The Splat Cooking Blog

Saturday lunch today was different, trying to cut costs I decided to buy a pack of puff pastry, caramelise some onions in butter and olive oil and make a caramelised onion tart with salad and leftover roast veg for lunch, made onion tart surprise for the children aka puff pastry pizza with passata, ham and mozzarella.  Served this up to yelps of joy from husband and small children and everyone raved about how wonderful it was and begged me to cook  it again.  Makes a nice change, I’m so used to ‘yuk,I’m not eating that, what’s in it, don’t like the look of that, can I just have some bread, etc, etc, ‘ it was wonderful and now on the list.

Very Excited – just been commissioned to write 20 recipes for the new BBC Lifestyle recipe site.

I love dumplings, baked in the stew so they go crispy on top rather than boiled like my Mum prefers them, however, they always feel like they’re sitting at the bottom of my stomach for the rest of the day and the guilt of how much fat is in them takes the edge off the enjoyment. So I made a classic ‘chuck it’ beef stew today and used my herby farl recipe instead of classic suet dumplings – they were lovely.

Herby Farls

350g plain flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

half a teaspoon salt

284ml buttermilk

2-3 tablespoons skimmed or semi skimmed milk

chopped fresh herbs – chives, thyme, rosemary – about 1 tablespoon

2 tablespoons grated cheddar cheese (optional, leave it out if you don’t like cheese with beef)

Cook the stew as  usual, to make the farls mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, adding a little extra milk if you need to until it comes together as a soft dough.  Knead for a minute or two until smooth then break off balls, roll roughly and lay on the top of the stew, leave gaps in between as they will expand as they cook.  Pop the casserole back into the oven on 180oc/Gas 4 for 15-20 minutes until the farls are golden brown. Eat

At cooking club this morning we made Chocolate Cupcakes, not just any old chocolate cupcakes cos that would be boring, these were the ultimate chocolate cupcakes as they contained three different fruit and veg, no additives and had a scrumptious deep pink glossy icing – what a cool way to achieve your Five a Day – eat a chocolate cupcake that counts as 2 portions – YES!   You can use courgettes, carrots or beetroot (beetroot gives a lovely deep red colour to the cakes, a bit like red velvet cupcakes without the additives) you won’t be able to taste the veg and it keeps the cakes very moist.  Raspberries or blackcurrants can be added too and used to make a coulis for the icing.  Raspberries give a light pink/red icing colour, blackcurrants give a deep pink/plum icing colour, both complement chocolate well and taste delicious.

So how do you do it?

Chocolate Cupcake Basic Recipe

Makes 12 cupcakes

150g soft butter or margarine

150g caster sugar

3 eggs

150g self raising flour

1 heaped tablespoon Green and Black’s cocoa powder (don’t use Bourneville or Supermarket brand they’re horrid)

2 tablespoons blackcurrants (fresh or frozen)

1 courgette, 1 carrot or 1 beetroot, grated

For the icing – 500g fondant icing sugar, 100g blackcurrants or raspberries and a little caster sugar

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, a spoonful of mixture should drop off the end of the spoon easily when tapped on the side of the bowl, if it doesn’t you haven’t creamed if enough so keep going until it drops off easily.  (This is reason that cupcakes don’t rise).  Beat in the eggs with a little flour to prevent curdling, don’t panic if it does curdle, just add some more flour.  Sieve in the flour and cocoa powder and fold into the mixture until well mixed.  Add the grated veg and two tablespoons blackcurrants, mix gently so you don’t crush the blackcurrants.  Transfer to muffin cases and bake on 180oc/gas mark 5 for 20-25 minutes until springy to the touch.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool.

To make the icing: sieve the fondant icing sugar into a bowl, place the fruit into a small saucepan with a tablespoon of sugar and place on a low heat for 5 minutes until the fruit has collapsed and the juices are running.  Remove from the heat and sieve, crushing the fruit to extract as much of the juice as possible, add 100ml water and begin to mix into the icing sugar starting with half of the liquid.  It will be stiff so add liquid little by little as you want to achieve a thick sticky icing rather than it being too runny, if too thick add a little more liquid if it goes to thin add more icing sugar, if you don’t have fondant then normal icing sugar will do.  Spread over the cakes, eat and kid yourself that they’re healthy!

Cooking club at school on Monday was a near disaster.  We were supposed to be making jammy squidges, my version of jammy dodgers with a basic shortbread mix.

It was so cold in the kitchen that the butter hadn’t softened, in fact I think room temperature was colder than the fridge, so I softened it in the microwave.  The first attempt melted a large portion to liquid and I should have suspected something was wrong (or just very cold) when it solidified within 5 minutes to rock hard.

Lovely soft butter was transferred to bowls and taken to the classroom but by the time the children had washed hands and donned aprons it was rather hard again, but we carried on anyway.  Well, we managed to get the butter lovely and soft and fluffy but by the time the children had added the flour it was just too cold and the mix wouldn’t come together at all.  Very crumbly and no hope of rolling it out – I’ve never known this to happen with shortbread and all I can put it down to is the temperature as it was just so cold.

We saved the day and the biscuits by rolling out small amounts of dough and carefully squishing them then sandwiching them together with jam when they were cooked.  They tasted great but just didn’t look quite as good as they should have, but at the end of the day they all go down the same way.

Have made mental note to keep shortbread to warmer months.

However, on Saturday the Viennese Fingers we made turned out a treat, mind you, my home kitchen is always warm with the Aga.