An apology, and an autumn cracker of a soup

Yes, it is more than a year since anyone last thought of this poor neglected blog, myself included.  I’ve been cooking, some, but a year full of travelling and music and movies (both watching and helping to make one!) and various other life changes have conspired to prevent me from spending much time writing outside of work, or being home much to do the kind of culinary experimentation that I so enjoy. 

However, as the winter nights draw in and thoughts turn to wrapping up warmly, getting home earlier and eating comfort food, it seemed like the right time to share a recipe I only just discovered but which I think will become a firm favourite.  It started life as a carrot soup on my very favourite blog of all time, but since I am not too fond of carrots but very enamoured of sweet potatoes and butternut squash, I decided to play around and make it my own. 

The real draw for me was the chili.  After buying a chili plant in the summer and nurturing it on my balcony, my obsession with fiery food has only increased. It elevates this soup into something special, and gives it a kick of heat that is very welcome on a cold day.

Autumn Sweet Potato-Squash-Coconut Soup with Chili and Lime
Adapted from Orangette

50g unsalted butter
800g sweet potato and butternut squash, peeled and chopped
1 medium onion, chopped

1 chili, chopped (and de-seeded if you prefer less heat)
4 cups (950 ml) vegetable stock (or chicken, if you like it better)
1 ½ to 2 (13.5-ounce) cans unsweetened coconut milk
Lime wedges, for serving
A few tbsp of crème fraiche to stir into the soup (if desired)

Chives, chopped (for garnish, if desired)

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add the sweet potatoes, squash, chili and onion, season with a few pinches of salt and some pepper, and cook for about 15-20 minutes until the vegetables are soft.

Stir in the stock and coconut milk. Bring to a simmer, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are very soft and the liquid is slightly reduced, which should take about 45 minutes. Puree in a blender or in the pot, using a hand mixer, and do a final taste test to get the seasoning right. 

Garnish with anything you like (I went for a swirl of crème fraiche and some chives) but don’t leave out the lime. A few squeezes of lime juice absolutely make this soup.

Perfect pound cake

This holiday weekend should have provided an opportunity to try out some new dishes.  Instead, I returned to something old for our Easter Sunday dessert.

I've received a lot of good recipes from both of my grandmothers over the years.  Indeed, Grandma's shortbread has already made an appearance on this blog.  However, nothing has been made quite so often in the Glennie household as the following recipe for pound cake, which comes down from family on my mother's side.  For such a seemingly simple recipe - a pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs, plus a few other bits and pieces - it is surprisingly hard to get it right.  Gramary is the only one who has managed to do it consistently, and I have spent years trying to live up to her standards.  If you don't follow the instructions to the letter, or leave it unattended in the oven for too long, you're likely to end up burning the top, or turning the cake out from the pan only to see half of it still stuck to the bottom.

However, the rare times when you do get it right - and last night was one of them for me - there is perhaps no cake so sublime.  It is light enough that you (almost) don't feel guilty having two or three pieces at a time, and has a lovely uncluttered sweet flavour that won't send you into a sugar shock.

There's a reason it is always first choice for birthdays and other special occasions in our house.

Ring-Mould Pound Cake

1 cup margarine
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/3 tsp ground mace
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups sifted cake flour (I've never been able to figure out what cake flour actually is - something North American - but you can substitute with regular flour: just remove 2 tbsp for each cup)
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Sift the flour, mace, salt and baking powder three times.  Time-consuming and a little annoying, but whatever you do, don't skip this step. 

In a separate bowl, cream the margarine and the sugar.  Add the eggs to the mixture, beating after each one, and then do the same with the vanilla.

To this, add the flour mixture a little at a time, beating it in well.  As the mix starts getting stiffer, add in the milk and beat - alternate the two until the flour and the milk are used up and the mixture is a smooth and fluffy consistency.

Pour the whole lot into a greased and floured ring mould cake tin and spread it evenly - it should fill about 2/3 of the tin.

Here comes the hard part - judging how long and at what temperature to bake the cake.  Our original recipe says to bake it at 350 degrees for an hour and then at 300 degrees for a final five minutes.  But I'd keep an eye on it and check after 45 minutes to make sure it isn't burning.  Basically you're good to go when the top of the cake is golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.  Leave it in the pan for 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven, and then invert on a wire rack and allow to cool completely.  Serve with fruit, ice cream, or nothing at all.  Preferably accompanied by a little Van Halen. 

Et voila!  Happy Easter, dear readers.

Guerrilla pancakes

Calling all Enid Blyton fans.  Anyone who grew up reading her books will probably remember their way 'in' to Blyton-land.  For some, it will have been the capers of the Famous Five or the Secret Seven.  Others might have come to her via the boarding school shenanigans of the girls of Malory Towers and St Clare's.  For me, it was the Adventure Series.  These were the stories of Philip, Dinah, Jack, Lucy-Anne and their parrot Kiki, two brother and sister pairs who always managed to fall into an amazing adventure every time they went on holiday.  The locations varied - a mysterious valley, a cruise through the Greek islands, or a wild Welsh mountain - but some things never changed.  Philip would always acquire some bizarre and wonderful pet, the gang would constantly manage to fall afoul of nefarious men up to no good, and Lucy-Anne would invariably have occasion to exclaim, "Food really does taste better when eaten outdoors!".

A slightly roundabout way of getting to this blog, but I've had Lucy-Anne's refrain in mind after some recent adventures of my own.

Last week was Shrove Tuesday.  Otherwise known as 'Pancake Day', or the final opportunity to stuff yourself with carbohydrates and sugar before giving one or the other - or both - up for Lent.  I never do either.  I like my food too much, and I prefer resolutions of the 'taking new things up' variety.  But I'll never turn down the chance to eat pancakes when it is offered.  I haven't managed to celebrate Shrove Tuesday for a number of years; I always seem to be busy in the evening on the day it rolls around.  This year looked like it was going to go the same way, as friends and I had plans to go to an immersive theatre experience being staged by dreamspeakthink at Somerset House (worth checking out before it ends on March 30th, for any Londoners reading this blog).  Then Matt came up with the crazy? genius plan of making pancakes somewhere outside, en route to the performance.  I thought he was kidding, up until the moment he bought a portable gas cooking stove.  Then it was game on.

My role was to choose and make the recipe, so I got to insist on North American style pancakes.  None of your fiddly European crepes, thank you very much!  On the morning in question I forgot to write out the recipe we've been using in our family for decades, so I had to source an alternative online.  It had to be something pretty basic, but this one did the trick.  If you're making it at home, you can't go too far wrong with the following, which is supposed to serve 6:

• 450ml (16 fl oz) semi skimmed milk
• 150g (5 oz) caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 250g (9 oz) plain flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
• maple syrup, and plenty of it (for there is nothing in the world that can't be improved with maple syrup - that's just a fact)

The logistics were a little tricky.  I had to mix up all the ingredients listed above in our terrible little kitchen at work, where there is barely the room or the equipment for making a cup of tea.  Then transfer the batter to an airtight container and pray that it didn't explode in my bag.  Later, we had to find just the right location.  Somewhere that wouldn't involve sitting under a dark bridge, but that wouldn't be too obvious either.  The Southbank it was - home to most of London's best cultural experiences.  Fortified against the sub-zero temperatures by some fancy cocktails from the BFI bar, we set up our guerrilla restaurant on a picnic table outside the Festival Hall.  And amazingly? It all worked beautifully.

  

Turns out Lucy-Anne was right.  Food really does taste better when eaten outdoors, with a spirit of adventure.  But only in the company of the right people.

'Tis the season

I do love Christmas.  Not in an over the top way, and definitely not until December 1 hits.  I don't like it when the shops put out their Christmas goods in September, and am always vaguely distressed by the out of control advertising for things you don't want or need.  'This Christmas' should be banned from the airwaves, forever.  But there are many lovely things about this time of year. The parties, the lights, the scent of a newly cut Christmas tree (mine is bringing me out in hives, but at least is looking pretty while doing so).  Advent calendars, which I will apparently never be too old for.  And the food.  Most especially the baking.

This weekend I had some good friends around for an early celebration.  There were smoked salmon sandwiches and there was Prosecco, because tea just seemed too prosaic.  There were orange cupcakes with chocolate icing.  And there was gingerbread cake.  Which was too good not to share.

Gingerbread cake with lime
(adapted from Mary Berry)

250g/8oz softened butter
250g/8oz dark muscovado sugar
110g black treacle
375g/12oz plain flour
5 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 fresh ginger root (or a few pieces of stem ginger)
2 limes, zested
300ml milk
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

You can cook this in any shape or size you want, but for reference, the mixture fills two 7" baking tins or one 10" tin.  I bet it would also make lovely muffins.

Start by preheating the oven to 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3, and greasing and lining whatever tin you decide to use.

In a saucepan, heat the butter, sugar and treacle over a low temperature, stirring until the mixture is smooth and all of the butter lumps have disappeared. Then take off the heat and set aside to cool slightly.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour and the spices. Be generous with the ginger, and add in any other spices you think might complement it.  Pour the treacle mix into the flour, and stir thoroughly until they are combined.  Stir the beaten eggs into the mix, and add half a grated ginger root.  Or more, if you desire.  It gives the cake a lovely low fire.  You could also chop up some crystallised stem ginger and throw that in.  I don't care for ginger pieces so they didn't make into my version of the cake.  Instead, I decided to add the zest of a lime.  I think that I could have done with twice that amount though, as the flavour didn't come through all that strongly.

Warm the milk gently in a saucepan, taking care that it doesn't get too hot and burn on the bottom of the pan. Add the bicarbonate of soda and let it foam a little. Add to the gingerbread mixture, and stir until well combined.

Pour the whole lot into your prepared tin and throw it in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour, until the top is starting to.  I found that my cake needed the full hour, since it was being cooked at a relatively lower heat.  Keep checking it to make sure that it doesn't burn though.  If a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean, it's done.  Et voila!  I don't think this cake needs much else by way of adornment.  Just a sprinkle of icing sugar.

I was considering making a tarte tatin for Christmas Day this year, but think that this cake might just have moved into contention...

Courgette and potato cakes with mint and feta

My poor blog.  It should be suing me for neglect and emotional distress.  It's been a very busy summer, moving house and moving jobs, and I haven't had much time for culinary experimentation lately.  However, as the days grow shorter and colder and Christmas draws near, it is time to spend more time at home in the kitchen.   I hauled the slow cooker out for the first time in months today, and look forward to trying out some new stew recipes over the next few months.  No stew in this post though.  Instead, a Delia Smith recipe I've been meaning to try out for a while: courgette and potato cakes with mint and feta.  I'm a fairly recent feta convert, but now I use it in every dish that I can (and even some that I probably shouldn't).  It was perfect for these potato cakes though.  On their own they might have been a little bland, but the feta gave them a lovely sharpness and accompanied the mint and the courgette nicely.  So, without further ado:

Courgette and potato cakes with mint and feta cheese

6 medium courgettes (weighing about 700g)

4 medium Desirée potatoes (weighing about 700g)

4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint

450g feta cheese, crumbled

4 spring onions, finely chopped

2 large eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons plain flour

50g butter

1 ½ tablespoons olive oil

salt and freshly milled black pepper

First, grate the courgettes coarsely (leaving the skins on) and put them into a sieve. Then sprinkle them with 2 teaspoons of salt to draw out some of their excess moisture and leave them to drain for about an hour. While these are sitting, scrub the potatoes and place them in a large saucepan. Pour enough boiling water over them to just cover them, then simmer gently with a lid on for 8 minutes. When they are slightly tender, drain them and leave them aside until they’re cool enough to hold. Then peel them, grate them into a large bowl and season with salt and freshly milled black pepper.

When the courgettes have sat for an hour, run them under cold water.  Squeeze as much moisture as you can with your hands, then put them on a clean tea towel and roll it up to wring out the remaining water.  This was a neat trick - I'd never thought of doing it before, but it did help to get rid of the juices and prevented the cakes from ending up as soggy messes.  Add the courgettes to the grated potatoes, along with the spring onions, mint, feta and beaten eggs and toss the whole mixture together.

To prepare the cakes, divide the mixture into about 16 (or as many as you can get with the quantities you use), shape them into small rounds about 1 cm thick and then lightly dust them with flour.  The important thing is that they stick together.

To cook them, pre-heat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Melt the butter and oil in a small saucepan, then brush the cakes on both sides with it. When the oven is ready, place the cakes on trays, returning one to the top shelf and the other to the middle shelf for 15 minutes. After that, turn the cakes over, using a palette knife and a fork, swap the positions of the trays in the oven and cook them for a further 10-15 minutes, or until they are golden.

The recipe calls for them to be served hot, but I can confirm that they work well as cold leftovers too.  I think they were intended to be a side dish, but two of them make a lovely light lunch, accompanied by a green salad.

Bacon and ricotta cake with roasted tomatoes

Forgive me father readers for I have sinned; it has been two months since my last post.  Oh dear.  Moving house in the middle of an already busy summer has left me with very little time for attempting new recipes, despite the fact that I have a very nice new kitchen that is crying out to be used.  However, I will soon be on enforced home stay thanks to the Olympics and the official* advice to stock up with water and canned goods, barricade the doors, and stay away from the streets and all forms of public transport for the next three weeks.

The upside of this is that it should give me more time for experimentation in the kitchen, so I will hopefully get back into a more consistent blogging routine soon.  To start off, here's a recipe I tried recently that I can tell will become part of my regular repertoire.  Easy, not too time intensive (10-15 minutes to prepare, 45 minutes to cook), and absolutely delicious both warm and reheated.  It works equally well as a side or a main dish, and could be adapted for vegetarians by omitting the bacon (although I must say, one of the two reasons I could never be a vegetarian is my love for bacon.  The other would be my love of a really good steak).  So without further ado:

Bacon and ricotta cake with roasted tomatoes
(adapted from Waitrose Recipes)

  
For the cake:

• 1 medium potato, peeled and quartered
• 225g bag baby spinach
• 1 or 2 40g packs crispy smoked bacon (the original recipe calls for 4 packs, but I only used one and that seemed to work just fine, so I would recommend reducing that)
• 4 tbsp Parmigiano-Reggiano, grated
• 250g ricotta cheese (the recipe called for 500g, but again, I used half that with no adverse effects)
• 2 large (or 3 medium) eggs

For the tomatoes:

• 300g cherry tomatoes, halved
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• fresh thyme or oregano
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar  

Before you start, preheat the oven to 180°C (gas mark 4) and grease and line a 900g loaf tin with baking parchment.

Place the potatoes in a pan, cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10-15 minutes until tender. Drain and allow to cool slightly, then grate coarsely.  While the potato is cooking, place the spinach in a pan, splash with a little water and cook over a medium heat for 1-2 minutes, or until just wilted (microwaving in the bag works equally well - just follow the instructions on the pack). Drain and cool in a colander, then squeeze out any excess liquid and chop roughly.  Crush the bacon into a bowl and mix in the spinach, potato, Parmigiano-Reggiano, ricotta and eggs. Season with pepper. Tip the mixture into the loaf tin. Cook for 25 minutes.

While the cake mixture is in the oven,  chop the cherry tomatoes in half and place in a roasting tin, cut side up. Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with the sugar, thyme or oregano and season. After the cake has had 25 minutes, put the tomatoes on a lower oven shelf, beneath the cake, and continue to cook for about 10-15 minutes until the cake is just firm to the touch and the tomatoes are cooked.

Leave the cake to cool slightly in the tin, then turn out while still warm. Drizzle the tomatoes with balsamic vinegar and serve with slices of warm cake.  Et bon appetit!

*This may not have been the message that LOCOG and Transport for London have been trying to convey, but everything they have said thus far has had that effect!

Asia de Cuba

I am less than a week away from becoming a homeowner.   This is exciting for all number of reasons, particularly because I want to start throwing more dinner parties and will finally have some proper space to do so, including a balcony with lots of room for summer barbecues. But before any of that good stuff can happen, there are a lot of things to be done.  Including using up as much of the food in the house as possible.  Given the random collection of items in my freezer, this has led to some unusual dinners over the past few weeks.  Some more successful than others.  But this is one that I might actually try again: a Mexican-Chinese mash up that worked surprisingly well.  Also very quick and easy for nights when you don't feel like putting a lot of effort into cooking but don't necessarily want to buy takeout.

Chinese-style tacos

4 taco shells/soft tacos
1 red onion
1 green pepper
500g diced beef steak
4 tbsp black bean stir fry sauce
sour cream
handful of grated cheddar cheese, to serve
guacamole, to serve (if desired)




In a large saucepan or wok, heat a splash of oil and fry the onion in until it starts to turn golden.  Add the diced beef (you could substitute with other types of meat here) and then cook until there is no pink showing.  Drain the fat from the pan, and then return to the heat and throw in any other vegetables you like.  I used a green pepper for colour contrast and texture, but you can definitely be creative with alternatives here.

Here's where I deviated from a more traditional taco - by adding a few tablespoons of garlic black bean sauce to the mixture.  Cook for a few minutes, during which time you can heat the tacos, if desired.  I would recommend doing it in an oven if possible - I warmed mine up in the microwave and they went a bit soggy.

To serve, scoop a few spoons of the beef mixture onto one side of the taco, and either serve plain, or with condiments.  I had sour cream, grated cheese and guacamole, so I used a little of each.  Slight overkill perhaps, but it was delicious.  I also chopped up a few cherry tomatoes and threw them on for good measure.  Et voila, a slightly unusual but still very good fusion taco!

Suggestions welcome on what to do with the remainder of my freezer: a fillet of lemon sole, half a ciabbata loaf, frozen vegetables galore, and some frozen bananas. Preferably not all in the same recipe!

p.s. Apologies if a half finished version of this post showed up in your inbox last week.  I had it saved to post later, but Blogger decided to publish the draft on its own schedule!

Cherry tomato clafoutis

As predicted, following up my last post has been difficult.  The past month been busy, and I haven't had much time for anything more than everday cooking.  A few new things have been tried.  An easy stir fry of braised red cabbage, pancetta and peas that works equally well as a main course or a colorful side dish.  A delicious lemon curd layer cake that went over a treat with colleagues and family.  Nothing that seemed like a worthy successor to the pie chart pie, but I'll never blog again if I keep thinking that way, so I have decided to (re)start afresh with something simple that I made over the Easter weekend: a cherry tomato clafoutis.

A clafoutis is traditionally a sweet dessert, most commonly made with cherries.  However, a recent edition of Good Housekeeping included a recipe for a savoury version which looked good, so we decided to try this out to accompany our barbecued chicken.  It's incredibly simple, but works very well and is aesthetically appealing (at least until you serve it - then it collapses somewhat).


Cherry tomato clafoutis

 60g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
3 large eggs
100 ml milk
3 tbsp shredded fresh basil leaves, plus extra to garnish
150g cottage cheese
250g cherry tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste, if desired


Mix together the flour, baking powder, eggs, milk and seasoning.  Then whisk in the basil and the cottage cheese.

Pour the mixture into a shallow baking dish (that can hold about a litre), and arrange the cherry tomatoes in the mixture as you please.  You can either drop them in whole or slice them in half and add them, cut sides down.

Season the lot with black pepper and cook in an oven set to 180 degrees C for about half an hour until the egg is a golden colour and has set.  Garnish with the remaining basil and serve.  Depending on how many people are dining, this could either work as a main course, with a green salad on the side, or as a side dish to accompany meat.  Either way, it passes my mother's 'back pocket' test and will certainly be made again!

Pie chart pie

I should probably hang up my keyboard and cease blogging.  I think I've reached the pinnacle of my baking career.  And at such a young age, too.

This week, I made a pie chart pie. 

This all came about because I work in a place where being geeky makes you cool.  We like statistics and frequency tables and regressions.  And yes, pie charts too.  Last week I was creating some pie charts for a report, and a silly Friday afternoon conversation led me to wonder if it would be possible to actually create a pie in pie chart form.  So I took a poll of colleagues' fruit preferences, and decided to attempt a pie that would show the results in their correct proportions.  Lemon turned out to be most popular, with 4 votes, followed by 2 each for strawberry and blueberry, and 1 each for apple and kiwi.

I'm not going to provide step by step instructions, because I'm not sure who else would be crazy enough to try and make this.  I decided not to google it before I made it, because it would have been disappointing to find out that this wasn't an original idea.  But when I did search the internet for it after it was done, I discovered that I am probably the first person to have thought of doing this.  I'm going to have to look into copyright!

However, should you ever try and recreate this for yourself, my method was to start by making the dough for pie crust (any recipe for shortcrust will do - I went with the one I used recently for tarte tatin) and chilling that in the fridge for half an hour or so.  Then roll it out and use it to fill a flan dish, making sure that the pastry comes up and slightly over the edges of the dish.  With the extra dough, fashion small walls to divide up the segments, and push them into the base of the pie.  You could use beaten egg or milk to help fix them in place, but I decided to just treat the pie crust like plasticine and mould it by hand, and it worked fine.  Then cut out pieces of tin foil large enough to fit in each segment, and weigh down with baking beads.  Cook the pie crust for about half an hour in an oven pre-heated to 180 degrees, remove and leave to cool completely before filling.


What you use for filling is entirely your own choice.  I would recommend the following for lemon, blueberry, strawberry, and kiwi (adjusting for the quantity needed for each segment) but there are lots of good recipes out there that would work just as well.

Where it gets tricky is the timing.  For my pie, the lemon curd and the apple needed to be in the oven for 25-30 minutes, but the strawberry only needed 6-8 minutes, and the blueberry and the kiwi weren't supposed to be cooked at all.  However, if you leave foil in those segments the pie crust shouldn't burn, and you can fill them afterwards when the rest of the pie has cooled.

And you know what?  It was a lot of work.  It took about three and a half hours to make.  But it was all worth it for the reaction of all my lovely colleagues and friends.  I'm very glad to know people who think that an endeavour like this isn't completely insane, and enable me in my culinary ambitions.

Now thinking of starting a side-business called Pie Squared...there must be a market for statistical baked goods out there!

An ode to apples. And friendship.

"Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits."

Thus pronounced Henry David Thoreau, and after making tarte tatin for the first time on Saturday, I would have to agree.  In fact, I think it may be one of those rare perfect desserts.  Sweet without being sickly, very adaptable, and incredibly more-ish.  Frankly, I'm surprised that the piece I took home with me lasted until the next day.

I can't take all the credit for this one though.  It was a joint effort by me and Jenn, who I will eventually convince to stop lurking and start posting!  Amongst the many things we have in common, we share a love of all things culinary.  After lots of nice meals in good restaurants, recipe exchanges, and last year's cupcake decorating class, the logical next step was cooking together.  Truly, cooking is so much more fun when done communally.  Especially when it gives you the chance to catch up with a good friend (and cuddle her insanely adorable baby!).

After some discussion about potential recipes, we eventually settled on tarte tatin, since neither of us had made it before and it was a good opportunity to try pastry-making.  Excellent decision.  Felicity Cloake has posted a comprehensive guide to the different variations of tarte tatin on the Guardian food blog.  I can't imagine anything nicer than the one she eventually plumped for, but I'm sure it would be fun experimenting.  Anyway, we decided to go with her version, and it definitely lived up to its title.

Perfect tarte tatin

For the topping: 
7 medium sized apples (4 Cox and 3 Granny Smith worked nicely, but I'm sure any variety would do)
200g white sugar
50g butter

For the pastry:
225g plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
120g cold butter
1 medium egg, beaten

The recipe suggested halving and coring the apples, and then leaving the fridge uncovered for 24 hours.  But I get impatient with delayed gratification recipes, while Jenn only remembered this instruction in the middle of the night and, eminently sensibly, decided it wasn't worth getting up for.  So I don't think it makes a blind bit of difference if you cut up the apples right before you prepare the tart.

After you've done this, put the sugar in a 20cm heavy-based ovenproof frying pan along with 50ml water and leave to soak for a couple of minutes, then cook over a medium heat until golden and fudgy. If the sugar starts to crystallise in the pan, don't worry.  I had a moment of panic when this happened, but it seems to sort itself out once you add the apples.

Take off the heat and stir in the butter and a pinch of salt, until well combined, and then carefully arrange the apples in the pan, round-side down, bearing in mind the caramel will be very hot, and put back on the heat – you may need to cut some of the apples into smaller pieces to fill in the gaps. Cook for 5 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool completely.

If you're pressed for time, pre-prepared shortcrust or puff pastry (about 175g worth) will do.  But I'm on a mission to get everyone making their own, so sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and add the sugar and a pinch of salt. Grate in the butter, then rub together until it is coarse crumbs.  Mix the egg with 2 tsp cold water and sprinkle over the mixture. Mix together into a soft but not sticky dough, adding more water (if required) very gradually. Shape into a ball, and then cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes before rolling out.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Roll out the pastry  to 5mm thick, and cut out a circle slightly larger than your pan. Put back into the fridge to rest.  Or just keep going.  Again, this is one of those steps that I think can be skipped.  Put the pastry on top of the pan and tuck in the edges around the fruit. Bake for about 30 minutes until the pastry is golden, then remove from the oven.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then place a plate, slightly larger than the pan, on top and then, very carefully, using oven gloves, invert the tart on to the plate. Best served warm, with crème fraîche or ice cream.

Emergency birthday cookies

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the old saying goes.  But I pushed that to the limit last night when I realised - at 9pm - that my friend from work had had a birthday that day without many people knowing.  I think everyone deserves to have at least a little fuss made on a birthday, even if they're not big on celebrating it, so I thought the least I could do would be to make some kind of cake.  But after a week away from home, my cupboards were quite literally bare.

Hardly enough flour, and no lemons, oranges, chocolate or raisins for flavour or texture.  What I did have was a large unopened bottle of amaretto, which held some promise.  Hence the following recipe.  I almost thought it was too simple to post, but the cookies turned out much better than I was expecting and disappeared pretty quickly when I took them into work.  I therefore deem them blog-worthy!

Amaretto Cookies

2 cups cake flour (if you don't have this to hand, an easy substitute is to use plain flour, removing 2 tbsp for each cup you use)
1/2 cup wholewheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 tbsp amaretto (I would suggest adding a bit more than this - the flavour was fairly faint in the batch I made)
1 tbsp vanilla extract

The website I found the recipe on gave no instructions for preparation, apart from mixing all the ingredients, chilling the dough, and then baking in whatever cookie shape you like for around 8-10 minutes.  Unlike some of my co-bloggers, I prefer having a few instructions to guide the process, so I'd suggest the best order for this would be to cream the butter and sugar together, then add the egg, the amaretto and the vanilla extract and beat well, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go.  Mix the dry ingredients together with a whisk in another bowl, and then add this to the butter mixture a third at a time, beating after each addition.

Leave the dough in the fridge for about an hour to give it time to firm up, and then either roll it out and cut into cookie shapes, or take the quick and easy route like me, scooping small balls of dough onto a parchment-lined sheet and pressing down with two fingers until they look approximately like a cookie.  They didn't spread too far in the oven, but I'd still suggest leaving plenty of room between each one.  You might also want to sprinkle each cookie with a little demerera sugar before baking.

These don't take long to cook - between 8-10 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 200 degrees, or until the edges start to turn golden.  And you should get between 20 and 24 cookies out of the mixture, depending on how big or small you like them.  They may not be particularly exciting birthday-fare, but are perfect as elevenses with a nice cup of tea or coffee.  And even if you don't like a fuss being made, happy birthday anyway Glenn!