Sweet Potato & Courgette Bake

I got some sweet potatoes in my Oddbox order recently but I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with them. As it is also courgette season, I decided to do a search on the internet for sweet potato and courgette recipes and came across a sweet potato and courgette bake that sounded interesting. It didn't seem like something Steve would like to eat so I figured it might make a nice lunch or dinner for my daughter when we were eating something she didn't fancy. 

Well, she's not a huge fan of lamb so when Steve and I decided to have a rack of lamb for our Sunday dinner last night, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to make the bake - just ram it in the oven with everything else that was cooking.

With the recipe to hand, I started by getting some sweet potato on to boil to make some mash. Then I finely sliced the remaining sweet potato and the courgette. It was now time to start assembling the bake but to be honest it all suddenly seemed a bit bland. As it happened, my daughter was in the kitchen, getting herself a glass of water and she asked what I was making. I explain, as I layered the courgette into the bottom of the dish, that I was making the sweet potato and courgette bake but I was thinking of adding a few more flavours. With that, I poured a little passata over the layer of courgette and sprinkled on some dried Italian herbs and dried onion flakes.

"It needs cheese sauce," she commented. 

My shoulders slumped. I had been gardening all afternoon, it was getting late, I had roast potatoes to prepare and get into the oven, a rack of lamb to cook and I wanted to fit in a bath before it was all cooked too. I did not have time nor energy for a cheese sauce.

"It's OK," she said, "I'll make it."

So as I prepared the roast potatoes, she put together the ingredients I would have used to make a cheese bechemel sauce but instead of making a roux, adding the milk and then the cheese, she just bunged it all into a sauce pan and stirred. 

"That's really not how to make a cheese sauce," I said, as she stirred the unconvincing lumpy ingredients together.

"Oh, isn't it?" she asked, frowning, "but it worked the last time I did it like this."

And to my surprise, a few minutes later she had a cheese sauce. She poured this over the layer of sweet potato and we continued to layer up the bake, finishing with the mashed sweet potato and cheese.

By this point the potatoes were in the oven so I went off for a quick bath whilst things cooked. And upon my return, she had a beautiful bubbly bake, ready to serve. Definitely a lot tastier than the original recipe and full of her favourite flavours.

Sweet Potato & Courgette Bake (serves 1)

1 sweet potato
1 small courgette
300 ml vegetable stock
100ml passata
Dried onion
1 tsp Italian seasoning
25g butter
25g flour
Dash of mustard
100ml milk
Cheddar
Salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease a small ovenproof dish. Peel the sweet potato then cut in half. Cut one half of the sweet potato into small chunks and boil in a pan with the vegetable stock until soft. Drain, but keep the vegetable stock. Season the potato lightly then mash. To make the cheese sauce, put the butter, flour, mustard and milk into a small pan and heat gently. Stir constantly until it forms a smooth sauce then grate in Cheddar to taste. Thinly slice the remaining half of the sweet potato and then do the same to the courgette. Starting with the courgette, layer up the bake ingredients. On top of the courgettes, add some passata, Italian seasoning and dried onion, then layer sweet potato on top and spread on a layer of cheese sauce. Repeat until you have used up all the sliced vegetables. Carefully pour vegetable stock down the edge of the dish until you can see it amongst the layers but without disturbing them. Put the mashed sweet potato on top and finish with a little grated Cheddar. Bake for 1 hour or until golden and bubbling.

Ramped Up Strawberries and Cream

We are reaping the rewards this year of the work we put into sorting out the strawberry patch last year and we are getting a pretty decent crop. Mind you, the recent weather hasn't been helping and the rain, drizzle and general dampness means that some of the fruit are going mouldy. Although some are beyond help, others have just a patch that could be cut out if tackled immediately.

With this is mind, back in the kitchen I set about processing the strawberries that I had picked that morning. First I sorted them into perfect and imperfect and then I cut up the imperfect ones, removing the areas of damage. I allocated 300g of the better ones for strawberry cheesecake, which I would make the next day. The cut strawberries needed to be eaten within hours to avoid further spoilage. So, I used 100g of them straight away to make strawberry and vanilla muffins. 

Strawberry and Vanilla Muffins (makes 8-9)

175g self-raising flour
85g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp sunflower oil
150ml natural yoghurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
100g strawberries, chopped

Preheat oven to 200°C and line a muffin tin with 9 cases. Place all the ingredients, except the strawberries, into a bowl and mix until just combined. Add the strawberry pieces and gently mix in. Spoon the mixture evenly into the muffin tin then bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

That left about another 100g. These I mixed with some strawberry jam. Then I whipped up some cream and layered them into tumblers. These went into the fridge and after dinner I served them up with a cherry on top and some chocolate sauce. Strawberries and cream - just ramped up! 

A quick and easy dessert and coincidently the colours of the England flag, just in time for match day, or failing that, the perfect accompaniment to Wimbledon!

Ramped Up Strawberries and Cream (makes 4)

100g strawberries, chopped
50g strawberry jam
200ml whipping cream
50g icing sugar
85g dark chocolate
50g water
4 glace cherries

Add the icing sugar to the cream and whisk until thick. Spoon a third of the mixture evenly between 4 glasses. Mix the jam and strawberries and spoon half of this on top of the cream. Add another third of the cream on top of the strawberries, then add the remaining strawberries and jam before topping with the rest of the cream. Chill until ready to serve. Over a pan of boiling water, melt together the chocolate and the water then pour into a small jug and leave to cool to room temperature. To serve, top with a cherry and pour over the chocolate sauce.

Variations on the Victoria Sandwich Cake

When I was a child, we would visit my grandparents about once a month for a weekend. On departure we would be loaded up with goodies. There would be pocket money and sweets pushed into the hands of my brother and me, and a box of food for my parents. My grandad was not only an extremely generous man who would give you the shirt off his back if he felt that you needed it, but he was also a pastry chef. When he had signed up during World War II, he had requested to be a mechanic... so they had assigned him to the catering corps. After the war, with this training behind him, he had been in continual employment as a baker and pastry chef. Therefore, staples in the food parcel would be his amazing steak pie and his strawberries and cream sandwich cake, made with a filling of fresh whipped cream and slices of strawberries. I don't know whether it came frozen or whether my mum dealt with the vast quantities of generosity by slicing it and freezing it, but I have memories of eating slices of the cake, not quite thawed out in the middle, the cold cream still slightly resisting my teeth. Happy memories.

I'm in no way a pastry chef but I have been making Victoria Sandwich cakes for years now. Like scones, people seem to have preferrence for either strawberry or raspberry jam in the middle of their cake, but, in the absence of my grandad's cake, I have always preferred raspberry jam, especially as my version is seedless. 

I make a cake once a week generally and we eat some every afternoon as a snack. It might be fairy cakes or muffins or fruit cake or layer cake but there is always something in the cake tin. In order to decide what to bake each week I have a scan around the kitchen, seeing what's in the fruit bowl in need of using up or what else we seem to have too much of. Currently, we have too much jam. 

Inevitably, when I make a batch of jam, there is always a bit at the end that doesn't make a whole jar full. This I decant into lidded plastic pots and, under normal circumstances, I use these as my taster samples at events. Or, when my daughter eats porridge at the weekend, I stir in some jam to flavour it. But, I'm not attending events currently and even if I were, tasters would not be allowed. And, my daughter has decided that porridge for breakfast is too filling.

So, in order to find ways of using up jam, I have been making various sandwich cakes, based around a basic Victoria sandwich cake recipe, and inspired by the flavour of the jam I have to hand and anything lurking in my fruit bowl. It has been a fun and tasty experiment and I share the recipes below. And now, come June, I finally have fresh strawberries to pick so a chance to relive my childhool memories.

Basic Victoria Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
Raspberry jam
100g unsalted butter
225g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Soften the butter then slowly mix in the icing sugar and vanilla to create butter icing. Spread one cake with jam and the other with butter icing then sandwich them together.

Plum & Orange Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
110g caster sugar
110g plum jam
1 orange (zest and juice)
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
Plum jam
100g mascapone
2 tbsp honey

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in jam, followed by the zest and juice of half an orange. Next add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Stir the remaining orange juice and zest and the honey into the mascapone. Spread one cake with jam and the other with mascapone icing then sandwich them together.

Toffee Apple Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
110g caster sugar
110g apple jam (preferrably Toffee Apple Jam)
1 apple
A little brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
Toffee Apple jam
100g mascapone
2 tbsp honey
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Peel, core and slice the apple then toss in a little brown sugar and cinnamon. Scatter this into the base of one of the cake tins. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in jam. Next add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack, making sure that the apple layer is facing up. Stir the honey and cinnamon into the mascapone. Spread one cake with jam, then carefully spread the mascapone icing on top. Place the apple cake on top, with the apple layer forming the top of the cake.

Rhubarb & Ginger Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
110g caster sugar
150g rhubarb
2 tbsp of giner syrup from a jar of stem ginger
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
Rhubarb & Ginger Jam
100g unsalted butter
225g icing sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger or two drops of ginger extract

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Chop the rhubarb and put in a small saucepan with the ginger syrup. Cook with the lid on for a few minutes until the rhubarb has broken down and gone mushy. Set aside to cool. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in the rhubarb.. Next add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour, mixed spice and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Soften the butter then slowly mix in the icing sugar and ginger to create butter icing. Spread one cake with jam and the other with butter icing then sandwich them together.

Chocolate Orange Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
110g caster sugar
1 orange - juice and zest
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
25g cocoa powder
Pinch of salt
Orange curd

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in the orange juice and zest. Next add the eggs one at a time. Add the flour, cocoa and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Spread one cake with orange curd then sandwich them together.

Strawberries & Cream Victoria Sandwich Cake Recipe

225g butter or margarine
225g caster sugar
4 eggs
225g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
Strawberry Jam
100g mascapone
50g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
A few fresh strawberries, sliced

Preheat oven to 180°C and grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins. Cream together the butter (or margarine) and the sugar then stir in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour and salt and stir until it forms a cake batter. Divide the batter between the two tins and level out then bake for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the tins and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. Slowly mix the icing sugar and vanilla into the mascapone to create a creamy texture. Spread one cake with jam and the other with the mascapone. Layer the slices of strawberries on top of the mascapone then sandwich the two cakes together. Finish with a dusting of icing sugar if you like.

Rhubarb Mousse

Rhubarb is a peculiar thing - peculiarly English too. You just don't see it used much in other countries and I have struggled to explain what rhubarb jam is to non-native customers at my stalls over the years.

I have always regarded it as a cheap food too - something so easy to grow that you can plant it once and just let it get on with its own thing from then on. Certainly I imagine that everyone who was "Digging For Victory" back in the day must have had some on their plot. 

Having never felt the need to buy rhubarb before I really couldn't have told you how much it would cost but this week, out of curiousity, I looked it up on both the Tesco and Ocado supermarket sites and found that it was £6.88 per kilogram on that particular day. Having already harvested 3kg of rhubarb this year, I realised that would have set me back about £21! Astonishing, especially as there is still time to pick some more this season.

So, was I wrong all along to think of rhubarb as a cheap food? Well, with fresh raspberries coming in at roughly £12 per kilogram, it certainly doesn't compete with those price-wise. But then again, rhubarb isn't as squishy and hard to transport as raspberries so maybe that isn't a fair comparison. What about the other stems that we eat? 

Celery comes in at roughly £3 per kilogram so in comparison, rhubarb is something of a luxury food! And, remarkably, on the day I was checking prices, asparagus was being sold for £6.59 per kilogram. So, like for like, asparagus and rhubarb are the same price. And yet I would have considered asparagus to be... a bit posh!

Having discovered that I should be showing more respect to my rhubarb, I decided that I needed to elevate it further than the humble crumble. As such, I combined it with some double cream and some fancy ruby chocolate to create Rhubarb and Ruby Chocolate Mousse, and scattered some homemade granola on top as a nod to rhubarb crumble. There you go, rhubarb, the fancy dessert you deserve!

Rhubarb and Ruby Chocolate Mousse (makes 6)

150g rhubarb
1 tbsp caster sugar
1 tbsp water
2 gelatine leaves
150g natural yoghurt
200g ruby chocolate (use white chocolate if your prefer)
300ml double cream
Granola or similar to scatter

Cut the rhubarb into pieces and place in a small pan with the sugar and water. Cook gently with the lid on for several minutes until very soft. Leave to cool then use a stick blender to puree. Next, cover the gelatine with water for a few minutes to soften. Put the chocolate in a small bowl over a pan of hot water to melt. Next, squeeze the water out of the gelatine then put it in small pan over a low heat until melted. Add a little of the cream to the gelatine and heat gently to incorporate the two as this will make the gelatine easier to pour. Whisk the remaining double cream in a large bowl until thick. Add all the ingredients to the cream (apart from the granola) and gently fold together until mixed. Spoon into suitable containers/glasses and put in the fridge to set. When ready to serve, scatter the granola on top if using.

Potato Bread

Sometimes we make too much mashed potato to go with our sausages. There are, of course, plenty of things you could do with leftover mashed potatoes, including making bubble and squeak or fashioning it into potato cakes. One of my favourites is to use it as an excuse to make mashed potato doughnuts (as previously blogged). However, when my husband makes mash potato, he tends to season it quite heavily, including adding celery salt and garlic powder and these residue flavours aren't really what you want in your freshly fried doughnuts!

So, having gathered a small box of mashed potatoes from the dinner plates last night, today I decided the best use to put it to would be in a loaf of bread. I usually make bread on a Thursday anyway as Friday is the only day of the week where my daughter has lessons in the afternoon and can't come home from sixth form at lunch time, thus she is in need of bread fresh enough to take as a sandwich.

Once the bread is cooked, you would scarcely notice that it has potato in it. I find it tends to rise enthusiatically and it has a lovely soft texture and I guess that has something to do with the starches from the potato. It is a very satisfying way to make use of waste food.

Potato Bread

225g water
3 tbsp sunflower oil
425g white bread flour
75g malted bread flour (or use a total of 500g white flour if preferred)
175g cold cooked mashed potato
1 1/2 tbsp skimmed milk powder
1 tsp salt (add an extra half a teaspoon if there isn't salt in your mashed potato)
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp easy blend yeast

Load the ingredients into your bread machine and set to dough. Alternatively, mix by hand and knead for 10 minutes or use a dough hook on a food processory. Leave to prove for one hour. Knock back and shape dough to fit into a 2lb loaf tin then cover with greased Clingfilm and leave to prove for half an hour. Preheat oven to 190°C. Slash the top of the bread with a knife several times then put the tin in the oven. Through some water into the bottom of the oven to create steam and shut the oven door. Cook for 45 minutes until golden brown and it sounds hollow when tapped. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

The Endless Loop of Leftovers

Sometimes I find myself in a endless loop of leftovers. I make something, which leads to leftovers and then I find a way to make that into something else, but it leads to more leftovers and on it goes.

I had a meat delivery last week. Mostly I just bag it all up into suitable portions and get it into the freezer to last a few weeks. However, I turned the 700g of stewing steak into steak pies before freezing them, cooking up the pie filling that afternoon and adding some puff pastry once cooled. The pies had circular lids so I was left with some offcuts of puff pastry. 

The meat box was also supposed to contain 12 sausages, which I would normally divide into 8 and 4. We eat 8 sausages between us as one meal, and the other 4 I might turn into sausage egg muffins or add them to a mixed grill. However, I only received 1 pack of 6 sausages, which doesn't work for me in terms of numbers. Fortunately, there was a rather delicious sausage pasta bake recipe in the BBC Good Food Magazine this month that feeds four with 6 sausages so I bought some mozzerella and made that. That left a little bit of mozzerella that I boxed up and popped in the fridge.

Later, I added to the off-cuts of puff pastry when I made a batch of sausage rolls (also destined for the freezer). One tray of sausagemeat only needs three quarters of a sheet of puff pastry, leaving an odd bit. Sometimes I make this into 3 or 4 cheese straws just to be done but this time I added it to the offcuts from the pies. But what to do with the puff pastry?

I had seen a recipe for Homity Pie in the BBC Good Food Magazine too and I wondered if it might be nice to replace some of the Cheddar in it with my leftover mozzerella and maybe give it a lid of puff pastry instead of shortcrust. It certainly seemed like the perfect way to use up some of the rubbish potatoes from our allotment, along with some onions and leeks from my Oddbox delivery. However, it did mean I had to buy a pot of double cream.

With the double cream purchased, I re-read the recipe and realised it was more a tart than a pie, being without a lid, so that ruled out using up the puff pastry. I also decided that Cheddar would work much better than mozzerella in terms of flavour so I didn't use that either. The pie was really delicious, and definitely one to add to my favourites, especially at this time of year when potatoes, onions and leeks are seasonal stars.

I tried it out as a lunchtime dish for my youngest daughter and me as we like being guinea pigs for new recipes but my husband was so taken with the thin slither he tried that he decided to eat some of it for his dinner.  And the remaining two portions, my youngest and I ate for lunch on Sunday. All good, except it only used half a pot of double cream so I had to think of something to do with that now.

Looking around the kitchen for inspiration, my eyes fell upon some tired looking apples in the fruit bowl so I typed "apple pudding" into Google and found a recipe for Sticky Toffee Apple Pudding, served with cream. I whipped this up on Sunday afternoon and put it into the oven to cook once I had served up the roast dinner. Despite the moment of doubt as I pour sugar water over the top of the cake batter before it went into the oven, it turned out beautifully, creating its own lovely toffee sauce at the base. And it was particularly tasty served with cream. I just had the headache of trying to fit a half eaten pudding into the fridge where a pot of double cream had previously been!

Fortunately, we reheated the apple pudding after dinner on Monday and finished off the last of the cream with it too so that at least was now out of the fridge. We had had leftover pork from the Sunday roast for dinner too so it was a good day for eating leftovers. In addition, I had a moment of inspiration Monday morning and decided to turn the puff pastry and mozerella into a mozerella and courgette tart for lunch for my youngest daughter and me. This also used up half an OddBox courgette but it meant I opened a jar of red pesto but didn't use all of it! 

So on Tuesday I decided to try cooking up some Pasta 'ncasciate. I thought this would not only use up the aubergine I had just bought but maybe the tired looking mushrooms, the half courgette and the red pesto. I found a recipe and set about making it, realising it didn't contain either mushrooms or courgettes and that red pesto wasn't really the right thing to use for the sauce either. It turned out to be a very tasty dish and I'm pleased to have found another way to eat aubergine. 

However, it made way more than I needed and once again I found myself scratching my head, wondering how to fit the leftovers in the fridge! Still, that's lunch sorted on another day, and you know what, I might even cook up the half a courgette and tired mushrooms and add the red pesto to it when I serve it up this time!

A Vegan Birthday Feast

It was my step-daughter's birthday on Saturday so I cooked her up some of her favourite food. She loves Japanese food and she loves sticky toffee pudding, so that's what went on the menu. As she is vegan, she obviously required that all her food was vegan but she also requested that the whole meal was vegan, i.e. that we all partook. 

The main meal was a buffet of different Japanese foods. I cooked sticky rice in my Instant Pot, baked a nasu dengaku aubergine, fried some shop bought vegan gyoza, and whilst she stir fried some tofu and veg noodles, I deep fried some tempura - pumpkin, mushroom and onion. The other addition at the table was a jar of radishes that I had pickled the weekend before. 

I had received some radishes in my first Oddbox veg delivery. Despite being one of the easiest things to grow, we don't usually bother because no one really likes them. So I figured I may as well try pickling them to see if that made them more palettable. After all, my step-daughter is generally a fan of pickled things and she likes pickled diakon, and diakon (or mooli) are just very large radishes. I have to say, after they turned a pretty pink colour during the course of the week, I was actually quite excited to try them. Yes, definitely nicer pickled and definitely a very similar taste to pickled diakon.

Pickled Radish

1 bunch of radish
175ml cider vinegar
175ml water
2 tsp salt
3 tbsp maple syrup (or honey if not for a vegan)
1/4 tsp chilli flakes
5 garlic cloves (whole)
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp peppercorns

Wash the radish and pat dry then slice very thinly. Separate the slices as you drop them into a suitable jar. Add all the other ingredients and put the lid on then slosh it about a bit to mix. Leave for 1 week before eating. Eat within 3 weeks.

I have made vegan sticky toffee pudding a few times over the years and, in fact, I think I prefer it to conventional sticky toffee pudding because it is soft and gooey and satisfying without being overly heavy. Usually I make it as a single cake in a square cake tin and I have even made it in a hemisphere cake tin at Christmas to look like a Christmas pudding. However, on this occasion I decided to use some individual pudding tins from Lakeland. Normally I glaze the cake with some pear jam or similar but on this occasion I started by putting some of my pear sauce in the bottom of each pudding tin. To serve, I topped with a bit more pear sauce and a dollop of Oatly Oat Fraiche, although vegan custard, cream or ice-cream would have worked well too.

Sticky Toffee Pudding (makes 8)

250g dates
2 tbsp linseed breakfast topper
300ml soya milk
200ml vegetable oil
175g dark muscovado sugar
200g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground mixed spice
100-200 g pear sauce or golden syrup or date syrup or jam

Put the dates, linseed and milk in a saucepan and simmer for 2-3 minutes until soft. Use a stick blender to blitz until smooth. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix well, breaking up any lumps in the sugar. Add the date mixture, the oil and 50 g of jam/sauce. Stir well to form a batter. Pour more sauce/syrup into the bottom of each individual pudding tin then dollop in the cake mixture until about three quarters full. Put the tins onto a baking tray and bake for 30-35 minutes until springy to the touch. To serve, run a knife around each pudding and tip into a serving bowl/plate then heat each one for 30 seconds in the microwave. Add more syrup to the top if necessary and serve with creme fraiche, custard, cream or ice-cream.

Cooking with Honey

I have known Carol for probably getting on for ten years now. We met because I was looking for some local honey to go into local food hampers I was putting together but we quickly became friends and I thoroughly enjoy standing on the doorstep nattering for an hour. Yes, I would invite her in but she always insists she won't stop! 

Carol's honey is an essential ingredient in my Honey & Lemon Marmalade and during February's monthly orders I sold all the stock I had of that and I could have sold more. So I emailed Carol to ask to buy another jar so that I could make a fresh batch. To my surprise she rung me up to say that she had some honey that would be suitable for cooking that I could just have.

The smell and flavour of honey varies tremenously depending on what the bees forage from. This is why Scottish Heather Honey is so prized, of course, but sometimes the foraging isn't quite so desireable. Honey foraged from ivy, for example, can have a flavour that no everyone likes. Carol didn't know what the bees had foraged on for this particular batch but it had an unusual smell that she felt some people wouldn't like and, although it tasted nice, she thought a customer opening a jar and getting that aroma might be put off.

A short while later she dropped off half a bucket of the honey and said I was welcome to have it for cooking. She also gave me a sample of some flapjacks she had made with it to demonstrate that the flavour wasn't unusual when used in cooking.

With good quality honey being a relatively expensive commodity, I was excited to have a larger than expected quantity available to me and an invitation to use it in cooking. Normally I would use a cheap supermarket honey in cooking and even then be fairly sparing with it.

I sniffed it and tasted it and, although I could see Carol's point about the smell being slightly odd, it wasn't unpleasant. In fact, it reminded me of the complex floral notes you get when sniffing real ale. From my experience with that I know that what I can smell bears very little resemblance to the flavours I taste, and so it was with the honey, which was very mild and just generally pleasant.

Happy with my tests, I used some to make the batch of Honey and Lemon Marmlade. After that it was time to experiment. 

The first new recipe was steamed honey puddings for dessert on Saturday. I made individual puddings that we served with custard and it was a delightful, light sponge.

On Monday, whilst my youngest daughter filled some time before her return to school, she made a honey cake to refill the cake tin for the week. We ate a slice in the afternoon as a snack. It was a little underdone in the middle, which was my fault as I had judged it cooked. However, the gooey middle was like a sticky sauce, similar to the "sauce" in a chocolate fondant. Later, when I came back from a walk to the postbox, my eldest asked what the cake was. She'd had helped herself to a slice whilst I was out and had puzzled over the flavour as it was almost like a ginger cake but she had liked it, unlike ginger cake. It is true, the complex flavours in the cake are deceptive, and suggest that a subtle combination of spices were used. She also said that the gooey middle was the best bit!

On Thursday I made some honey biscuits to have with my elevenses and for my husband to enjoy was his after dinner cup of tea. These proved to be soft and chewy, again with hard to pindown flavours.  Over dinner my eldest told me she liked the biscuits I had made, which puzzled me as I didn't know she had tried one. Turns out that she had seen the photo I had posted onto Instagram and had fancied eating one, then gone into the kitchen whilst I had been answering the door! 

After that she asked if I could made some honey flapjacks - nice thick and properly sweet ones, not like the "healthy" ones I often make. So on Friday afternoon I whipped up a batch of flapjacks too! 

Wow! What a sweet week but a lovely week of experimenting and creating.

Individual Steamed Honey Puddings 

(makes 6)

100g plus 12 tsp honey
100g unsalted butter, softened.
100g caster sugar
3 eggs
110g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Butter 6 mini pudding basins. Put two teaspoons of the honey into the bottom of each pudding basin. Cream together the butter and sugar then stir in the 100g of honey and then the eggs, one at a time. Add the dry ingredients and stir well until a smooth batter in formed. Divide the mixture evenly between the six pudding basins. Put the lids loosely on the basins or cover with foil then stack on a trivet inside a pressure cooker, with two cups of water in the base. Put the lid on and bring to pressure then cook for 40 minutes. Leave for the pressure to release naturally then remove the puddings to cool. When ready to serve, reheat in the oven for 30 seconds for each pudding and serve with hot custard.

Honey Cake

250g honey plus extra for glazing
225g unsalted butter
100 dark muscovado sugar
3 eggs, beaten
300g self-raising flour

In a pan, melt together the butter, honey and sugar over a low heat. Once melted, increase the heat and boil for 1 minute then set aside and leave to cool for 20 minutes. Preheat then oven to 170°C and line a circular cake tin. Pour the cooled mixture into a large bowl then beat in the eggs. Add the flour and stir until it forms a smooth batter. Pour into the cake tin then bake for 50 minutes to an hour, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so then turn out onto a wire rack. Glaze the top of the cake with honey until sticky. 

Honey Biscuits (makes 10-12)

100g unsalted butter, softened
50g light brown sugar
25g caster sugar
2 tbsp of honey
1 egg yolk
1 tsp mixed spice
150g self-raising flour
30g oatbran

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking sheet. Cream together the butter and the sugars then mix in the honey and the egg yolk. Add the dry ingredients and mix to form a soft dough. Use an ice-cream scoop to remove a ball of dough then place it on the baking tray. Don’t squash it flat. Repeat with the rest of the dough then bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Leave to cool on the tray for a few minutes then transfer onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Honey flapjacks (makes 12)

200g unsalted butter
200g light brown sugar
200g honey
400g oats
Pinch of salt
50g sunflower/pumpkin seeds

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease a 20 by 30 cm tin. In a saucepan, melt together the butter, sugar and honey. Remove from the heat and add the oats, salt and seeds. Stir well then spoon into the tin and level out. Bake for 15 minutes then turn out the oven and leave for another 5 minutes in the oven. Remove from the oven and cut out 12 bars then leave to cool in the tin.

Over ripe Bananas

Normally I buy 5 bananas a week and my youngest eats one banana every day at break when at school. I know that it became a bit of a joke during Lockdown 1 that everyone was making sourdough and banana bread, but I just stopped buying bananas and we didn't have any over ripe bananas to worry about. However, in Lockdown 3, my daughter decided to make herself elaborate breakfasts of chopped fruit in natural yoghurt, flavoured with vanilla extract and maple syrup. As such, I bought different combinations of fruit each week, including blueberries, nectarines, grapes, melon and bananas.

My husband likes a banana too... occasionally. Mostly he doesn't eat bananas and then suddenly he will fancy one - particularly if the bananas in the fruit bowl are the perfect ripeness for his tastes. This, as you might imagine, is hard to cater for. When I only buy 5 bananas during school times, he knows that if he eats one our daughter will go without at break time. However, if I buy extra, especially for him, he may not fancy one at all during the time that they are in the fruit bowl.

One week recently, I bought five bananas and he decided he fancied eating bananas again, so that week we had eaten all the bananas before the end of the week. As such, the following week I decided to buy 10 bananas... but that week he didn't really fancy any and then they went overly brown and he definitely doesn't like an overripe banana - or banana bread for that matter.

As you can imagine, it has been very hard to buy the correct number of bananas during Lockdown 3 and as such I have had over ripe bananas to deal with on numerous occasions. Yeah, I have a banana bread recipe but I don't make that very often because I have other recipes I prefer - banana and fudge yoghurt cake, banana and carrot cake, banana and maple muffins, chocolate banana loaf cake, and so on. Usefully the muffins and the yoghurt cake freeze particularly well so I can make them before the bananas go completely to mush and freeze them for another day regardless of what we already have in the cake tin.

In fact, in the middle of last week, my daughter made a chocolate banana loaf cake using three over ripe bananas, leaving 2 in the fruit bowl, demanding attention. As we already had the chocolate cake to be eating, I figured I would make a banana and mincemeat loaf cake at the weekend and stick it in the freezer until the chocolate cake was finished. 

It seemed a particularly useful recipe because it would also get the half a jar of mincemeat off the work surface that had been knocking around since Christmas. So that's what I did, except I forgot to freeze it and two days later we had finished the chocolate cake anyway so we went straight on to eating the mincemeat one. Probably just as well, as I still have 24 muffins and a loaf cake in the freezer anyway!

Banana & Mincemeat Loaf Cake

150g unsalted butter, softened
90g caster sugar
2 eggs, beaten
150g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
2 over ripe bananas, mashed
150g mincemeat

Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a 2lb loaf tin. Cream together the butter and sugar then add the eggs, one at a time. Put in the dry ingredients, then the bananas and the mincemeat then give it a thorough stir until well combined. Spoon into the tin and bake for 1 hour. Test with a skewer and leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Banana Loaf Cake

3 over ripe bananas
3 eggs
100ml sunflower oil
175g caster sugar
175g self-raising flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
4 tbsp cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate chips

40g softened butter
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 160°C and line a 2lb loaf tin. Put the mashed bananas, eggs and oil into a large bowl. Add 1 whole egg and 2 egg yolks to the mixture in the bowl. In a small bowl, whisk the two egg whites until stiff. Add the dry ingredients to the mixture in the large bowl and combine until just mixed. Fold in the egg whites. Spoon into the loaf tin and backe for 1 hour 10 minutes. Cool in the tin for a few minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. In the meantime, make the butter icing with the butter, remaining cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Once the cake is cool, thinly ice the top of the cake with the butter icing. 

Carrot & Banana Cake

150g sunflower oil
150g light muscovado sugar
2 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
50g sultanas
2 over ripe bananas, mashed
100g carrots, grated

Preheat the oven to 180°C and lightly grease and line the bottom of a 20cm square tin. Add all the ingredients in the order listed, stirring where appropriate. Once completely combined, spoon the batter into the tin and bake for 50-60 minutes.

Banana & Fudge Yoghurt Cake

2 pots of self-raising flour
1/2 pot of light muscovado sugar
1/2 pot of sunflower oil
1 pot of natural yoghurt
2 eggs
4 tsp maple syrup
1 over ripe banana
50g vanilla fudge, cut into small pieces

For this recipe you will need a 120g pot of natural yoghurt and then you will need to use the yoghurt pot as the measure. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a 2lb loaf tin. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir until well combined. Spoon the batter into a loaf tin and bake for 45 to 60 minutes.

Banana & Maple Muffins (makes 12)

115g softened butter
115g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp maple syrup
2 over ripe bananas, mashed
225g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 190°C and put paper cases into a muffin tin. Cream together the butter and sugar then add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the syrup. Stir in the bananas. Add the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Spoon into paper muffin cases and bake for 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Apple Strudel

I had a piece of pork to roast the other day and I knew it would create leftovers. Some leftover meat is easier to deal with than others and I often find myself a little lacking in inspiration when it comes to cooked pork. As such, I had a look at what Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall recommended in his leftovers book. 

As a result, we had pork rissoles on Monday. Never made them before but I particularly liked them as they also used breadcrumbs - another leftover ingredient. 

On Friday it was Chinese New year so I saved a small piece of the pork to try Hugh's suggestion of pork wontons. He said that mixing pork with brown sauce worked surprisingly well as a wonton filling. So, I bought a pack of filo pastry, cut up a little bit of pork into small pieces, dolloped on some homemade brown sauce and created some wontons. And, you know what, he was right - I was surprised by how well it worked.

However, I had a pack of 10 sheets of filo pastry and I had only needed one sheet for my wontons.

Asking around the internet for filo pastry inspiration, I decided to give apple strudel a go. I'd never made it before but I don't really know why. The only thing was I didn't have any apples left in storage - just bags and bags of cooked apples in the freezer.

So on Sunday morning I took a bag of frozen apples out of the freezer and tips its contents into a sieve over a bowl. I figured I didn't want it particularly runny as a filling so I would drain out the excess moisture as it thawed. 

I was pleased to see a mention of breadcrumbs in this recipe too, both because I like using up stale bread in useful ways, and because I figured it would help stablise the potentially sloppy mixture.

It was simple enough to turn the cooked apples into strudel filling and it was easy to layer the filo pastry up, with generous brushings of melted butter in between. I was also pleasently surprised by how easily and neatly I managed to fold and roll the pastry into a self-contained bundle. 

I figured that the wet filling probably wouldn't do the pastry any good if I left it to sit so I got it into the oven straight away then put it back into the oven later to reheat in the residal heat after removing the roast. I served it with the last of the pumpkin ice-cream. An excellent use of ingredients for the perfect winter dessert.

Apple Strudel

1 pint cooked Bramley apples (weighing about 450g)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp lemon juice
80g caster sugar
60g sultanas
20g butter
40g white breadcrumbs

9 sheets filo pastry
50g butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 190C and line a baking tray with baking parchment. Mix the apples with the cinnamon, lemon juice, sugar and sultana. In a small frying pan, melt 20g butter and fry the breadcrumbs until golden-brown, then add to the apple mixture. Melt the remaining butter in a pan. On a clean, dry tea-towel or silicone baking mat, lay a sheet of the filo and brush with some of the melted butter. Lay another sheet on top and repeat until all the filo pastry is used. Pile the filling along the length of the pastry along one side about 2 cm from the edge and carefully fold in the ends of the pastry then roll the pastry up to enclose the filling, finishing seam side down. Brush with the remaining melted butter. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden-brown. Leave to cool to room temperature and dust with icing sugar. Slice and serve with cream, ice cream or custard.

Cheese and Potato Pasties

I made steak pie last week and sausage rolls on Saturday morning and on both occasions I was left with some scrappy bits of puff pastry from the rolls of ready-made pastry. 

It's always a bit of a dilemma as to what to do with odds and ends like this as I don't want to put them in the bin. Sometimes I just make a few cheese straws and sometimes I make mini cheese and pickle pasties but folding some pastry over a cube of mature Cheddar and a dollop of onion chutney and crimping it shut at the edges.

This time I decided to make some cheese and potato pasties, suitable for making an interesting lunch the next day. Honestly, they couldn't be simpler (or cheaper) and particularly great if you are carb-loading!

Cheese & Potato Pasties (makes 2)

Two pieces of ready rolled puff pastry, measuring about 16 by 8cm each
1 potato, weighing around 150g
Butter
Cubes of Cheddar cheese
2 teaspoons of dried onion
Salt and pepper

Peel and dice the potato then boil for 10 minutes or so until soft enough to mash. Drain and mash with some butter and salt and pepper. Leave to cool. Once cool, add cubes of Cheddar cheese, the dried onion and a little more seasoning then mix it all together with your hands until it moulds. Divide the mixture into two and place them to one end of the pieces of pastry. Use a pastry brush to moisten the edges of the pastry with milk then fold the pastry over the filling and crimp down. Brush with more milk. Can be refrigerated or frozen at this point for future use. To cook, place in an oven at 200°C for 20-25 minutes until risen and golden.

Salted Caramel Bramley Apple Pudding

There is a notice on the allotment gates currently stressing, in no uncertain terms, the importance of maintaining social distance when on site. This is not particularly tricky to abide to, especially at this time of year when trips to the allotment tend to be fleeting and rarely coincide with anyone else. Even if there are other people on site, each allotment plot is 10 m by 10 m and I have never, in the 24 years of having a plot, felt the need to tend to the edge of my plot at the same time as my neighbour is tending to the equivalent edge on theirs. Even when we have stopped to have a conversation, it has always been within comfortable shouting distance rather than face to face.

So, on a recent trip to dig up potatoes, it was vaguely nice to see someone else on site rather in the least bit alarming. She was three plots away and tending to her apple tree. In fact, she was there with her husband, which in itself is rare as the plot is very much her hobby rather than his, but he had clearly been called in for some heavy duty work and she seemed to be pointing to various bits of the tree that needed pruning. They were fully engaged in their task and I wasn't even able to wave hello as I seemed to have snuck in unnoticed.

It was nice to see her caring for the tree as it had produced an absolute bumper crop in 2020. So much so that she had asked several of the plotholders, including myself, to help themselves to apples from it next time it was safe to do so. 

Now, I love a Bramley apple, especially the way they mush down when cooked, so I had taken her up on this, at first filling a bucket with windfalls each time I came to visit and eventually, on her insistance, helping to finish picking apples from the tree itself. These I packed carefully into open boxes in the garage whilst I worked my way through them, cooking them up and freezing them in 1 pint portions ready for use in jam, chutney or pie. 

With the general other abundances from the allotment during the autumn to attend to as well, I only made slow progress on the boxes of apples but in fact they stood very well as they were, only needing the occasional eviction of a mouldy one. Indeed, it was only last week that I took the last two apples out of the box to use in a recipe for salted caramel apple pudding. Here's hoping that with its winter care and attention, the tree will go on to crop as heavily again this year, and maybe by then I will have used up the apples in my freezer!

Salted Caramel Bramley Apple Pudding

2 Bramley apples
3 eggs, plus 2 egg yolks
50g dark brown sugar
200ml whole milk
300ml double cream
375g tinned caramel
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
75g plain flour

Preheat oven to 180°C and butter a 30 by 20cm ovenproof dish. Peel, core and slice the apples then scatter over the base of the dish. Put the eggs, yolks, sugar, milk, cream, 200g of caramel, vanilla and salt in a large bowl and stir with a whisk until well combined. Gradually stir in the flour to form a smooth batter. Pour the batter over the apple pieces. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes until set all the way to the centre. Heat up the remaining caramel and serve up portions of the pudding with a drizzle of caramel and scoops of ice-cream.

What to do with yellow beetroot

It was a funny coincidence that the day after I had grated part of an enormous yellow beetroot into beetroot and potato rostis, my mum mentioned that she had what she thought looked like yellow beetroot delivered in her veg box.

She had just signed up for OddBox deliveries and she was really chuffed with her first box, although she wasn't entirely sure what she was going to do with the sweet potatoes and she wasn't sure she had correctly identified the yellow beetroot. She took a photo and texted it over to me and from what I could see she definitely had two large yellow beetroots not much smaller than the two monsters I had just harvested.

Her next question was, what should she do with them and how could she cook them. I have a bit of an eye for cooking times with beetroot, having practised this mysterious craft for more than 20 years now and I told her that hers would take 40 minutes of boiling or 30 minutes in the pressure cooker.

It wasn't long after that that she sent me a photo of her freshly cooked cubes of yellow beetroot. I was shocked! There is an unwritten law in beetroot-craft that states that a beetroot must be cooked whole, unpeeled and not even so much as shown the blade of a knife. Everyone knows that you twist (no cut) the leaves from the top of a beetroot and you leave its root in tact and boil it whole, or so I thought. With this assumption I had neglected to include these details when explaining the cooking times to my mum so not only had she peeled it, she had cubed it and cooked it like that for 15 minutes.

"You shouldn't peel or cut beetroot before cooking," I texted curtly back (I was working at the time).

"Why's that?"

"They 'bleed' when cut."

"Well, being yellow, there was no blood! So I haven't made it toxic?? Is it OK to eat??"

This made me laugh and also to take stock for a moment. It is one of the issues with ancient practises such as kitchen gardening. "Wisdoms" get passed down from generation to generation without people necessarily questioning why they are done and if they are indeed useful or necessary. So did is actually matter if your beetroot bleeds, especially if it yellow? It definitely wouldn't make it inedible or toxic, maybe it would lose some nutrients, and, worse case scenario, it might stain your kitchen (if its purple).

I reassured her that she hadn't rendered the beetroot inedible and she went on to enjoy it in salad for the next couple of days.

In the meantime I had one enormous yellow beetroot left on my draining board (and several still in the ground), so what should I do with it?

The thing about yellow beetroot is that it is different from purple beetroot. I mean, it tastes the same and it could be used in exactly the same way as purple but the colour really makes a difference. Whereas I might turn large purple beetroot into chutney, no one wants a weirdly off-putting light brown beetroot chutney. On the other hand, a yellow beetroot can be used in a casserole without causing the whole thing to turn an alarming colour. So how best to enjoy this particular shade of beetroot.

Having made the beetroot and potato rostis and a medley of roasted vegetables with the other one, I was warming to the idea of using it in a way that wouldn't give a purple result.

So the following weekend I made a beetroot and orange cake. It is actually a recipe carrot cake I have been using for years but I figured that yellow beetroot and carrot are interchangeable and it proved to be the case.

Beetroot & Orange Cake

140 ml sunflower oil
130g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Grate rind and juice from 2 oranges
225g grated raw beetroot
85g sultanas
285g plain flour
25g wheat germ or bran (optional)
1½ teaspoons mixed spice
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Preheat oven to 160ºC (gas 2) and place the cake tin liner in a cake tin. In a large bowl, beat together the oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla, orange rind and juice. Peel and grate the beetroot and stir it into the mix. Add the sultanas. Sift in the flour, spice, raising agents and add the wheat germ/bran. Stir well then spoon the mix into the cake tin. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, test with a skewer. Cool in the tin.

And later in the week I enjoyed inventing the pleasing sounding Bacon, Beetroot and Brie Muffins, which we had for lunch with salad and crisps. 

Bacon, Beetroot & Brie Muffins (makes 10)

4 rashers of streaky bacon
175g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
50 ml milk
1 egg
100ml vegetable oil
100g grated raw beetroot
75g brie, chopped

Chop up the bacon and fry quickly to brown then set aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a muffin tin with paper cases. In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients. In a jug, beat together the milk, egg and oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and add the beetroot, brie and bacon before quickly stirring together until just combined. Dollop the mixture into the muffin cases then bake for 25 minutes.

Although I am sure that little flecks of purple in either of these would have been fine or even amusing, it was nice to stealthly ninja beetroot into baked goods in such as way as to not draw it to anyone's attention. Maybe useful to know if you are trying to feed someone who would be put off by its presence if they knew it was there?