the secret of the cinnamon roll

many of you will know - an possibly share my addiction to pinterest. i also have an addiction to cinnamon buns ever since a trip to san francisco let us to the gorgeous little store called molly stones in sausalito.  i am always on the lookout for a cinnamon bun that replicates that molly stones taste. i have tried many but i think i have found it ...........and ahem.....its not a made from scratch (she says slightly red faced!)

 it starts with a pack of jus rol croissant dough - to be found in the chiller cabinet next to pastry!
roll it out flat (dont separate it into triangles) and spread it with butter and sprinkle liberally with soft brown sugar mixed with a teaspoon or 2 of cinnamon.

 roll it up like a sausage and chop into rings.
put a ring in each hole of a mini muffin tin - i am especially fond of  this one with 24 holes

bake them in a hot oven, and take them out of the tin as soon as they are done - or they weld themselves to it! (top tip, don't ice them in the tin or you"ll have to eat them out of the tin with a spoon!)

put them on a plate and dribble with icing made with icing sugar, a teaspoon or 2 of maple syrup and a teaspoon or two of milk and a little pinch of cinnamon.

eat while still warm and enjoy!!!

lovely lemon curd

image from pinterest

 the greengrocers had piles of lemons and limes  for £1 last week, so i couldn't resist making a big batch of lemon curd. I had been wanting to try making a desert from Annabel Lagbeins book 'the free range cook' - which is a current favourite in our house, she mixes home made lemon curd with whipped cream and sandwiches it into a choux pastry ting with sliced strawberries. i did make it but it was all eaten before i had chance to take a photo! so instead here is annabels recipe for lemon curd, you can buy the book here - it is fab!

lemon curd

375g caster sugar

220g diced butter

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

juice of about 6 lemons

6 eggs

you are supposed to make this in a bain marie but i am a lay wotsit and made it in a pan on a very low heat!

place the butter, sugar, lemon juice and zest in a pan or bain marie and heat gently till the butter has melted. whisk the eggs and stir them in , cook gently storing all the time till the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon - it is ready when you can draw a line along the back of the spoon and it doesn't fill back in with liquid. - it takes about 5mins.

remove from the heat, and pour it through a sieve into sterilised jars (i think this is worth doing as it gets rid of any scramble bits and also of the eggy bits known in our house as egg bogies!!)

slather onto buttered toast, or fold in to cream, it makes a fab dessert spooned into pastry tart shells , or dolloped onto a shortbread biscuit with a scoop of creme fraiche and a tumble of raspberries.

cinnamon buns inspired by san francisco

 Ever since visiting Molly Stones in Sausalito i have been on the quest for a perfect "molly stones cinnamon bun" to make here.
I have had many attempts, some too doughy, some too bready, some not sweet enough, some too sweet.
Anyway with an amalgamation of a load of recipes and a lot of experimenting , i think i am there (18 were snaffled in a flash so i think they were ok!!)

also the blue stripey fabric in the pic is a sneak peak from my new collection! it is called provence stripe and will launch later in the year.

so my made up recipe is as follows (after the picture)
just a few things first though!
1. it wasn't until i tried baking them in a silicone muffin tin that i got the required squelch factor of the molly stones version ( though they were still delicious when i did them in a round cake tin)
2. i used a bread maker on raisin dough setting to make my dough, as i am impatient and had a million other things to do!
3. i usually make them unto the second rise and then leave them in a cold oven overnight to rise and then bake them when i wake up.

recipe

500g strong white flour

1 sachet of easy blend yeast

1 heap teasp salt

3  heap tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 large free range egg

1 heap tablespoon butter

125ml milk

2 heap tablespoons yoghurt (i used greek because thats what i had, i think you could use any natural - apart from a 0% fat)

1 heap tablespoon marmalade

150g rasins or sultanas

************

1heap tablespoon cinnamon mixed with 3-4 tablespoons soft brown sugar

2 tablespoons softened butter (do not use marg)

************

tip all the ingredients into the bread maker in the order that your machine likes them and set to dough setting on mine this takes 2hrs 40mins.

if making by hand mix the dry ingredients in a roomy bowl, then mix the wet ingredients in a jug, then get messy! pour the wet in to the dry and mix it with your hands till you have a lovely smooth elastic dough. knead it and knead it some more, till the dough feels smooth and silky, then leave in an oiled bowl to rise, tom from hobbs suggests covering your bowl with a shower cap, the ones you get free in hotels! - this is a fab tip. leave to rise till doubled in size, about 1-2 hours depending on how warm it is, i use the airing cupboard or a warming oven.

after its proving tip the dough on to a lightly floured surface and roll out in to an oblong - tricky because it is springy and won't stay where you want it. but do your best to get it long and about 20cm wide. 

spread the dough as best you can with the softened butter - you may need a bit more, i didn't measure i just liberally covered the dough, sprinkle lavishly with the cinnamon sugar.

roll up along the length (difficult to explain but if you have the long side facing you roll in to a long sausage).

slice into spirals about 2cm thick, and pop each spiral in to a silicone muffin tin hole (if you are using a metal one you will probably need to grease it to stop any sticking, or put then in a cake tin with sides about 1cm spaced to allow for their next rise.

leave to rise (i do this overnight) till doubled in size then bake in a hot oven - don't let them catch.

i drizzled mine with icing made with icing sugar, orange juice and cinnamon.

scoff yourself silly!!!

weekend reading

i was rather delighted to see we had been mentioned on Anna's blog she shops local. i follow anna herberts column in our local paper, she is cooking her way through Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking.

Anna is married to the talented baker Tom Herbert of Hobbs house bakery.
and her blog is a lovely read, as she combines cooking with motherhood.

a tenuous link i know but sticking with a bread theme i came across another website, weekend bakery
fabulous photography a real visual treat. also there are some fab bread recipes, both sweet and savoury.
however if you can't be bothered to bake your own head down to hobbs house for the best that money can buy

rose shortbread



sticky cinnamon buns


pizza dough with a poolish

sweet paul and summer seafood

with a trip to cornwall with great friends planned - food is always high on the agenda.
one of the friends is a fabulous chef, so the plan is lots of seafood on the beach. as i have said before you can't beat a nice sustainable sardine! so when i saw these pictures in sweet paul summer issue, i had to share!

Lemon Aid

I've recently become obsessed with making homemade lemonade. On the few hot days that we've had this summer I've realised what a refreshing pick-me-up drink it is, and now that I've dug out the juicer element of my magi mix I've discovered that it's also a quick and easy thing to make with the children. Using the traditional method my mother-in-law told me I make up a sugar syrup (boiling water and loads of sugar) and add this to the freshly squeezed juice of about 6 lemons and voila. To make it into more of a 'treat' drink I add fizzy water and the children are in heaven. A perfect remedy for those tetchy toddlers!

Sticking with tradition, ideally it would then be put in a glass jug with a beaded fabric doyley and kept in the larder but since we were recently invited to a Mad Hatter's Tea Party I couldn't resisit the opportunity to take my latest obsession and to blend it with my love of the wierd and wonderful world of Alice in Wonderland with the tiny bottles and enticing labels.

sustainable sardinery

anyone who watched hugh and jamie et al do their fish fight programme will know that we should all be eating more sustainable fish, indeed we should only be buying sustainable fish. i have not bought tuna since watching the programmes i was so shocked. I come from a fishing family, my maternal grandfather was a trawlerman out of Fleetwood and he was a great believer in sustainability (before it became a buzz word). 

Sardines and mackeral are two perfect examples as they are prolific in our waters. They are also incredibly cheap and tick all of the nutrition boxes. i like them stuffed with a handful of herbs and chargrilled whole, served with a sharp zingy salsa, or a rhubarb or gooseberry compote, zipped up with a star anise, or a big dob of chilli jam.

cup cake competition

When we ran our cupcake competition last year one of the runners up was Lesley from Poppy Greens. Not surprising since she runs her own cup cake business. As well as creating her beautiful cakes, made with eggs from her own free range chickens, she also has a fantastic selection of vintage china for hire and produces bunches of wonderful country cottage flowers. For plenty of inspiration take a look at her gallery.

If inspired then you should enter her competition, she is offering a free place on selected workshops during June and July, but be quick the deadline is tomorrow!

wild garlic pesto

i have been making lots of wild garlic pesto this year as the woods around our house are full of it, it is coming to an end now but if you can find it in a shady spot here is the recipe, an ammended version of a sarah raven one from the garden cookbook.

2 very big handfuls of wild garlic washed and blanched
50g of pinenuts or walnuts (i use walnuts as pinenuts seem ridiculously expensive at the moment!)
lots of olive oil (to get it to the consistancy you like)
1 small clove garlic minced
50g (ish) parmesan or pecorino grated
salt and pepper

squeeze the water out of the blanched wild garlic leaves in a seive,
put the walnuts in the food processor and pulse to break them up.
add the wild garlic, parmesan, minced fresh garlic and a couple of big glugs olive oil.
turn the motor on and pour olive oil in through the funel of the processor till you have the consistancy you like.
check for seasoning.

i have used it on pasta, under the skin of a roast chicken, on top of a chargrilled chicken breast, and dribbled over roasted peppers. it is really good.

ps do you like my spoon - a great charity shop find.........

seville oranges

since we moved from london to the country 10 years ago, there has been a gradual shift in my cooking. we are blessed with an amazing greengrocers nearby, (along with 2 butchers, a farmers market, a fab deli and fishmongers and a branch of hobbs house bakery - not bad for a tiny town , more of a big village!!!!). Anyway the shift has been towards a more seasonal type of cooking, I have stopped eating asparagus all through the year and instead gorge myself on it in may and june, the same for strawberries. It wasn't a conscious ethical thing, its more of a seduction by the greengrocer!! when the display outside is loaded with squeeky bright puple red cabbages, and stacks of local leeks, and scented piles of seville oranges I just can't bring myself not to cook them. my mother in law makes the most fabulous seville orange marmalade, I always buy loads of seville oranges in january and february, but never seem to get around to making marmalade! well this week i bought some, got the marmalade recipe, and then used them to make a version of a lemon tart!!! I have to say it was a great success - as the picture shows -there was only this sliver left the following morning - and that was only because it was wrestled from Miss B's grip on sunday night (I suggested that a third portion would render her with a bum the size of mine!!!)
recipe below

pastry
150g plain flour
150g softened butter
75g cornflour
75g icing sugar
zest 1/2 seville orange

blitz all this in a processor till it makes a soft shortbread  type dough, chill then roll out between 2 sheets of cling film (a great tip!!) line a tart tin with it (chill again it allegedly stops it shrinking - pastry is not my strong suit and i never get it right!) prick the base, put greaseproof and baking beans over the pastry and bake blind for 8-12mins, remove greaseproof and beans and put back in oven for 3mins.

filling
zest of 1 1/2 seville oranges
juice of 2 seville oranges and 1 lemon
3 eggs
180ml double cream
160g golden caster sugar
1 teasp vanilla extract

whisk all of the filling ingredients together in a jug, put the tart tin on a baking sheet in the oven and pour in the filling (this stops it spilling everywhere when you are trying to manoeuvre a full tin from the worktop to the oven!!) and bake for 20-25mins till softly set with a little wobble. cool, dust with icing sugar and scoff!!

perhaps i will try marmalade later this week.............

escape to the sun

Well, I don't know what has happened to the last month. For me the chaos of Christmas and New Year was enough to deal with and I was looking forward to the respite that January usually brings. However with baby's 3rd birthday on the Bank Holiday Monday and the arrival of an 8 week old puppy two days later the return to school has not brought all the free time I was hoping for.

One thing we have found time for is our New Year ritual of ignoring the dull, grey days outside and planning the year ahead and the various holidays we would like to go on! We obviously wont be going to Stockholm, Brittany, Prague, Istanbul, Geneva, Paris, Greece, Gozo and Morrocco this year. In fact we'll be lucky with a trip to the Lake District but there is nothing wrong with dreaming of the sun!

But back to reality and tonight I'm out to supper to celebrate a friends birthday and I've been asked to take some food, specifically this aubergine salad. It truly transports you to balmier climates and the aromas that fill the kitchen whilst you cook it are amazing. I love it for the fact it is far better made at least a day in advance, getting tastier every 24 hours and I often incorporate it as part of a huge meditarrenean style feast with a slow roast lamb and a selection of food from one of my favourite cook books, Falling Cloudberries, by Tessa Kiros (I did this for my sister's hen night).

Sarah and I were introduced to this recipe by one of our NCT group (we were very lucky to have had an NCT group full of good cooks!). It was originally a Delia Smith recipe, but I've adapted it to make it quicker to make, as follows:

You need:
1 aubergine
1 can tomatoes
1 onion
some garlic
olive oil
chilli
1 teaspoon of allspice berries
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
some fresh mint, flat leaf parsley and coriander

1. Cut the aubergine into small cubes, cover in olive oil and roast in the oven till cooked (40 mins to an hour)
   
2. Dry roast the cumin seeds and allspice berries (in a saucepan on the hob), when they start jumping around take them off and bash them into a powder in a pestle and mortar
3. Fry onions, garlic and chilli till soft
4. Add tomatoes, aubergine and crushed spices, then salt, pepper and fresh herbs
   
5. simmer for 5 mins then store in the fridge over night

Serve with Greek Yoghurt and flat breads and imagine you are somewhere else.

butternut squash and chestnut soup

Today was a beautiful winters day. We woke up to a hard frost which thawed into a glorious, crisp, clear, sunny day. Perfect for striding across the common rather than shopping in Sainsburys! This sign that winter is truly on its way led me into the kitchen at lunchtime to make one of my favourite soups. It has such a thick, velvety texture its irresistible and now I've enough to last me a couple more frosty days.

To make:

Soften 1 medium onion in a pan

Add a peeled and diced butternut squash, pour over some water (enough to soften the squash in but not too much water as the texture is part of the appeal of this soup) salt, pepper, some herbs and a stock cube

Add the secret weapon, a can of Merchant Gourmet's pureed chestnuts (available in most supermarkets). Bring to the boil and let bubble gently till the squash has cooked, then whizz in the blitzer to make smooth.

This is how I make it as hubby is vegetarian, then I add bits of bacon and pumpkin seeds as decoration. For those who do appreciate the flavour of meat, add some lardons when you are frying the onions it makes the soup taste even better

pink pasta

My great friend Heather from eggs, cream, honey posted a fabulous recipe for chocolate, beetroot, loaf cake, and it put me in mind about what an underrated vegetable the humble beetroot is. It was sarah ravens garden book that got me back into beetroot, childhood memories of ghastly vinegared stuff staining the plate and the palate had rather put me off. Anyway my kids are very keen on gino de campo's recipe for beetroot potato cakes with smoked salmon (though they like a fried egg on the  top in place of, or as well  of the salmon), and i am very keen on htem roasted with garlic and olive oil, then blitzed with greek yoghurt and feta for a vivid dip. But quite the most exciting thing we've done recently is PINK PASTA!!

Miss B and I made a basic pasta dough - I can't give you quantities just mix 2 eggs and tipo 00  flour till the consistancy is right, it should be firm and elastic, then add some pureed roasted beetroot and knead it in. It is gloriously streakily fuchsia coloured to start with, then softens to a beautiful deep pink. ~(I know the pasta machine ids the least used kitchen gadget - but it does keep children amused for a considerable time as it has all the requisite qualities for an afternnon in the school hols - messy, creative and edible!)

keep pushing it through the pasta machine till it feels right. we turned ours in to taglietelle, which was very popular for a girly tea!

perfect peaches

I happened to come across a bag of what must have totalled 2kg of these delightful 'donut' peaches in our local greengrocers. They weren't perfect and so were reduced to £1 for the whole bag. Anyway not one to miss a bargain I had to buy them (and then think of what to do with them!!)

so ......peach and raspberry jam (equal quantities of chopped fruit and sugar, the juice of half a lemon boiled hard for about 4minutes then tipped into a sterilized jar).

and peach and strawberry pavlova using a big version of the ottolenghi merengues, we also had peach,parma ham, rocket and mozerella salad twice but both times it was eaten before i could take the photo!!!!!

pretty in pink

Sarah and I are both suckers for packaging and yesterday Hubby returned from a weekend away with a prize example. I'm not generally a fan of carnations. To me the mere word conjours up images of single, folorn stems on cafe tables and last ditch attempts at flower buying in a petrol station. However, packaged up nicely and it's a completely different story.

These pinks, wrapped simply in brown paper with an acid green bow of raffia are beautiful. In fact I can't bring myself to unwrap them. I even decided that they would make a very charming, rustic bouquet for young bridesmaids to carry. How fickle I am!

And whilst on the subject of pink and packaging look at these amazing fairy cakes a friend made me for my birthday. My eyes practically popped out of their sockets when I was presented with a box of 16 of these. Handmade, these truly were a work of art and tasted delicious too.

sloe gin

It's a good time of year for hedgerow pickings and whilst out on a family walk this weekend we discovered endless bushes of sloes. Well Hubby and I both enjoy our Gin & Tonics but I've never made my own Sloe Gin, but with such an abundance of the fruit to hand we picked ferociously. Tonight I sat at the kitchen table with a pin, pricking all the sloes and putting them in kilner jars. I used roughly 300 g caster sugar, 400 g sloes and a 70 cl bottle of Gin per mixture. Now the jars are resting in a dark cupboard, I need to turn them every few days until all the sugar has dissolved and then wait. Hopefully it will be perfect just in time for Christmas.

simple sprat supper

Going to the super market during the Summer holidays is disastrous. Trying to navigate a trolley full of food and 3 young children is not at all fun, and I try to avoid it. But my aversion to shopping, along with the fact that we've hardly been home in the last 4 weeks means our cupboards are about as baron as Old Mother Hubbards.

We do need to eat however, so yesterday I whizzed in to buy a couple of meals to keep us going, anything cheap and easy. Then we spied the fish counter and there, lying in a bed of ice, were hundreds of shiny Sprats.

We ate and enjoyed Sprats as children but I had forgotten all about them. Smaller than sardines, but larger than whitebait, they are great grilled on both sides and then eaten whole. So tonight we ate a simple but delicious supper of Sprats, with lemon mayonnaise, chips and home grown salad. How could you go wrong?

tiny hands and home grown potatoes

early in the year we set off to dundry nurseries in cheltenham to choose our seed potatoes for the year. It is a ritual, i am not really sure that it is a money saving thing by the time you have bought potato grow bags and watered etc. however the children love it, they really love the whole thing of growing a bucketful of potatoes.

this year we have gone red (can't remember which) white (charlotte) and blue (salad blue),

and with great excitement we tipped out our first bucket and had about 25 yummy charlotte potatoes. the children have scoffed roast chicken and new potatoes, salad nicoise and ham fried eggs and new potatoes with great gusto this week!

Viva Italia

We had great plans of day trips to Florence, Sienna and wondering around the shady cobbled streets of Tuscan villages but after a whistle stop tour of Pisa directly after landing in Italy we realised the heat was far too intense to do anything. So happily we fell into the Italian way of life; long siestas, eating fresh food, and swimming in the sea.


It is amazing how good quality basics can account for the most wonderful time.We were staying on an exclusive (but not ostentatious) estate on the Tuscan Coast. The house was filled with antiques and we slept in a four poster bed with quality old linen sheets and lace trimmed pillow cases (the bedroom was probably the size of our entire house), so sleeping was great.

The Estate had a 3 km private beach, and the sea was fantastically warm and great for swimming. I flounced around the beach in my all-in-one-supermarket swimming costume, somewhat like Gloria from Madagascar, alongside bronzed, svelte, glamorous Italians, and I was happy. Until hubby announced that George Clooney has been known to holiday on the estate!

And the food. Well we never found a nice little village market to mooch around, but it didn't matter because the local supermarket sported incredible, fresh food. The children ate inordinate amounts of fruit, we consumed tomatoes (of all shapes and sizes) as if they were going out of fashion and the seafood was delectable.

Why did we come home?

last minute truffles

We were invited out to supper the other night and I decided to take some of the aforementioned elderflower cordial along with some homemade chocolate truffles. After a quick dash to 'a local supermarket' to get the ingredients I came home and handed the task over to Granny and the girls so that I could spend the afternoon at my sewing machine (the vintage and handmade fair is truly pending!).


Happy to oblige, mum set to work but soon her progress was stifled by the lack of truffle cases. I could have sworn I had some plain white paper cases lying around, but my search was futile and with no contingency gift we had to think laterally.

Out came a book on origami and mum found a cup design and had to make enough cases for all the truffles she had made. Whilst it was very much a last ditch attempt and the girls are to young to find the idea of paper folding entertaining I have to say that I was very pleased with the result,