Squashed Fly Biscuits

So after an 18 month hiatus, I'm back again. In a new kitchen and in the summer holidays from school, so I may actually get some baking done.
Today's bake is inspired by fiction, in particular the Murder Most Unladylike Mysteries by Robin Stevens. These fab books set in the inter-war years in a girls' boarding school are full of yummy food and "bun breaks". Best of all Robin has published the recipes of some of the favourite treats from the series, along with some short stories in Cream Buns and Crime.
As we are off on a train journey tomorrow I decided a portable thing would be best, and hence chose Squashed Fly Biscuits. Better known as Garibaldi, these classic treats are elevated to the level of heroes by Daisy and Hazel in these books.
Although the recipe sounded easy to make there was a tricky moment when you had to fold the plain dough over the currants. In hindsight a little patience from me, and chilling the dough before rolling out would have made this much easier. All in all a quick treat to make that has elevated the humble cup of tea into a bun break (and with 40 biscuits made should sustain us through our train journey too!

Bananas past their best!

We arrived home from a great weekend away, walked into the kitchen and were greeted with the smell of over-ripe bananas. Mr Beard immediately grabbed them and said "These are going in the bin". "Oh no," I replied "it's half term, I'll make a banana loaf tomorrow."
So I looked in the beautiful new book I bought with my Christmas book tokens - Homemade Memories by Kate Doran. I found a recipe for chocolate freckled banana loaf. I didn't really fancy chocolate in it, but reading the blurb at the beginning of the recipe it suggested adding walnuts too, so I decided to just do that and omit the chocolate.

The next morning, I went shopping at a budget supermarket. They didn't have wholemeal flour, so I decided as I had frozen peas in the trolley already that I couldn't go elsewhere, white flour would have to do. When I got home I realised that I didn't have brown sugar or Greek yoghurt either!! So I just used caster sugar and 3 tablespoons of the plain yoghurt out of a Muller corner yoghurt! Thinking about it, a recipe using up left over bananas shouldn't really involve buying a lot of other ingredients, so other things got used up too.
The whole thing turned out to be delicious, although I can't really say I used the recipe, other than the measurements and method!

Winnie the Pooh teabread

There are recipes that I go back to again and again, and this is one of those. The title of the cookery book gives this away. A recipe for Pooh's Raisin Bread for eating with honey, from Pooh's Fireside Recipes by Katie Stewart, a book I bought with my pocket money in the 1980s, one of the first cookery books I bought myself. My mum loves this recipe almost as much as me, and often makes it when we meet up. It's a cosy sort of cake, slices spread with butter which go fantastically with a cup of tea. I think the secret of it's deliciousness is how you make the batter and it looks done, and at the last minute you pour in 2 oz of melted butter and mix it in. Yum! This is not one where you can change the recipe or mess with in any way, it's too delicious as it is!

Lilypad in the hole

Getting back to work means that baking has been on the back burner, and quick teas have been the order of the day. The post Christmas austerity also means that I'm trying to cook lighter options too. For last night's tea I recreated a favourite in the Beard household - Lilypad in the hole. "What's that?" I hear you ask? It's toad in the hole with vegetarian sausages.When I tell anyone this, they say "but you're not vegetarian". But the great thing about vegetarian food is that meat eaters can eat it too, and it's lower fat and often cheaper, so great in January when 2 types of belt tightening are the order of the day.
The real reason I make this, however, is that we prefer it to toad in the hole. The problem with the carnivore friendly version is how greasy it is, the fat comes out of the sausages and makes the batter soggy and greasy. This doesn't happen with the veggie version, and it's quicker to make too, as you just preheat the oil in the dish while the oven heats up, then tip in the batter, pop the sausages in, put it back in the oven, and when the Yorkshire pudding is cooked the sausages are too. Yum! Delicious with a bit of microwaved swede and some sprouts!

Spur of the moment rhubarb

Well, here we are back from our 2 week holiday, and gearing up to go back to work tomorrow. So it must be the unpacking, tidying away, going to the supermarket day. I had to nip to a well known catalogue shop, to enable us to connect our new DVD player to the TV, so Mr Beard said he would get started on the shopping and I could catch him up. This ended with him doing a run down of most of the week's food in the yoghurt aisle.
As I was packing the stuff as it came down the conveyor belt, I noticed a packet of new season forced rhubarb from Yorkshire. "Rhubarb?" I said. "Yes", he replied "It looked nice and I thought you could make a crumble."
I had to agree that it did look nice, but I didn't really feel like a crumble. It all seemed like a very Nigel Slater thing to do. Buy something in season because it looked nice and then conjure some delicious sweet treat from it. So I was drawn to the Kitchen Diaries III book which made and appearance on my shelves over the festive season, but alas only rhubarb with pork chops was to be found therein. I checked all my Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books too, as he also strikes me as someone with good rhubarb recipes. But nothing quite took my fancy, so I resorted to google. Hey presto! Nigel Slater in a Guardian article making things with rhubarb. So Rhubarb and Cinnamon Polenta Cake it was. I was determined to stick to the recipe verbatim, but then a panic where, realising that Nigel Slater must have a larger capacity food processor than me, and thinking it wasn't all going to fit (it did, I just panicked for no reason) made me forget to put the orange zest in. It didn't seem to matter though, as the crumbly buttery cake with bright pink rhubarby centre was better than I even hoped

Key Lime Pie

New Year's Eve was eagerly anticipated in the Beard household, as the in-laws had booked us seats to see the new Star Wars Film. Cooking wise, we had also been put in charge of the majority of the New Year's Eve dinner. As the film started at 4pm, this meant we had to come up with a menu which could be made in advance. Cue snacks from Waitrose as a starter. Nigella's Coq au Riesling is one of Mr Beard's make it ahead specialities, because it tastes much better the next day, so was the obvious choice for main. I was in charge of the dessert. I wanted something quick that would look impressive and settled on Key Lime Pie from the Leon Book 3: Baking and Puddings. Being away from home, I did not want to make a meringue topped pie, as there were too many things to go wrong, so this is a cream topped, digestive biscuit bottomed pie. The other best thing about this recipe is that hardly any measuring was involved. Half a standard packet of digestives, and a whole tin of condensed milk, meant the only guestimation was needed for the butter! Brilliant when you're away from your home kitchen and scales.
When the pie was served, I was served the ultimate accolade: second helpings requested by my father-in-law!

Words with friends

My first post Christmas baking adventure started with inspiration from Mr Beard. We had a meet up planned with his usual Words with Friends opponent, a friend of his parents. We were discussing what to give him as a Christmas gift, when Mr Beard said "we could make scrabble tiles out of biscuits". This meant I could, but it seemed like a good challenge. So here I am in my in-laws kitchen, grappling with an unfamiliar oven, very old fashioned, and slightly inaccurate scales and never having piped before! I looked on the internet for inspiration, and all the pictures I saw looked very professional, and yet unobtainable, so I flicked through the cookery books I had with me. I found a recipe for lemon star biscuits in '101 Christmas Dishes' which I decided looked plain and pale enough, and made chocolate butter cream from the back of the icing sugar packet, with melted plain chocolate included, and was pretty pleased with the results. We had loads of biscuits and icing left over, so used them as place settings too!