So I got my thinking cap on & after discounting making a train cake (his present to is learn how to drive a steam train!) I remembered the cake Lorraine Pascale had made on her TV series with chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream (which isn’t too sweet) and fresh fruit – the ‘I can’t believe you made that’ cake.

Now I did leave it a bit late to co-ordinate what I needed as Anthony and my brothers were taking part in a 24hr mountain bike race which also involved our first camping holiday so I was quite busy balancing a few things. The result of this was a lack of chocolate cigarellos. I had assumed I would be able to order them from my usual online cake suppliers but they didn’t sell them. A number of others do, but I was very surprised at how expensive they were and I would have had to pay for fast delivery.

After some thought we abandoned the cigarellos and used the retro-sweets Matchmakers (orange flavour).

Se here we go – one chocolate cake with fresh raspberries.

The cake went down really well and everybody enjoyed it.  It wasn’t too sweet and the matchmakers worked well, but a word of warning they are fragile so if you are transporting the cake any distance maybe take some extra matchsticks & a small pot of buttercream to glue back into position!

One alternative to matchmakers I had been considering was using wafer cigarillo type biscuits but I couldn’t source what I wanted at short notice. However, I have since found that the Harvey Nichols pop-up shop in Liverpool One selling them & think these would work just as well.

The Recipe – from Lorraine Pascale

You will need a 20cm/8in round deep cake tin and a 20cm/8in cake board.

Ingredients

• 200g/7oz butter, softened (plus a little extra to coat tin)
• 200g/7oz caster sugar
• 4 free-range eggs
• 140g/5oz plain flour
• 60g/2½oz cocoa powder
• pinch salt
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 400g/14oz plain, milk, or white chocolate cigarillos (about 75–80 in total)

For the buttercream

• 250g/9oz butter, softened
• 500g/1lb 2oz icing sugar
• 100g/3½oz good dark chocolate (at least 70 per cent cocoa solids), melted and slightly cooled

For the decoration

• Fresh raspberries or strawberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 180/C/350F/Gas 4

Line the cake tin with baking paper and rub a little bit of soft butter around the tin

Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl until they begin to go pale. Add half of the eggs and half of the flour and mix well. Add the rest of the eggs, flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder and beat for a minute or two.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 30–40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin.

To make the buttercream – put the butter and icing sugar in a bowl and whisk together until the mixture goes fluffy. Add the cooled, melted chocolate and whisk for a further two minutes.

The original instructions are to leave the cake in the tin until it is completely cool, however I prefer to take mine out & cool on a wire rack.

Cut the top of the cake flat with a large serrated knife and turn the cake upside down on the cake board so that the bottom now becomes a flat top. Split the cake horizontally and sandwich the top and bottom together with a 1cm/½in layer of buttercream.

Spread half of the remaining buttercream all over the top and sides of the cake, making it as smooth as possible. Put it in the fridge to set before doing another layer – this makes it much easier to get neat squared-off edges.

Gently push the cigarillos, or matchmakers, vertically onto the sides of the cake, positioning them as straight as possible and making sure they touch the bottom.

Enjoy!

We spent a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon at Claremont Farm Pick Your Own with Elodie. I wasn’t sure if she would enjoy picking strawberries, but they are one of her favourites at the moment & when we mentioned a tractor ride she was rather excited about it!

She took to picking strawberries like a duck to water and had the biggest advantage – little legs so less bending down! Anthony was supervising the strawberries she picked for her basket & between us we quickly filled up two containers.

So, what do you do with 2kg of Strawberries? Jam was high on my list (as it has been on my To Make list for too long) but by the next morning I no longer had 2kg of fresh juicy strawberries I had 1kg & something left after everyone had been helping themselves. But I still had enough for 1/2 the amount!

The recipe I used was an Easy Strawberry Jam from the Womens Institute.  I am glad to say it worked & was relatively easy to make.  First of all I washed & prepared the strawberries

Then they sat in the pan for just over an hour with the jam sugar & some lemon juice

When the jam jars had been sterilised & drying in the oven I put the heat on & simmered away until the jam reached its setting point (it took me nearer 25 minutes to get to this stage rather than the 15-18 minutes the recipe mentions)

I misread the recipe & didn’t leave the fruit to stand for 15-20 minutes which is supposed to stop the fruit from rising in the jars.  But the fruit was no longer in big pieces so I guess it doesn’t matter! The jam was carefully spooned into the jars & the lids put on tightly.

However, the lid of the first jar didn’t stay on for long.  Elodie enjoyed warm jam sandwiches for lunch & I made some scones later in the day.

From field to scone in 24 hours.  Not too bad?!

Tonight he eventually got his way and made his own after some research for a good recipe. That is when he came across an article on the Guardians Word of Mouth Blog – How to cook the perfect chilli con carne.

He quickly decided that he wanted to make the perfect chilli con carne but we did find it difficult to source the ingredients and we swapped the speciality chillis for a hot red one & some dried chilli flakes, Mexican oregano for dried oregano and we forgot the sugar. We also added half a tin of tomatoes at the end to bulk things out too.

We were slightly disappointed with our version, I couldn’t taste any coffee but Anthony thinks it added to the base layer of flavour. And the overall heat was much less than I had expected but it did leave me with a slightly tingly tongue! We’ll see how it develops overnight/in freezer.

Ingredients

• 50g butter
• 1 celeriac
• 1 potato
• 1 leek
• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 litre chicken stock

1. Peel & chop the celeriac and potato

2. Peel & chop onion,

3. Slice the garlic & leek

4. Melt the butter on  a low heat and add the vegetables.  Put the lid on the pan to help the vegetables sweat down.  I left the for about 20 minutes.

5. Add chicken stock and leave to cook for 20 minutes until celeriac is tender.

6. Leave to cool slightly then blitz with a blender.

7. To serve, heat soup thoroughly.

We enjoyed ours with the last of my River Cottage Bread.  A simple, filling and very tasty midweek dinner.

Elodie cleaned her bowl and has since been feeding her baby soup. I think she enjoyed it! (well, for the timebeing).  I managed to get 3 Elodie portions & 2 large dinner portions out of the above recipe. I have frozen two of the small portions & I think they will be ok.

Hugh suggests that you swirl some Parsley & Walnut Pesto through it but we didn’t and it was fine without. Though we did swirl a little cream through the adult portions but to be honest it didn’t make much difference.

Tonights dinner wasn’t something I’d normally make when trying to eat more healthily, but I am participating in a forum monthly challenge and this months recipe certainly made Anthony smile. In fact, anything with sausages makes Anthony happy. The recipe is taken from Jamie’s Dinners – I halved everything to make dinner for two but even they were extremely generous portions.

Ingredients

Serves 4

• Olive Oil
• 2 knobs butter
• 4 chicken breasts, cut into chunks (Mr Oliver uses 1kg/2lb 3oz boned and skinned chicken legs, cut into pieces)
• 2 medium leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced into 1cm pieces
• 2 carrots peeled and roughly chopped
• 3 sticks of celery finely sliced
• A small handful of thyme, leaves picked
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• 1 wineglass of white wine
• ½ pint milk
• s&p
• 225g good pork sausages
• 1 x 500g pack of all butter puff pastry
• 1 egg

Method

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees/ Gas mark 7

1. Take a large casserole pot and add a lug of olive oil and your butter.
2. Add the chicken, leeks carrots, celery and thyme and cook slowly on the hob for 15 minutes
3. Turn the heat up & add the flour – keep stirring for a couple of minutes before adding the wine, a wineglass of water and the milk
4. Season with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper, then cover with a lid and simmer very slowly on the hob for 30-40 minutes until the chicken is tender. Stir it every so often so it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. The sauce should be loose but quite thick. If it’s a little too liquid, just continue to simmer it with the lid off until it thickens slightly. (At this point you can let it cool and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days if you want to – it can also be eaten as a stew.)
5. Pour the chicken mixture into an appropriately sized pie dish.
6. Squeeze the meat out of the sausage skins, roll it into little balls, brown them in a little oil and sprinkle them over the stew.
7. Roll out your pastry to about 0.5 cm thick. Egg wash the rim of the dish and drape over the pastry, using a knife to trim the edge of the dish. Egg wash the top of the pastry to make it go golden whilst cooking, then pinch it to crimp around the edges.
8. I use the back of a knife to lightly criss cross the top – this allows the pastry to go crisp and flaky.
9. Cook the pie in the centre of the oven for about 30 to 40 minutes until golden on top

Mr Oliver likes to serve with sweetcorn and mashed potato.  But I had forgotten that we had already used the potatoes in the fish pie so ended up having the pie with chips! It was enjoyable but I think I do prefer the creamy chicken & tarragon pie…

Cod & Salmon Fish Pie
Salmon Loin, skinned
Cod Loin, skinned
1 pint milk
Dill
5 peppercorns,
1 carrot, peeled and cut into quarters
1 onion, peeled & halved
15g butter
15g plain flour
2 maris piper potatoes
butter (for mashing potatoes)

1. Poach fish in milk with carrot, onion and peppercorns
2. Put potatoes on to boil
3. When fish is cooked, take the fish out & put to one side
4. Remove carrot, onion & peppercorns and throw away (keep the milk!)
5. Melt butter in pan & add flour, cook through for a minute
6. Slowly add milk to the roux and stir until sauce thickens
7. Drain & mash potatoes
8. Flake fish into dish, top with dill and sauce then put mashed potato on top
9. Cook for 20 minutes at 200°c

Baileys Chocolate Mousse Recipe (based on recipe from Waitrose)

175g Green & Black’s Organic Dark Chocolate, broken into small pieces
Knob of butter
5 large eggs, separated (3 yolks, 5 whites)
2 tbsp Baileys

Method
1. Place the chocolate and butter in a large heatproof bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Leave to melt for 2-3 minutes – do not allow the bowl to touch the water. When it has all melted, remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
2. Using a wooden spoon, beat the egg yolks into the chocolate with the liqueur.
3. In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form stiff peaks. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold the whites into the chocolate mixture until completely incorporated.
4. Divide the chocolate mousse between 4 glasses and place in the fridge to set for at least 2 hours.

The recipe chosen for the challenge was a yeasted version based on a recipe by Simon Rimmer.

Stollen
based on a Simon Rimmer recipe

100ml/3½fl oz warm milk
6g (1 sachet) fast action yeast or 2 tsp dried yeast or 20g fresh yeast
pinch salt
1 tsp caster sugar
225g/8oz plain flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp ground mixed spice
200g/7oz mixed dried fruit (including glacé cherries)
25g/1oz flaked almonds
50g/2oz unsalted butter
1 free-range egg, beaten
250g/9oz marzipan

To finish
rum
25g/1oz butter, melted
50g/2oz icing sugar

Method
1. Place the milk and yeast into a bowl and mix well. Leave to sit for 5-6 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, sift the salt, sugar, flour and mixed spice into a large bowl. Add the dried fruit, almonds and butter and mix well then stir in the yeasty milk and mix well.
3. Add the egg and stir to form a dough. Knead the dough for 5-6 minutes, then cover and leave to prove for 20 minutes. Uncover the dough and turn out onto a clean, floured work surface. Knock the dough back to reduce the volume, then knead the dough for 3-4 minutes.
4. Push the dough out by hand into a flat oval shape about 23cm x 18cm/9in x 7in. Roll the marzipan into a sausage shape about 6cm/2in shorter than the dough. Place the marzipan into the centre of the dough, then fold over the sides of the dough to seal in the marzipan. Then fold in the ends of the dough to contain the marzipan and help give the dough shape. Place the stollen seal-side down onto a greased baking tray. Cover and place somewhere warm to prove for one hour.
5. Preheat the oven to 180C/365F/Gas 4. Place the stollen on the baking tray into the oven to bake for 40 minutes, or until golden-brown and cooked through (I think ours was cooked after 30 minutes).
6. To finish, remove the stollen from the oven, brush with the rum then melted butter and dust liberally with icing sugar immediately. Allow the stollen to cool, then serve in slices.

The bread the loaf has produced is certainly not my best, but does have potential – I was multi-tasking when making it and I may have used not-very-fine-sea-salt as the fine sea salt had been thrown away last week when we had a soy sauce disaster in the cupboard!

But that aside, the bread tastes delicous, makes crispy toast and a lovely cheese and onion sandwich.

The kneading technique for this loaf was devised by Dan Lepard, who, after working full time in commercial kitchens came to realise there wasn’t time for full 10 minute knead of all the different bread batches. He switched to short kneads spaced out and found it works just as well. I have to say I was very surprised when the loaf actually worked as I seemed to nearly pour the dough into the tin… that may also explain its slightly odd shape!

Anyway, it is a delicious loaf and one I’d make again.

Recipe & Instructions courtesey of with knife and fork

Note:
You must use oil not flour on the kneading surface and your hands. Something like vegetable oil is good.
The dough must be quite sticky and soft to start with. It will firm up when kneaded and as time progresses.

Steps:
* Once you have soft sticky dough leave it covered in the bowl for 10 minutes.
* Now oil your kneading surface and hands and tip the dough out.
* Knead for about 12 seconds by folding in the edges to the centre, a bit like shaping a round loaf, rotate the dough as you go.
* Flip the dough over, leave it on the surface and cover with a cloth. Wash out the bowl and then oil it lightly. Put the dough back in the bowl and cover.
* Leave for 10-15 minutes and then do another 12 second knead. You will notice the dough is already less sticky and firmer.
* Leave for 20 -30 mins and repeat the fast knead. You are aiming to have kneaded the dough 3 times in the first hour.
* Leave covered to rise until at least 50% larger but not more than double in size (kneading once per hour if it takes more than hour to increase in size).
* Tip out onto the oil surface and press the air out of the dough using the tips of your fingers so its square-ish in shape. Repeat the fast knead process (or fold in to thirds then rotate through 90, flatten again and fold into 3rds again).
* Shape the dough as required for the particular loaf you are making. Put it in a tin, or supported in a floured cloth in a bowl.
* Leave to rise until at least 50% larger and preferably almost double in size.
* Slash top and bake as per your recipe.

White Tin Loaf (based on Dan Lepard’s Quick White Loaf, p63 of the Handmade Loaf)
2lb loaf tin greased and floured or lined with baking parchment (no need to line the short ends just oil them).

Oven to be pre-heated to its maximum setting (R10/250C) and with a tray of water in the bottom to create steam.

Ingredients:
200g semi skimmed milk at room temp (Dan uses whole milk but semi skimmed seems to work fine)
150g water at room temp (remember 1g = 1ml but its easier to be accurate weighing fluids)
1 tsp fast action yeast (or 2 tsp fresh yeast crumbled)
200g plain white flour
300g strong white bread flour
1 ½ tsp fine sea salt

Method:
Mix the flours and salt together in a bowl.
Mix the water and milk together in a separate bowl and whisk in the yeast.
Add the liquid to the flour and mix with the fingers of one hand to a soft sticky rough dough. You may need to add a little more liquid do this a teaspoon at a time until you have a soft sticky dough.

Follow the kneading instructions above.

The first rise will probably take about an hour from the last knead.

To shape for a tin loaf, flatten the dough to a square about the same width as your tin. Roll the dough into a cylinder and press the seam firmly, fold under the two short ends and place in the tin seam side down.

Allow to rise (covered) to 1 ½ to 2 times volume i.e. to the top of the tin.

Slash the top of the loaf along it length and put it straight into the oven for 10 minutes at maximum temperature. After 10 minutes check how it’s browning and drop the temperature as follows (these baking guidelines are from the River Cottage Bread Book):

R6/200C if the crust is pale
R4/180C if crust is noticeably browning
R3/170C if crust is browning quickly

And cook for a further 40-50 minutes.

I usually check again part way through this time and either adjust temperature again or cover the top with foil if it’s brown enough. Also note that with a traditional gas oven (i.e. one without a fan) the top may brown far too quickly on the side near the heat at the initial temperature so you might want to start at a lower setting of R8/9 for the first 10 minutes. Adapt the setting for what you know about your oven and how things usually bake.

When it’s cooked turn it out of the tin and allow to cool.

Then when it’s cooled cut a big huge doorstop of a slice, toast it and slather with lashing of butter. Yum.

The recipe also works well with a mix of 50:50 wholemeal and white bread flours. You’ll probably need 2-3 tbps extra water.

I also have my eye on this summer spelt recipe from Mostly Eating – keep up the good work Sophie!