Here is the last of the festive recipes from Miisa Mink at the Nordic Bakery.

Recipe: Frozen Lingonberry & Ginger Biscuit Cream with Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

Serves 6

40 g powder sugar (icing)
50 ml water
2 egg yolks
5 tbsp lingonberry jam
300 ml whipping cream
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g ginger biscuits, roughly crushed

Sauce:

50 g unsalted butter
150 ml double cream
3 tbsp maple syrup
3 tbsp Golden syrup
2 – 3 tbsp Balsamic vinegar

To make the cream add sugar, water and egg yolks into a pan and bring to boil. Keep mixing well until sauce reduces. Remove from heat and set aside to cool. Add lingonberry jam and place in the fridge. Whip the cream in a separate bowl until it becomes fluffy. Fold whipped cream, vanilla extract and crushed ginger biscuits into the cooled down lingonberry sauce.

Pour into six individual serving pots or one round pie tin and place into a freezer for a minimum of 2 hours or over night. Take the frozen cream out of the freezer 15 minutes before serving.

To make the sauce, place all ingredients into a saucepan and slowly bring to boil. Simmer for 20 – 25 minutes mixing occasionally. Remove from the heat when sauce thickens. Pour hot sauce over the cold lingonberry and ginger biscuit cream and garnish with more ginger biscuits. Serve immediately.

Thank you to Miisa for letting me reproduce her recipes.  If you like this I thoroughly recommend the Nordic Bakery Cookbook.

I am quite a fan of the liquid breakfast and will have a smoothie 3 or 4 times a week.   That one glass can easily hold all of your 5-a-day, and by pulping rather than juicing the fruit and veg they can count towards multiple portions!

This month the theme for Breakfast Club is Stars and Stripes, and with Thanksgiving at the end of the month, what could be more appropriate than pairing cranberry and pumpkin.      Not only is this a glorious cheerful colour on a dismal November morning it is also delicious, with the tartness of the cranberry providing an excellent wake up call to your taste buds.

This was inspired by both Dom, who also submitted a smoothie for breakfast club this month, and Johanna, who gave me the idea of thickening a smoothie with pumpkin.

Like the green smoothies which I regularly make which have no hint of spinach or kale, you really cannot taste the pumpkin here.     The next time I roast either squash or pumpkin I shall prep extra (without salt or pepper) specifically for smoothies.

If you get a taste for smoothies keep a box of ingredients in the freezer.    With a good blender chunks of banana, pineapple, stone fruit and individual berries and grapes can all be whizzed up from frozen for your breakfast.     Whizzed frozen banana is especially thick and creamy, and by itself makes and excellent ice cream.   A stick blender should be enough to whizz soft fruit with a few frozen additions.

I added some ground linseed for some added omega-3.

How do you style a smoothie to look photogenic?

Recipe: Pumpkin and Cranberry Smoothie

Quantities are approximate – use what you have.

Per Person

2 heaped tbs roasted pumpkin or butternut squash
1 handful cranberries
2 handfuls grapes
1 tbs ground linseeds
1 small glass orange juice

Place all the ingredients into your blender and whizz.   Add water if needed to thin.

Pour into a glass and serve immediately.

Most people know at least something about food and wine matching, even if it is just following the most basic rule of white with fish, red with meat.    For the novice wine drinker the first differences you learn are between red and white, light or heavy, dry or sweet.   As you drink more wine your palate develops and you learn to identify and label many different tastes.   It is very similar with both chocolate and coffee.  I have realised that both are easily as complex as wine, but I have been lazy about properly tasting them, I tend to munch and gulp rather than actually taste and think.

I have been to two amazing coffee events recently that have really forced me to think about my coffee, the first was with Union Roasted (the post is coming) and the second was with Cafe Direct who invited me to a food and coffee matching class and to taste their range of Fair Trade coffees.

Cafe Direct's Coffee Tasting Flavour Wheel

I was challenged to come up with a recipe for Cafe Direct’s Kilimanjaro coffee, which they describe as bright, lively with berry and citrus flavours.   I was given a bag of apples, lemons and limes, access to some basic pantry ingredients, and set to work.

I loved my lemon & lime posset which I paired with an apple filo strudel, but was quite disappointed in the filo pastry, the resulting strudels were heavy and soggy; frankly not worth eating.  I realised after cooking them that the packet of pastry had about a quarter of the sheets that my usual brand does, but weighed the same, so the sheets were 4 times the thickness!

Photo by Cafe Direct

I have tweaked and recreated the pudding, layering the posset on top of the apple.    Served in a wine glass I think this makes an elegant, and easy pudding that you can make up to 48 hours in advance.  Perfectly fuss free!

Recipe: Apple, Lemon & Lime Possets

Makes 4

Ingredients

For the Apple Compote

2 small apples – peeled and finely chopped (this will be about 8oz / 200g prepped apple)
30g / 2 tbs golden syrup
Juice of 1 lemon
Scant amount of water

For the Posset

284ml carton double cream
Juice of 1 lemon (reserve 2 slices for garnish before juicing)
Juice of 1 lime
75g / 3oz sugar

Place the ingredients for the compote into a small saucepan and gently simmer until the apple is soft.   Allow to cool (pouring something hot into a cold glass could easily crack it) and divide between 4 wine glasses.    I use a jam funnel to ensure the fruit lands at the bottom of the glass rather than sliding down the sides.

Put the cream into a medium sized pan and bring to the boil.  Add the juice and  sugar and simmer for a minute or two stirring well.   Remove from the heat.   Allow to cool, to avoid cracking the glasses,  and then pour over the apple compote.   Chill to set for a few hours in the fridge before serving.

For an extra indulgence pour a little more cream over the top of the possets before serving.

You may also like this recipe for elderflower and lime possets.

Click for a printable recipe for  Apple, Lemon and lime possets.

Thank you to Cafe Direct for a lovely and informative evening.

For a chance to win vouchers for £500 to spend at the famous London cookery school L’atelier des Chefs, and a night for two in a hotel, head on over to Cafe Direct’s Facebook page and come up with your own recipe to match with one of their coffees.   Closing date is the 25 November 2011.

Also sending this to Cook Eat Delicious Desserts, where this month the theme is apples hosted by Nayna.

I have a confession to make that I actually made this for supper last night, but it would make a lovely weekend breakfast that is not too sinful.

At the moment people seem to be throwing yogurt at me, not literally, but in the last few weeks 3 cool bags of the stuff have arrived.  I have already written about Total and The Collective.  Both Onken and Twekkelo are in the review queue.

Making toffee yogurt by sprinkling dark brown soft sugar over natural or Greek yogurt and leaving it to dissolve is an old, but useful trick.   The resultant mixture is delicious, sticky and toffee like, but still not too sweet and with none of the nasties of many commercially produced flavoured yogurts.   Being allowed a sprinkle of dark brown soft sugar on cereal was a weekend childhood treat.

I combined my toffee yogurt, with sliced bananas, Dorset Cereals new pecan and toffee good honest crunch cereal and a few raspberries.   Dorset Crunch’s slogan of  “life is too short for boring breakfasts” reminded me that we are nearing the end of the month and I have not yet made anything for Breakfast Club, which this month is hosted by Nayna with the theme of berries.

Breakfast Club: Because breakfast should be more interesting
than tea & toast or coffee & cereal!

Recipe: Indulgent Breakfast Banoffeeish Pots

(Serves 1)

1 small banana
about 4 oz / 1/2 cup natural or Greek yogurt
2 tsp dark brown soft sugar
2 tbs crunchy cereal
handful raspberries

Slice the banana and place in a glass, cover with the yogurt, then sprinkle the sugar over and leave in the fridge overnight.

Just before serving sprinkle over the cereal and the fresh berries.

 

I see no reason why this would not work with non dairy or soy yogurt.

Thank you for having me over! I normally write at The Brightside a happiness blog, where you’ll find Helen today. She’s got a lovely post up about spotting Morris Dancers whilst having a few days away in Kent.

Right now where I live in Southern Ontario, rhubarb is fresh and just ending its season, while strawberries are just beginning. It’s the perfect time to make Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie – a truly fuss-free recipe!

In fact, this recipe is so simple it’s easy to adapt it to other fruits. Try it with whatever is in season in your own area. If I was lucky enough to be in the UK in the summer, after making a strawberry-rhubarb pie I’d definitely try gooseberry, or later on combine blackberries with apple.

The Simplest Pastry Ever

I learned to make my favourite pastry from my Mum. It’s so fuss-free that at this point I simply eyeball it, but maybe measuring would be a good idea the first time you bake this. :) This recipe makes a tender, rich pastry that’s more melt-in-your-mouth than flaky.

200 g / 315 mL / 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
120 g / 160 mL / 2/3 cups soft margarine
3 tbsp / 45 mL cold water

(Where I live, most soft margarine comes salted, so I don’t add any salt – adjust to your own preference and ingredients.)

Cut fat into flour with two knives or a pastry-cutter. Sprinkle water on top and with floured hands, gently squeeze into a ball. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling out on a floured surface.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

I measured the ingredients I used so you can replicate this recipe exactly, but it’s truly forgiving. You could use more strawberries, or more rhubarb – you only need enough fruit to fill the pie, enough sugar to please your palate, and enough flour to cope with the juiciness of the fruit. I used all the rhubarb in this picture and about half of the strawberries shown.

500 g / 1 1/4 lb rhubarb stalks
400 g / 1 lb strawberries
170 g / 180 mL / 3/4 cup brown sugar
50 g / 75 mL / 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
Ground ginger to taste

Wash and trim rhubarb; chop into 1 cm/1/2-inch slices. Sprinkle with salt; let stand about 20 minutes. Wash and hull strawberries; cut larger ones in halves or quarters.

Roll out pastry and cut out pie lid; roll out remaining pastry and line bottom and sides of pie pan.

Stir strawberries and rhubarb together; stir in sugar, flour, and a pinch of ginger if you like ginger. Scrape mixture into pan; top with pastry lid. Crimp edges and cut vents.

Place pie on a baking sheet to catch drips. Bake in 200°C / 400°F oven for 45-55 minutes – until filling is bubbling and pastry is golden.

If you make this pie with another fruit, you can adjust the sugar and flour. Rhubarb and strawberries are both rather tart and juicy, so they need more sugar and flour than other fruits. On the other hand, I don’t like my pies too sweet, so I only used 3/4 cup/180 mL sugar. If you have a really sweet tooth, you might use as much as a cup/235 mL. Apples probably only need half a cup/120 mL of sugar (and a heaping tablespoon/25 mL of flour) unless you use a super-tart variety. The fun of experimenting is how many pies you get to make! :)

Enjoy and happy pie-making.

Janet Rowe

Many thanks to Janet for her delicious pie!   I am very pastry unconfident, but this seems so easy so will be trying it soon.

Ever since my Cuisinart Blender arrived last month, I have become green smoothie obsessed.    At first I was just chucking in everything, but now have become a little more methodical with my breakfast green smoothies, and am focussing on flavours a little more.

Just before Easter I was lucky enough to be asked to a Total Greek Yogurt Master Class, held at the fabulous L’atelier des Chefs, tucked behind John Lewis on Oxford Street.     During the day we cooked a wide variety of dishes with Total, and were treated to a talk and Q&A from a celebrity nutritionist.

I feel that I have little need for a dietitian, nutritionist or nutritional therapist (all are quite different roles), but I am always interested to hear what people have to say. My nutritional philosophy is simple, eat what makes your body feel good and is sustainable. I aim to eat more raw food and less animal products than the average person, as this makes me feel fantastic and is also good for the environment.

If you need some pointers I highly recommend this article on how to make healthy eating incredibly simple on nutritionist Sophie’s wonderful blog (please do hop over there and encourage her to post more often!)  I am also an avid reader of Limes  & Lycopene by Australian nutritionist Kathryn which is packed with wonderful advice and recipes.    To learn more about increasing your intake of raw food visit Amber’s site and read about her training as a raw chef.  All three of them tackle nutrition by encouraging people to make their own healthy meals.

However I digress.    Although I aim to eat less than average, I do enjoy my meat & fish, eggs & diary, and Total Yoghurt is one of my favourites.

After the talk we moved on to the class held in the demonstration kitchen, where we were shown how to cook six very different dishes all using Total yoghurt.    Total is a highly versatile ingredient which works well as a cream or crème fraiche substitute, it contains far fewer calories and all the flavour, as well as being live and thus full of good bacteria.   The higher fat varieties are also heat stable, making cooking with them a breeze as they should not spilt when heated.  (I have successfully cooked with the 0% but you need to be very gentle with heating it.)   It is also delicious on its own!

I especially liked the Mackerel Tartare with Minted Cucumber Soup and the Chestnut Tiramisu recipes.

Yoghurt Tartare of Mackerel with Minted Cucumber Soup (serves 6)For the Tartare

• 12 Fillets of mackerel
• 1 Banana shallot (Echalion)
• 25g Pickled gherkins
• ½ bunch Flat leaf parsley
• 50g 0% TOTAL Greek Yoghurt
• 10g Ketchup
• 3ml Tabasco
• 10ml Worcestershire sauce
• 25g Capers in vinegar

For the Soup

• 1 Cucumber
• 1 Garlic clove
• ¼ bunch Fresh mint
• 3 pinches Fine salt
• 10ml White wine vinegar
• 50g 0% TOTAL Greek Yoghurt

Start by preparing the mackerel: fillet the fish if necessary and remove the pin bones. Remove the skin from the fish and then cut the flesh into dice. Keep refrigerated while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

Peel and finely dice the shallot. Chop the gherkins into small pieces. Pick the leaves from the parsley and roughly chop. Mix these chopped ingredients

with the mackerel and add the capers and Greek yoghurt.

Mix well and then add the ketchup, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce. Taste the tartare mix and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

To make the soup: peel the cucumber and the garlic and pick the mint leaves. Place these ingredients in a blender with the salt and the white wine vinegar. Blitz for a minute to make the soup.

Add the Greek yoghurt and pulse the mixture for 5 seconds. Check the seasoning.

To serve: place a large quenelle of the tartare mix in the middle of a small bowl and pour the soup around. Serve immediately.

Recipe reproduced with permission of Total

Greek Yoghurt Chestnut Tiramisu Rapide (serves 6)

• 1 Egg yolk
• 50g Caster sugar
• 300g Sponge fingers
• 80g Sweetened ‘crème de marron’
• 125ml Double cream
• 250g 10% TOTAL Greek Yoghurt
• 20g Unsweetened cocoa powder
• 100ml Espresso Coffee
• 30g Caster sugar
• 25ml Cognac

For the cream: whisk together the egg yolk and the sugar until the mixture turns white and fluffy. Add the chestnut cream and mix well.

In a separate bowl, whip the double cream until thick and then gently fold in the Greek yoghurt.

Add the chestnut mixture to the Greek yoghurt and the cream mixture and gently fold together.

To assemble the dessert: mix the coffee with 30g sugar and the cognac.

Dip the biscuits into the coffee and then place in the bottom of your glasses. Top with a layer of the cream and then a sprinkle of cocoa powder.

Repeat this until you glasses are full. Finish with a layer of cream and a dusting of cocoa powder.

Recipe reproduced with permission of Total

Lots more recipes can be found here, including one of mine!

Many thanks to Total for a lovely day and the lovely cocktails afterwards – the perfect start to the first long weekend!

Totally Green Breakfast Smoothie (serves 2)

1 glass orange or apple juice
1 large handful of spinach
2 small bananas
2 kiwi fruit
1 handful green grapes (mine were frozen)
6 mint leaves
2 heaped tbs Total 0% Greek Yogurt

2 sprigs of mint to garnish

Simple throw everything into your blender and blitz (I run the smoothie cycle on mine several times) until smooth.    Thin with water if desired.

For a thicker and creamier smoothie use frozen bananas.

I am sending my smoothie to Only Cooolers & Mocktails which is hosted by Nayna at Simply Food this month.

What is nicer than homemade bread topped with homemade jam for breakfast?  This is a jam with an Asian twist, with hint of chilli and ginger.  Certainly different, but not too startling for first thing in the morning.

This jam is based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, which I visited a few months ago, when we had the most amazing bright pink rhubarb and  ginger jam.   Becca asked for the recipe, and made some more jam which she blogged.

I based my jam on recipe Becca used, but played with the flavours, using Thai ginger, or galangal, and adding some chilli.    My jam is sadly not as pink as the original, my rhubarb was long past the first flush of youth, but is still delicious.

Taste the syrup before cooking to test the chilli levels.   This recipe is very easy to scale up or down, with equal weights of rhubarb and sugar, 1 chilli per 150g fruit.   After the jam is cooked allow to cool for a few minutes and always pour into hot jars.   Boiling hot jam being poured into cold jars may cause the inside of the jar to expand faster than the outside, which can make the jar crack or shatter.

Rhubarb, Ginger & Chilli Jam (makes 3 250g jars)

450 g rhubarb
450g sugar
3 dried red chillies
2cm finely grated Thai ginger or galangal
Juice of half a lemon

Cut the rhubarb into 2cm chunks and place in a bowl, pour the sugar over and give the bowl a shake.  Add the chillies and leave for 24 hours. (I left mine in the fridge for about 5 days)

After a day the sugar will draw the juice out of the rhubarb making a lovely pink tinged syrup.   Taste to check the level of chilli, if hot enough, remove them, if not leave them in for the cooking.

Place the rhubarb, syrup, ginger & lemon in a saucepan and gently simmer until setting point is reached.

Taste the jam whilst cooking and add more ginger, or remove the chillies, if desired.

Remove the chillies (if you have not already done so), pour into clean warm sterilised jars and seal.

Setting Point – Place a blob of the jam onto a saucer and allow to cook for a minute, if a skin forms and the jam wrinkles with a gentle poke the jam is ready.   If  still runny carry on cooking.

To Sterilise Jam Jars – Remove the lids and place in a low oven for 20 minutes,  pour boiling water over the lids, or run through the dishwasher.

Green smoothies?  Trust me here, they are delicious and fantastically good for you.  After a few days of one of these for breakfast you will feel the benefits, getting all 5 of your five a day for in one glass for breakfast can only be a good thing right?

I am the first to admit that my diet is not the most, shall I say, mainstream?  I try to blog about what most people would consider the more normal things that I eat, resisting the tendency to be too green and raw and vegan.       I have absolutely no objection to animal products.  However I prefer mine to be both organic and free range, which is expensive and thus makes them a treat rather than an everyday staple.

I was delighted when Cuisinart recently contacted me and asked if I wanted to trial one of their products.   As soon as I looked at their website I knew that one of their blenders would be just the ticket for making green smoothies.

A green smoothie is simply a smoothie made with the addition of greens.      The sweetness of the fruit takes away any bitterness from the raw greens and the end drink is  delicious, refreshing and engergising.

The blender powers through the seeds, kale leaves and frozen fruit.  I used a glass of orange & apple juice, frozen plum & nectarine pieces, half a carrot, mixed seeds, kale and a banana and some water to thin it out a little.

The resulting green goodness in a glass!

A full review of the blender is to be posted soon.

Thanks to Cuisinart for my blender.

Muffins are pretty much my catch all emergency bake, and a usual weekend breakfast.    My standard muffin is egg free; a shout for fewer ingredients, and to mark my mantra of “If you cannot afford free range then leave it out”.    This is usually shouted at the telly during a cooking programme, when Hugh, Jamie or whoever, are telling us to buy free range chicken and eggs, but missing the point that some people simply cannot afford to.     You try and persuade a parent on a low income that they should not buy their 15 eggs for £1, in favour of free range at 5 or more times the price.   I suspect that their prime motivation is to feed their families rather than towards animal welfare.    

Personally I think that chefs and cooking programmes are all missing a trick and maybe they should focus on encouraging people to consume fewer animal products, and to stop regarding meat, eggs and diary as a cheap and daily source of food.   I am sure it would be altogether better for many peoples’ health, wallets and the environment.   I do not think it is wrong to eat meat, eggs and diary, but I know I feel a whole heap healthier when I eat less of them.   Whether this actually is because I am eating less animal products, or by the fact that by not eating them I will be consuming more fruit and vegetables I do not know.   A bad vegetarian or vegan diet can be just as damaging as any other, imagine how grim you would feel if you ate nothing but chips for a week?

However I will get off my soap box for, despite my words, these muffins do contain egg, in the blood orange curd I baked into them.    I would think that marmalade or jam would make a good alternative should you wish to bake vegan.

I am sending these to the March Monthly Mingle, hosted by Sarah at Maison Cupcake.   These are not quite as pink as I had hoped, the batter was gloriously bright then faded in the oven.

Recipe: Think Pink! Blood Orange Juice and Curd Muffins (Makes 6)

“Dry” Ingredients
6oz plain flour
2oz  sugar
Zest 1/2 blood orange
1tsp baking power
pinch salt

“Wet” Ingredients
6oz blood orange juice (top up to 6oz with milk if needed)
2oz  sunflower oil
Orange pulp from the juicer (remove the seeds)

6 tsp blood orange curd

(Optional) Sprinkling of oats

Method
Whisk the oil and juice mixture with a fork.   Mix the dry ingredients.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold together (the batter should be lumpy and mixing should take no more than 15 folds).   Divide half the mixture out into the muffin pan, add a blob of curd to each muffin and then top with the remainder of the batter, sprinkle with oats if using.  Bake at GM5/190C/375F  for 20 – 25 mins until risen.

Eat warm from the oven, but beware of hot scalding curd!

All this wonderful produce for only £6!  For details of finding your local food Co-op see here.

I find that fruit every week and vegetables 2 out of 3 weeks is perfect!