May Day Crullers

These are great fun!!

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• flour
• milk
• yeast
• icing Sugar
• lemon juice and zest

Get the yeast going and add the egg and flour to it. Add the milk to make a batter like thick cream [or stirred Greek yoghurt]

Put the batter into a polythene bag and cut off one of the bottom corners of the bag with scissors. [about a 0.25cm hole].

Heat some high temperature oil in a frying pan, about 1cm deep and squeeze some of the cruller mixture into it. Make the traditional pretzel knot shape or, errrrr some other shape 'to taste'.

When cooked, drain the oil, sprinkle with icing sugar and drip with lemon juice. Allow to cool and eat with an ice cold vodka chaser.

Peaches in brandy

This used to be very popular with tw and sj as a boat based dessert.

Cut fresh peaches in half and remove the stones. Place cut side up in a pyrex dish and place under a high grill until the peaches show signs of browning.

Remove and sprinkle liberally with sugar and dowse with cheap brandy [or something]. Return to the grill until the sugar starts to caramelise or the brandy bursts into flames or both.

Serve with Greek yogurt.

Izzy's sand tarts

One summer spent near Toronto, we used to buy Izzy's sand tarts from the local bakery. These were just like my mother's syrup tarts only a bit deeper.

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons white bread crumbs
• finely grated rind of 1 lemon
• lemon juice
• short crust pastry
• 6 tablespoons Golden Syrup

Put the syrup into a saucepan with the bread crumbs, lemon rind and juice and heat gently until just melted. Cool.

To get a more 'sandy' texture, fry the breadcrumbs in a little oil or put under the grill before use.

Roll out the pastry and line a pie dish with it. Pour in the syrup mixture.

Roll out the pastry trimmings and cut into long, narrow strips. Arrange them in a lattice pattern over the filling.

Bake in a moderately hot oven (400° F, 200 C) for 25 to 30 min or until the pastry is slightly browned.

Scones

Ingredients

• 4 oz butter [120g]
• 3 oz sugar [80g]
• 1 lb flour [500g]
• teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• salt
• 6 oz [200g] dried fruit but that I always slip with this measurement
• 12 - 14 fl oz [330ml - 360ml, 330gm - 360gm] milk, 12 fluid oz if you want to shape with a cookie cutter, even better made with sour milk

You can use self raising flour or baking powder instead of the bicarb and tartaric acid. None of these shortcuts are much use on Cribbit as none survive active for very long in the damp.

Rub the butter into the sugar and then add the flour and mixed fruit.

Now I have digital scales [how the boy has fallen!] its so easy as you just bang everything in the bowl after the butter and sugar are mixed and then add the milk by weight and not volume. grammes for millilitres.

Mix together and bake in oven until done, about 25 minutes. [350F 180C]

The metric version makes about 14 scones, 12 from the Imperial measurements.

Christmas Pudding

Tw and I spent our first Christmas on Cribbit in 1993, he joined me at the end of term and we had much discussion as to what our Christmas menu should be. We settled on his choice which was pizza, and we had a good hot one, and Christmas pudding. This presented a bit of a problem as we only had days not months to go, so we surfed up this recipe which does not need to mature so long.

Ingredients

• 50g/2oz/1/3 cup glace cherries
• 225g/8oz/2cups sultanas
• 225g/8oz/2cups raisins
• 50g/2oz/1/2cup dried apricots
• 50g/2oz/1/2cup candied peel
• 3 tsps nutmeg, cinnamon and mixed spices
• 75g/3oz/2/3cup ground almonds
• salt
• 100g/4oz/2/3cup Demerara sugar
• 200g/7oz/13/4cup butter
• 75g/3oz/11/2 cups bread crumbs
• juice and jest of 1 orange and 1 lemon
• 2 eggs
• 3 tbs brandy
• 2 tbs milk

Mix the fruit, nuts, sugar, spices and breadcrumbs together and rub in the butter. Beat together the wet ingredients and add to the fruit and stir well with many wishes. Transfer into well buttered pudding basin. There must be room for the pudding to expand. Cover and boil in a water bath for at least 4 hours.

On Christmas day boil up again for 1-2 hours.

Turn out and serve with flaming brandy.

Honey cake

  Hot from the oven

Actually, I call this Ann's honey cake, this is because she gave me the recipe and because she made it often in her last couple of years and I always think of her when I make it. It is quite simple to make, which is why she could manage it and I'm afraid to say that that is what I like about it too, being just about within my capabilities in cake baking.

Ingredients

• 170g clear honey
• 140g butter
• 85g light muscovado sugar
• 2 eggs beaten
• 200g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• icing sugar to dust

Pre-heat oven to 160 C and butter a 18cm diameter cake tin.
Measure the honey, butter and sugar into a large pan. Add a tablespoon of water and heat gently until melted.
Remove from the heat and mix in the eggs, flour and baking powder.
Spoon into the cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until the cake is springy to the touch and shrinking slightly from the sides of the tin.
Cool in the tin and then turn out onto a wire rack.


Either ice the cake with icing sugar, more honey and warm water OR dust with icing sugar.

  Done and dusted

Ginger Biscuits

These used to be a favourite when we lived on Grand Island and didn't have to worry too much about our waistlines. It's a recipe that evolved from an original in Joy of Cooking. As its American, its units of measurement are cups which are a real pain when you try to measure butter so I've converted it to metric pounds.

Ingredients

• ¾ cup or 6 oz butter
• Cream 1½ cups of sugar with the butter and stir in:
• 2 well beaten eggs
• 2 tablespoons of vinegar
• ½ cup syrup
• Sift and add
• 3¾ cups flour
• 1½ teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
• 4 teaspoons ginger
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon mace or nutmeg if not available
• crystallised or stem ginger

Adjust the spices to taste. The solid pieces of ginger are excellent.

Mix the ingredients. Drop in blobs on a greased cookie sheet and bake for about 12 minutes at 325F [165C].

1 cup of butter is 8oz, so ¾ cup 6oz so its ¾ of a half a pound block of butter or a bit less of a 250g metric block of butter.

If using British syrup, dilute it with its own volume of water to get the equivalent of American syrup.

Body centred cubic to get the most on the tray

One thing I do miss is my BIG American oven and oven trays, when we first came back, baking biscuits used to take all day on our minute cookie trays. Even now, with a bigger oven, it still takes twice as long as it used to in the US

It used to be quite difficult to find mace in British shops, I'm told it is made from the outer layer of the nutmeg. Nutmeg is quite suitable as an alternative. I have noticed that mace is available in Asda now they are 'part of the Walmart family' and they also have other US type ingredients as well. They are less strong when it comes to continental europe ingredients though.

On one memorable occasion, I found that we had no bicarbonate of soda, its purpose is to react with the vinegar to generate carbon dioxide so the cookies rise. So what else could I use instead? Well Rennies [antacid tablets] are meant for just the same job and maybe their pepperminty flavour will work well with the ginger. Well let me tell you IT DID NOT!