And so just for you, pull up a chair, pour yourselves a cup of tea and have a strawberry vanilla thumbprint biscuit.

I love Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Despite his vast meat intake he is a delight to watch – apart from the time he ate a placenta, but we won’t think about that.

A few weeks ago he wrote an article for the Observer about the Great British Biscuit:

I don’t want to sound like some harrumphing colonel, but what is happening to the Great British Biscuit? [I don't want] to see the mighty, wheaty digestive [and] the fiesty gingernut supplanted by cookies the size of hubcaps. Are we meant to eat them, or drill a hole in them and hang them up?

And so this recipe is an adaptation of one of his. These are small, nibbly biscuits to have with your morning tea. Enjoy!

Ingredients (makes 12)
110g unsalted butter at room temperature
110g Caster sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 egg yolks
1 tablespoons mil
140g plain flour
Some jam for later

Heat the oven to 180*C/350*F/Gas Mark 4 and line a baking tray or two with baking parchment.

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy and add the vanilla extract and egg yolks, beating them in one at a time, followed by the milk.

Gently fold in half the flour, stir, and them fold in the other half.

Gather the soft dough together and make a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and put it in the fridge for half an hour.

Then make 12 small balls with the dough and flatten them down onto your lined baking trays – make sure they are well spaced as they spread whilst cooking! In each biscuit make a thumbprint in the dough which you fill with a little (quarter of a teaspoon) of jam.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until firm to the touch and allow to cool on wire racks.

….and it’s Pancake Day!

As a kid Shrove Tuesday used to be one of my favourite days of the year.  We hardly ever ate pancakes other than on Pancake Day and I have to admit I’m a glutton for pancakes.  Being brought up a Catholic you know that after Shrove Tuesday there is nothing to look forward to until Easter, you are always forced to give something up for Lent (usually chocolate or cake…boo!) and the school tuck shop closes for the duration.  Therefore you have to make the most of the pancakes – once I ate so many I was sick in a cup… I was only six but still….

So in celebration here are three of my favourite pancake recipes.

1.  Vegan pancakes – add sweetcorn (and take out the cinnamon + vanilla) for savouries or blueberries for sweets.

2.  Apple Porridge Pancakes – perfect for breakfast

3.  The traditional British Pancake (ie, not a crepe) – best served with lemon and sugar.  Mix together 100g  of self raising flour with 20g of caster sugar.  Beat in one egg, 100ml of milk and 20g of melted butter.  Et voila! (Makes

Readers, how do you eat yours?

Can’t decide between chocolate or yellow cake?

Don’t want anything to creamy or covered in frosting, just a little bite to go with a cup of tea?

Then this Marble Cake is perfection.  Seriously! Again, neither vegan nor good for you particularly, but at least there is no icing this time right?

Ingredients
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
185g (6.5oz) chopped butter
3 eggs
230g (8oz) caster sugar
280g (10oz) self-raising flour
185ml (6 fl oz) milk
2 tablespoons of unsweetened coco powder

Preheat the over to 200*C/400*F/Gas Mark 6 and lightly grease and line a loaf tin.

Put the vanilla extract, butter and sugar in a bowl and beat until pale and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating them in well.

Sift the flour and fold into the butter mixture along with the milk until combined.

Divide the mixture between two bowls. Add the coco powder to one bowl and mix in well.

Spoon the mixtures into the tin alternatively and then use a fork to swirl the different coloured cake batters together making sure you get down to the bottom of the tin.

Bake for 50 minutes – allow to cool and then turn out onto a wire rack.

Eat as soon as it’s cool enough!

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And as it’s Friday, some blanks, courtesy of Lauren.

1. The phrase or punctuation I overuse most is ….. awesome. I use it for everything. From something that is truly awesome to something that is just OK to things that are not OK at all with a sarcastic lilt. I need to find another word.

2. Today I am thankful for …..all my lovely clients. I moan about how tired I am but I love my work and am truly honoured to be able to do it.

3. My best friend is ….Himself.

4. A quirky thing about me is ….. I hate peas, I have to sleep on the side of the bed nearest the loo and if I sleep naked I have horrible nightmares about turning up to work naked.

5. This weekend I ….on a training course. It’s not very interesting for anyone but me. And there are a lot more in my future.

6. Something that worries me is ….money, anything happening to Himself or the cats, my health getting worse. I lie awake at night worrying about all kinds of ludicrous things that seem so trivial in the light of day.

7. On my night stand you would find ….a pile of books, my journal, a pack of coloured pens, a Lumi daylight alarm clock (because I am NOT a morning person!!!), my phone, water bottle, lip gloss, various other detritus (such as socks which I go to bed in but take off in the night).

This cake is not very good for you.

This cake is definitely not vegan (but it is veggie friendly).

This cake is divine.  A cross between a cake and a pudding.  A gorgeous bananary fluffy mountain of awesome calories.

Nom.

I bake when I have things on my mind.  When I’m working stuff out.  When all around me seems to be losing their heads I put things in a bowl and become a cake.  The culinary equivalent of If.

I made this cake on Friday night.  I had something on my mind which had passed by the time I enjoyed the cake on Saturday afternoon.

Such is the way of cakes.

Ingredients
For the Cake
90g/3oz softened unsalted butter
45g/1.5oz runny honey
115g/4oz caster sugar
1 egg
2 bananas (mashed)
90g/30z vanilla flavoured yoghurt (or plain yoghurt + a teaspoon of vanilla extract)
0.5 teaspoon baking powder
185g/6.5oz self raising flour (sifted)
For the Glaze
60g/2oz unsalted butter
1 tablespoon runny honey
60g/2oz icing sugar
splash of milk

Preheat the oven to 180*C/350*F/Gas Mark 4.

Lightly grease a cake tin and place baking parchment in the base.

Cream together the butter, honey + sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and banana and mix together.

In a small bowl combine the yoghurt (or yoghurt + vanilla extract) with the baking powder and stir well. Slowly fold the sifted flour and yoghurt mixture alternately into the bowl of banana mixture.

Once mixed togther well put the cake mix in the greased + lined tin and bake for 60 minutes. I baked mine for 55 minutes and it sunk a tiny bit so suggest doing the skewer test after 60 minutes instead. Because this is quite a moist cake it needs baking for a little bit longer than you would initially think.

While your cake is baking you can make the honey glaze.

Cream together the butter + honey until pale and fluffy then slowly beat in the sugar and about half a tablespoon of milk. Put the icing in the fridge until your cake is baked and cold and then the icing goes on top before the cake goes in your belly.

Speaking of furry creatures, I’m like Paddington Bear when it comes to marmalade and would quite happily keep marmalade sandwiches under my hat if it were socially accpetable to do so.

So there was only one thing on my mind when these arrived from the veg box people.

Like other bloggers I wanted to make MARMALADE!!

This is by far and away the easiest marmalade recipe in the world (Himself managed to make it practically unassisted this year for heaven’s sake) and is adapted from one I found in a Waitrose (UK supermarket) freebie magazine about three years ago.

Ingredients
1kg Seville oranges (Sevilles make the best marmalade by far. It is all they are good for. Do not try and eat one unless you want your eyes to pop out from the bitterness).
1 lemon
2kg sugar

And that’s it!

Pour two litres of cold water into a very large pan.

Squeeze the oranges and lemon and add the juice to the pan.

Remove the pith from the orange peels with a spoon and then chop the peel into strips.  The chunkier the strips the chunkier cut the marmalade.  We went for very chunky cut!

Add the peel to the pan and bring the whole lot to the boil then simmer until the liquid has reduced by half and the peel is soft (this will take about 1.5 hours).

Add the sugar about 500g at a time slowly stirring in, making sure it all dissloves.  Then increase the heat and boil rapidly for about 15 minutes

You need to reach “setting point”.  So after 15 minutes, get a cold saucer and put a little marmalade on it.  Allow it to cool and then push the edges of the marmalde spot – if it wrinkles, it’s ready to go.  If not boil it for another 5 minutes or so and test it again.

Once you’ve reached setting point leave the marmalade to cool in the pan before transferring into sterilised jars (see how to sterilise jars here).

You will make more marmalade than you ever thought possible and consquentially have to use every available container in the house!

Joke.

Q: What did the chick say when it saw an orange in the nest?
A: Look at the orange mama laid.

The fruit’n'veg box was full of them (and oranges but we’ll save them for next week).

So let’s make carrot cake.

Now I was going to veganise Sas’s recipe – but you know what?  It’s perfect just as it is.  If you bake with eggs, go try it now!

So onto those carrot muffins.

Ingredients
(makes about 9)
275ml coconut milk
Juice + zest of one orange
250g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
5 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 carrots, grated
Large handful of sultanas

Mix flour, baking powder, bicarb + salt together in a bowl.

Add the cinnamon + nutmeg, the orange zest + sultanas + grated carrot, and then fold in the golden syrup.

Mix the coconut milk with the orange juice and pour over the mixed ingredients – fold (don’t stir) with a wooden spoon until everything is combined.

Divide into muffin cases and bake at 180*C/Gas Mark 4 for 25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Potatoes and carrots, those winter stalwarts.  Usually I just make them into soup.  I kind of live on soup in the winter.  When you work weird hours it’s easy to just have a vat of soup to heat up when you’re hungry.  But sometimes even the queen of soups wants to do something a bit more interesting.

Enter the vegan gratin.

This is a creamy, warming dish that makes a great lunch or a side dish for a bigger meal.

My only problem was how to make the sauce creamy yet dairy free?

Enter the can of powdered “cheese” sauce available from your local Holland & Barrett (or other health food store).

Let’s go gratin!

Ingredients
1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
500g of mixed root veggies (potatoes, carrots, celeriac, swede, Jerusalme artichoke, whatever) chopped
salt + peppa
a pinch of parsley + rosemary
1 bowl of “cheese sauce” (three heaped teaspoons of powder mixed with 150ml water)
1pt vegetable stock
handful of porridge oats

Preheat the oven to 190*C/Gas Mark 5.

Fry the onions and garlic over a medium heat until soft.  Then add the root veggies, season well and add the herbs.  Gently fry for about 5 minutes until the veggies start to soften.

Now add the stock and “cheese sauce”.  Turn the heat down to low, cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

Put the whole contents of the pan into an ovenproof dish and cover with porridge oats.

Bake for 30 minutes.

So readers, tell me what you do with an abundance of root veggies?

In the UK at least it can also be the bleakest month of the year.  Holidays are long forgotten and it seems ages until the next break at Easter.  The mornings are dark, the afternoons are dark.  Some days out here in East Anglian fen country it doesn’t ever seem to get light at all.  And it’s cold.  Bitterly, bone-gnawingly cold.

And to top it all, this begins a seemingly endless few weeks when there is nothing in my veg boxes except root vegetables, blood oranges  and cabbage.

So it will not surprise you to learn that January’s recipes will involve just that!

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As you can see, these aren’t “real” gnocchi.  I haven’t quite cultivated the patience to try to make that yet.  What these are though are little potatoey pillows of perfection – the recipe is based on one sent to me in said veg box by Abel + Cole.

Ingredients
(serves two)
3 medium potatoes, mashed and left to go cold.
1 chopped garlic glove
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Pinch of salt + pepper
Herbs of your choice (I have no fresh herbs at this time of year so used 0.5 teaspoon of dried rosemary, dried coriander + cumin)
2 tablespoons plain flour

(ignore the onion – it snuck into the photograph when I wasn’t looking)

Mix the potato with the salt, pepper, herbs + oil.

Add 1 tablespoon of flour and work the mixture into a dough – add more flour as and when you need.

On a floured surface roll the dough out into a cylinder shape + slice into rounds about 1cm thick.

(worst cylinder shape ever)

Make sure all your little potatoey rounds are covered in flour and then fry them in a little oil over a medium heat until they are golden on both sides (some of mine went a bit more than golden….)

To serve I sauteed half a finely chopped onion with half a chopped cabbage in some soy sauce + sweet chilli sauce.

I bet they are also nice with some tomato + basil pasta sauce too.  Or as part of a full English breakfast if you’re into that sort of thing!

Readers, back during my vegan christmas posts (which seem so far away now!), I was so full of my own cooking that I forgot to post the link to Shannon’s vegan gingerbread cookies.  How remiss of me and now I insist you all click the link and try them out.

Just as soon as you’ve recovered from cookie overload!

I will return.

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Have you entered the giveaway?

I was debating whether or not to post this recipe but I thought rather before the New Year’s Resolutions kick in than afterwards!

This fudge is delicious, super easy to make and put in a fancy jar makes a great present (just in case you’re seeing anyone this weekend you’ve forgotten to buy gifts for).

Ingredients  – makes about 30 pieces
250g vegan chocolate
110g vegan margarine
40ml soy or almond milk
250g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Melt all the ingredients except the icing sugar together either in a saucepan over a very low heat, stirring continually or put them in a glass bowl in the microwave and melt on high on 10 second bursts, stirring in between each blast.

Sift the icing sugar in a little at a time.  I would sift one third of the sugar in and stir, then the next third, then the final third – mix well to avoid any lumps until you have a fudgy, doughy consistency.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment and put your fudge mixture into it, patting it down to form a thick layer.  Place the baking tray in the fridge for at least 3 hours but preferably over night to set. Once set you can turn out and cut into squares.

Apologies for the short and late post – still feeling pretty below par!