Flapjack Treacle Tart

In which I bake a traditional recipe with a twist that makes it faster…

Prep time: 35 minutes (only 5 minutes with pre-bought pastry) Cook Time: 30 minutes.

Much as I adore a traditional treacle tart I often find it takes a little longer to make than I’d like. I decided to speed it up a bit with some inspiration from my mother’s quick treacle tart recipe and one of my other favourite desserts: flapjacks.

Ingredients

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

• 90 g butter (softened)

• 65 g caster sugar

• 3 egg yolks

• 200 g plain flour

Filling

• 200 g porridge oats

• 115 g butter

• 115 g soft brown sugar

• 2 tbsp & 2 tsp golden syrup

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven to 190°C (170°C for a fan oven).

2. To make the pastry: cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

3. Add the egg yolks one at a time while beating into the creamed sugar.

4. Mix in the flour to make a ball of dough and then knead until it sticks together.

5. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes before using.

6. Once the pastry is ready, roll it out and make sure it will fit into a tart dish.

7. Grease the dish then place the pastry into it.

8. Blind bake the pastry for 10-15 minutes. While you are waiting for that you can move on to the filling.

9. To make the filling: heat the golden syrup, sugar and butter in a saucepan until they melt together.

10. Remove from the heat and stir in the oats.

11. Combining: pour the oat mixture into the pastry case.

12. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the filling is bubbling.

13. Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little before serving.

14. Enjoy hot and ideally with a scoop of ice cream or clotted cream.

Variations

To make this recipe vegan just switch the pastry for vegan pastry (you’ll find most pastry in your supermarket is vegan these days). Then, for the filling, just make my Vegan Flapjack recipe instead (you’ll need about 2/3rds of the recipe).

Cream the butter and sugar

Knead into a ball and chill

Cut the pastry to size

Press the pastry into the dish

Blind bake the pastry

Melt the sugar, golden syrup and butter together

Mix in the oats

Add the mixture to the pastry case

Allow it to cool slightly

Tom Out!

References

[1] BBC Food: Pâte sucrée (sweet shortcrust pastry)

[2] TTSS: Vegan Flapjacks

Vanilla & Chocolate Cheesecake

In which a vanilla and chocolate cheesecake is made ahead of tea testing...

Obviously tea testing requires suitable cake (someone else was already making scones for it) so a decadent cheesecake was required :)

Ingredients

• 175g caster sugar
• 450g cream cheese
• vanilla pod
• 75ml lemon juice
• 175ml crème fraiche
• 625ml double cream
• 150g dark chocolate
• 25g butter
• 12 dark chocolate HobNobs

Recipe

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1. Crush your biscuits of choice (HobNobs :D ) with a rolling pin.
2. Melt butter.
3. Mix.
4. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch cake tin.
5. Chill in fridge while preparing filling.
6. Cut the vanilla pod open and scrape out the seeds.
7. Mix the sugar, cream cheese and vanilla seeds together.
8. Whisk lemon juice, 475 ml cream and crème fraiche until they form soft peaks.
9. Fold the mixtures together.
10. Melt dark chocolate into remaining cream.
11. Cool until you can make a trail with it.
12. Put a third of the cheese mix into the base.
13. Swirl chocolate mix on top.
14. Repeat until all the filling has been used.
15. Use a sharp knife/long cocktail stick to swirl the mixtures together.
16. Chill for approx 5 hours (I did overnight).
17. Enjoy!

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Cheesecake

Tom Out!

P.S. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/11296/gordons-cheesecake

Pudding Party!

Those puddings in full...

Enjoy the glorious pudding party pictures!

See my earlier post for the recipe for Bruce Bogtrotter's Cake :)

Tom Out!

Bruce Bogtrotter's Cake

In which I make a ridonculously chocolaty cake from a possibly recognisable children's book...

I'm sure many of you will have read/seen Matilda by Roald Dahl. There is a famous scene in which Bruce Bogtrotter having stolen some of the Trunchbull's personal cake is forced to eat an entire chocolate cake.

Luckily Gary Rhodes (you know that TV chef you haven't seen in a while) wrote a recipe book called Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes which tells you how to bake a slightly smaller version of the cake.*

*The cake in the book is "fully eighteen inches in diameter". The original recipe makes a 9" cake so I doubled the ingredients and made it twice as high!

Ingredients

• 450g plain dark chocolate
• 350g butter
• 450g caster sugar
• 120g self raising flour
• 12 eggs (separated)

Icing

• 450g plain dark chocolate
• 450ml double cream

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Chocolate!

Recipe

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Mixing choc and butter

• Melt the chocolate and butter together.
• Allow to cool (so it doesn't cook the eggs).
• Mix in sugar, flour and egg yolks.

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Stiff peaks in the egg whites

• Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks are formed.

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Mixing the eggs into the chocolate

• Fold half of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture.
• Fold in the other half until just combined.
• Grease two 9-inch (21 cm) cake tins.
• Bake at 150°C for 35-45 minutes (keep checking with a knife and don't burn it!)
• Leave to cool on a rack while you make the icing.
• To make the icing simply melt the chocolate into the cream over a low heat.
• Leave the icing to cool (~2 hours unless you speed it up in a fridge)
• Ice the cake (you should have around half an inch of coverage all over)
• Serve

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Bruce Bogtrotter's Cake

Tom Out!

P.S. Pudding party pics to follow!

Regular 4-sided polygons flavoured with the seed of Theobroma cacao (aka Brownies)

In which I bake brownies and try to imitate the inimitable Wade...

On Sunday I tasted a brownie and it was good. I asked Wade for the recipe. For those who have never enjoyed a Wade email (he was ManSSAGO secretary) I will try to write this in a similar way to this wonderful worldly wordy wordsmith!

Culinary Necessities (some optional)*

• 250g dark chocolate

• 200g butter

• 150g brown sugar

• 350g caster sugar

• 2 tbsp golden syrup

• 4 eggs

• 1-2 tsp vanilla essence (optional)

• 200g self raising flour

• an arbitrary amount of cocoa (1-2 tbsp)

*The chef points out that this recipe scales linearly if you want more or less of it

Mostly Non-arbitrary Techniques to Employ in Some Form of List-like Order

• Apply heat in a manner which causes gentle merging of constituent parts (Melt)

• Enjoy in an olfactory manner

• Agitate (whisk) the ovoid ovums (eggs)

• Mix in the chocolate ecstasy (allow to cool first, you don't want to cook the eggs)

• Sieve in ground wheat (flour) and the seed of Theobroma cacao (cocoa)

• Fold it in

• Apply grease resistant flat tree matter (greaseproof paper) to a containment device (It's a TRAY!)

• Chuck in the oven at an arbitrary place on the Celsius scale (~200°C)

• Allow the passage of multiple time units (30-40 mins) until stodgy (knife not entirely clean when stabbed through)

• Let it return to near room temp

• Enjoy with your sense of gustatory perception

Remember, Remember

On the subject of verbose verbiage we're only a day late for one of the best speeches ever:

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villian by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengence; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V."

Tom Out!

P.S. V for Vendetta: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film)

Red Velvet Cake

In which I shamelessly bow to the whims of the masses (one person who replied) and make red velvet cake.

Ingredients

• 650g butter

• 650g caster sugar

• 10 eggs

• 1 tbsp vanilla essence

• 650g self raising flour

• 75g cocoa powder

• 70ml red food colouring

• 300g icing sugar [icing]†

• 500g butter [icing]†

• blue food colouring [icing]†

†I generally just make the icing by eye so these aren't accurate measurements.

How-to

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1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C.

2. Cream butter and sugar together.*

3. Beat in a ⅓ of the eggs, a ⅓ of the flour and the vanilla essence.

4. Beat in the second third of eggs and flour.

5. Beat in the cocoa and remaining eggs and flour.

6. Add the food colouring.

7. Mix thoroughly.

8. Grease two 9'' round cake tins.

9. Place half the mixture in each tin.

10. Bake for 1 hr 15 mins (use your judgement mine took a little longer).

11. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Icing

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1. Cream the icing sugar and butter together.

2. Add blue food colouring.

3. Mix well.

4. Apply liberally to your cake.

5. Enjoy :)

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*You will need a LARGE bowl!

Tom Out!

P.S. Based on: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/three-tier_red_velvet_17795