Spring Double Bill

It's a double-post of baking goodness! I've been setting up for people over later and I love using my friends as guinea pigs for my kitchen/lab experiments.

The two following recipes aren't just my normal alterations of substituting flours or adding nuts. The two below have turned into two different recipes from what inspired me.

The first was a reason to use up a box of chocolates that M's aunt gave us. The chocolates were nice but we just don't eat enough chocolate to keep it around. So I took a whole grain chocolate chip recipe and amended it to fit the Mint Crisps I wanted to use. Turned into lovely after-dinner type cookies. If you wish to use the recipe without mint chocolate, just take out the peppermint extract and use regular chocolate.

With the grated chocolate, try to find something complimentary to the chopped chocolate you're using. If you're using dark, grate some dark. If you're using milk or white, use milk.

One of my work guinea pigs, R, suggested using chocolate orange segments with orange extract or orange zest instead of the peppermint extract. Really want to try those now!

Whole Wheat Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

115g softened butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granualted sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp peppermint extract

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 cup oats

1 cup chopped chocolate (dark, light or flavoured is your fancy)

2oz grated chocolate

Process the oats in a blender or food processor until fine, like oat flour. If you aren't able to do this, substitute 1 cup of oats for any type of flour and use 1/4 cup oats whole.

Whisk flours, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and oats together. Set aside. Cream butter with both sugars for 3 minutes, until fluffy. Beat in egg and extracts. Stir in grated chocolate.

Gradually beat in dry mix to sugar mix. Toward the end, you'll need to switch to a wooden spoon. Fold in chopped chocolate.

Place 2in spoonfulls 2in apart on baking sheet. Bake at 375/gas 5 for 12 minutes or until the bottoms are slightly golden. Let cool 2 minutes on baking sheet. Transfer to wire rack to cool completly.

The second recipe was something I found on the Vegetarian Times website. They often have some interesting recipes using very different ingredients, which always piques my interest (if you can't tell by now!) And who doesn't love cheese? So I turned these into cornbread style scones because I had a craving for cornbread and some cornmeal in the cupboard. I sprinkled tabasco sauce on the tops before putting them in the oven. This is optional (I love spicy) but I couldn't taste it enough to warrent being in the recipe. M says he can so maybe I've just spicy-ed off my tastebuds from years of putting tabasco sauce in my morning eggs.

Cheddar Sweetcorn Scones

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup plain flour

1 cup cornmeal

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2oz chilled butter

2oz grated mature cheese

1/2 cup corn kernals

1/2 cup buttermilk (see note)

1 egg

Preheat oven to 400F/gas 6

Whisk baking soda, flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Stir in cheese. Transfer to a food processer and blend in butter until the mix looks like breadcrumbs. Alternatively you can rub the butter into flour by hand.

Stir in buttermilk and egg until a dough forms. fold in corn. Pour onto floured surface and pat into rectangle 1/2in thick. Cut out into rounds like scones.

Brush tops with milk or egg wash. Bake 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden.

Add juice of 1/2 lemon to the milk and let sit 5 minutes to get buttermilk. Or you can use plain yogurt.

Cracked Black Pepper Oatmeal Crackers

This recipe is inspired, as a lot of mine are, by Heidi at 101cookbooks.com. I altered some of the ingredients and played with the flour a bit to get this lovely creation. The pepper is perfect and mixed with the touch of sugar, the sweet and the savoury, the topping possibilities are endless. Personally, I loved them with some leftover Christmas cranberry chutney but I think a hearty mature cheddar would be just as perfect.

Homemade crackers are tricky, especially with our little Beko-POS-oven. The most difficult part is rolling the dough out thinly enough to get a crispy cracker, rather than a cakey biscuit. It took a lot of flour and a lot of elbow grease but I think mine came out right.

Either way, I did something right. I brought a batch to work and they were gone by lunch! Normally I have cakes sitting out on my desk all day and have to either bring the remaining home, or force them on people but not today. I'll have to bring in the rest tomorrow.

I think the rye flour is key here. It adds the savoury to the sweet of the oats and mixes well with the pepper. I used a mix of spelt flour and buckwheat instead of wholemeal but when I rolled the dough out, I floured the surface with wholemeal. Go with what you have in the cupboard. Plain would work just as well.

1 cup oats

360ml milk, heated to boiling

55g softened butter

4tbsp demerara sugar

3 tsp baking powder

2 tsp crushed black peppercorns

1/2 tsp sea salt

155g rye flour

190g wholemeal flour
salt to sprinkle

Mix oats with boiling milk. Let cool (you can put it in the freezer if you're short on time)

Stir in all wholemeal flour when the oats have cooled. Mix together well. Add wholemeal flour until a dough forms (you may need more or less than what's called for).

Pour the dough out onto a floured surface. Knead until the dough is uniform.

Preheat the oven to 425F/245C/gas 8-9. Roll out the dough as thinly as you can. Cut into shapes of your choice. Sprinkle with salt Big flaky salt is better but go with what you have.

Bake about 9 minutes or until the bottom is just golden. Turn over and bake another 5 minutes or until crisper and golden.

Let cool to crisp up even more.

They were perfect spread with jams/chutneys/nut butter and a cup of Redbush tea for some sunday afternoon blogging!

Buckwheat Cheese Souffle Blinis

What is more glorious than weekend brunch? The slow, easy pace. The comfort food, allowing the day to fold out around you. The vast amount of culinary possibilities allowable; sweet or savoury, lunch or breakfast.

I have to say, it's one of my favourite meals. We try not to go overboard but sometimes a little indulgence in the middle of the day is wonderful.

This is a Sophia Dahl recipe I found on the BBC with a few alterations of my own. When I first saw the title and the chef attached, I assumed I'd have to make massive alterations to increase the healthier properties but it's surprisingly restrained. Really high in protein and quite low in calories, considering.

Topping possibilities are limited to your imagination. We had scrambled eggs and smoked salmon on ours. Stewed apples, poached eggs and hollandaise, ham and applesauce, etc. etc. Let me know if you try something else on yours!

170g Buckwheat flour

2tsp baking powder

salt & pepper

290ml milk

2 tsp mustard powder

75g low-fat cheddar cheese

75g low-fat onion and chive cottage cheese

4 egg whites

Mix flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. Add mustard powder, cheddar and cottage cheese. Mix well.

Whisk eggs whites until stiff peaks form. Fold egg whites into batter gently.

Heat skillet pan over medium high heat. These can be cooked with a knob of butter, little olive oil and just some non-stick spray.

Pour batter into hot pan. I use a 1/3 cup to scoop out the right amount. The batter should be enough to make 8, which serves 4.

Four-grain Granola Scones

I bought a bag of buckwheat flour yesterday for Sunday brunch, which is not this post but the next (I promise!) The recipe for the brunch didn't call for much so I started doing some research into other uses for buckwheat. Pancakes and blinis are obvious but I was in the mood for a good scone.

So did some hunting, came out with a good base and made my own little alterations.

These are quite morish and a little on the dry side, which is what you want out of a scone. They are yummy on their own with a little butter or could be piled high with jam or a nut butter of some kind. I have a jar of cashew butter in the cupboard begging to be eaten.

I didn't have any granola so I used muesli, which is sort of similar in my head. If you don't have either, oats could be substituted, with perhaps a little chopped nuts and some dried fruit for added flavour

Don't worry about the variety of flours. Mix and match, as long as you keep the measurements right. This is just what I had on hand to use. Rice flour, tapioca flour, cornmeal, polenta, could all be subbed. And this could be made wheat and/or gluten free if you wish. Worship at the alter of altering recipes.

1/2 cup wholewheat flour

1/3 cup spelt flour

1/4 cup rye flour

1/4 cup wheatgerm

2/3 cup buckwheat

1/4 cup demerara sugar

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup chilled butter, in pieces. (this is 80g butter for the brits)

1/3 cup milk

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup granola or muesli

Mix together flours, sugar and baking powder. Cut in butter with pastry cutter or blender. You can also rub it in by hand. You want it looking like breadcrumbs.

Mix together milk, egg and vanilla. Stir into flour mix until it forms a sticky dough. Pour onto floured surface. Knead in granola until all mixed together.

You can roll the dough out and cut rounds or you can drop the dough by

spoonfuls onto a baking sheet.

Bake at gas 6 until slightly golden on the bottom. Due to the nature of the flours, the tops won't turn golden. Mine took about 10-15 but our oven is screwy. So just watch. These are another that burnt bottoms will seriously alter the taste. Be careful! If they are cooking too fast, turn the heat down.

nom nom nom...

Cornflake Macaroons

To slide along with the healthy theme this blog has taken as of late, I've also started toying with recipes that fit in with certain dietary needs, partly to insert a little variety, partly to challenge myself and partly as an effort to be healthier.

It's just the next step as well. There are only so many recipes where I can substitute wholegrain flour for plain or applesauce and oil for butter. So I'll make a play at differernt things.

As many explanations as I can make, macaroons don't really fit the above bill, do they? These are slightly healthy, low in calories and sugar but still high in white sugar.

But they are wheat free, which is what I've been into lately.

Pancake day left me so uncomfortable and achy I started playing with the idea of wheat sensitivities, etc.

So we'll jump right in, flour-free.

2oz cornflakes

2oz chopped almonds

2 egg whites

7oz caster sugar

1 tbsp honey

3oz coconut

1/2 tsp almond essence

Preheat oven to 300F/gas 4

Crush cornflakes. Set aside. Whisk egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold sugar into egg whites. Fold in leveled tablespoon honey with cornflakes, coconut and almond essence.

Pile onto greased or lined baking sheet by tablespoon-fulls about 1 inch apart. Spread flat if you want them more cookie-looking. I left mine in mounds which made them stand out in my cookie platter more.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until pale golden. Don't overcook as darker bottoms really alter the flavour of these.

Sorry I don't have a picture. They were quickly piled onto a baked goods platter for a church social event then quickly demolished.

Peanut Butter Brownies

I've had a craving for chocolate lately. Not like a craving for a Snickers bar or something silly and horribly processed but nice truffles or gooey brownies or something full of chocolate chips. You may be thinking that this isn't worthy of a blog post! Everyone loves chocolate! Not me... I'm not a huge chocolate person. It's just been lately.

And I love peanut butter. I may have an addiction.

So these are perfect. Or at least I thought they would be. I hunted for a recipe in all my books, in all my files and nothing. So I Googled. Lots of recipes. None with chocolate. Isn't the whole point of a brownies supposed to be the chocolate? Why a peanut butter brownie recipe with no chips or no cocoa? Does this make sense to anyone else?

So I added chocolate to the recipe. Simples.

P.S. these are not very healthy. I'd be lying and a complete hypocrite if I tried to say that. But enjoy them anyway.

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/3 cup (75g) softened butter or margarine

2/3 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup cocoa

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and peanut butter. Gradually cream in sugars, eggs and vanilla extract.

Stir together flour, baking powder, cocoa and salt. Slowly stir this into peanut butter mix.

Pour into greased or lined pan. Bake at 350F/175C/gas 5 for 30 minutes or until set. If you like your brownies gooey, take them out a little earlier.

I added peanuts to mine as I like them crunchy. If I had chocolate chips on hand, I would have added those to. Experiment! I think the next time I try these, I'll do a brownie base and add a creamy peanut butter top then marble it in. Wish I would have thought of that earlier... :(

Jam'n'oatmeal cookies

More healthy baking. Lots more. Just because it's no longer January doesn't mean we should stop going to the gym or stop watching what we eat, right? Right.

There's still a hefty bit of sugar in these but for the most part, they're pretty healthy. On a side note, I love google-ing healthy baking recipes, clicking on the site, reading the headline "HEALTHY XXXX" and the first ingredient is 2 cups white sugar. For shame! One in particular I looked up today (for the next post) was on a fitness site! oi!

Anyway, enough ranting and on to the recipe!

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups oats

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup jam (I used raspberry and peach. Use anything you have around)

1/4 cup water

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup chopped nuts or dried fruit

Combine flour, oats, sugar, baking soda and cinnamon. Stir to mix. Add the jam, water and vanilla extract. Stir to mix well. If batter is too dry (mine was) add more jam, more water or a little milk, if you wish. It needs to be stiff but pliable, like standard cookie dough.

Stir in the fruit or nuts.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a greased or lined baking sheet. Flatten each slightly if you wish.

Bake at gas 4/275 F for 18 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on the pan 1 minute, as they will be too gooey to move when they first come out of the oven. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.