Clotted cream shortbread

When I was younger I went on a lot of family holidays to Cornwall and of the many fab memories I have, I remember lots of cream teas and I remember coming home with loads of shortbread for family members, and maybe a couple of boxes for the home biscuit tin too!

I had loads of clotted cream left over and so decided to make clotted cream shortbread. That was the easy part. Surprisingly there are very few clotted cream shortbread recipes about. So I adapted various other ones I have, I crossed everything and waited.

Clotted Cream Shortbread

makes ~20, dependant on size

75g clotted cream
75g butter, room temp
1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
75g caster sugar
200g plain flour
25g rice flour

Grease two baking sheets and preheat the oven to 170C/150C FAN. Soften the butter well with a wooden spoon. Add the clotted cream, vanilla and caster sugar to the bowl and cream by hand util everything is combined.

Add the flours and stir until the the mix comes together as a dough, you my need to press the remaining clumps together with your hands,  Lightly flour a surface and rolling pin and roll out the dough till about 1 cm thick. 

Cut out shapes with a cutter of your choice. Try and be clever with you stamping out. The more you work the dough the less short your short bread will be. Aim for just one or two re-rolls of the trimmings. Place the shapes on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the shortbread biscuits are golden.

Transfer the biscuits to a wire rack and sprinkle with caster sugar while hot. 

Crossing everything worked! These were a delicious shortbread and perfect with a cup of tea/hot chocolate. Not entirely sure how long they keep for, about 3 days in my house!

I got a bit excited when I was coating them in sugar and decided to dye my sugar pink with a little bit of pink food gel. Well I had already cut out hearts so thought why not,  but don't they look pretty?

Banana, oat and raisin Sourdough

This months cupcake book club read was set in, and around, a bakery and inspired me to get creative with my sourdough.

I already have a sourdough starter which I have had for just over 3 months. Up until now I have only made white or wholemeal loaves, well once I added a little Gruyère!

So after this book I made a slightly more adventurous one, banana, oat and raisin.

There were mixed opinions on the finished loaf, M loved it and would eat the lot in one sitting if allowed. I was not so much of a fan. I found it denser than my previous sourdough loafs, I guess this could be due to the banana. Having made nice light, soft loaves over the past few weeks I am almost certain that I made no flaws technique wise, but hey, everyone makes mistakes once in a while so maybe I did something. I suppose I would have to make it again to find out.

I will not be deterred however and plan to make an adventurous savoury sourdough too.

My sourdough starter, sponge and loaf recipes can be found on the blog. The breakfast sourdough idea came from Paul Hollywood's latest book.

Nectarine pie

Maybe its just me but I am finding this months alpha bakes a tricky one. I saw the letter  'N' and though 'oh that's fine'. But then I actually thought about it. And though some more. In the end I enlisted the help of M who thought and thought and eventually came up with nectarines.

I decided to try the nectarines in a pie. I was a little worried as I had not heard of nectarine pie, maybe there was a good reason for that!

Actually it was a very nice tasting pie, lovely buttery short pastry, plenty of vanilla and sweet juicy nectarines  The only issue was that the nectarines did not break down as an apple or pear does. I think if you were to try this I would roast the nectarines with a little vanilla first before adding them to the pie. I think this would encourage them to break down more so that the filling of the pie would be oozy and sticky.

Nectarine pie

makes 2 mini ones with pastry left over

100g plain flour
1/2 tbsp icing sugar
60g butter
1/2 an egg yolk
1 tbsp ice cold water
3 nectarines
vanilla paste or pod

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN. Mix together the flour and icing sugar. Add the butter in small cubes and then rub in with your fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the egg yolk and water, and use a round edged knife to bring the mix together. If it is a little dry add a a touch more of the egg yolk or ice cold water until you have a soft, not sticky dough. It is a good idea at this point to refrigerate the dough for a short while to make it easier to work with. I wrapped mine tightly in clingfilm and chilled for 30 minutes.

Roll out the pastry and line your pie dish. Fill with chopped and peeled nectarine chunks (pre roasted for a softer filling) and vanilla seeds or paste. 

Arrange strips of pastry in a lattice on the top and pinch to seal. Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden.

Serve warm with cream, clotted cream or ice cream

Another good thing about this pie was that there was not a soggy bottom in sight, Marry Berry would have been proud.

I am going to make some sort of Apple pie soon (ish), so will post pastry amounts and techniques for a large pie then.

Chocolate orange marble cake

Hi, just a quick post today its been a busy busy week. Still have a few posts waiting to be finished and up loaded!

I wanted a nice simple cake to enjoy with a cuppa after work and this fits the bill perfectly.

For the recipe just follow my vanilla and chocolate marble cake recipe, here. Once you have divided the batter simply add the zest of a grated orange and juice from half the orange to the vanilla batter.

I do not think this cake needs any icing it is fantastically moist and just the thing for when you want a delicious but simple cake.

Chocolate melting moments

I was not entirely sure what to make this week and so asked M for some inspiration. After a moment of thought his face lit up and h said 'posh biscuits'. What is a posh biscuit I hear you ask, or maybe you don't, maybe unlike me you already knew. I worked out he meant something that was not an american style cookie. 

So after a little thought I came up with these. A two tone vanilla and chocolate melting moment sandwiched together with a white chocolate ganache.

I was going to pipe swirls but was short on time and my butter was a little hard so I piped little fingers instead.

Chocolate melting moments

I made 24 little sandwiched fingers but it depends on how you pipe the mixture.

For the vanilla biscuits

62g butter

14g icing sugar

tsp vanilla paste (or extract)

14g cornflour

62g plain flour

For the chocolate biscuits

62g butter

14g icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla paste (or extract)

14g cornflour

52g plain flour

10g cocoa powder

For the ganache

80ml of double cream

100g white chocolate, broken up

Prepare the ganache by gently heating the cream to boiling point, pour over the chocolate and leave for a couple of minutes. Stir briskly with a fork, the chocolate should be all melted and smooth. If any lumps of chocolate remain that do not go away after stirring stand the bowl in a little hot water and stir again. Leave the ganache to cool and thicken, first on the work top and as it cools you can move it to the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C FAN and line two baking sheets with baking parchment.

To make the vanilla biscuits beat the butter sugar and vanilla together until very soft, ~ 5 minutes. It needs to be very soft so it is pipeable.

Add in the flour and cornflour and, using a spoon, bring the dough together.

Using a star nozzle pipe either swirls or fingers onto the prepared baking sheets. If you are finding it hard to pipe the butter is probably a little hard and you will need to beat it for longer next time. 

Make the chocolate biscuits in the same way, adding the cocoa along with the flours.

Pop the trays in the fridge or freezer for 15 minutes to help the butter firm up. This prevents the biscuits spreading and keeps the piped shape nice and sharp after baking.

Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes until lightly golden. 

Remove from the baking sheets and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Pair up the biscuits with a friend of a similar size. 

Give the ganache a quick whisk with a fork. With a piping bag and star nozzle, or a spoon ( I used a nozzle, these were 'posh' biscuits remember ..) place ganache along one biscuit of each pair sandwiching the second on top. 

These are lovely short, crumbly, melty biscuits that pair really nicely with the creamy ganache. I hope I succeeded in my quest for posh biscuits, judging by M's reaction I did just that!