My micro baker

The oldest breakfastboy is 7 and has declared his intention to become an artisan baker when he grows up. He has picked out his delivery van (the most important feature of his bakery, natch) and spends hours poring over his recipe books. He is very fond of recipe books. So fond, in fact, that when I donated some of my old ones to a fair at his school, he promptly spent the money I'd given him on buying one of them back. It's a shame he doesn't extend the same enthusiasm to actually eating any of the recipes he is reading out to me. Not the ones with vegetables in them anyway.

He has recently taken to writing his own recipes. Unfortunately, he hasn't quite grasped the principle of recipe writing, so they consist of spur-of-the-moment quantities of whatever he thinks is likely to be in a cookie or whatever it is, which he then presents to me with a 'right, can we make them now?'. I'm reluctant to squash his creative urges, and I suppose that making them to his invented recipe might teach him to analyse what goes wrong and make them better next time, but I'm equally reluctant to waste 1kg of chocolate chips on what is clearly destined to not work, recipe-wise. Any advice gratefully received.

In line with my current bread fetish, I suggested this morning that we make a raisin and cinnamon loaf together. I really love a raisiny breakfast and I think we're now far enough from the surfeit of dried fruit that is December to contemplate a spicy, fruity loaf, perhaps toasted with a scraping of butter for breakfast. Yum. This one is Dan Lepard's recipe from Short and Sweet, which involves making a sponge of flour, water, yeast and raisins, leaving it for a few hours, then adding more flour, sugar, cinnamon and butter to create a dough. You then give it a few kneads and leave it to prove before baking. The recipe is given in his Guardian column here (look at the bottom of the article for the raisin-cinnamon variation of the main recipe). So, it's one of those most-of-a-day-long loaves, and I thought it would be good for teaching him a little about patience in baking and about how yeast works in dough, seeing as how he wants to be a baker and all. So, we set to with great enthusiasm making our sponge, which bubbled up nicely and we were all ready for the second stage. But I turned around to find him pulling on his wellies and heading off out with his brother and MrB, leaving yours truly with the rest of the loaf to make.  I suppose he's showing excellent promise as a manager of staff and delegator of tasks, also amply demonstrated in the 'tidying up the toys' department *clutches straws*. Still, there are worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than in the company of GQT and a big lump of raisiny dough.

Here's the loaf. It's a bit...erm...brown on the crust maybe, but it tastes delicious - we have all tested it and approved, ready for breakfast tomorrow. Can you smell the cinnamon? Mmmmmmmmmmm.

Meanwhile, in other news, I came into the kitchen this morning to find that my sourdough starter had escaped from its (closed!) kilner jar and was glooping down onto the counter. It's a lively little fellow for sure. Isn't it amazing that a mixture of flour and water can do that after a few days? Wow. no wonder people become addicted to making bread. I am reliably informed that some bakers name their sourdough cultures, in the manner of family pets, but I haven't thought of a suitable name for mine yet. I'll wait and see if my first sourdough loaf later this week gives me any inspiration.

Today, I am dark, chunky and bitter

I'm talking marmalade of course.The arrival of Seville oranges is one of the highlights of my year. I know. It's one of the few really seasonal fruits left - you really can only get them for a few weeks at this time of year, and I find that rather thrilling. You can freeze them, though, so buy more than you need when they come into the shops, because their season is very fleeting.

I adore marmalade. For me, the darker and chunkier the better, and making my own means I can make it as dark and chunky as I darn well please.

Marmalade of course originates right here in Bonnie Scotland; in Dundee to be precise, where the story goes that Mrs Keiller was obliged to think up something to do with a cargo of bitter oranges that her husband had bought from a Spanish ship that had taken shelter in Dundee harbour. Imagine the scene in the Keiller house. 'You've bought what???'. I thought MrB was bad enough with his random internet shopping purchases, but at least he's never come home with a ship full of oranges.

Our smallest breakfast boy also loves dark marmalade 'with golden chunks' (too much Paddington...), and last year the boys were big enough at 5 and 6 to help with the rather tedious business of prepping the fruit. You can imagine their delight at being allowed to handle large sharp knives. Under very close supervision it's actually a perfect way to introduce children to sharp knives - once the oranges have boiled, they're soft enough to cut very easily, so it's really quite a straightforward job for little people. If you like a fine shred in your marmalade, you may need to work on their technique a little - I think a mezzaluna might be a good solution. And, perhaps counter-intuitively, it's important to make sure that your knives are very sharp, as this will prevent them from slipping and potentially cutting small fingers. I firmly believe though that it's important not to completely eliminate all manner of risk from children - they need to know how to handle knives if they are ever to become competent cooks.

There are a million and one recipes for marmalade, and I have fiddled with many of them over the years to come up with my version. It is dark and treacly, and bitter, so definitely avoid it if you are more of a golden shred lover.

This is the recipe I've come up with after all the fiddling. The result will be very dark, so if you prefer a clearer, sweeter, more golden kind of marmalade, then this probably isn't for you. One of these days I'm going to experiment with some of the more exotic types of marmalade, as the possibilities are legion: grapefruit, lime, orange and lemon. The addition of ginger or whisky are also possibilities worth exploring. My Tokyo correspondent Elisabeth has recently told me about an Asian citrus called a Yuzu - I'd love to try that if I could get hold of some. But for now, here's my antidote to the January blues, and it's orange. Well, it's not actually, it's more of a deep dark brown.

The recipe is based on Pam Corbin's one in the River Cottage Preserves book, but I've tweaked it to make it darker. Her whole fruit method is really simple though.

Breakfast Lady's Seville Orange Marmalade

1kg Seville oranges
2.5l water
75ml lemon juice
1kg dark muscovado sugar
1kg jam sugar or granulated white sugar
1 tbs black treacle

Note: you can fiddle about with the types of sugar to make this less dark, or darker, but you need 2kg in total.

You'll also need:
jars - I sterilize mine by washing them on the hot cycle of the dishwasher, but don't open it until you're ready to use them. You can also put the jars in a moderate oven for 5 minutes instead if you don't have a dishwasher. This quantity makes about 6 or 7 jars.
a sugar thermometer is useful, but not essential
cold saucers (put 2 or 3 in the freezer before you start)

1. Put the water in a large sturdy pan - a maslin pan if you have one.

2. Give the oranges a scrub and take the 'button' off the tops. Put them, whole into the pan and bring to the boil, then simmer for 2 hours or until the skin is soft. I find that it's hard to turn them over when you start - they turn themselves back over, but as they get softer, you'll be able to turn them to make sure the other side gets cooked.
TIP: One year, I was pushed for time, so I did the boiling up of the oranges in my slow cooker to free up the time that I'd otherwise have to be around while the oranges are cooking on the hob. This worked fine, but just make sure you have the right quantity of liquid afterwards.

3. Take the oranges out of the pan and keep the water. Measure it - you need about 1.7l, so either make it up by adding fresh water if you don't have enough or reduce it by boiling if you have too much.

4. Cut the oranges in half and scoop out the pips into a bowl. Cut the peel into chunks of whatever size you prefer. Tip all of the peel and accompanying mush back into the pan. Put the pips and any attached stuff in a sieve and shoogle it about with a wooden spoon over the pan - the gloop that comes through it is rich in pectin, which is what makes the jam set, so get as much out as you can, then chuck the pips out.

Naked chunks

5. Add the sugar, lemon juice and treacle to the pan and turn the heat back on. This is the point where I feel the terror, as I see how much sugar is in it, but hey ho. On we go. Cook it gently until the sugar has dissolved completely. Don't let it boil at this stage or you'll end up with crystals in your finished marmalade.

6. Once the sugar has dissolved completely (check on the back of a wooden spoon - if you can see grains, keep going), bring the mixture to the boil and boil hard for about 15 minutes or until the temperature reaches about 100C on your thermometer. Keep stirring so that the marmalade doesn't catch and burn on the bottom of the pan. Setting point is marked on mine (I think it's 204ish C), but I usually start testing it before this. Take one of your cold saucers and drop a little of the marmalade onto it. Leave it for a few moments and then push it gently with your finger, and if it wrinkles, you have a set. I sometimes find it takes much longer than 15 mins, but  don't despair if it seems to be taking forever, just bring it back to the boil and carry on, testing at 5 minute intervals until you get a set.
7. Once you have a set, take the pan off the heat and leave it for 10 minutes or so - this helps distribute your chunks evenly - then pour it into sterilised jars and seal.

And if you're going to all that trouble, you really need to make some nice fresh bread for your inaugural slice.

Bliss. On a plate.

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!