Working with Cellardoor Magazine

So I've been a little quiet this week - I did have two recipes baked and ready to share with you but I lost all the pictures! I have literally no idea what I've managed to do, but in trying to get ahead and transfer all the images to my computer I somehow wiped my camera and now I'm left with no pictures! I'm so sad about it, there's something about losing pictures which is just so upsetting but its okay, because I've got some exciting news to share with you today instead - I'm working with Cellardoor Magazine as their food blogger!

This is a really exciting opportunity and means that every week they'll be sharing one of my recipes on their blog. They are a little different to what I post here - a lot less cakey things and a lot more main meals and savoury options. All the dishes are really tasty and I'm loving having an outlet for all the cooking I don't think would fit in on here. 

Head on over and check out Cellardoor's blog - its a lovely mix of interviews, music and style, I've spent many an afternoon scrolling through their lovely posts!

If you'd like to see the recipes specifically then you'll find them here:

Roast Pumpkin Soup

Ginger Spiced Toffee Apple Pie

Creamy Chicken One Pot Pasta

Follow Cellardoor to make sure you don't miss out on a recipe. You can subscribe to the mailing list on the blog, like them on Facebook and follow on Twitter. I'm so excited about this project I'd love for you to be a part of it with me! 

As long as I have no more technical difficulties I'll be back to posting recipes next week :) 

Mars Bar Cookies

These cookies are so good! Sweet, sticky and packed full of chocolatey caramel pieces they make a great treat for a cold afternoon, perfect with a cup of tea and a snuggle on the sofa! 

Ingredients: 

225g butter

220g light brown sugar

100g caster sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp salt

320g plain flour

3 full size mars bars, chopped 

Makes 20 cookies

Method: 

1. Preheat oven to 180 . Line 2 large baking trays 

2. Cream together butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until well combined.

3. Fold in the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt until just combined. Now add the mars bar pieces and fold again until well distributed in the mixture.

4. Place spoonfuls of mixture on the tray spacing well apart to allow for spreading. Using the back of a wet spoon, lightly flatten the tops.

Bake for 15 minutes, until the edges are golden and the middles just set. Leave on the tray to cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool fully.  

These are very sweet, so definitely not something to be eaten everyday, but they are a great thing to bake for a winter treat or special occasion.

I just had to include this picture of chopping the Mars bars, it was just such an enjoyable thing to do! 

Cheese Bread

Tonight's post is a perfect midweek recipe. My mum used to make this cheese bread for my lunchbox and every time I smell it cooking I feel like I'm 8 years old again! This is a really easy bread recipe, mixed in one go with no yeast means no rising - in fact it's more like a cake batter than a bread dough which means its super quick to make. Within 30 minutes you'll have a soft, crumbly, cheesy loaf of joy! Amazing when warm spread with melty butter, and even better to look forward to in your lunchbox! 

Ingredients:

75g margarine
225g wholemeal bread flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder 

1 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp paprika

½ tsp salt

1 egg

75g mature cheddar cheese

120ml (8 tbsp) milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190°C, grease and line a loaf tin.

2. Place all the ingredients in a deep bowl and beat together until thoroughly mixed. 

3. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 30-35 minutes, adding a little grated cheese to the top of the bread after 20 minutes of baking. Turn onto a wire rack to cool, but this is definitely best eaten warm!

Coffee and Walnut Cake

This cake has always been my dad's favourite - if I ever say I'm going to bake he will always ask for this without fail! It is a lovely classic; light coffee sponge with creamy buttercream and crunchy walnuts and the great thing about it is you can adjust the amount of coffee to suit your taste. This uses the same technique as my Victoria Sponge recipe, where you weigh the eggs first and then weigh each ingredient to the same weight, so its very easy to scale up or down.

Ingredients:

Cake:

3 eggs
Caster sugar
Margarine
Self raising flour
2-4 tbsp homemade coffee extract (see below)
Handful of chopped walnuts - optional but delicious

Coffee Buttercream

50g unsalted butter, softened
150g icing sugar
2tbsp homemade coffee extract
8 whole walnuts, to decorate

Method:

1. First up, make your coffee extract. I do this by dissolving 3 heaped tsps instant coffee in 100ml boiling water then leave until cold - don't use this mixture warm as it will curdle your cake batter! 

2. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease and line two shallow cake tins. Weigh the eggs in their shells. Make a note of what they weigh as this is measurement you'll need for all the other cake ingredients. Weigh your sugar, margarine and flour to this weight, and beat the eggs in a separate bowl or jug.

3. Using either an electric mixture, or by hand, cream together the sugar and margarine in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

4. Mix in the beaten eggs and coffee extract a little at a time, adding a spoonful of flour with each addition to stop the mixture curdling. Use 2 tbsp coffee extract for light hint of coffee, 3 tbsp for a bit more of a hit, and 4tbsp if you like a really deep, rich flavour. 

5. Gently fold the chopped walnuts and remaining flour into the mixture, once its all incorporated pour the mixture into the tins.

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the top of the sponge is springy on top and a skewer comes out clean when inserted. Transfer to a wire rack until completely cool.

7. To make the buttercream beat the butter until it is really soft, then add the icing sugar a spoonful at a time, beating well after each addition. When you've added about half of the icing sugar, add the coffee extract, a spoonful at a time. Like the cake, you can add as much or as little coffee as you'd like here, but bear in mind that the more you add the more likely it is you'll need to add more icing sugar as well to keep the buttercream soft and spreadable. 

8. Fill and top the cake with buttercream, decorating with the walnuts and anything else you'd like. Grated white chocolate always goes nicely on a coffee cake, as does a little sifted cocoa powder. Cut into slices and enjoy! 

You can also use this recipe to make coffee cupcakes, just spoon into cupcake cases and reduce cooking time to 15-20 minutes. 

National Baking Week and Millionaire's Shortbread

I feel so guilty having neglected this blog for the past few weeks! I had the craziest busy week last week, but its all a bit more normal now so I'll just brush off the cobwebs and get back to regular posting. This week is National Baking Week, so I'm hoping you'll crack out the mixing bowl and get baking! I've got four shiny new recipes coming up for you over the next four days and each one is simple, quick(ish!) and delicious!

National Baking Week has been designed to not only get the nation baking, but to also raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital through bake sales - all the details of how to do this can be found on the National Baking Week website. Raising money for a great cause, you can eat ALL the treats and not feel guilty at all so there's no excuse not to get involved!

Millionaires Shortbread is my favourite, but I've always been put off baking it because of the time it takes, and I've long been freaked out about making my own caramel (I had one bad experience with an exploding bowl when trying out a microwave recipe and I've never quite recovered from it...) but this one is great as it can be made much more easily and quickly by taking a few short cuts. Using a digestive biscuit base and a pretty foolproof method for making the caramel, the only really time consuming thing here is the chilling, but you could easily do that overnight and all you'll have to do is cover with chocolate the next morning and enjoy!

Ingredients:

Base:

200g digestive biscuits

60g butter, melted

Caramel:

150g butter

150g dark brown soft sugar

1 can (397g) Condensed Milk

Topping:

200g dark chocolate

100g white chocolate

Makes 25 mini squares, or 16 bigger pieces

Method:

1. Crush the digestive biscuits until they resemble crumbs, and stir in the melted butter, making sure all of the mixture is covered. Press the mixture into a well greased and lined tin, using the back of a metal spoon to smooth the surface. Chill for 30 minutes.

2. To make the caramel heat the sugar and butter in a pan over a low heat, gently stirring until melted. Add the condensed milk and bring to a rapid boil, stirring continuously. Cook for a minute or so, until the caramel has thickened. Pour over the base and chill for at least 2 hours, but overnight if possible. 

3. Once the caramel has set, melt the dark chocolate and spread over the caramel. Working quickly before the chocolate sets, add spoonfuls of white chocolate and swirl using a skewer or toothpick to create a marbled effect. Return to the fridge to set for about an hour.

4. Using a hot knife (run under boiling water then dry) cut the shortbread into squares. I actually found the easiest way to do this was with a pizza wheel, but you have to make sure its really hot! 

Store in an airtight container in the fridge and these will last for up to two weeks, well, if you can resist for that long!

Join the baking revolution and share your recipes on twitter with me @millieismagic and the baking week team @bakingweek 

Viennese Whirls

This is the simplest and most beautiful recipe - all it takes is four main ingredients and you've got yourself a light, crumbly, buttery Viennese biscuit. Add in some jam and buttercream and you'll create a teatime classic - simply delicious! 

Ingredients:

Biscuits:

175g margarine
50g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
1tsp vanilla essence

Filling:

25g butter, softened
100g icing sugar
1tsp milk
Jam - whichever flavour you fancy but make sure its a smooth jam, like a seedless raspberry for example. You don't want big pieces of fruit in the middle of your whirls!

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160 Line a baking tray with baking paper

2. Thoroughly cream together the margarine and sugar. Mix in the flour and vanilla essence until you have a smooth paste 

3. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag fitted with a large star nozzle (my favourite piping bags to use are these) and pipe rosettes on the baking tray. You could using a template here to get them all the same size, or you can just eyeball it, like I did here:

4. Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack

5. While the biscuits are cooling make the buttercream. First off beat the butter until it is really soft, then slowly add the icing sugar, mixing until its all incorporated. If the buttercream is really stiff, add a little of the milk to make it softer - you want a light, fluffy icing, with a spreadable consistency.

6. Take two cooled biscuits, spread a little jam on one and a little buttercream on the other. Push the two halves together - be gentle here as the biscuits have a very soft, crumbly texture. Enjoy one, or two, or three...

Variations:

Chocolate Viennese Whirls

Make as above, substituting a tbsp of flour for a tbsp of cocoa powder in the biscuit mixture, and a tbsp of icing sugar for a tbsp of cocoa powder in the buttercream. Sandwich using nutella in place of jam. Yum! 

Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels

When I was at high school, it became tradition when spending an afternoon in the city to head to the Auntie Anne's pretzel stall and treat myself to a cinnamon sugar pretzel. Now I've not eaten one of these for years but found myself this week with an inexplicable craving for a soft, buttery pretzel that just would not go away. With no way of getting into the city to buy one, and the craving not going away no matter what I tried, I decided to make them myself.

I wont lie to you, this is not an 'easy' recipe, but its not impossibly difficult either, its just very fiddly - I can promise you though that the extra effort is so worth it. This recipe needs at least three hours from start to finish, but at the end of that time you'll have yourself a batch of delicious soft pretzels that taste even better than the ones you can buy in store (sorry Auntie Anne, but its true!) Anyway, I've rambled on long enough here, lets get on with the recipe. 

Ingredients:

Pretzel dough:

300ml warm water

1 x 7g sachet dried yeast

2 tbsp brown sugar

350g plain flour

150g bread flour

1 heaped tsp salt

Baking soda wash:

40g baking powder

400ml warm water 

Cinnamon Sugar:

40g butter, melted

6 tbsp caster sugar

1 heaped tbsp ground cinnamon

Makes 12 pretzels

Method:

1. Place the yeast into a large mixing bowl, add the warm water and sugar and stir to combine. This is to activate the yeast - set the bowl to one side for about 10 minutes or until the yeast has proved. You'll know its done when it looks like the picture below

2. Add the flours and salt to the bowl and mix well - first with a spoon and then with your hands as the dough comes together.

3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic. This will take somewhere between 8-10 minutes and is one hell of a workout! Once the dough has been kneaded place in a lightly oiled bowl, turning so the dough gets a covering of oil. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in a warm place for an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.

Before...

...and after

4. When the dough has finished rising, mix the baking powder with the warm water and pour into a deep dish or tray, set to one side.

5. Turn out the risen dough and cut into 12 equal pieces. The easiest way to do this is to cut the dough into quarters,  and then cut each quarter into thirds. 

6. Now its time to make the pretzels. First up take a piece of dough and roll it into a long, thin sausage about the thickness of a pencil. DO NOT USE FLOUR here, don't flour your hands or the surface as it makes rolling the dough impossible - the dough shouldn't stick anyway, but if it does then use a tiny bit of oil to stop it. Twist the dough into a pretzel shape, here's how I did it:

7. Quickly dip the pretzel into the baking powder mixture, making sure its completely covered. After dipping, blot the underside of the pretzel on a piece of kitchen paper - this will stop the bottom cooking quicker than the top

8. Place the dipped pretzel on a tray lined with baking paper. Repeat for all pretzels then leave to rise for about 30 minutes. 

9. Preheat the oven to 230°C. When the pretzels have risen, bake for 8-9 minutes or until they are risen and golden. 

10. Place the cinnamon and sugar in a bowl and mix well until fully combined. Pour into a shallow tray.

11. Take a cooked pretzel and brush the top with the melted butter. Then take the pretzel and dip it butter side down into the cinnamon sugar (I used tongs to hold the pretzel - its far less messy!). Lightly shake the pan to ensure the whole pretzel gets a good coating.

 Tap of the excess and leave one a wire rack to cool. Repeat for all pretzels. 

These are best enjoyed on the day of baking, but if they do last longer than that - and I'd be amazed if they did as they're so moreish - then reheat them in the oven at about 200°C for five minutes before eating. 

If cinnamon sugar isn't your thing, you could always dip these in vanilla sugar, chocolate sauce, anything that takes your fancy really! If you prefer savoury pretzels, just sprinkle with coarse sea salt before baking and voila!