Raspberry, Basil and Lemon Financiers

Fittingly enough, the history of financiers is a story of greed. Financiers were part of a clever marketing trick targeting stockbrokers at the Bourse in Paris in the late nineteenth century. They’re based on an older simple almond cake called a Visitandine, made by nuns of the Visitandine Order. The Order was founded for nuns who were unable to deal with the austerity required by other stricter orders, who presumably were not allowed to spend their days eating delicious almond cakes.  Stockbrokers in the rational atmosphere of 1890s Paris were not very likely to warm to such an ecclesiastical theme, so a baker named Lasne, who had a shop close to the Bourse, rededicated them with a nod to their egos. The simple cakes were easy to eat neatly as they didn’t have icing on them, which suited people working all day in three piece suits.  They’re a simple recipe to master, with key basic elements of almond, egg and brown butter, after which you can add your own variations. Like their lighter cousins, Madeleines, they’re best eaten on the day they’re made, but the batter can rest in the fridge for a day or two before baking, so you can still have them prepped to go for guests. This recipe makes about 25 financiers, depending on the size of your moulds.

Ingredients

• 50g butter plus extra for greasing
• 50g plain flour plus extra for dusting
• 140g ground almonds
• 160g icing sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 6 egg whites, at room temperature
• pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest
• a few drops of vanilla essence
• 20-30 raspberries (one for each financier)

Ingredients

• Gently melt the butter over medium heat, watching carefully, until it starts to brown.
• Take off the heat and leave in the hot pan to brown for a minute or two more.
• Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl then stir in the egg whites.
• Gradually stir in the browned butter, basil, lemon zest and vanilla essence until it forms a batter, being careful not to overmix.
•  Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or more.
• Preheat the oven to 180°C.
• Spoon the batter into greased muffin or financier tins.
• Add a raspberry to each one.
• Bake for 10-14 minutes, watching carefully from 10 minutes on.
• Remove when the edges start to brown.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes.
• Transfer to a wire rack and serve as soon as possible.

Salted Peanut Butter and White Chocolate Blondies

In hindsight, baking blondies for my office in the second week of Lent was probably not the best idea I’ve had. Lent is a Christian tradition of penance for the 40 days preceding Easter, usually involving giving up whatever little vice you like the most.Like most things involving guilt and denial, it caught on like wildfire here in Ireland. As a child, I used to give up sweets, but would stockpile the sweets I would normally eat, and then end up eating them all in the space of about a week after Easter. 

Other places like Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans kick it off with amazing carnival celebrations that last days in a flurry of parties, music, and vibrant costumes. We decided to go the other way and instead have a day where we eat a few pancakes, followed by six weeks of complaining about not eating chocolate.  The key to survival is to adopt strict definitions of what you are giving up. So, for example, giving up chocolate, but not white chocolate, as that does not have cocoa powder. That’s how you can manage to wrangle yourself something as gloriously unhealthy as these. They are soft, chewy and just the right balance of sweet, salt and fat.

Makes 20-25 blondies

Ingredients

• 450g brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 85g honey
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence
• 225g flour
• 225g butter
• 225g peanut butter
• A handful of roasted sated peanuts, chopped
• 100g white chocolate, chopped

Method

• Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.
• Melt the butter and leave to cool slightly (make sure it’s still liquid though).
• Add the butter, peanut butter, honey and vanilla essence to the eggs and sugar and combine well.
• Add the flour and stir to combine thoroughly.
• Stir through the peanuts and white chocolate.
• Pour the batter into a well greased brownie tin.
• Bake at 180C for 30 minutes, then cover with tin foil to stop it browning more and bake for another 15 until it’s set.
• It will still seem a bit liquid, but a skewer in the middle should come out clean.
• Leave to cool for an hour before slicing up.
• This keeps well for a few days in a tin although it’s unlikely to last that long.

Salted Caramel Brownies

I’m not going to lie to you. These are only the second best brownies I’ve ever tasted. The coveted best brownie in the world prize goes to Paul A Young’s brownies in London, which haunt my dreams. I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth. Nine times out of ten I’ll take a cheese board over dessert, but like every breathing human old enough to consume solid food, I can’t say no to a good brownie. I also don’t bake a lot, for much the same reason, but when I do, I want perfect results and this recipe gave me that.It’s ever so slightly adapted from The Boy Who Bakes . 

These are the perfect chewey, gooey, fudgey kind. I have no time for cakey brownies. They’re a waste of time,effort, hope and chocolate. One of the handiest things about these are that they actually improve after a day or so, which makes them perfect for do-ahead baking. The original recipe says it makes 12, but I probably got about 20 out of mine because a small two or three bite square is actually plenty with something this rich. They were happily demolished in my office in no time at all. If you’re not bothered making the salted caramel, these will still be great without it.

Make 20 brownie bites

Salted Caramel Filling

• 175g caster sugar
• 150ml double cream
• 10g unsalted butter
• large pinch of flaked sea salt

Fudge Brownies

• 180g plain flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 320g dark chocolate/milk chocolate mix (I used 1/4 milk chocolate, 3/4 65% dark chocolate)
• 150g unsalted butter
• 350g light brown sugar
•  caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 120g natural yoghurt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

• Make the caramel by melting the sugar in a medium sized saucepan over medium high heat until it turns a copper brown coin type colour.
• Add half the cream and salt, it will bubble up a bit,so be careful.
• Add the remaining cream, remove from the heat and stir.
• Mine went a little bit lumpy in parts, but it all melted again once it was in the brownie.
• To make the brownies melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.
• Stir to combine properly once melted.
• Leave to cool a bit and add in the eggs,yoghurt and sugar and beat well until smooth.
• Sieve in the flour, salt and baking powder.
• Add the vanilla extract.
• Pour half the brownie mix into a parchment lined brownie tray.
• Add the caramel in as smooth a layer as you want/can manage (mine was just dolloped around the place).
• Pour the remaining brownie mix on top.
• Bake at 180C for 30 minutes until a skewer just comes out with a couple of damp crumbs.
• It may look uncooked because it’s bubbling, but that’s just the layer of caramel, it will look more properly set once it cools.
• Leave to cool completely before cutting.

Caramel Almond and Hazelnut Cake (Toscakaka)

I found this recipe on the beautiful Poires Au Chocolat blog, who in turn adapted it from the Scandilicious book. Toscakaka is a traditional Swedish cake. The Danes and the Swedes have a kind of friendly rivalry going on. If you have seen the crime drama The Bridge, this shows it pretty well.  One thing Danes and Swedes do see eye to eye on is cake.

Coffee and cake is an institution in both Denmark and Sweden. There are eight lovely bakeries within a ten minute walk of my flat in Denmark, and on weekends they are filled with people stocking up on cakes and bread. Casual high street bakeries are something I can remember from my childhood in Ireland, but they are few and far between these days. Bakeries are starting up again in Dublin now, but they tend to be more for special occasions than everyday.My favourite Aarhus bakery is SchweizerBageriet which sells the loveliest pastries. Locals complain about how expensive it is, but for me, spending a euro on a slice of homemade Wienerbrod (the Danish word for what we call a Danish, which they call a Viennese pastry) is a bargain.

In the South of Jutland, home to all of Denmark’s craziest food traditions, they have a traditional coffee and cake afternoon with sixteen homemade cakes. It’s the ironman of baking and eating, in which only the strongest and most disciplined can triumph.

This cake is very rich and decadent despite looking a bit austere. It lasts well in the fridge for a few days but it’s nicest when fresh.  Traditionally it is just made with almonds, but I ran out, and had some hazelnuts knocking around and I think the combination worked well. It could be great with some toasted pine nuts as well.Serve with crème fraîche, if that’s your kind of thing.

Ingredients

Cake

• 75ml buttermilk
• 75g butter
• 3 eggs
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 150g plain/cream flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• A pinch salt

Topping

• 150g mixed hazelnuts and flaked almonds
• 125g butter
• 125g brown sugar
• 50ml milk
• 1/2 tsp salt

Method

• Preheat your oven to 160 C.
• When it heats up a bit, toast the almonds on a baking sheet until golden 8-10 minutes (keep an eye that they don’t burn).
• Toast the hazelnuts in a saucepan over medium heat, then roll around in a tea towel roughly to remove the skins.
• Roughly chop the hazelnuts.
• Melt the butter for the cake in a saucepan, then allow to cool.
• Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla together for a few minutes in a bowl big enough for all the cake ingredients until they are dense, increased in volume and a light yellow-cream colour.
• Mix the flour, baking powder and salt together in another bowl.
• Sift in about 1/3 of the flour mix to the egg mix.
• Gently stir together with a spatula.
• Add half the buttermilk, and stir in.
• Sift in the next 1/3 of flour.
• Add the remaining buttermilk.
• Add the last bit of flour, then stir in the melted butter.
• Stir the whole cake mix together gently so it’s well combined.
• Pour into a lined, greased 9″ springform tin.
• Bake until set and starting to brown on top, around 30 minutes.
• While it is baking, make the topping by melting all the ingredients together over a medium heat (you can use the same saucepan from melting the butter for the cake).
• Stir as the ingredients melt and blend together, and allow to bubble for a couple of minutes while stirring.
• Remove the cake from the oven and place on a wire rack.
• Turn up the oven to 200 C.
• Pour the topping over the cake, smoothing the nuts evenly over the cake surface with a knife.
• Bake in the oven for another 5-10 minutes until the topping is dark brown and bubbling.
• Leave to cool on a wire rack in its tin for a few minutes.
• To remove, run a knife around the tin first (yes it is a springform, but the glaze dribbles down the side fusing the edge of the cake to the tin).
• Leave to cool and serve at room temperature.

Incredibly Easy Cheat’s Foccacia

This is a recipe from the Ballymaloe Cookery Course. It would probably cause an Italian baker to cry, but it does not require proofing, can be made, baked and served in 30 minutes, and tastes pretty damn good. It is a variation on Irish soda bread, so it is best eaten fresh.It is light and crispy, plus homemade bread always looks like an impressive effort, so just make it and never tell anyone how easy it was. Focaccia can be plain or made with any variety of flavourings you feel like. I’m a fan of the rosemary and red onion combination, though olive and feta is also good too, so just use this recipe as a base for adding your favourites.

Ingredients

• 450g plain flour
• 1 teaspoon of salt.
• 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 600ml buttermilk
• Olive oil
• Sea salt (optional)
• Rosemary (optional)
• Red onion (optional)

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200°C.
• Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl
• Add the buttermilk in a well in the middle.
• Using a kind of claw like gesture, stir the mixture in circles with your hand.
• Continue to do so until all the mixture has come together.
• It should be soft and not too sticky, so you may have to add more milk or flour, depending on the consistency.
• Mix in the onion and some chopped rosemary (or whatever you choose to use) reserving some to scatter on top.
• Press into an oiled baking tray.
• Top with the remaining onion and rosemary, drizzle with olive oil, and bake for approximately 15 minutes, until golden.
• The bottom of the bread, if tapped, should sound hollow, as an indicator that its cooked through.
• Cool on a wire rack, cut into slices and serve.

Blue Velvet Cupcakes

These are  technically The Hummingbird Bakery’s Red Velvet Cupcakes. However, as red food dye could not be found in my home or hometown for love or money, I decided on blue instead. Who doesn’t like a David Lynch inspired cake? Second, as these were so incredibly amazing when I ate them at the actual Hummingbird Bakery, I decided to follow the recipe religiously. I should have remembered that I am an atheist. If a recipe does something that goes against my instincts, I go with my instinct. I didn’t here, and trusted that plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and vinegar would do the rising trick. It didn’t. These were still lovely. But next time, it will be self-raising flour and baking powder all the way, as that has always given me cupcake results, so that is why I have modified the recipe here. This recipe makes approximately 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients for the icing

• 300g sifted icing sugar
• 50g unsalted butter at room temperature
• 125g cream cheese

Ingredients for the cupcakes

• 60g unsalted butter
• 150g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• 10g cocoa powder
• 10ml blue (or red) food colourin
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 120ml buttermilk
• 150g self-raising flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Ingredients for the coloured sugar

• 1-2 teaspoons blue food dye
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar

Method

• To make the icing beat all the ingredients in an electric mixer forabout 5 minutes at a medium-high speed until light and fluffy. The Hummingbird recipe has a slightly more convoluted way of doing this, but it works fine this way too. The icing can be made ahead of time and refrigerated, just let it soften before actually trying to ice the cakes.
• For the cupcakes, first beat the butter and sugar together on a medium high speed until fluffy.
• Add the egg and mix until well incorporated.
• Mix the dye, cocoa powder and vanilla extract together in a seperate bowl and add to the butter mixture,
• Mix until thoroughly combined and coloured.
• On a slow speed, add in half the buttermilk, beating until combined.
• Add half the flour and beat until combined.
• Repeat until buttermilk and flour are all completely added in.
• Add the baking powder and mix in.
• Beat for another 3 minutes at a high speed.
• Spoon the mixture into paper cases in a twelve hole cupcake tray, and cook at 180°C for approximately 20-25 minutes, until a skewer inserted in comes out clean, and the sponge springs back when pressed.
• Leave to cool on a wire rack completely before icing.
• To make the decorative sugar, place in a sandwich bag with some food dye.
• Seal the bag and rub the sugar around in it until the colour is evenly distributed. If you want a darker colour, add more dye.

Photo courtesy of the lovely Caoileann Appleby

Lemon, Cinnamon and Cranberry Biscuits

I have been going a little bit baking crazy since being reunited with an oven after one and a half years using a glorified bunsen burner to cook all meals.These biscuits are the first thing I ever baked when I was a child, and they are literally 100% foolproof.  They are so much more than the sum of the ingredients. They are the perfect soft, buttery, rich shortbread-esque biscuits. Every time I make these for someone I am quizzed for the recipe, and every time I give it, they are surprised by how simple it is. Four basic ingredients and a mixer.  The original recipe just has the lemon rind. I have added in the cinnamon and dried cranberries, but really this recipe is a great template to play around with. I have also substituted some grated ginger root for the lemon with lovely results. You could add in chocolate, hazelnuts, blueberries. Whatever comes to mind really. This makes about 20 biscuits, depending on what size you make them.

Ingredients

• 275g self-raising flour
• 100g caster sugar
• 225g butter
• grated rind of 1 lemon
• 3 teaspoons dried cinnamon
• Handful of dried cranberries

 

Method

• Mix all the ingredients together in a standing mixer until they form a dough (if you are trying this with non-dried fruit, I’d advise stirring it in at the end instead).
• Roll into little balls in the palm of your hand and flatten with your hand onto a greased baking tray (leave some space between, these will spread out faster than a cat in front of a fire).
• Bake at 180° for 10-15 minutes until they are starting to turn golden.
• Remove and cool on a wire rack.
• Yep, it’s that easy.

Moro’s Seville Orange Tart

The Moro Cookbooks have been on my favourites list for many years now. You can tell this by the multitude of food stains on the nice cream colour of the first book. They are full of interesting and unusual Middle-Eastern, Spanish and North African recipes that you really won’t see elsewhere. So when I finally got to go a chance to go to Moro in Clerkenwell two weeks ago, I jumped at it. Generously portioned, exquisite mains left me unable to muster the strength for dessert, but my dining companion, whose slim figure hides an astounding appetite, managed to struggle this down and I had  a taste. It was fantastic. It is basically a Tart Au Citron, but using bitter Seville oranges instead of the usual lemon. Seville oranges are the ones you make marmalade out of, and are in season in December and January. If you ever get a chance to visit Seville during this time, you will literally see them on every tree. The cathedral even has an orange grove at the side, which is stunningly beautiful. This recipe was a tad complicated, but definitely worth the effort. I addied on some candied orange peel for decoration, but this isn’t strictly necessary. Serves 6.

Ingredients:

• Pastry
• 140g plain flour
• 30g icing sugar
• 75g chilled butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 egg yolk
• Filling
• 140g caster sugar
• 170ml Seville orange juice (approx. 6-7 oranges)
• 170g unsalted butter
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon grated orange zest
• Candied Peel
• peel of one orange
• 35g sugar
• orange juice

Method

• To make the pastry first sift the flour and icing sugar together.
• Add the butter and mix in a food processor until you have a fine breadcrumb texture.
• Add the egg yolk and mix until the ingredients come together (you might have to carefully add a small amount of water or milk for this to happen, I certainly did, do it tablespoon by tablespoon).
• Shape into a ball, flatten and refrigerate for at least 1 hour (i did it overnight and it was fine).
• Here my experience differed a bit from the recipe. They said to grate the pastry, as it would be quite solid, and press into a 24cm tart tin (preferably one with a loose bottom). Mine was soft enough to role out and line the tin with. It should be 3-5mm of thickness. Each to their own. My advice would be to not trim the pastry until
• Leave it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.
• Bake the shell on a preheated baking tray in the over at 220°c for 10-15 minutes until light brown.
• Cool in the tin on a wire rack.
• Meanwhile, to make the curd, cook all the ingredients slowly and over a low heat in a saucepan for approximately 20 minutes. Here, I ran into a problem. Despite the low heat, the egg whites managed to cook faster than the other ingredients, and appeared in fried rice esque lumps in the mixture. I sieved them out, returned the mixture to a new saucepan and continued. It thickened fine and worked out perfectly.
• It does take a while to thicken, give it time.
• Once thickened, spread the curd into the prebaked tart shell and bake at 240°c for 10 minutes on the top shelf until it starts to colour.
• Cool on a rack.
• To make the candied peel, julienne (very finely slice) the peel.
• Cook in a pan with a 100ml mix of orange juice and water (whatever proportions you have to hand are fine, it doesn’t even have to be juice from Seville oranges) and the sugar for 15-20 minutes until the liquid is reduced by 1/3 to a syrupy consistency.
• Serve in slices with cream or creme fraiche and the candied peel and syrup on top.

Two Foodie Reasons to Visit Portobello Road

© Copyright Danny Robinson and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

So, on my recent visit to London,  I made my usual pilgrimage to the Portobello Road market. For those who are wondering what this is, its basically (in my opinion anyway) one of London’s best clothes/jewelry/vintage markets all along the Portobello Road in  Notting Hill. It is generally viewed as a fashionista’s go to place. However, its foodie credentials are less well publicised, despite it being the home of two of my favourite places- The Humingbird Bakery and Books for Cooks.

The Hummingbird Bakery is an American style bakery will all the classic cupcakes, brownies, bars etc. Its red velvet cupcake was hands down the best experience I have had in 2011 (and last weekend I had not one, but two kittens to play with, just to give an idea of scale). While I always love red velvet cake at first, it tends to be a rollercoaster experience that turns from love to hate and nausea after 3-4 bites. This one was amazing, light red sponge, with a rich and creamy frosting, but not so rich or sweet as to be sickening.  The bakery is also fantastic for having a good range of gluten free cakes (coeliac disease is a big problem in Ireland, and having several friends with it, I am very aware of how many amazing food experiences they are missing out on). It also has an amazing cookbook with some fairly epic food porn. (They also have two more branches in Soho and Kensington if you can’t quite make it out this far west).

The second reason to visit is the Books for Cooks shops just off Portobello Road. The name pretty much says it all, it is a cookery book shop with an amazing range, and a test kitchen at the back where they serve different food every day. The selection is very impressive, and the staff happily will leaf through books with you to find a recipe you are looking for. I am almost scared to visit because I know I will leave with another twenty books on my wishlist. They also do great slim paperback volumes of their favourite recipes for a very reasonable £5.99. If you are a cookbook hoarder like me, this is definitely the place to go.

The Hummingbird Bakery

133 Portobello Road,Notting Hill, London W11 2DY

http://www.hummingbirdbakery.com

Books for Cooks,

4 Blenheim Crescent, Notting Hill, London, W11 1NN

http://www.booksforcooks.com

Union Square Cafe Marbled Fudge Brownies

Despite it being ten years since I went, the Union Square Cafe still lingers as a restaurant with nothing but positive associations in my memory, and will be top of my list if I ever manage to make it back to New York. This memory has probably been stimulated by the purchase by my parents (I was 15 at the time, and intent on spending my money in Sephora) of their cookbook, which I have probably read a few dozen times. These particular brownies appealed out of some aesthetic fascination with marbling, combined probably with them being the only thing 15 year old me wasn’t too intimidated to cook in the book. The marbling is created using a kind of cheesecake mixture, and amazingly manages to hold well through the baking process .They are the exact right kind of squidgy, gooey brownie (dry brownies are my pet hate, so close to perfection, and yet so so far). They are also quite elegant looking, and with some creme anglaise could definitely double as a posh dessert. For my part, I tend to whip them out for birthdays where it is difficult to transport a cake (some day, I will learn to drive, and everyone will get birthday cakes).

Ingredients

Fudge Mix

• 122g dark chocolate
• 135g unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 170 g caster sugar
• 100g cream flour
• pinch of salt

Cheesecake mix

• 55g sugar
• 215g cream cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 1 egg

Method

• Preheat oven to 180°.
• Melt the chocolate and butter in a bain marie, stirring to combine.
• Whisk the eggs and sugar for the fudge mix together in a large bowl until well combined but not increased in size.
• Add the melted chocolate to this, and stir well.
• Add the flower and blend with the other ingredients.
• To make the cheesecake mix, cream the sugar and cream cheese together, preferably using a standing mixer, but a hand held blender would probably manage.
• Add the egg and vanilla and stir until combined.
• Pour the chocolate mix into a buttered and lined 8″ brownie tin.
• Pour in the cheesecake mix and swirl with a fork to create a marbling pattern (be careful not to swirl too much and blend it in)
• Bake for approximately 30-40 minutes (start testing with a fork or scewer from 30 on every few minutes, if necessary covering with tin foil to prevent the top burning).
• Cool on a rack for 15 minutes before unmolding.
• Cut into squares and serve.
• The union square cookbook suggests doing these in individual moulds. My experience is however that people tend to prefer the centre to the edge pieces of brownies. Thus I usually prepare these in a big tin, and trim the edge pieces off. But each to their own.