Caramel Crown Cake

This weekend I took up the Claytons Bloggers' challenge to 'Pimp that Biscuit' - and I decided to make a big Caramel Crown.

The Caramel Crown is one of my favourite bought biscuits. It has a crunchy base topped with a layer of caramel, and the whole thing is coated in milk chocolate. Mmmmm......

After much close inspection of the Caramel Crown - slicing, dissecting, tasting etc - it was decided that the base was a quite plain and not particularly sweet biscuit - so I decided to use packaged biscuits and crush them up.

I chose a reasonably plain type of biscuit - kind of like an oaty digestive - and crushed two packs of them finely. Then I melted 200 g butter and stirred it in.

I lined a 22 cm springform pan with baking paper, and then formed the cake base by pressing in the crumb and butter mixture, and moulding it into a shallow bowl shape.

The original biscuit has tiny bumps around the biscuit edge, but after a few unsuccessful attempts at copying this effect, I decided that particular feature wasn't very important (except that it's probably the reason the word 'crown' is in the biscuit's name. Never mind).

I cooked it for 15 minutes on 180 C and let it cool completely before removing it from the tin and putting it on the serving plate.

The Caramel Crown has a layer of caramel (as you would expect) and as I have very little experience at making that type of thing, I decided to cheat and use caramel topping from a tin.

To be more authentic, it would need a smooth, home-made caramel, like the caramel you find in Twix and Mars bars.

Annoyingly, for some reason I stopped taking step-by-step photos at this point, but after I filled the biscuit case with the caramel, I then melted a 200 g bar of cooking chocolate, let it cool for a while, and poured it over the caramel part of the cake. Then I melted another bar of chocolate, and when that had cooled and thickened a bit, I used it to pour and spread over the edges and sides.

Quite a lot of chocolate pooled around the biscuit base, but that was fine because I had put strips of baking paper under the sides that I could remove afterwards.

I put the cake in the fridge to set the chocolate, and when it was starting to firm up, I drew a few lines in the top in an attempt to copy the ridges on the top of the original Caramel Crowns.

Then when the chocolate was completely set, I trimmed around the pooled chocolate at the base with a sharp knife, in order to remove the baking paper strips.

I had timed my Caramel Crown Cake-making so that it could be my Number One Son's (15th) birthday cake but didn't want to stick candles in my creation. So I stuck them in two obliging Caramel Crowns instead.

After the singing and blowing out of the candles, the cake was whipped back into the kitchen and cut with a sharp knife to reveal the interior, which looked pretty much like the original. It tasted similar but not identical, was very sweet and very popular.

Ingredients:
400 g plain oatmeal biscuits
200 g unsalted butter
1 tin of top and fill caramel
400 g (approx) milk cooking chocolate (good quality)

Oaty Cranberry and Milo Cookies

I made these cookies for my children's lunchboxes - they are a variation of the Oaty Muesli Bars but with Milo to give it a slight chocolatey/malty taste, and some dried cranberries for some tangy sweetness.

(I imagine instead of the Milo, cocoa powder would work well too - although I would probably increase the amount of sugar to 100 g. I will try this variation next time.)

Cream together the soft butter and brown sugar, then add an egg.

Beat in the egg (add a tablespoon of the flour first as it makes the mixture smoother)...

...then fold in the rest of the flour, and then the Milo.

Stir in the cranberries...

...and then the oats, until the mixture is well combined.

Put on a baking sheet and heat the oven to 180 C. I made round cookies and some longer muesli bar shaped cookies which are good for school recess/morning tea.

Cook for 15 minutes. They will still be quite soft when they come out of the oven, but will firm up as they cool.

The cooked cookies! They keep their shape well because they are crammed full of oats.

Ingredients:
50 g butter, softened
80 g light brown sugar
1 egg
50 g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp Milo
175 g rolled oats
50 g dried cranberries

Refrigerator Naan

I often make naan for my children to take to school. Recently I've been making my naan dough the evening before and leaving it in the fridge overnight, and then I just cook it in the pan in the morning. Ta-dah! Fresh naan for the lunch boxes.

This is a small amount of dough that makes 6-8 little naans.

I've started using some wholemeal flour in my naan to make it a bit more substantial. Put flours, yeast, salt and a little sugar in a large bowl. In a jug mix together warm water, yogurt and oil.

My kitchen clock showing the time I was making the dough - nearly 11 pm. Yes I suppose I am a bit mad.

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry with a spoon, then when it's looking shaggy start mixing by hand. It helps if you rub a little oil onto your hands to stop it sticking too much.

Bring it all together into a ball, adding a couple more drops of water if necessary, and knead for a few minutes (I do this in the bowl).

Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, get the dough out and remove it from the bowl.

Break it into the number of pieces you need, roll each piece into a ball, then roll them flat with an oiled rolling pin.

Heat a heavy-based pan to a medium heat and then lay some of the dough ovals in (don't add any oil to the pan).

Cook for a few minutes until golden underneath, then turn over. Turn the heat down if they are browning too quickly, or they will burn before they are cooked through.

Cook the other side for a few minutes, then cool on a wire rack.

Ingredients:
150 g plain white flour or bread flour
100 g wholemeal flour
1 level tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp fine salt
1/2 tsp sugar
150 ml warm water
1 tbsp plain yogurt
1 tsp vegetable oil (I use olive oil)

My original naan recipe is here

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins (again!)

This time I used brown sugar instead of white sugar in this recipe and they are pretty good! Lovely crunchy top and fluffy interior.

So if you've got some blueberries and buttermilk hanging around, these (here and here) are good muffin recipes, and this blueberry buttermilk cake is worth making too.

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins (another version)

This is a slightly different version of blueberry and buttermilk muffins. The other ones I made contained demarara sugar and butter, while these have white sugar and oil.

Put flour and sugar in a bowl, and in a large jug put oil, buttermilk, egg and vanilla.

Add the buttermilk mixture and blueberries to the flour and sugar, and stir until combined.

Because of the white sugar, the mixture is very pale - I normally use brown or demarara sugar, so I was surprised at how white it was.

Spoon into muffin trays and cook at 200 C for around 20 minutes. My little muffins took 15 mins.
The cooked muffins have a golden, crispy top and are very light and fluffy inside. I'm used to the more solid, substantial and sticky muffins, so to me these are a bit like the 'white bread' version - not as tasty - more like a light cupcake.

But very popular with everyone else, and they come out of the muffin papers very cleanly with no residue, which is unusual for a muffin!

Ingredients:
2½ cups (375g) self-raising flour
¾ cup (165g) caster sugar
1 egg, beaten lightly
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup (160ml) vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
¾ cup (180ml) buttermilk
100 g blueberries

Based on this recipe.

Mango and Sugar Plums

I had to take photos of this mango and the sugar plums and put them on here, because they're so beautiful!

Blueberry Buttermilk Muffins

I love muffins made with buttermilk - it seems to give them a slightly sour tang (as in cheesecake rather than off milk!) which goes especially well with blueberries.

The recipe started as a loaf, but now I use it for muffins instead, as it's more practical for school lunches.

Put flour, baking powder, bicarb, nutmeg and sugar in a large bowl. In a jug put egg, buttermilk and have melted butter ready.

(I don't put the butter in with the other wet ingredients to keep it warm and fully melted.)

Add buttermilk/egg and melted butter to the flour mixture, and stir in gently. When almost combined, add blueberries and continue to stir until everything is just combined.

Spoon into muffin pans and cook at 190 C for 15-20 minutes (my smaller ones took 15 mins, and the bigger ones took 20 mins).

I had about 4 tablespoons of mixture left over and didn't have room for another muffin pan in the oven, so I oiled my mini quiche dish and made a little muffin cake instead. I sprinkled some extra demarara on the top and we shared a mini cake for dessert.


Ingredients:
2 cups (300 g ) plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarb of soda
small grating of nutmeg
1 cup (220 g) demarara sugar
1 punnet (175 g) blueberries
1 egg, lightly beaten
60 g butter, melted
1 cup (250 ml) buttermilk

Minced Beef Wellington

I made this for dinner last night, and as it wasn't a spectacular success, I wasn't sure whether to blog about it. But I decided to add it anyway, if only to remind myself how it turned out.

When I say it wasn't a success, it wasn't that no one liked it, because it was eaten and enjoyed. But I wasn't sure the time and effort it took was worth the result. Although as I discovered the next day, it tastes much nicer when it's cold.

(This recipe is from Jamie Oliver's book Ministry of Food.)

Firstly fry all the chopped vegetables in a large frying pan, in a little olive oil. Add a generous handful of frozen peas - or sweetcorn, which is what I used. Put them in a large bowl and allow to cool.

Add minced beef, egg, salt and pepper; and I also added a couple of shakes of Worcestershire sauce because I couldn't see how this wasn't going to turn out to be very bland otherwise!

Roll out the pastry to the size of a small tea towel (according to JO) or if you've got the ready-rolled pastry, defrost 4 or so slices.

Shape meat mixture into a sausage shape - or if you've got the square pastry, it's going to be several sausage shapes. Put the 'sausage' at one end and roll it all up. (If you have a tea towel-shaped bit of pastry, place it along the long edge.)

Roll it up completely...

...and then seal the ends. I used egg along the edges, but in the end I decided I would have been better with no 'glue' as the pastry was quite gummy already and the egg was making things more slippery.

I ended up making some little pasties aswell.

Put them on a baking tray, brush with egg and cook at 180 C for an hour. In the photos in the book, there are no slits cut in the top to let out steam, but I thought it was better to have them.

The cooked pies aren't very pretty! There was quite a lot of leaking out of the holes. But they got eaten up, with tomato sauce, and were quite filling.

I suppose my problem with this is that the filling was a little bland (I know I didn't follow the recipe exactly but I don't think that would have made a lot of difference) but then I'm not a big fan of meat pie in any form - I find they often have an unappetising 'steamy' flavour - so maybe that's why it didn't appeal to me much.

Part of one of the long 'wellingtons' was left over, and I kept it in the fridge overnight. We ate it at lunch time, and it was actually *much* nicer cold. So I would suggest this would make a good lunch dish or picnic food, cooked the day before.

Ingredients:
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 potato, finely chopped
1 stick celery, finely chopped
2 large flat mushrooms, finely chopped (I left this out)
2 cloves garlic, minced/grated - I chopped mine finely
4 sprigs rosemary, leaves stripped and finely chopped (I used one sprig)
a big handful frozen peas (I used frozen corn)
1 large egg, beaten
500g good quality minced beef
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
500g puff pastry, or 4 or 5 sheets of ready-rolled

Cypriot Orange Cake

I saw this orange cake on Anna's blog and decided that today - a cool and rainy Saturday - is the perfect day to try it out.

I actually got my eldest son to do most of the work, while I was making dinner - it's one of those cakes where you just mix everything together and put it in a cake pan.

Put the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, sugar) in a big bowl, and in a jug combine eggs, oil, vanilla extract and orange zest and juice. Mix it all together gently.

Pour mixture into an oiled bundt tin or a 23 cm round tin.

Cook for one hour (mine took 50 mins) at 180 C. Leave to cool in pan and then remove onto a cake rack.

As Anna says, it's light and fragrant - orangey and tangy and not too sweet, and very easy to make.

Ingredients:
3 cups self-raising flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
3 tsp baking powder
zest and juice of 2 oranges
4 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla essence