Apple Shortcake Squares

I was recently looking back through my blog posts and noticed that to date I have included relatively few recipes that use apples. I was actually quite surprised because they are easily obtained, are hugely popular and I love them.

 

One of the most popular desserts in any Irish household is apple pie. In fact, most restaurant menus in this country always have an apple pie, tart or crumble of some type on it! To be honest, no matter how accomplished a baker you are, if you can’t produce a noteworthy apple tart, you might as well give up! In Ireland your baking reputation stands or fails on the quality of the apple pie you can produce. When making my apple pie, I like to use two or three varieties of apple; Bramleys, because they break down to a purée-like consistency when cooked, Granny Smiths because  they retain their shape and provide texture and I also sometimes use Pink Lady or Braeburn for their distinctive apple taste.  I have always preferred using a pinch of ground cloves rather than ground cinnamon in my apple pies, but each to their own. I know some bakers who like to use ground ginger, but for me, the judicious use of ground cloves (only a pinch is required) really bring out the flavour of the apples.

 

So many people, even in suburban areas have their own apple trees and this can be a wonderful source of freshly picked fruit later on in the year. I have a number of apple trees growing in my garden, which have been planted for six or seven years at this stage and provide me with some wonderful fruit at the end of the summer. It is a source of great annoyance to me that my children love to go out into the garden after a windy night and use the fallen fruit as makeshift sliotars when practising their hurling and camogie! Windfall apples, provided they haven’t been lying on the ground too long, can still be used for making chutneys or in baking… so you can imagine my irritation at seeing the apples being hurled down the garden at force rather than for being used to make tasty treats!

 

The recipe that I’m giving here is my version of the Apple Shortcake Squares which are on sale in many Irish bakeries. At their simplest these are made with apples sandwiched between two layers of pastry and dredged with caster sugar. My version uses self-raising rather than plain flour which creates a pastry with a more shortcake-like consistency but without being spongy like a cake. The pastry dough is on the soft side so I don’t roll out the base but rather press it gently into the tin with the tips of my fingers to create an even layer. For the top I flour some non-stick baking parchment and place the pastry on this, flattening it out slightly with my hands. I then flour the slightly flattened pastry and place another layer of non-stick baking parchment on top. I then proceed to roll out the pastry into a thin layer, large enough to cover the top of the Apple Squares. This is such a handy way of rolling out any pastry, but particularly this one which is very soft and a little difficult to manage.

 

Finally, I should mention that I recommend using Granny Smith apples for making these squares. I find that cooking apples are too mealy and break down too much, but that the Granny Smiths retain some texture. Also unlike ‘normal’ pastry which should be given a chance to rest, you can roll out and use this pastry once you have made it.

 

Ingredients:

Apple filling:
5-6 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped into 1cm cubes

25g caster sugar

25ml water

Pastry:

240g self-raising flour

125g butter, cubed

15g icing sugar

1 large egg, lightly beaten

30ml cold water

To finish:

25g caster sugar for dredging
 

Method:

Apple filling:

1. Place the apples, sugar and water into a medium sized saucepan over a moderate heat. Bring up to simmering point and allow to cook for 8-20 minutes until the apples have softened but not broken down. Remove from the heat, set aside and allow to cool completely.

Pastry:

2. Preheat oven to 180C/Fan oven 160C/Gas Mark 4. Line a 30cmx20cm traybake tin with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

3. Place the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the cubed butter. Rub the butter into the flour using the tips of your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Make a well in the centre and add the egg and water and mix together using a fork until everything comes together.

4. Divide the dough in half. Press one half of the dough into the bottom of the prepared tin, flattening it out with your fingers or the back of a spoon to create a level surface. Spoon the COOLED apple mixture onto the pastry into the tin, spreading it out evenly.

5. Roll out the other half of the dough between two sheets of floured non-stick baking parchment into a rectangle the same size as the tin (30cm x 20cm). Remove the top sheet of baking parchment and lifting the rolled out pastry on the other layer of baking parchment flip it over to cover the apple filling. Tuck in the edges of the pastry making sure that the apple is covered.

6. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30minutes until light golden brown. Remove from the oven and dredge with the caster sugar. Set aside to cool before cutting into 12 even squares.

Makes 12 squares.

 

Condensed Milk Loaf Cake

Whilst I love the frivolity and decadence of layer cakes, there is something that I find so reassuring and sensible about loaf cakes. For some reason, I never feel particularly guilty having one slice too many from a loaf cake, but even one slice of a layer cake always makes me feel as if I am doing something a little naughty! If I’m being completely honest, I find it hard to resist cakes of any description whether they be layer cakes, loaf cakes or small little dainty cakes. I just love cake.

 

Layer cakes are beautiful, look stunning and are perfect for special celebrations, but they’re not really the type of cake that I hanker for when I want something comforting to nibble on with my cup of tea. Layer cakes with their fillings of cream/jam/fruit/chocolate etc. invariably need to be eaten with a pastry fork or other implement, where as you can usually eat a slice of a loaf cake using your hands.  Even when iced with simple glacé or buttercream icings, there is nothing pretentious about them. It is therefore unsurprising that I love to try out new loaf cake recipes when I come across them.

 

I always seem to have tins of condensed milk in the kitchen cupboard, mainly because it’s a key ingredient when making Millionaire's Shortbread, which I regularly do for cake sales, coffee mornings and the like. I also use it to make the toffee filling for Banoffee Pie, which is such a hugely popular and incredibly easy dessert to make (I will post my take on Banoffee soon). I was recently carrying out research on different cakes from around the world and was fascinated by the fact that condensed milk regularly appears in cakes from South America and parts of Asia. I tried out a few different recipes for cakes containing condensed milk, and after making a few changes, this is the one that I finally settled on.

 

This is a lovely cake. From the outside it looks very plain and a bit unexciting, but when you take a bite the milky sweetness of the condensed milk really comes through. Despite the addition of the condensed milk, the cake is not too sweet and has a lovely close texture without being heavy. It really is the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea or strong black coffee.

 

The great thing about a cake like this is that you can serve it on its own or with some soft fruit and a dollop of cream as a dessert. Happy days! Because of the inclusion of condensed milk which acts as a humectant, this cake keeps wonderfully fresh for a number of days, but it is fairly addictive, so I doubt it’ll last that long.

 

Ingredients:

225g butter, softened
100g caster sugar

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

240g condensed milk

1tsp vanilla extract

200g self-raising flour, sieved
 

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160C/Fan Oven 140C/Gas Mark 3. Grease and line a 900g loaf tin with non-stick baking parchment and set aside.

2. Place the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat together using a hand-held electric mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well after each addition.

3. Add the condensed milk and vanilla extract mixing well until they are fully incorporated. Finally, fold in the sifted flour. Don’t over-mix, but equally make sure that there are no ‘pockets’ of flour remaining.

4. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface with a spatula or the back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for 50-60 minutes or until well risen and a thin skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
 

Serves 6-8.
 

 

Hot & Sour Prawn & Pineapple Soup

If you like spicy, fragrant food, this soup is just for you. It is incredibly quick to prepare, it looks wonderful and it tastes absolutely delicious.  I love the combination of prawns and pineapple with a background note of spicy heat supplied courtesy of the red chillies that have been included.  I have recommended using 3 or 4 red chillies, but you can use two if you’re not as keen on a bit of heat in your food.

Tamarind paste gives the sour element of this dish and whilst you will definitely notice its presence, it is not mouth-puckeringly sour in the way that biting on a slice of fresh lemon would be. I have been using tamarind paste a lot recently and love the depth of flavour it gives to those dishes in which it is used. I remember when I first became really interested in cookery and how difficult it used to be to source certain ingredients; I found it so frustrating! Thirty years ago you wouldn’t have had a hope of finding tamarind paste for sale in an Irish supermarket or shop and yet these days, ingredients like these can be found in many corner shops! For the enthusiastic and experimental cook, this is great.

 

As with all my recipes, I encourage you to put your own stamp on the dish… always taste as you go along and adjust seasoning, spicing etc. as necessary. I find it amazing that so many people cook without tasting! It is the most important step when cooking. I season using sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, but I also keep a lemon on hand as I find a squirt of fresh lemon juice can often enliven any dish without making it taste lemony… try it out… it really works!

This dish could be served as it is, almost like a substantial soup, but you could also serve it with rice as a light curry; it depends on how hungry you are feeling and what you are in the mood for. I like to serve it accompanied by flatbreads, which also serve as a vehicle to mop up all the yummy sauce!

 

To make this dish, you need to firstly create a paste base for the soup, but this is easy with the aid of a food processor. If you don’t have a food processor, you could chop the vegetables into small pieces and pound them along with the shrimp paste to blend everything together. The paste does not need to be absolutely smooth but everything does need to be well combined and broken down, particularly, the often fibrous fresh ginger and the lemongrass.

 

I think it is perhaps appropriate that I say a quick word about shrimp paste… this stuff looks seriously unappealing and when you spoon it out of its jar/container, it smells… well frankly… horrible! However, when mixed with the other ingredients and fried off in the pan, it is transformed and creates the most wonderfully complex base for the soup. So, don’t be put off by the shrimp paste in the beginning despite any initial reservations which you may have!

Ingredients:

Paste base for the soup:
3-4 thin red chillies, chopped
4-5 shallots, chopped

1 lemongrass stalk, outer husk removed and chopped finely

25g fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

1tsp shrimp paste

1tblsp vegetable oil

Soup:

1tblsp vegetable oil

2tblsp tamarind paste

1tblsp palm sugar (or Demerara sugar)

1 litre of vegetable stock

400g raw prawns, peeled and deveined

150g fresh pineapple, cut into small chunks

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

To finish:

Some fine egg noodles, cooked

1 lime cut into wedges

Some very thinly sliced red chilli pepper

Fresh coriander leaves
 

Method:

Paste base:

1. Place all the ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and pulse to create a paste. Alternatively pound the ingredients together using a pestle and mortar.

Soup:

2. Heat the oil in a medium sized, heavy based saucepan over a moderate heat and add the paste base for the soup. Fry gently for 2-3 minutes until it deepens a little in colour, stirring regularly so that it does not catch on the bottom of the pan.

3. Add the tamarind paste and sugar and stir well and then add the vegetable stock. Increase the heat under the saucepan and bring the mixture up to the boil. Then reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 10- 15 minutes, uncovered.

4. Add the prawns and pineapple and simmer for a further 5-7 minutes until the prawns are just cooked.

5. Serve in bowls with noodles and wedge of lemon and a little of the sliced chilli and fresh coriander scattered over the top.

Serves 4-6.

 

Baguettes

I will admit that there are times when I do feel ridiculously pleased with the results of my various experiments in the kitchen. I am not professionally trained and have never been on any cookery courses (other than the bread making course that I recently went on); I am merely an enthusiastic amateur who loves eating and cooking tasty and interesting food to share with those that I love. That’s it at its simplest. Furthermore, I love writing and sharing my enthusiasm for food, so it seems natural that I would do that here, on this blog.

 

My love of cookery stems from my love of eating and a desire to experience new tastes and flavours and seeing how I can use and adapt these to create the types of dishes that I crave and want to eat.

 

Initially when I started this blog, I was going to write about ALL the different things that I had been trying to cook for myself, family and friends, even some of the less-than-successful recipes, but I soon realised that this was not what I wanted my blog to be about. We all lead such busy lives and are bombarded, on a daily basis, with so much information from so many sources, that the last thing we want to do is trawl through a recipe which at the end of, the writer declares to be unsuccessful. I think that it is far more useful to test, tweak, and perfect the recipes in my own kitchen before publishing them for others to (hopefully) enjoy trying out! I always try to include any variations and significant issues that I have come across, hoping that by sharing my experiences, others will feel more confident in trying out the recipes.

 

Recently, many of the recipes that I have been cooking and working on have been quite technical and a little complicated. The challenge has been to simplify these without sacrificing taste or quality, so that they can be attempted in a normal home kitchen like mine. After trying out new ingredients or new processes, there is something so reassuring about going back to basics and doing a bit of bread making. Although I love challenging myself in the culinary sense, I also like to return to the basics…and really, there is nothing more basic than bread!

 

The bread making course that I attended in the Firehouse Bakery in Delgany, County Wicklow a couple of months ago really awakened something in me and I have been baking my own bread with increased confidence since then, adapting basic recipes to include other ingredients along the way. I love feeling the changes in the bread dough as you knead it and seeing it spring to life as the yeast gets to work and the dough rises as it proves. The smell of freshly baked bread is one of the most amazing things and its aroma acts like a magnet drawing others into the kitchen in pursuit of some to eat whilst it is still warm.

 

I have wanted to make my own baguettes for ages, so finally decided to give it a go and mightily pleased I was with the results! The recipe that I used is one by Patrick Ryan of the Firehouse Bakery, with a couple of slight changes that I have made. The recipe that I used was originally published in Food & Wine Magazine… an Irish magazine published monthly and can be accessed here.

 

The recipe needs to be started the night before so that the poolish has time to develop. Patrick states that this recipe creates 6 baguettes, but I divided the dough into 8 rather than 6 baguettes and preferred the slightly thinner results.
 

Ingredients:

Poolish:
250g strong white bread flour

250ml water

3g fresh yeast

Dough:

675g strong white bread flour

10g fine sea salt

5g fresh yeast

500g poolish

330ml water
 

Method:

Poolish:

1. Place all the ingredients in a clean medium sized mixing bowl and mix together thoroughly with a wooden spoon to create a very wet and sticky dough. Cover the bowl with cling-film and leave to sit at room temperature overnight.

Dough:

2. Place the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and combine together using your hands. Crumble the yeast into the flour and mix through with your hands until well distributed.

3. Add the poolish which should be very aerated and risen after its night’s resting and add the water. Mix everything together with your hands to create a soft dough.

4. Turn the dough out onto a clean work-surface and knead for 12-15 minutes until smooth and silky. As usual resist the urge to flour the work-surface – as you continue kneading the dough, it will stop sticking to the surface.

5. Place the dough into a clean, lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling-film and set aside to prove for 60-90 minutes until the dough has doubled in size.

6. Turn the dough out on to a clean work-surface and knock back. Divide into 8 equal portions (I use my electronic scales to measure exactly, though you can do it by eye).

Shaping the dough:

7. Firstly shape each portion of dough into a ball and then working one ball at a time and flatten out into a rectangle (approximately 20cms x 15cms) with one of the long sides facing you. Take the edge closest to you start rolling up into a tight sausage like shape about 15cms long, crimping the edges with your fingers along the seam at intervals as you roll.

8. Using the palm of your hands and starting in the centre roll the dough out working your hands from the centre to the outside edges until doubled in length and each roll has pointy tips.

9. Arrange the formed baguettes on a clean tea-towel, heavily dusted with flour drawing the tea-towel up to separate each baguette as they are placed side by side. Love the baguettes to prove for 45 minutes until well risen.

To finish:

10. Preheat oven to its highest setting and lightly flour two large baking trays. Place an empty roasting dish on the bottom of your oven and allow to heat up along with the oven.

11. Carefully roll each baguette onto the prepared baking trays (I put 4 on each) and slash each baguette 3 or 4 times diagonally along its length with a blade or sharp knife.

12. Throw some ice cubes into the roasting dish at the bottom of the oven and place the baguettes in the oven for 20-25 minutes until deep golden brown and cooked all the way through.

Makes 8.