Claire Elizabeth

Strawberry & White Chocolate Jam

16:13

The other week, whilst sitting around the dinner table talking with family and friends, the subject of jam was brought up and we began discussing our favourite flavours. I like a good raspberry conserve, seeds and all, but I think my personal favourite has to be 'quatre fruits'- four fruits that is. My parents buy this delicious jam on their trips to France and I always look forward to a jar of the stuff when they return. However, I did recently discover that Bonne Maman make a similar version containing strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and cherries which is also rather scrummy, and available in the UK-wahey!

Anyway, one of my friends told me about a jam that his mum makes which contains chocolate. Chocolate? In jam? I wasn't sure that it could actually work. Now don't get me wrong, I love a bit (or a lot) of Nutella but wouldn't adding chunks of chocolate to fruit jam be a bit strange? Well, in this case, it definitely isn't! Basically, you make a raspberry jam, then stir in small pieces of white chocolate at the last minute so that some of it partially melts into the hot jam, whilst some of it remains as chunks which gives one a nice surprise when spreading some of the stuff on hot, buttery toast-nice! I just had to have a go at making a batch of my own.

For mine, I used fresh strawberries and also added the seeds from a vanilla pod as I love the combination of vanilla with white chocolate. I took a standard bar of white chocolate, and roughly chopped it into chunks/flakes of varying size. I made my strawberry jam as normal, transferred it to jars, then whilst it was still hot in the jars I quickly stirred through the chocolate. I was a bit worried that it would all melt instantly, considering the low melting point of chocolate, but surprisingly it didn't and I was left with four wonderful jars of ruby red jam speckled with creamy white chunks and tiny black dots of vanilla.

Rather nice stirred through homemade ice cream, or you could just get a spoon...

As for the taste? Well, all I can say is that I was blown away. This is the best jam I have ever tasted and I admit to eating it straight from the jar... I will most certainly be making it again once my batch runs out!

Victoria Plums

16:22

Hello all! I know, I know..it has been far too long since I last shared some baked goodies with you all, but I'm here now and I hope you like what I have to offer :)

This week I'm going to show you some sweet treats I made using a seasonal fruit for September- the Victoria plum. The Victoria plum is an English variety, with a sweet yellow flesh and light red-orange skin. As you may have already guessed, the name originates from Queen Victoria and the fruit was apparently introduced in the 1840's. The Victoria plum tree is very widely grown in many British gardens, including mine, as my Dad kindly received one as a gift last year! Unfortunately we lost all the plums last season due to some cheeky little squirrels but this year we got a full crop thanks to my Dad's clever netting around the tree. Although the plums were lovely and ripe, I found they were a little tart for my taste buds and I decided that they would be best used for cooking (or baking in my case!)

One of my favourite plum recipes is Delia's Oat and Cinnamon Slice-a delicious combination of oats, butter, brown sugar, fruit and cinnamon. It's so simple to make as the base of the slice is also used for the crumble topping and so you can whip up this afternoon tea treat in very little time. You can of course use a variety of different fruits for the filling- I once tried apples and raisins, which is a classic combination, but why not experiment and use some of your favourite seasonal fruits.

After making my plum slice, I had a go at a recipe for plum and almond cupcakes. However, instead of baking mine in a cupcake tin, I made mini loaf cakes instead as I decided that I don't use my individual loaf tins often enough! The recipes calls for ground almonds and cinnamon but I substituted the cinnamon for almond extract instead, as I love the marzipan-like flavour it gives. I sliced the plums and arranged them on the top of the cake mixture, then sprinkled them with flaked almonds and brown sugar to give a crunchy topping.

I thought my little bakes would make lovely gifts, so I packaged a few of them in cellophane bags tied up with pretty ribbon-simple but effective!

After my little baking session, I still found that I had a few leftover plums so I thought what better way to use them up than to make some jam! Cooking the fruit with the sugar turned the mixture into a wonderful orange-pink colour and really intensified the flavour of the plums.

I'm thinking that it will be rather nice spread onto a slice of homemade brioche or stirred through some vanilla ice cream-yum!

Product Review: Dot Com Gift Shop

16:24

British Treats for a Jubilee Feast!

16:05

angelina

Gateau Opera and Mont Blanc

16:42

carrot cake

Easter Bakes & Carrot Cake!

16:02

Okay so I know Easter was last weekend, but I thought I'd show you some of the stuff I made over the spring festival. As usual, I baked a simnel cake since me and my family do love a bit of fruit cake, especially when there is some marzipan involved aswel! I won't bore you with the history of simnel cake, as I already did that last year (!) but basically it's a light fruit cake with mixed spice, citrus zest, and a layer of marzipan running through the middle, as well as on top. It is traditionally topped with eleven marzipan balls which represent the eleven apostles-simple!

I also made some classic Lenten biscuits, which are simple but ever so tasty crunchy little biscuits, packed with currants, mixed peel and sprinkled with a generous helping of caster sugar.

I love making things that taste delicious but look pretty too, so I had a go at some Easter bonnet biscuits. These are vanilla sable biscuits with a marshmallow on top to make the hat shape, and a coating of coloured royal icing. I finished mine with some simple piping and icing flowers- pretty effective huh?

Ok, so my final Easter bake, and probably my favourite this year, carrot cake complete with marzipan bunnies, carrots and chocolate mini eggs! I actually made this for my sister's birthday as it fell on Easter Monday this year, and so it just seemed right to make her an Easter themed cake!

For the cake, I took a risk and used a different recipe to my norm-but boy I'm glad I did as it turned out to be an absolute delight! The sponge was packed with carrot and raisins but also contained dessicated coconut which gave it an interesting texture without imparting an overpowering coconut flavour. I took the recipe from Claire Clark's book, Desserts, which has a great selection of recipes and some lovely photos.

Unfortunately my icing was a bit of a disaster, as cream cheese always seems to turn into a sloppy mess when I try and convert it into a sweet icing! In the end I had to add nearly a whole pack of icing sugar just to get it to a spreadable consistency, and by the time I had done that you could barely taste the cream cheese so I may as well have just made butter icing! Never mind, atleast I didn't actually use it all and so hopefully my teeth won't be dropping out any time soon!