Fruit Leather Snacks

When I was little I used to love going to the health food store with my mum on Saturday mornings. They used to sell these little fruit leather snacks and we used to go with the intention of stocking up for the week's lunch boxes. They rarely made it to when we got home, let alone through the week for our packed lunches. I decided to experiment the other day as I had a load of apples left (they were on offer and I couldn't resist buying 3 kilos of them!) so made up a big batch of apple compote. I put the oven on as low as it could go, spread it over a square silicone cake mould and hoped for the best. This was the result! 

Ingredients

4 apples

1 tsp cinnamon 

100ml water

Method

1. Peel, core and chop the apples into small chunks (around 1cm).

2. Put into a saucepan over a low heat with the cinnamon and water and simmer gently until the apples are soft and starting to go mushy.

3. Using a hand blender, mush the apples until they're blended and resemble a smooth sauce.

4. Cool the sauce and spread over a silicone baking sheet. You need something square or rectangular thats shallow to be able to spread it thinly. You want to get it as smooth as possible and only about 1 or 2 mm thick. Thin and smooth is all that matters.

5. Bake for about 6 hours on the lowest setting on your oven. If you leave it in too long you'll end up with an apple crisp rather than soft leather strips. 

6. Leave to cool then cut into strips with scissors. 

Tips

- Try using other fruit in with the apple such as strawberries or pears.

- Roll them up into little rolls to make them fun for kids to eat. 

- Use a cookie cutter to cut them into shapes for kids. 

- Try making some applesauce with no cinnamon. Take out a small amount of the cooled sauce and add the cinnamon to that. Pipe it in diagonal lines across the spread out apple sauce on the tray to give a stripy effect. Bake as normal and you'll have stripy fruit leather! You could also make a cinnamon free apple sauce and pipe the lines in a strawberry compote to make it multicoloured and stripy. Play around with it! It's so simple and is inevitably delicious so even if it doesn't look like it'd win any beauty pageants, it'll sure taste delicious! 

Enjoy! 

Healthy Banana and Oat Cookies

I love cookies. Who doesn't? I'm trying to cut down on processed foods though, as I'm getting more and more conscious about what I eat. These cookies are super simple. I've played around with different variations on the recipe too. The first ones I made were these cranberry ones. Simply oats, banana and cranberries. Easy huh? I was going to add some orange zest but didn't have any oranges and a walk to the shop in the rain didn't sound too appealing. The second ones I made are chocolate ones. Healthy chocolate cookies! I use raw cacao in my baking instead of cocoa powder. It gives a really rich chocolatey flavour and you don't need to use much at all. It's a bit pricey but I buy in bulk and using it means I can eat more chocolatey bakes without the guilt. It's high in antioxidants and is good for your heart and stuff (I googled it once and was sold but if you want a proper list of why it's good, go ahead and have a look online). 

Ingredients

2 bananas

200g oats

25g cranberries

Zest of 1 orange

Method

1. Peel the bananas and mash them in a bowl.

2. Stir in the oats, cranberries and zest.

3. Roll into 20 small balls and flatten onto baking trays into cookies

4. Bake at 180 degrees for 15-20 minutes until they're golden and firm to the touch.

5. Cool on a wire rack and eat!

                                      

Variations

Chocolate and Date Cookies

- Add 25g raw cacao and 25g chopped dates to the mixture.

Chocolate Orange Cookies

- Add 25g raw cacao and the zest of an orange to the mixture.

White Chocolate and Cranberry Cookies

- Add 25g white chocolate chips and 25g cranberries to the mixture.

Tips

You can basically add anything you want to these cookies. With my recipes they work out at around 50-55 calories each. Obviously adding chunks of chocolate will increase that but they're still better for you than normal cookies and are low in saturated fat and sugar. I don't feel guilty polishing half a batch of these in one go! They're fab for breakfast on the go or snacks during the day. I even took a load to the cinema with me to avoid the temptation of popcorn and pick and mix! 

Simple Genoese Sponge

While deciding what sponge to use as the base of a birthday cake, I did a bit of experimentation. I've never made a Genoese sponge before so decided to give it a go. Overall it was quite simple and the cake was light and really spongy. It's not dense enough to support the weight of the fondant I'd need to cover it with for my birthday cake but it makes a really nice light sponge for making a cake for afternoon tea or something. I topped it with lemon curd and fresh blueberries but you really could use anything. There's only one of the two layers in the photos because half of it was eaten warm from the oven with Nutella and custard. That's less sophisticated but so so tasty! 

Ingredients

50g melted, cooled butter

120g plain flour

Pinch salt

4 eggs (if you can, use duck eggs or substitute one in for a hens egg)

120g caster sugar 

Method

1. With a little of the melted butter, grease two sandwich tins.

2. In a bowl over hot water, whisk the eggs and sugar with an electric whisk for about 10 minutes until thick, pale and creamy and at least tripled in size.

3. Remove from the heat and fold in the flour in two batches, followed by the butter. 

4. Divide between the two tins and bake for 20-30 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius until golden and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. 

To finish top with lemon curd and fresh blueberries and then dust with icing sugar. I did take a picture but it seems to have vanished from my phone while all the rest have stayed... mystery! It's really versatile so you really could top it with whatever you wanted. My brother wanted a Nutella one so instead of having two layers of sponge I had one of the cakes topped with lemon curd and blueberries and the other with Nutella and fresh strawberries. Give it a go! 

Tips

-Use a much bigger bowl than you think you need for the eggs and sugar- you'll be surprised how much the mixture expands! 

-Don't be impatient with the whisking - it'll go really thick and creamy and leave a trail when you pull the beaters out of the mixture. 

Almond, Berry and Seed Breakfast Muffins

I saw a recipe somewhere for muffins like these but decided to tweak them a bit. They taste really good and they're way better for you than the muffins you buy from Starbucks on days when you're running too late for breakfast. I made a full batch of 12 then froze some so that when I needed to take one with me I just took it out of the freezer and by the time I got hungry it had thawed out. They keep for a couple of days in an airtight box anyway as they're full of fruit. They're so simple to make and even trick you into thinking you're eating real cake! They also only take 30 mins start to finish and 25 of those are when they're in the oven!

Ingredients
1 cup self-raising flour
1 pot (about 280 ml) buttermilk
1 cup ground almonds
2/3rds cup caster sugar (or muscavado unrefined sugar if you have it)
3tbsp seeds (I used half chia seeds and half flax seeds, Amazon sells them cheap)
1 large egg
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup berries (I use frozen mixed berries) 
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Method
1. Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Mix the oil, buttermilk and egg in a jug.
3. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated.
4. Fold through the berries.
5. Divide between 12 muffin cases in a cupcake pan.
6. Bake at 170 degrees Celsius for about 25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean when inserted.
7. Leave to cool on a wire rack. 

Tips

- I topped mine with a sprinkling of porridge oats before baking to give some extra crunch to the top

- Use wholemeal flour if you want them to be even healthier

- Try mixing it up with different fruits and seeds as they're really versatile! Pumpkin seeds and apricots would be amazing... you could even add some white choc chips if you wanted them to be a little bit naughty!! 

Happy baking :) 

Salted Caramel and Peanut Millionaires Shortbread

I love millionaires shortbread but find it too sweet. This is a great way of making it less sickly. However, it does mean that you can eat more of it and are entering dangerous territory if trying to embark on a diet! I used salted peanuts in this recipe instead of salting the caramel to add constrast so that there's parts that are really salty and parts that are really sweet from the caramel. I like it that way but by all means just salt the caramel and leave out the nuts.

Ingredients

75g caster sugar

115g butter

200g plain flour (or 175g plus 1tbsp corn flour)

1 pinch salt

Caramel:

100g butter

100g light muscavado sugar

1 tin consensed milk 

150g dark chocolate

Method

1. Mix the butter and caster sugar until combined and resembling breadcrumbs. 

2. Add in the flour and press into a 20cm tin.

3. Bake at 150 degrees Celsius for about 30 minutes until golden. 

4. For the caramel, melt the butter and muscavado sugar together over a low heat. 

5. When combined, add the condensed milk, bring to the boil and stir continuously until the caramel is thick and coats the back of the spoon. As a test, dip in a cold teaspoon and if the caramel firms up and sets very quickly, it's good to go.

6. Pour the caramel over the biscuit and allow to firm up and cool.

7. When cool, top with the melted dark chocolate and allow to set. 

Tips

Make the caramel really thick. Be patient with it as it'll get there, it may just take a while. You should be able to drag your spoon from one side of the pan to the other and the line you've just drawn on the bottom of the pan to be still visible. This'll allow for an easily sliced caramel rather than having it too gooey and messy when trying to divide it up.

Cut through the chocolate when it's slightly soft so just before it sets otherwise it'll crack and you won't get uniform little squares. If it's set hard, dip your knife in hot water and divide up the chocolate first before cutting all the way through the shortbread. 

Try adding nuts to the base if you don't want to add them to the caramel (use unsalted though) for extra crunch but keeping the smooth caramel. 

Salted Caramel and Chocolate Profiteroles

Today is my aunt's birthday. We went out for lunch to a place that she'd been to before and said they did amazing profiteroles. When we went to order dessert, they'd sold out! She wasn't too happy about this so I came home and decided to give them a bash. I'd never made profiteroles before and the first attempt today failed as I didn't have enough flour, decided to wing it and found out the hard way that choux pastry can't be done in the haphazard way I usually bake. This actually requires measuring and careful following of the recipe. If you do that, it's actually really easy (not on the biceps though! You'd have guns like a superhero if you did it every day) and doesn't take too long. A relaxing afternoon bake for a rainy day!

 

 

Ingredients

120g plain flour

Pinch of salt

200ml cold water

75g butter

1 tbsp caster sugar

4 eggs, beaten

 

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

2. Put the water, sugar and butter in a pan over a low  heat until the butter is melted.

3. Turn up the heat to a boil then once boiling, turn off the heat and tip in the flour and salt.

4. Beat like your life depends on it until its a smooth paste which comes away from the sides of the pan in a ball.

5. Leave the dough to cool a bit.

6. When it's cooled a bit, beat in a little of the egg at a time. You'll need about 4 but stop when it's a smooth, glossy, pipeable paste. Don't keep adding to use it up as you'll get a mixture that's too runny and doesn't hold its shape in the oven.

7. Scoop into a piping bag with a round nozzle (or a food bag with the corner snipped off if like me you don't have a piping bag and nozzle to hand just accept the fact that you won't get symmetrical, perfect little choux buns).

8. Pipe into little balls in rows on baking trays lined with parchment and stuck down with tiny blobs of the mixture. This is the kind of consistency you want to end up with after the eggs are beaten in.

9. Dip your finger in cold water and flatten any 'nipples' on them before baking them.

10. Bake for about 30 minutes until risen and golden. They expand a LOT!

11. Stab each one's bottom with a skewer to release some air and put them back into the oven, hole side up for 5 minutes.

12. Allow to cool completely on a wire tray.

 

Tips

Don't pipe them too close together as they expand a lot when cooked! I didn't realise just how much they grew!

Put a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to create more steam and give them extra puffiness.

Pipe in single squeezes. Don't go back to a blob and add more to it to make it bigger as it won't rise up in a ball shape and you'll get odd-looking random shaped balls.

Don't open the oven while they're cooking as they'll deflate.

Cook them until they're a dark gold. If they're underdone when you open the oven they'll deflate so be patient and let them go slightly darker than you think you should.

Make sure they're filled with cream! If you don't squeeze hard enough you'll get a measly amount coming out of your bag into them and that's no use to anyone... load them up! They should feel heavy compared to the unfilled ones.

 

I filled mine with a big pot of cream (about 600ml I think), whipped up with the zest of an orange. You just pipe it into the buns when they're completely cool (you do need a small nozzle for this though).

 

For the chocolate sauce, I melted 200g dark chocolate in a bain marie (heatproof bowl over simmering water) and added in half a tub of double cream (about 150ml). I just mixed it until smooth and dunked the filled profiteroles into it. If you weren't adding caramel sauce too, some Cointreau would be good so you could have chocolate orange ones. Or even melt in a chocolate orange instead of the dark chocolate which would make it reeeeally yummy.

 

I drizzled over some of the sauce I'd made for the chocolate and chestnut pavlova as I still had some of that left. I just added some sea salt to it to give it a hint of saltiness to cut through the sweetness. To make it I melted100g caster sugar with 4 tbsp water together then brought it to a boil. Don't stir the mixture or the sugar will crystallize. When it was a dark caramel colour, I removed it from the heat and whisked in a tablespoon of butter and 300ml of double cream. It bubbles up and sizzles but just keep mixing and you'll get your delicious sauce in no time. Add in salt to taste and then store the extra (if there's any left) in sterilized jars.

 

They're not that difficult to make and considering this was my first ever attempt at choux pastry, I don't think they turned out too bad! They taste so good that any minor aesthetic imperfections are instantly forgiven by the lucky people that get to chow down on them!!

 



Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes

I made these for breakfast for my mum when we went on a weekend away to West Wales. I had to wing it as I didn't have scales or a whisk but if they turned out as well as they did despite that, then having the right tools will only increase the chances of this being an idiot-proof recipe! They're really simple and taste really good. I serve them in a big fat stack with lots of maple syrup. They're best eaten straight out of the pan but I've also microwaved them after they've cooled when I'm ready for round two!

 

Ingredients

1 punnet blueberries

5 heaped tablespoons plain flour

1 pinch salt

1 egg

1 pot of buttermilk (about 254ml I think)

2 tbsp melted butter

1 tsp salt

1 tsp bicarb

 

Method

1. Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

2. In a jug or small bowl, stir the wet ingredients together with a fork.

3. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and mix until combined.

4. Over a low heat, dollop in tablespoons of the mixture. Top each blob of batter with some blueberries.

5. When the tops of the pancakes bubble, flip them over.

6. Eat hot with lots of maple syrup!

 

Tips

Don't have your pan too hot as the outsides will cook really fast and you'll have raw dough in the middle. They're fine to take their time over a low heat. If you do happen to have them undercooked, blast them in the microwave for 30 seconds and they'll be cooked throughout.