Plum Pie and a heated discussion...

Pies are a perfect way of using seasonal fruits to create delicious satisfying puddings.

I recently had quite a heated discussion with someone about what the difference between a pie and tart was. As I have always understood it, a tart has pastry on the bottom and the filling is exposed, whereas a pie has a top which encloses the filling. This top is most often made of pastry but can also be made of potato (in the case of savoury pies) or other things such as meringue… or whatever takes your fancy. Pies can also have a double crust – in other words, they can have a pastry top and bottom which contains the chosen filling completely. Both pies and tarts can be sweet or savoury.

 

For me, there is something so comforting about eating a pie, whereas tarts have pretensions to sophistication and elegance, which depending on how well they are made may not be realised!

 

Whilst apple pie in all its variations seems to reign supreme, you can pretty much use any fruit to make a pie. Although I love a tasty apple pie, I think that so many of them disappoint as they are made with flavourless apples. When making my apple pie, I use cooking apples (Bramley) AND a crisp eating apple (Granny Smith) to create a pie that still retains a little texture but where the fruit is all completely cooked through. I also favour adding a pinch of ground cloves as opposed to the ubiquitous cinnamon to add little spicy warmth. I find that the cloves really enhance the flavour of the apples whereas cinnamon can take over.

In any event, apple pie was not on the agenda here. Plums are plentiful and cheap at the moment and I had a hankering for something to eat that included them; so I plumped for plum pie!

 

A good friend recently sourced a large supply of wonderful plump vanilla pods for me so I decided that I would flavour my pie with vanilla. This is an incredibly easy pie to make, using a simple shortcrust pastry and although you could par-cook the fruit before baking it in the pie, I think the fruit tends to turn into a purée; far better to tumble the uncooked fruit into the pie and let it soften in the heat of the oven as the pie bakes.  A tablespoon of arrowroot thickens the fruit juices that are released to create a beautiful fruity, plum-flavoured sauce.

 

This is a really flavourful pie and lovely served with some custard or a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Ingredients:

Pastry:
250g plain flour

20g caster sugar

125g butter, chilled and cubed

1 egg yolk

1-2 tblsp cold water

To finish:

12-14 plums, stoned and thickly sliced

Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla pod

25g caster sugar plus a little extra for sprinkling on the finished pie

1tblsp arrowroot

A little beaten egg
 

Method:

Pastry:

1. Sieve the flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl. Add the diced butter and using your fingertips, rub into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the egg yolk and water. Using a fork, mix everything until it comes together in a dough. Turn out on to a lightly floured work surface and knead briefly to form a smooth ball. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes.

To make the pie:

3. Preheat oven to 190C/Fan Oven 170C/Gas Mark 5. Lightly grease a 20-23cm round pie dish with some butter and place on a baking tray. Set aside.

4. Mix the sliced plums, sugar, arrowroot and vanilla seeds in a bowl and set aside. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll out 2/3 of it into a circle large enough to line the bottom and sides of the pie dish. Tumble the fruit into the lined pie dish and roll out the remaining pastry into a circle large enough to cover the pie.

5. Using a pastry brush, brush a little egg around the edge of the pie and place the other circle on top to cover the fruit filling. Press the edge to seal , trim off any excess pastry and crimp the edges if desired. If you like you can use some of the pastry trimming to cut out shapes to decorate the top of the pie. Brush the top of the pie with a little more of the beaten egg and cut a slit in the pastry to allow steam to escape.

6. Bake for 15 minutes and then reduce the temperature to 170C/Fan Oven 150C/Gas Mark 4 and cook for a further 20 minutes until the pie is golden brown and the fruit has softened and started to release its juices. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with a little caster sugar. Allow to cool for 10 minutes and serve.

 

Serves 6-8.
 

 

 

 

 

Cabinet Pudding

I regularly bake celebration cakes for neighbours, friends and family and over the years have made many birthday, wedding, christening and first holy communion cakes. This is something that I enjoy doing when I get the opportunity. Sometimes, when I have a particularly big or elaborate cake to make, it can really feel that I am being engulfed by flour, eggs, sugar and sugarpaste.

Although I make a whole range of cakes including chocolate, lemon, carrot etc., the one that seems to be the most popular is based on my basic madeira cake. This I bake in the relevant sized tin; I then split and fill it and trim it so that everything is level before I start decorating.

This inevitable means that I often have cake offcuts left over and rather than thrown these out, I try to use them up in other recipes.

One of these is a traditional steamed pudding called cabinet pudding. This is made up of small cubes of leftover or stale cake, glacé or other dried fruits and an egg custard. The cake is allowed to soak in the egg custard for an hour , the dried fruit is added and then the pudding is steamed for 75 minutes. What emerges is a sweet pudding which is not at all stodgy and is surprisingly light.

 

Here I have made the pudding using glacé cherries only, but you can add in a handful of sultanas, chopped angelica or whatever dried fruits you fancy. I have often though a tropical using some canned pineapple chunks along with some added desiccated coconut would be nice… but the recipe that I give here is based on the more traditional versions of the pudding.

Serve this in wedges with a little pouring custard or softly whipped cream on the side.

Ingredients:

25g butter for greasing the pudding bowl
75g glacé cherries, halved
275g sponge/madeira cake

75g crushed amaretti biscuits (the hard kind)

Custard:

500ml cream

3 medium eggs

25g caster sugar

2tblsp Amaretto
 

Method:

1. Grease a 1 litre pudding bowl with the butter and then line the base of the pudding bowl with a little circle of non-stick baking parchment.

2. Embed some of the cherries (cut-side to the edge of the bowl) in the buttered sides of the bowl.

3. Cut some of the cake into strips and use to line the pudding basin. Cut the remaining cake into 2-3cm chunks and place in the basin with the remaining cherries and crumbled amaretti, making sure that they are well distributed.

4. Heat the cream in a small saucepan and whilst it is heating beat the eggs and sugar together in a mixing bowl. When the milk is almost at boiling point, pour it in a steady stream onto the egg mixture, gently beating all the time. Add the Amaretto and then strain this mixture, through a sieve onto the cake chunks in the pudding basin. Set aside to soak for 60 minutes.

5. Cover the pudding with a sheet of baking paper pleated in the centre. Secure the paper in place by tying with string around the outer lip of the basin. Steam in a steamer for 75 minutes following the manufacturer’s instruction or alternatively, place the basin in a large saucepan with boiling water coming halfway up the sides. Place the lid on the saucepan, and reduce the heat so that the water is gently simmering away. Check every 20 minutes and add some more boiling water if needed to maintain the water levels.

6. When the time is up, remove from the steamer saucepan and allow to sit for 10 minutes before turning out onto a serving plate.
 

Serves 6-8.
 

Creamy Butternut Squash Soup

There are so many recipes out there for butternut squash soup, but without a doubt my favourites are those that have a spicy curry flavour and a little chilli heat or those that also include some apple in them.

The first time that I tried butternut squash was many years ago when I first visited the United States, where it was served as a mashed vegetable accompaniment to roast turkey in the restaurant that I was working in. The thing that struck me when I ate it then, was how naturally sweet it was. It is because of this sweetness that butternut squash can take on other punchy flavours without its inherent personality being lost. As already mentioned, I love it paired with apple in a creamy soup, but I would strongly recommend using cooking apples or tart Granny Smith as you need a certain acidity to balance all the sweetness.

 

This is a great soup for this time of year. It’s creamy and comforting to eat but the inclusion of chilli and ginger adds a zingy warmth to the finished soup which enlivens the taste buds. I have only used half a chilli, but if you like it hot, add some more.

Roasting the butternut squash before adding it to the soup really intensifies the flavour, so I would advise you to do it, but if you are short on time you can chop the peeled butternut squash in medium sized chunks and simmer them in the stock.

I have used ground coriander and a few rasps of nutmeg and added these to the onions, garlic and ginger whilst they were softening in the pan. I definitely think that this spice combination added a little something extra to the soup.

 

This is a perfect soup for autumn and looks so cheery and inviting that it is sure to enliven even the most miserable day.
 

Ingredients:

To roast the butternut squash:
1 large butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, cut into medium sized chunks

25ml olive oil

A sprig of thyme

½ thin red chilli, chopped finely

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Soup:

1tblsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

2tsp of fresh ginger, grated

½ tsp ground coriander

½ tsp ground nutmeg

500ml vegetable stock

250ml coconut milk from a can

Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

To garnish (optional):

Some coriander leaves

Some thin slices of chilli cut across the centre

Toasted coconut flakes
 

Method:

Roasted butternut squash:

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/Fan Oven 180C/Gas Mark 6. Tumble the butternut squash chunks into a roasting dish along with the thyme, chilli and olive oil. Season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Roast in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the squash has softened and started to caramelise at the edges. Remove from oven.

Soup:

2. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over a moderate heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, coriander and nutmeg and allow to cook for about 5 minutes without colouring or until the onions have softened and become translucent.

3. Add the roasted butternut squash, the vegetable stock and coconut milk and increase the temperature under the saucepan. Bring up to the boil and then immediate reduce heat so that everything just simmering away gently. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. Purée the soup in a blender until smooth and then return to a clean saucepan and keep warm until ready to serve. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

5. Garnish with some coriander, chilli and coconut flakes if desired. Serve hot with some crusty bread.
 

Serves 6.

 

 

1st Birthday and a recipe for Lemon Cupcakes with Limoncello Glacé Icing & a Lemon Curd Centre!

Tomorrow is my blog’s 1^st Birthday!!!

WOOHOO!!!

In the past year, I have loved sharing some of my favourite recipes and the memories that many of these dishes evoke for me. As the year progressed I found that I was becoming far more adventurous and experimental with some of the foods that I was cooking. The thing that has probably amazed me the most is that I don’t find it burdensome cooking, photographing and writing up the recipes and that it is in fact a process that I enjoy very much.

So on the eve of my blog’s birthday, I would like to thank all those who follow me, those who have commented on and those who have given me feedback about my recipes. I am truly grateful and extremely humbled whenever anyone takes time out of their busy lives to do so.

Given my celebratory mood, I wanted to bake something to mark the occasion, but was determined that it would be something special and representative of my favourite things. I didn’t have to think much about this. I love cake; I love lemon and I love daisies!!! You will see in the photos accompanying this post that I have decorated my cupcakes with individual sugar daisies that I had left over from another cake that I had baked for a christening. I think they look so beautiful delicately perched on top of these cupcakes.

 

In many ways this is a really simple cupcake… the sponge is light flavoured with finely grated lemon zest and it is topped with a simple glacé icing! I have embellished it a bit, by hollowing a little of the cooked sponge cake out of each cupcake and filling the cavity with homemade lemon curd and have also flavoured the glacé icing with the Italian lemon liqueur Limoncello - what I was trying to achieve was a really lemony cupcake and in this regard, I feel that I definitely achieved my aims.

 

What I particularly like about these cupcakes is that they are not decorated with a thick layer of buttercream icing but instead a rather restrained (but VERY flavoursome) glacé icing. I flavoured the icing with Limoncello, but if you don’t have any, just substitute some freshly squeezed lemon juice – the cupcakes will still taste fab.
 

Ingredients:

Cupcakes:
175g butter, softened

175g caster sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

175g self-raising flour, sifted

Lemon Curd:

4 unwaxed lemons, juice and finely grated zest

200g caster sugar

100g butter, cut into small cubes

3 large eggs plus 1 yolk, lightly beaten

Glacé icing:

200g icing sugar

2-3tblsp Limoncello

To finish:

9 sugar daisies (optional)
 

Method:

Cupcakes:

1. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan Oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Place 9 cupcake cases in a cupcake/muffin tin and set aside.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and using a hand-held electric mixer, beat together until light and fluffy. Add the finely grated lemon zest and beat again to fully incorporate.

3. Gradually add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Add the sifted flour and fold into the creamed mixture. Once all the flour has been added and fully incorporated, spoon the mixture, dividing it equally, into the prepared baking cupcake cases.

4. Bake in the preheated oven for 17-20 minutes until the cupcakes are golden brown cooked through and well risen. Allow to cook for five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Lemon curd:

5. Place the lemon juice and zest, sugar and butter into a heatproof bowl. Place the bowl sitting over a pan of barely simmering water making sure that the water is not touching the bottom of the bowl.

6. Stir the mixture occasionally until the butter has melted. Add the eggs into the lemon mixture and whisk together until everything is well incorporated. Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened.

7. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool completely (NOTE: This makes more lemon curd than you need for this recipe, but any excess can be poured into sterilised jars and stored in the fridge for 2 or 3 weeks.

Glacé icing:

8. Mix everything together to create a thickish glacé icing (about the same consistency as golden syrup). Set aside.

To finish:

9. Using a small melon baller hollow out a small cavity from the centre of each cupcake. Fill this with a teaspoonful of lemon curd and then top with some of the glacé icing. Place a sugar daisy on top and allow the icing to set.

 

Makes 9.