Thanksgiving flapjacks - British style

So, we're British. We may do Halloween US-style, but we draw the line at Thanksgiving. I'll have no marshmallow-topped sweet potato in this house, thankyouverymuch. But in a spirit of transatlantic bonhomie, I wanted to make something for breakfast with an American flavour. I've plumped for flapjacks, with cranberries and blueberries. Now, I believe that when I say 'flapjack', an American will actually think of something quite different from what I have in mind - some sort of pancake? I'm not sure, but anyway, this is the British take on a flapjack, with the addition of the berries that I most closely associate with the US.

Now, I say these are breakfast flapjacks. To be honest though, I'd really only eat them for a breakfast on the hoof, on those desperate-for-carbs-but-no-time-to-eat days. Or possibly if today were a national holiday of some sort... I tried for years without success to make flapjacks that resembled the chewy, sticky ones my mum used to make. I've finally got there, but I'm afraid the results do not make happy reading for any dentists out there. The sugar and syrup are not exactly tooth-friendly, and there is a lot of butter in them too. But they are rather good, if I say so myself. I can convince myself that anything involving oats is health food, and blueberries are a superfood, so they are practically oozing with goodness when you think about it.

Cranberry and blueberry flapjacks

175g unsalted butter
175g golden syrup
175g light muscovado sugar
300g rolled oats
25g dried cranberries
25g dried blueberries
finely grated rind of 1/2 lemon





Notes: If you don't have light muscovado, a soft brown sugar would also work, but will make a slightly lighter flapjack.
Try to use good quality rolled oats - I find that some of the cheaper 'porridge oats' tend to be a bit dusty.
The dried blueberries and cranberries can usually be found with the raisins, sultanas etc in the supermarket. The ones I used are labelled 'dried and sweetened'. I haven't tried it with unsweetened berries, or fresh berries. I'd imagine that unwseetened blueberries might be OK, but cranberries are very tart. Although with all that sugar and syrup, that may not be such a bad thing. You could use all blueberries or all cranberries if you prefer, or another dried fruit such as raisins.
The lemon rind can be ommitted, but it helps to cut through the sweetness a little.

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 150C (140C for fan ovens). Line a square baking tin (about 25cm square, but slightly bigger or smaller is fine) with baking parchment
2. Melt the butter, then brush a little of this on the baking paper before adding the syrup and sugar to the butter in the pan and warming until the sugar dissolves.
3. Remove from the heat and stir in the rest of the ingredients.
4. Put the mixture in the tin and squash down a little to level the surface.
5. Bake for about 35-40 minutes until golden brown. The mixture will still be a bit sticky and bubbly-looking, but this will set once it's out of the oven.
6. Leave in the tin for 15 minutes or so, then remove and cut into squares.

Couldn't be easier!

Even if we don't celebrate Thanksgiving, it's always good to have an opportunity to stop and think about the good things that have happened this year, especially when 2012 has been a bit of a doozy for bad news in this family. So, along with the usual family/friends/good health etc, today I'm giving thanks for the following two things that have improved my life, particularly the kitchen-based parts of it, over the last year:

Easy-cut cling film. I cannot tell you how infuriated it makes me to lose the end of the cling film at 7.30am when I'm trying to get the packed lunches done. That awful sinking feeling when it peels off half a width and you just know you're in for a half hour of trying to find the end and the bit where the tear ends. But no more!

The person who invented this needs a knighthood, or a Nobel Peace Prize (well, if 'Europe' can win one, then why not easy-cut cling film wo/man?). It's a blimmin marvel.

My laundry pulley. The downside of living in the west of Scotland is that the weather is, quite frankly, dreadful. It rains a lot. My mum, who grew up in Aberdeen, and so really should know better, is always telling me that it's not that much worse than it is in south-east England where she now lives. Yeah, right mum. The climate means that outdoor drying is one of those things you do once in a blue moon, and then spend the rest of the day nervously twitching the curtains. I have a drier but y'know, not very green and all that, and also expensive to run.

The upside of living in the west of Scotland, however, is that you are quite likely to live in a house with great high ceilings, just begging for a laundry pulley. We had one in our old flat and I really missed it when we moved here about 5 years ago, so I'd been thinking about getting a new one ever since and finally got round to it this year. And hurrah. A load of washing on, up and out of the way, and dried in a few hours. The drier is hardly ever on and I am ridiculously, almost Stepford-wifely, pleased with it.

A note of caution, however. The rope on ours broke, and so I pootled over to Amazon in search of a replacement. The things that 'customers who were looking at this rope also looked at' would make you blush. Artificial dog poo and how-to books on Japanese bondage featured heavily, though I am not sure if it was the same customers looking at both. *mind boggles*

Happy holidays y'all!

Manky old bananas

Exhibit A:

We always seem to have a few over-ripe bananas hanging about hopefully in the fruit bowl. When my children see them, they look at me, roll their eyes and suggest politely that we get on and make some banana bread. The relevant page of Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess is so covered in cake batter and fingerprints that it's almost illegible. But today I was looking for something quick and easy to make with Smallest of All, who had declared that he had a burning desire to do some baking. The banana loaf is not exactly challenging, in fact it's pretty foolproof, but I wanted super-quick-before-the-others-get-back-from-the-supermarket. Muffins! Again! But you can freeze them, and if you take one out first thing, it's defrosted by breaktime, so perfect for the school snack or lunch box as well as for breakfast.

Clearly, the first thing you must do when baking with bananas and a 5 year-old is to perform the magic trick of Making The Banana Sink Into The Table. <dim the lights, roll of drums>

Exhibit B:

<rapturous applause>

You can then proceed to the baking proper. This time, we decided on banana and blueberry muffins. I based this on Gordon Ramsay's recipe from Healthy Appetite, which we've made often before. Packed with fruit, and made with wholemeal flour, they are pretty healthy as cakey things go. I feel a need to at least pay lip service to health with my children's breakfast. I've made a few changes to the recipe in the book, mostly for reasons of wanting something I could fling together with what I had in the house. I've used a mixture of wholemeal and plain flour. GR uses just wholemeal, which is also good; I just wanted something a bit lighter. The original recipe also uses buttermilk, but I didn't have any and I always use milk in muffins because I never do have buttermilk (well, do you?) and it's always worked fine. I also use frozen blueberries, because they are a fraction of the price of fresh blueberries. I use a slightly smaller quantity, and just bung them in frozen, so the batter will take a little longer to cook.

Smallest of All loves breaking eggs, pouring wet into dry, mixing, and sprinkling the demerara sugar on the top ('The bad thing is, you see mummy, I really like this part' <shoves whole hand in sugar jar>).

Blueberry and banana muffins

The dry stuff:
150g plain wholemeal flour
150g plain flour
100g brown sugar
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt

The wet stuff:
2 large manky bananas, mashed
280ml milk
75g oil or melted butter
1 large egg, beaten

The extra stuff:
250g-300g frozen blueberries
demerara sugar (for sprinkling)

The method:
1. Preheat oven to 180C and prep the muffin tray (ie put the cases in the holes).
2. Mix the dry stuff together in a big bowl.
3. Mix the wet stuff together in a jug/bowl.
4. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff until it's just mixed and there are no floury bits. Add the blueberries with the last few stirs.
5. Pour into the muffin cases - they'll be quite full. Sprinkle the demerara sugar on top. Bake for about 25 mins. Small helpers may lick bowls and spoons, assuming you aren't too concerned about raw eggs.
6. Cool in the tin for a few mins and then on a rack.


Exhibit C:

Bon app!

Halloween breakfast - pumpkin muffins

You've got to go to the US for a Halloween breakfast, right?

When I was growing up in England, Halloween was no big deal. We paid lip-service to trick or treating, but it mostly consisted of ringing people's doorbells and running away, because we knew that nobody actually had treats to give us.

We Brits tend to think of Halloween as a US interloper, but here in Scotland it seems always to have been a much bigger deal than in England. Think Macbeth's witches hubbling and bubbling up there in Cawdor. And they've always carved lanterns. Scotland doesn't really have the ideal climate for growing pumpkins, so they used to use turnips (not the little purple and white jobs, but what the English call swedes. The bigger orange-yellow fleshed neeps that are traditionally served with haggis and tatties). Have you ever tried carving a lantern from a rock-hard vegetable? I am frankly surprised that anyone from the pre-pumpkin generation in Scotland has any fingers left with which to carve anything. This is one US import that has most definitely made life easier.

Anyway. What to do with all that pumpkin flesh? Usually, I make soup. A German relative showed me a delicious pumpkin soup recipe that uses a pinch of ground cloves as its secret ingredient. Perfect with some good bread. However, this year, in honour of Breakfast Club, I thought I'd make some pumpkin muffins. Muffins, on this occasion, being the cakey American kind.

I will at this juncture make a confession. The joy of a muffin is that it is the quickest and easiest thing on earth to make. So simple that a toddler could do it. All that is required is a knowledge of the difference between 'wet' and 'dry'. You remember that character Ria from 70s sitcom 'Butterflies', played by Wendy Craig? Even she couldn't get muffins wrong. However, if you first have to carve and cook the pumpkin it sort of loses that 'look what I just flung together' thang. I was prepared to go the extra mile, having failed to locate canned pumpkin in the 5-acre Sainsburys up the road, but when my glance fell upon a jar of organic pumpkin puree in the glorious Whole Foods Market in Giffnock this morning, well. What's a working woman supposed to do?

This recipe is based on one from my go-to muffin book, Muffins Fast and Fantastic by Susan Reimer. I highly recommend it. Makes 10-12 standard muffins.

Pumpkin Muffins

255g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp each ground ginger, nutmeg, cloves
110-170g golden caster sugar
1 egg
120-150ml milk or water
2 tbs honey
200ml tinned/jarred pumpkin
90ml olive oil or 85g melted butter
60-85g chopped walnuts or raisins

Notes: if you can't find tinned/jarred  pumpkin, cut and peel a butternut squash, or use your pumpkin flesh, assuming you have not bought one of those pumpkins rather dubiously called 'carving pumpkins' in the supermarket. I'm guessing they don't taste so good. Remove the stringy pulp and seeds, then cook chunks in simmering water until soft (10-15 mins). Drain and discard the liquid. Puree in a processor. A regular 800g squash will make about 500ml of puree - you can freeze half if you like.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, raisins tend to make the mixture drier, as they absorb liquid, so I tend to use the lower end of the quantity given if using dried fruit, and the higher end for nuts, which are oily and don't absorb liquid in the same way.

You can use granulated sugar instead of caster sugar. I like the caramelly flavour of golden caster sugar in cooking. You can also use vegetable oil instead of olive oil, especially if you prefer a more delicate flavour. Do not, in any case, use a hefty virgin olive oil but one of the lighter (cheaper!) types.

1. Prep your muffin tins (ie put a muffin case in each hole in the tin!). Preheat oven to 190-200C (375-400F, gas 6).

2. In a large bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt, spices, sugar. Confession #2: when recipes say 'sift together', I generally stick my fingers in my ears and go 'blah blah blah', then just spoon it together and stir it up a bit. I hate washing sieves.

3. In another bowl beat the egg, then add the milk/water, pumpkin and oil/melted butter and stir well.

4. Tip the wet stuff into the dry stuff and mix it together until just combined. Don't overstir - just mix till you have no dry flour visible then stop. Add the nuts or raisins with your last couple of stirs.

5. Spoon into the muffin cases. Bake 15-20mins until tops are springy when you press them gently.

My children will be delighted to be given cake for breakfast, while I will be sending them to school safe in the knowledge that they have in fact had vegetables for breakfast. Isn't that just fiendish? Mwahahhahahahaha!

Come and join the Mumsnet Halloween bloghop!

Pioneer pancakes #2

So, to the results of the American pancake experiment. Ms Walker gives two variants on pancakes. The first is fairly similar to a standard pancake recipe, so I thought I'd try the second, which is for buckwheat pancakes of the type Almanzo dished up for Pa with ham.

Many years ago, I spent a joyous weekend in Rennes filling my face with those delicious buckwheat crepes that Brittany is famed for, and I'm very partial to a blini, which is probably the closest to this pioneer pancake that I've tasted, as they're also made with a leavening agent and often with buckwheat flour. These rustic American pancakes are closer to their East European cousin the blini than to our regular weekend blueberry pancake. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

So, to start with, we need (apologies for the US/Imperial measurements. I'm going with these, as I have measuring cups, and <whispers> cups are much easier than faffing about with the scales):

2tbs molasses

1oz yeast

2 cups buckwheat flour

1 cup wholewheat flour

½ tsp baking soda (= bicarbonate of soda)

½ tsp salt

1tbs dripping

¼ lb chunk salt pork

½ cup brown sugar

I'm an inveterate fiddler with recipes, so I adapted this slightly. Firstly I used quick yeast; the equivalent charts reckon that 1oz fresh yeast is approx 3.5tsp. I'm not going to start hunting down salt pork - it's only used in the recipe to grease the pan, so I figure I can live without it. I used bacon fat instead, as I fried up some bacon to go with the pancakes.

The recipe starts with an overnight sponge.  So, start by mixing the molasses with ½ cup of lukewarm water and then sprinkling the yeast on top. After leaving that for a few mins, add another 2 cups of water and both flours. Then cover with a cloth/clingfilm and leave overnight.  If you have a particularly warm kitchen (over about 20˚C at night), refrigerate the mixture. This is not a problem I ever have, sad to say. Here's my sponge:

I'm about to create another yeast-based explosion...

I returned an hour later to find it like this:

I was expecting to come into the kitchen the next morning and find it making its way across the kitchen floor. But in fact it had dropped back a bit and was looking lively but a bit more subdued. Thank goodness.

Next day, remove 1 cup of the sponge (you can keep this refrigerated and use as a starter for another batch if you like). Dissolve the bicarb and salt in ½ cup hot water and add the dripping/lard, then beat this into the sponge until well mixed.

Heat your griddle or pan (Ms Walker puts it so nicely: 'until it makes water drops dance') and then grease the pan (with the salt pork if you have tracked this down). Then cook as for a normal pancake. Traditionally, the first pancake is a 'blanket' pancake, that can be used to cover the pile as they are prepared, and is bigger than the rest. As the pancakes are stacked, sprinkle some brown sugar on each. The recipe says that this quantity makes about 24 3-4" wide pancakes. Even at their most ravenous, my family wouldn't eat that many, but I made larger pancakes and found that the quantities weren't outrageous. My mum was here too, but she's not exactly Desperate Dan when it comes to quantities.

The finished pancakes are darker than regular pancakes, and heartier, but got a resounding thumbs-up all round. Smallest Of All even discovered that he loves bacon (especially when it's slathered in maple syrup, I dare say, but anyway, it's some sort of result to get them eating anything new, to be honest). No eggs or milk, so definitely a more rustic kind of affair, but if my poncy lot will eat them with any degree of enthusiasm, then I'm sure they must be quite good.

Just the thing if you're heading out west. Which we were, as it happens, but not quite as far as Dakota. Happy trails!

Next time, Moomin-style pancakes, with pine needle sauce (I jest).

Pioneer pancakes and blackbird pie

Just back from a week of R&R. We were out of phone and internet range (I know - quaint, huh?) and a bit distracted by the views so no blogging for a few days. It was good to walk off a few of the heartier breakfasts:

Now, to pancakes. Once you start with pancakes, it's difficult to know where to stop. I guess because they're so quick and economical to cook, they feature in the cuisine of more or less every country in one form or other.  However, when I think of breakfast pancakes, I think of thick American pancakes, which are a regular weekend breakfast for us. We usually use Nigella's recipe from Domestic Goddess as our default, and plop in a handful of frozen blueberries while the batter is still wet in the pan. Once the pancake is cooked, the blueberries are done. We usually serve with a wee bit of maple syrup and cream. It is the weekend, after all.

We've been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books with the children  recently.  If, like me, you were reared on the slightly saccharine 70s TV version, I encourage you to read the books - their life was a lot more rugged than the TV version. In fact, they're currently stuck in the middle of a particularly hard winter in Dakota territory, where all the food has run out and poor old Ma Ingalls is reduced to hand-grinding wheat to make bread (in a tiny coffee grinder). Wait though. You think that's bad? This is shortly before the bit when Pa's hair gets eaten by mice. While he's still wearing it. Like I said, rugged. It kind of puts Sainsbury's supply issues into perspective. Anyway, I digress. The Ingalls family were keen on pancakes. In the big woods of Wisconsin, the family tap their own maple syrup and eat pancakes with this. Sometimes, Ma makes them into little pancake men. She does it freehand; do not make the mistake, as I did, of trying it with a gingerbread man cutter in the pan. You're liable to end up with a one-armed civil war veteran of a pancake. Later on in Dakota, Laura's future husband, Almanzo Wilder, rustles up a big pile of buckwheat pancakes for Pa Ingalls with molasses and ham from his family's farm. The rest of the town are starving at the time, and I note that Pa doesn't seem to mention to his family when he gets home that he's just had a slap-up feed chez Wilder.

When we started reading the books, we were a bit confused by some of the dishes mentioned, many of which are unfamiliar to my 21st century British ears, so I picked up a copy of Barbara M Walker's Little House Cookbook, which is great fun. It describes all the dishes in detail, and gives recipes for many of them. Including, should you feel the urge, a recipe for blackbird pie. As it's apparently illegal to kill blackbirds in the US, she suggests using starlings, with the rather chilling caveat, 'Starlings cannot be bought; they must be hunted'. The local starlings are safe, since I don't have the wherewithal to go a-huntin', but I thought I'd try and make some proper pioneer-style pancakes. If they're horrid, it'll at least teach my children to appreciate what they have, which Ma Ingalls would consider a fine lesson.

I'll post the results of the pancake extravaganza in a couple of days, once the hard drive with all my photos on it has returned from a wee trip to London...