Panettone and Hidden Chocolate Bread & Butter Pudding

Christmas time yields countless gifts, not least of which is the flurry of foods you only end up eating at this time of year. Like memories of ripe fruit from childhood, the recollection of these festive flavours is preserved in semi-perfection over the intervening year due to their short window of consumption. Like the Christmas tunes flooding the airwaves from the beginning of the month, they are welcomed in our house with open arms… (Though after a few weeks of these, you are happy to wave them off again.) Mince pies, pigs in blankets, turkey and stuffing, Christmas pud, Kirsty McColl & The Pogues… I love them all.*

In my perfect gingerbread house, the super-soft pillows would be made of rich, aromatic panettone. Light, buttery and filled with candied peel and dried fruit, choirs of (Italian) Christmas angels might have conceived this celestial sponge. A Christmas hit in our house, the BSG and I love it with Nutella for breakfast, a hot drink at teatime or a glass of sweet liqueur later. Quite frankly, it doesn’t stand a chance of lasting more than a few days. Should hell freeze over and stale leftovers remain once Christmas is over (fresh works too in case you can’t wait), then it makes the best bread and butter pudding out – a sneaky one to slip in just before any January detoxing…

For extra festive, sprinkle with icing sugar before serving and lace the layers with a few shakes of Gran Marnier for grown-ups.

Merry Christmas!

 

 

You need (Serves 2)

 

2 small round ovenproof dishes of ramekins, buttered

A couple of slices of panettone (whatever you have left, cut into rounds)

A few squares of good dark chocolate.  Green & Black’s Maya Gold works.

1 egg

160 ml whole milk

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Grand Marnier (optional)

 

Preheat the oven to 160C. Lay your panettone pieces in the buttered dishes and tuck a couple of squares of chocolate in amongst the layers. Beat the egg and other ingredients together in a bowl and pour evenly over the bread so it comes up the sides. Sprinkle the tops with brown granulated sugar if you like, for a little extra crunch. Put a dish on the oven shelf, with the 2 ramekins inside it and carefully pour boiling water into the larger dish so it comes at least halfway up their sides. Bake for 20-25 minutes until just set.

Serve with creme fraiche or yogurt to cut through the richness, with the essential Christmas clementine on the side.

*Give amazing little sprouts a chance: they’re not just for Christmas, but for the whole winter.

Elderflower Panna Cotta

 The BSG, Dad and I enjoyed The Rolling Stones’ Glastonbury set yesterday evening from the comfort of the sofa: with a great view, warm, dry and utterly relaxed in the knowledge that a trip to the facilities wouldn’t require a 45 minute commitment. I may have mentioned before that the BSG is allergic to camping, so this may be the closest we ever get (though I am working on the tipi boutique hotel idea. If a bunch of 69-year olds can headline a festival then I figure I’ve got some time)…

In the festival spirit (and because it is that time of year in Norfolk) we spent the morning in the hedgerow foraging for elderflowers. To reach the lofty, dinner-plate sized ones we had the added bonus of my dad, who you could say was the human equivalent of a cherry-picker. We divided the haul of foamy flowers; half went into making a cordial (for which the recipe is here) and the other half was destined for our pudding: elderflower panna cotta.

  

What emerged after the setting stage resembled something you might encounter in the murky fathoms of a frozen Siberian lake or the farthest reaches of space. This is because I didn’t have any ramekins... Appearance aside, it was Jagger-smooth, fragrant and nursery-food comforting, backed by its band of sweetened mashed strawberries and slices of yellow peach. When it’s not quite warm enough for ice cream, this is rock and roll, with extra flower-power.

Elderflower Panna Cotta

Serves 6

10 dry elderflower heads (choose the perfectly creamy, open ones – and ABOVE waist height for obvious reasons)
1 large pot (600ml) Double Cream
300ml natural Greek yoghurt
2 tablespoons caster sugar (or to taste)
Leaf gelatine

Shake off any stubborn residents from the elderflowers and place them flora-down in a bowl (there will be smaller bugs within but these can be strained out later). Avoid rinsing them as this will lose flavour.

Heat the cream and sugar in a pan until the granules have dissolved and the cream is just starting to scald. Pour the warm cream mixture over the elderflower heads and cover the bowl with cling film, then go and do something else for a couple of hours (like, say, watch Laura Robson battling through to the next round at Wimbledon)…

Strain the cream mixture through a j cloth and sieve into a clean measuring jug. Whisk in the yoghurt so that the liquid makes a pint. Follow the instructions on the gelatine packet for a pint of liquid (mine was four sheets), soaking the leaves in water for a few minutes. Meanwhile, gently heat the cream mixture in a saucepan until warm. Squeeze out the gelatine leaves and stir into the cream until dissolved. If any bubbles have formed, you can tap these out now.

Line your ramekins or container with clingfilm and pour in the cooling mixture. Refrigerate for a couple of hours until set. Turn out onto a plate and slice if necessary.

PS: there were all kinds of analogies swimming around my head about elders and betters while I was writing this post - dads and Rolling Stones and all that - but for some reason none of them caught. Suggestions on a postcard please…

A bread and butter pudding for the snow

Bread and butter: so simple, yet the stuff of childish dreams. As delicious-sounding in literature as any cake - especially when drawn from a wicker luncheon basket and laid out on a cloth with jam, or cold chicken and roast beef. Milly Molly Mandy and Billy Blunt gobbled all theirs up on their fishing excursion and it’s little wonder – all someone has to do is say those three words together and I am thinking of teatime (and forever of Grandpa, lord of the tea table with his packet of plain chocolate digestives – neatly secured each day with an elastic band).

Clearly, bread and butter pudding has less to do with butter than it does with bread (not to mention the eggs, sugar and milk) but the very fact that those two happily-wed words are in the recipe makes it a winner in my eyes. Last September on the eve of a friend’s wedding I was lucky enough to be party to his pre-wedding family dinner and thereby to the most fantasmical (that’s fantastic with an extra O) pudding. Although the portion control didn’t exist and my bowlful could have felled an adolescent elephant I nobly ate my way through, amongst the dairy every which way, a warm wedge of white chocolate and whisky bread & butter pudding. INCREDIBLE.

After a long walk on Saturday, or feet crumping through the fresh snow making dreams of mountain adventures, we felt we deserved a treat. This pudding, crisp on top and snowy light within was perfect foil to the conditions. It’s adapted from a recipe that uses croissants (which may be amazing – but I felt somewhat superfluous. After all, we’re supposed to be on some sort of regime until February)… I went in heavier on the whisky – on a medicinal bent you understand  -  yet lighter on the sugar, as we were all chilled to our cores and because white chocolate is sweet enough, thank you.

This is dedicated to my dear, pudding-partial Grandpa. He would have loved it, crowned with plenty of cream. He might have even had a second helping too.

Whisky and White Chocolate Bread & Butter Pudding

500ml milk
500ml double cream
A few drops of vanilla essence
3 eggs
5 egg yolks
150g caster sugar
8-10 slices of white bread, crusts removed and cut in half into triangles
25g sultanas
25g butter, melted
175g white chocolate, smashed into little pieces in its wrapper
4 tablespoons whisky
55g  marmalade (didn’t have apricot jam, but the extra orange taste is a winner)
icing sugar, to dust

Method

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

Pour the milk and cream into a pan, add the vanilla essence and bring slowly to the boil.
Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl with the egg yolks and sugar and beat together until pale and fluffy. This bit is actually quite important as your pudding will be light rather than stodgy.
Lay the bread over the base of an oblong ovenproof dish, slightly overlapping each piece. Sprinkle with the sultanas and pour over the melted butter.
When the cream mixture has reached boiling point, take it off the heat and allow it to cool slightly. Add the egg mixture and white chocolate to the cream and stir well. Leave for a few minutes to let the chocolate melt, stirring occasionally.
Add the whisky to the cream mixture and strain it all through a sieve over the bread. Let the bread soak it all up nicely, before covering the dish with foil.
Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes, or until almost set.
Remove from the oven, coat the top with the marmalade and dust with icing sugar. Either brown the top with a cheffy blowtorch or place under a grill or into a hot oven for a few minutes before serving. Wait if you have to - it must be warm, not hot.

Mincemeat and Apple Crumble

It’s ridiculously easy at this time of year to come by a perfectly decent shop-bought mince pie. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to make them at home each year. Is it the warm fuzzy feeling that festive baking bestows upon me, the sensation that I am making something to be shared lovingly with friends and family by the light of the Christmas tree?

Bah, humbug! More like an excuse to eat mincemeat straight from the jar with a spoon…

In an effort to become more transparent in my motives towards this Yuletide ingredient, I have legitimised it in the guise of a crumble, thereby freeing it of its shortcrust shackles. It makes a blinder of a seasonal pudding, with ice-cream, clotted cream or even a brandy-laced custard.

Mincemeat and apple crumble

Serves 4

900g cooking apples

1 x 411g jar mincemeat

55g light brown sugar

110g unsalted butter

170g plain flour

A handful of crushed amaretti biscuits or oats

Preheat the oven to 180^oC. Grease a baking dish.

Peel, core and chop the apples into dice of roughly 3 x 3 cm. Place these in a pan with a tablespoonful of water and the same of caster sugar. Cover and cook on a medium heat until they are yielding but not yet mush. Stir in the mincemeat and heat through, and remove the pan from the heat. Tip the fruit mixture into the greased dish.

Meanwhile, mix the flour, sugar, butter and crushed amaretti/oats with the fingers until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Scatter evenly over the fruit and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes until golden on top gently bubbling at the sides.

Glorious good pud

I have been accosted this week by several indignant blog-readers, some of whom I was unaware of, reminding me that its been a whole month since my last post. I am truly sorry, but even more delighted that there’s somebody outside of my family who  reads this, so this is for you kids, and I promise not to be so slack in the future.

My buddy Mel, who is a teacher and on her well-earned summer holiday (though can’t seem to lie in – she emailed at silly o’clock this morning) tells me she is off to the races at Goodwood tomorrow and she needs to make a pudding that will stand up to two car journeys and summer heat (here’s hoping).

Ah Goodwood! If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the thunder of horses, the sweeping views down to the Solent and enormous cotton-wool clouds drifting overhead. I hope the sun’s out for them.

Anyway, back to the pudding. Trying to stay largely away from anything soft or involving too much melty stuff, such as cream or chocolate I lighted on this delicate and retro-sounding recipe in How I Cook.

I can’t say that I’ve tried them all, but the thing I like best about Skye Gyngell’s recipes is that they come out (even in my clumsy hands) pretty much as they look in the book – minus the backdrop of vintage crockery, country flowers and sun bleached-tabletops of course. I know I am obsessed with this book, so I will put it down after this post, I promise. Though probably not for long.

This can be baked, transported and sliced with the minimum of fuss and the compote will be delicious and summery. A tub of crème fraiche to dollop on the side is all it needs. Put a quid on for me, my friend. x

Pound cake

Makes 12 slices
450g unsalted butter, softened, plus some melted to grease
450g plain flour, sifted
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarb of soda
450g golden caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 large free-range eggs
125 ml whole milk
Finely grated zest of an orange
Finely grated zest of a lemon

Heat the oven to 160˚C. Line a loose-bottomed cake tin (23 cm) with foil and baking parchment and brush the parchment with melted butter, dusting afterwards with a little flour. (NB I probably wouldn’t do any of this as I am too lazy and then it would probably stay in the tin, only to be prized out with a spoon…)

Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and bicarb together into a bowl and put to one side.

Using an electric mixer (your Magimix will do fine, Mel), beat the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together on a low speed for 2 minutes, increasing the speed to high and beating until pale and fluffy. Turn the speed down again and beat in the eggs, one at a time, alternately with the milk. (To substitute my lack of ‘speeds’, I would use the pulse button for slow, the continuous button for fast…)

Using a large metal spoon, fold the flour into the mixture in three batches, followed by the orange and lemon zest, until evenly combined.

Spoon the cake mixture into the prepared cake tin and gently level the surface with the back of a spoon. Stand the cake tin on the middle oven shelf and bake for 1 and ¼ hours, or until the cake has begun to shrink away from the sides of the tin and a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Leave in the tin for 5 mins then turn out onto a wire rack to cool. This cake is best eaten slightly warm from the oven (or the sunny boot of your car).

Apricot compote

Serves 10-12

1 kg ripe apricots
175g caster sugar
Pared zest of 1 lemon
1 vanilla pod, spilt lengthways
Tiny pinch of salt

Half apricots and remove stones, keeping 3 or 4 stones and throwing the others away.

Put the halved apricots and all the other ingredients into a pan with the reserved stones. Pour in a little water, just enough to give a 1cm depth in the pan and place over a low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring from time to time, for 10 minutes. The apricots should be soft and brighter in colour, their skins having slipped off. Set aside to cool.

Spoon the cooled compote into a suitable container, cover and refrigerate until well chilled. This will keep until you need it.

BSG anniversary

It’s been a year since the partnership between the BSG and his beloved Magimix was formally validated by the church of John Lewis. To celebrate this, we headed back to the scene of the festivities, to Norfolk for a long weekend. After the prolonged spell of warm dry weather the place seemed a whole season ahead of a usual May (and perhaps two ahead of what was last year’s May 8^th – 9 degrees and horizontal drizzle). The hedgerows were festooned with lacy swathes of cow parsley, gigantic fishbone leaves hung from the horse chestnuts and a sweet smell pervaded the warm breeze. True, the ground looked parched and in desperate need of rain, but I was glad to miss it this time.



To celebrate this first anniversary, our first thoughts – naturally - concerned food. This is how we express, spoil, console and refresh ourselves and the prospect of concocting a feasting menu was terrifically indulgent and exciting. Yes, even more so than a roll-top bath and hot and cold running room-service in a sandy-bricked village in the Cotswolds…

Given the weather, how could we not visit Cookie’s Crab Shop? It was packed full of happy seasiders in their pack-a-macs. (NB: if you are shellfish-averse, tell someone before ordering the Royal Salad – the BSG spent half his lunch carefully halving his lunch, ending up with a mountain of smoked mackerel and rollmops opposite my crab and crayfish monolith.)

Impossible as it was to imagine ever eating again after such a feast, we managed an Italian beef stew, melting over some polenta laced with Fontina (thank you Antonio Carluccio), followed by something rather exciting we’d stumbled across in an abandoned Olive magazine (thank you Rosie’s mum): Pimm’s jelly. This one’s definitely for grown-ups, and will prove a winner for pudding at any barbeque. Furthermore, as if this wasn’t fun enough – it was still fizzy.

Pimm’s, lemon and mint jelly

(It doesn’t matter if you use sachets or leaves in this recipe – the below is leaves but I used a sachet of powder – whichever you can find. If it makes a pint rather than a litre, split the ratios accordingly, 7 lemonade: 2 Pimm’s: 1 water.)

10 gelatine leaves
Small bunch mint leaves
200ml Pimm's
700ml sparkling lemonade
Chopped cucumber , strawberries, orange and lemon slices, to serve

Soak the gelatine in a bowl of cold water. Heat 100ml water in a pan, drop in the mint leaves and leave to infuse for 5 minutes. Take out the leaves, reheat, then stir in the gelatine until dissolved. Add the Pimm's and lemonade and cool. Skim off any remaining foam. Pour into a 1-litre jelly mould and chill overnight until set.

Turn out onto a plate and surround the jelly with the traditional Pimm's garnish.

April firsts

I am not such a very nice person as it turns out. I mean, what on earth has Rachel Allen ever done to me? Nothing, apart from smile gently down the telly. And yet for some reason, I find all her jingly, lilting sunniness irritating to the point of wanting to leap in and start a food fight there in her spotless, Ballymaloe telly-kitchen.

However, this longstanding grudge dissipated when last weekend I sampled some of her food. Well, not her food exactly, but recipes from her book, beautifully executed by my friend Sarah, who does everything absolutely precisely: she is a scientist to her very core. (We used to have art v. science arguments at school, like the dog v. cat ones I have with the BSG these days - he is pro-cat if you’re interested in taking sides).

A couple of days with Sarah and her family in the rolling countryside outside Leeds had three of us Londoners wondering why we hadn’t jacked in the big smoke for this idyllic, wholesome life. In the first few warm rays of the year we had lunch outside: a delicious, shredded salad of savoy cabbage, carrots, crisp apples, bacon bits and chicken. And it was Rachel Allen – well Sarah, really – who made us feel these first breaths of summer. I think there may have even been some rougeing of the face, but that was my fault entirely.

Feeling rather virtuous after this refreshing main course (I would say light, except we ate all of it, including Sarah’s husband’s portion…He’d been on a run and thoroughly deserved to eat), Sarah produced the most beautiful lemon tart. Honestly, it looked like the best homemade thing I’d ever seen – shop-bought ones with their unbroken perfection don’t quite cut it. And it tasted like a cloud of citrussy sunshine, and had some kind of bruléed crust on its top. Heaven. As it turned out, that was Rachel too. So, not just a pretty husband, then. I even got a picture of lunch, for once, before it disappeared.

It was surprise we’d managed to fit any lunch in at all, when a mere hour beforehand we’d paid a visit to the Ilkley branch of Betty’s Tea Room. For a first-timer like me, simply ordering a coffee (albeit a rich, Latte Latino made with chocolate sauce and cinnamon) just wouldn’t have cut the mustard, so with it came the plumpest Yorkshire Fat Rascal (an enormous warm fruit bun), some freshly baked rarebit scones and Betty’s famous cinnamon toast. Clearly a recipe they’d perfected over time, the cinnamon and sugar lay in a thick crust over crunchy fingers of brown toast – the sort of mean brown toast you’d never have associated with such a treat but which was now transformed under its crystalline cloak. No wonder Sarah’s son, Finlay, eschewed his rather yummy-looking lunch in its favour.

The rest of the weekend continued much along the same theme – three girls from London, being fed like kings, with pancetta wrapped monkfish, white chocolate mousse, pork and apple crumble (my first savoury crumble – won’t be my last that’s for sure) and on Sunday morning, blueberry pancakes like the fluffiest cumulonimbus made by Rhys, Sarah’s hubby; a good excuse to march up onto the moor for a brisk one.

It was very hard to leave, even harder to manage the wagyu burger the BSG had prepared on my return and nigh on impossible to fathom what we’ll conjure up for them on the return leg; I might ask my new favourite person...

Elderflower cordial

Norfolk’s elderflower bushes put up their parasols last weekend - they arrived about 3 weeks late this year, but better late than never: they were gigantic, frothy flying saucers, their champagne notes effervescent in the air. The BSG had been so keen to get cutting and steeping on our previous visit that the kitchen cupboard was already stocked with citric acid, which had been easily procured from the chemist’s. Armed with a pilfered wire supermarket basket – how embarrassing - we perused the green aisles, selecting only the most pristine, untainted chandeliers.

Elderflower cordial – makes one and a half litres

• 20 heads of elderflower
• 1.8kg caster sugar
• 1.2 litres water, boiled
• 2 unwaxed lemons*
• 75g citric acid

Method

1. Put the sugar into a large mixing bowl, covering with freshly boiled water and stir until the sugar has completely dissolved.

2. Gently shake the elderflower heads to evict stubborn residents, and then place into the bowl.

3. Pare the zest of the lemons off in wide strips and toss into the bowl with the elderflowers. Slice the lemons, discard the ends, and add the slices to the bowl, then stir in the citric acid. Cover with a cloth and then leave at room temperature for 24 hours.

4. Remove the larger contents and then strain through a muslin cloth or very fine sieve and bottle. It will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks after opening.

As well as being a refreshing summer drink mixed with still or sparking water it’s a wonderful infusion for pannacotta, fool, yoghurt and ice-cream.

If I could find a gooseberry, they go very well together too – but I can’t. They’re selling them in Morrison’s in High Wycombe apparently, so says my first class girl on the ground.

*it may well yield unmentionably disgusting results, but I am going to try adding cucumbers in like the lemons, in homage to the ‘grown-up’ soft drink of the eighties, Aqua Libra. I loved it. But I was clearly in the minority.

Something warm, for a rainy day

Last weekend, in the late golden September sunlight, we kicked off the hot autumn pudding season with a fragrant, fruity crumble, made by my brother Har, and of course, the BSG.

Here's the recipe...

This can be pretty much any fruit you like, (and quantities really depend on what crumble to fruit ratio you prefer.)

Makes enough for 6

8 good-sized plums, purple, red or yellow
4 large cooking apples
2 tablespoons of water
Caster sugar, a couple of good shakes from the bag

For the topping:
200g plain flour, or mix half and half porridge oats
100g cold butter, cubed
125g demerara sugar
Ground cinnamon

Wash the fruit, stone and quarter the plums, peel core and chop the apples. Put them in a heavy based pan sprinkled with the water and sugar to start them off, only for a few minutes (you can even put a star anise or two in with the fruit to spice it up a bit; it works well with plums, and cardamom pods suit rhubarb very well). Put the fruit in a buttered oven-proof dish.
In a food processor blend oats/flour, butter and sugar, until you have something the texture of builder’s sand – but taste it! If you like, sprinkle in some cinnamon and blend again. Then spread evenly over the fruit, don’t pat it down, and put in the oven at 180C for 35 minutes or so, until light brown on the top and bubbling at the edges.

Serve with crème fraiche, ice cream, yoghurt, custard: whatever’s your favourite.