Christmas pudding

This is my version of a Dan Lepard recipe that appeared in the newspaper the week after my daughter was born - Stir up Sunday as it is called in England. We'd never made a christmas pudding before, but it has now become family tradition.  It's ideally suited to being at home with a baby because you just add all the ingredients gradually to a big bowl, then steam for ages - as long as you don't need to go out, you're fine.  Nowadays I usually steam it in a slow cooker overnight, but above is a picture of last year's pudding on the stove top.

200g raisins
150g candied fruit peel 
50 g dried or candied cherries

75g beef suet
200g dark brown muscovado sugar

100g treacle
125g brown bread crumbs
50g plain white flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon

1/2tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tsp grated nutmeg 
2 eggs, beaten
50g grated carrot (about one medium carrot) 
Zest and juice of an orange

125ml dark ale

After mixing all the ingredients together, simply spoon into a buttered pudding basin, cover with parchment and foil, tie string around (or just use a plastic basin with lid), and steam for 4 hours, or over night in a slow cooker. The original recipe called for the wrong size bowl, and we've never figure out what size it is supposed to be.  We usually make either two large puddings or 3 small ones. 

Never having made a pudding before, the whole pudding basin, foil and string thing is definitely the worst bit for me - and worrying that I've done something wring and it will go mouldy. But every year it turns out just fine.  A very forgiving cooking style.

Dad's Oat Pancakes

My Dad took up baking after he retired. This is probably his best recipe - no idea where he found it. But we make it a lot (and can never find the recipe, which is why I'm posting it here).

It can be halved (use 2 eggs), or freeze leftover pancakes between small sheets of grease proof paper / baking parchment, and toast to reheat.  The oats gives them more substance than most recipes and keeps them moist for re-heating.

This is the recipe pretty much as he gave it to me (caps and all). One of these days I'll try to get the ingredients translated into weights for the UK cooks. Update! The ever-amazing Alli Coyle suggests the following weights/metric volume for you to try (slightly adjusted by me).  Thanks Alli!

OAT PANCAKES

1 1/2 CUPS porridge OATS 150g

2 CUPS MILK 500ml

1 CUP FLOUR (WHITE OR WHOLE WHEAT) 125g

2 TBSP BROWN SUGAR (OR WHITE)

2 TSP BAKING POWDER

3/4 TSP SALT (LESS)

3 EGGS

1/4 CUP OIL 60ml

----------------------------------------------------
Mix oats and milk in a small bowl; set aside for about 5 minutes.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Blend well.

Add eggs and oil to oats. Beat well.

Combine all and beat well,

Pour by 1/4 cupfuls on to heated griddle, cook and turn after bubbles have formed. (Make sure griddle is hot before starting.)

Makes about 18 pancakes. 

And now for something completely different...

The third of our family birthdays last week was graced with a cake that I've only been making for only a little over a year.  It's a classic from our adopted home - Victoria Sponge. I use Delia's recipe, which is very simple, and always seems to work well.  The layers seem thin before they're baked, but once put together they're lavish.

This time, I poked holes in one of the layers with a wooden skewer, before slathering it with most of a jar of (runny) home-made strawberry jam, and then a layer of plain whipped cream, and topped with just a light dusting of icing sugar..

It's even better in the summer with fresh sliced strawberries and whipped cream.  In this version, I'll add a spoonful of sugar and a few drops of vanilla to the cream.

Birthday cake - a family recipe

Sometimes the simplest things are the still the best.  This is the cake that we always had for birthdays as children, and now I make it too.  I'm pretty sure the recipe is from my great-grandmother, so that makes 5 generations of our family that have enjoyed it.

It's a very basic cocoa-based cake.   It probably could be made into layers, but we always baked it in a square time and iced it still in the tin.  

Chocolate Cake

8"x8" pan

1/3 cup cocoa

1/3 cup butter or shortening  (80g)

1/2 cup boiling water

1 cup sugar (200g)

1/2 cup buttermilk or yogurt or sour milk

1 cup flour (120g)

1 rounded tsp baking soda

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

Put cocoa, butter, water in saucepan and bring to boil. Cook until it thickens.

Pour chocolate mixture into bowl.  Stir in remaining ingredients in order listed. Beat hard for 2-3 minutes.  Pour into greased and floured pan. Bake in 350 deg. oven for 35-40 minutes

Retro-pepper jelly

I've been craving pepper jelly for a while and when I noticed a recipe for it in the new Joy of Cooking, I thought I'd give it a go. 

Only I hadn't noticed that the Joy recipe sieved the peppers out, which is why the recipe called for 1/3 less sugar than other recipes. And I didn't have liquid pectin.  

But, crucially, all the chopping could be done in the food processor - which given that I still can't use my right hand, seemed essential.

So I improvised quite a lot to get just what I was looking for - roughly one part chopped peppers to 1 part vinegar and two parts sugar with a sachet of pectin added before-hand.  

Like the rhubarb chutney, pepper jelly was something the  neighbours used to give us.   I remembered  it being mostly clear, with little flecks of different coloured peppers in it, so I didn't want to strain it as the Joy advocated, nor add food colouring like most of the on-line recipes.

Amazingly, it turned out just like I remembered - a warm zingy heat, but mellowed by the addition of bell peppers along with hot peppers from the farmer's market. It's not something you eat everyday, but it's very nice on an oatcake with cream cheese, or with cornbread. 

Experimental Rhubarb-Gooseberry Chutney

We ended up with surplus sterilised jars this afternoon, which, coinciding with a freezer clear-out, led to some unplanned chutney making.   

Rhubarb chutney is the first chutney I remember making, and also the first I made after moving to the UK and discovering I craved foods from home.  Our next door neighbour used to make it, and give us a jar, and I always loved it with caribou steaks or burgers, but unfortunately, these years caribou is hard to come by (which makes me rue the years in which I complained about having caribou 'again'!), although seriously good venison makes an adequate substitute.

Anyway, when Mrs Noel grew too frail to make it, I starting making it, following her recipe. Sadly, the original got lost, and in recent years I've been using this recipe from a classic cookbook - The Treasury of Newfoundland dishes.  I don't think this is quite the same - I might be tempted to add some ground ginger. But it's not bad.  

My copy of the cookbook is the 8th edition from 1976, but its been recently reprinted and is still available. It was sponsored by Cream of the West flour, but collated recipes from various contributors, whose names and addresses are listed at the back. Despite the corny bits of dialect and jokes, there are some real gems of recipes.


Anyway, today's chutney is experimental because although I had enough rhubarb to make my usual half-batch, in the interests of freezer-space, I decided to add an equal amount of gooseberries.  I'm not sure Mrs Noel (nor the worthies of the Treasury) would approve. 

Sacred jam

Jam making season has arrived in Polwarth.  Despite not enjoying our trip to Craigie's as much as we had expected to, we plunged into preserving.   First up the blackcurrants.  A couple of year's ago we'd bought some very nice blackcurrant and sloe gin jam at the village shop in Kirkmichael.  It was - until yesterday - the best blackcurrant jam we'd tried. 

We've not got any sloes, but last week I succumbed to temptation and bought a bottle of Sacred Gin from the wonderful Provenance Wines  (@Provenance_Edin).  And the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced this was the way to go.  This is not a hit-you-over-the-head with juniper gin (although I quite like that too), but an aromatic gin.  I googled for recipes, and while I found several adverts for artisanal jams with sloe gin, no recipes popped up.  So, I decided to follow my usual blackcurrant recipe, and then chucked in 50ml of gin after I took it off the heat. It bubbled up delectably. 

The jam smelled good while cooking - always a good sign - and even better while I ladled it into bottles. We still need to label it, but I'm already wondering where I can get some more currants.