes or until firm. They won't brown too much, due to whole wheat flour but make sure you're bottoms don't burn. 

Biscuit dipped in tea or biscuits in gravy? I'm not fussed (American translation: I don't care). Different from each other, but both good in their own right. Like Americans and Brits. 

Cherry Marmalade Muffins

Internet is finally back! At first I thought, what a nice excuse to take a break from the kitchen! Then I started dreaming about frosting cupcakes and how to properly layer good rocky road bars. 

Maybe a break was needed. 

But it didn't last long. Earlier in the week I whipped up a batch of indulgent muffins, smothered in (what I'm proud to say is my) homemade five-fruit marmalade. Great for anytime you want a muffin. 

I didn't have any self-raising flour so I used half plain flour, half whole wheat pastry flour with baking powder but I can imagine with self-raising AND a bit of baking powder they would be a bit more fluffy.

225g (8oz) self-raising flour

1 tsp mixed spice

85g (3oz) caster sugar

120gr (4oz) glace cherries, quartered or chopped (whatever fits your fancy)

2 tbsp marmalade

150ml milk

55g (2oz) sunflower or canola oil spread

Preheat oven to 400/200/gas 6. Grease muffin tin. Sift together flour and spice. Stir in sugar then cherries. Mix marmalade with milk. Add to flour. Beat in spread. Spoon into muffin tins. Bake 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and firm. 

I'm hoping for cake-less dreams tonight. I don't like waking up craving a cookie. Perhaps the time will come when I'll need an inter-bake-tion. Until then, more baking tonight! Keep a look out for it tomorrow.

Strawberry Pretzel Jello Pie

Don't grimace at the thought of salty pretzel with sweet jello. It sounds weird but I haven't met one person who has tried it and didn't become a believer. The larger chunks of slightly salty pretzel in the base counter the really sweet cream in the middle and it's all topped off with a tangy strawberry-pineapple jello. Still grimacing? Don't worry, I'll make you a believer yet. 

base:

2 cups/175gr crushed pretzels

1/4 cup/80gr sugar

2/3 cup/175gr melted butter

Cream Filling:

12 oz/375gr cream cheese

2 tbsp milk

1 cup squirty cream

Jello top

Box Strawberry gelatin

Boiling Water

1/4 pint pineapple juice mixed with cold water as directed on gelatin box

Mix ingredients for base together. Press into bottom of 13x9 pan. Bake 10 minutes at 350/180/gas 4. Let cool to room temperature

Beat cream cheese with sugar and milk for cream filling. Fold in squirty cream. Pour over cooled base. Put in fridge while you wait for jello

Make gelatin according to box. Let chill until only just quite set but still flexible. Pour over cream filling and refrigerate until fully set. 

Crescent Rolls

I love bread. The thought of being on a low-carb diet scares the buhjesus out of me. What would I eat? More importantly, what would I bake? So I won't go low-carb. Instead, I'm just trying to learn to love my flabby middle. As that's never going to happen though, I guess I'll just stick to trying to run off what I eat.

I've been working on a birthday cake all week and it's finally finished (those of you who follow me on Twitter [thanks LuShu!] will have seen a picture of it). Every time I turn around in the kitchen I was staring at more sugar or more butter so I thought I'd bake something with neither (though actually that's a lie). 

My favorite part of dinner used to be bread rolls. Maybe tha

t was just part of being a kid and not having defined enough taste buds for anything other than sugar, refined flour and more sugar. In fact, for a long time my little sister would eat nothing but bread and butter. Either way I looked forward to the garlic bread with pasta or the buns with burgers or the crescent rolls with just about anything else. And it turns out, making you're own crescent rolls is really easy! It's a simple milk bread recipe which is incredibly adaptable; I took half the dough and made cloverleaf rolls as well. Loafs, plaits and buns are other options as well.

4 cups (1lb) flour

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups (12 oz) milk

2 tsps sugar

1 tsp dried yeast

60gr butter

1 egg

soft butter

Sift flour and salt into a warmed bowl. I usually turn the oven on gas mark 1 and place it in there. Warm half the milk to luke warm with the sugar. Pour yeast over milk and sugar mix. Stir until dissolved. Pour mix into a well in the flour. Sprinkle a little flour over and allow to sponge. Leave until middle looks spongy with lots of bubbles. 

Warm the rest of the milk with the butter and pour into sponge. Mix to a soft dough. Place on floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. Return dough to lightly greased bowl and allow to rise in warm place until doubled. 

Punch down with your fists and knead lightly. Roll into circle 1/4 in thick and spread with soft butter. Cut into 8 wedges and roll up each wedge from outer wide edge. Shape into crescent, place on baking sheet and allow to prove until doubled in size. Brush with beaten egg glaze and bake 10-15 minutes at 230C/450F/gas 8. 

Scones & a Cuppa

Did you know...
84% of people living in the UK live in England?
The UK holds 78 seats in the European Parliament?
The Huguenots came to Britain to avoid religious persecution?
There are twice as many Hindus as Jews in the UK?

In celebration for passing my Life in the UK test this morning I thought I'd bake some nice traditional English Rich Scones.

This was another recipe M's nan Eva taught me how to make. They're so simple and easy, it's nice to keep a batch in the freezer for unexpected guests.

225gr Self-raising flour
pinch salt
25gr caster sugar
50gr dried fruit

50gr margarine
1 egg, beaten with enough milk to make 150ml

Preheat mark 7. Mix flour and salt together. Rub in margarine (or butter if using instead). Mix in sugar and fruit. Make a well in the middle and mix in egg and milk mix, reserving a little to brush on top. Stir until a soft dough. Pour onto floured surface. Knead briefly and roll out to 1/2 in thick. Cut into 2 1/5 in circles, brush tops with egg and milk mix. Bake 10 minutes. 

Poured myself a cuppa, spread a split scone with butter and some homemade Summer Berries jam and sat back to enjoy the rest of my day off.  I even used my Wales mug! (though I haven't been to Wales yet; it was a gift)

Rhubarb and Apple Pie

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, wonderful weather to spend the day at the allotment. This is only year two of our allotment and we're doing really well. We've got a lot of potatoes growing, some onions, strawberries, current bushes. And rhubarb. Which was absolutely ready for picking. 

The first decision was what to do with my fresh new rhubarb. Crumble? Pie? Jam? Cake? I made a ginger oat rhubarb crumble a few weeks ago, recipe courtesy of Sarah Brown, so I decided on a pie. 

The next decision sparked a debate on pie crusts. Lattice or cover? M and I had a rather serious discussion on what to do, his argument boiling down to the more pastry, the better so go with a cover. I, however, love the retro look of a lattice. It's more elegant and sophisticated. I was feeling like overindulging in unhealthy baked goods so, for today at least, I sided with him. I went with a full pie top, embellished the little leaves.

My first Christmas in England M's 91 year-old nan taught me how to make pastry. She can do it quite easily as her circulation is poor so her hands are always cold. In June, mine aren't. Needless to say, I used our brand new food processor to get the job done. The following pastry recipe is from her Be-Ro flour book. I double the recipe to get two crusts and found I had enough dough for a batch of jam tarts. 

225gr flour

50gr butter

50gr lard

25gr sugar

pinch salt

about 2 tbsp cold water.

The colder your above ingredients, the better your pastry. I start by pouring cold water into a jug and putting this in the freezer. Sift together flour and salt in a cold bowl. Measure butter and lard. Rub into flour (or pulse in food processor) until it looks like breadcrumbs.  Gradually add water, mixing until you have a soft dough. Pour into flour surface. Dust with flour, roll into disc shape and wrap in cling film. Put dough into the freezer to chill. In the meantime, make the pie filling.

300gr rhubarb chunks

250-300gr apples, peeled, cored and sliced

50gr brown sugar

25gr sultanas

3 tbsp cornflour

Combine all of the above in a bowl. When the crust is chilled, roll out and press into pie pan. Fill with fruit. Dot the filling with butter (this can be omitted if you wish). Layer on top crust and cut holes for steam. Bake at 375/gas 5 for about an hour, until fruit is bubbly and crust is brown. If your crust starts to brown too quickly, cover with foil and finish baking. Let cool. Can be served warm or room temperature. 

Herbed High Protein Muffins

Only one more day till the weekend and boy, will it...drag...on... What's going to get me through this afternoon? A little high protein, low carb snack. 

Baked a batch

 of these muffins last night and they smell so good I'm almost tempted to have more than one today. These are perfect for a healthy grab and go breakfast or an afternoon energy boost and can be adapted to any tastes. I split the batter in half and added sun-

dried tomatoes and basil to one half and sauteed mushrooms and fresh thyme to the second half. 

Other variations could be olives and thyme, roasted

 peppers and hint of coriander, or sauteed garlic potatoes and rosemary. Let me know if you try a different variation of flavours or a different type of flour. I was tempted by a 

toasted wheat germ and rye blend but I kept it a bit more traditional. 

1 cup/200gr low-fat or fat-free cottage cheese

3/4 cup/60gr grated fresh parmesan cheese

1/4 cup/50gr whole wheat flour

1 cup/80gr ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup/20gr chopped sun-dried tomatoes (or variation)

2 tbsp chopped fresh herb or 1 1/2 tsp dried herb

1/4 cup/50ml water

4 eggs

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat to 400F/gas mark 6

Mix together all ingredients except 1/4 cup parmesan cheese. 

Stir until just moistened, don't over mix

Spoon into 12 greased or lined muffin pans. Sprinkle remaining parmesan cheese over. Bake 30-35 minutes.