treats

Mini chocolate and raspberry trifles

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Today’s a good day. I got up to find Bert sitting up in bed, reading a book about dinosaurs to his diplodocus. He greeted me with ‘oh, hi Mum!’ and a laugh. He was topless and I asked why – apparently he’d split some of last night’s milk on himself so he took his top off and put it in the dirty washing basket.

An angelic child and a round toddler belly – what could be better? Oh yes, a large cheque from HMRC reimbursing me for a mysterious overpayment of … some kind of tax. And I’m down to the last two on a project in Winchester, where one of my oldest friends lives. For now I’ll enjoy imagining the cups of tea and glasses of wine rather than worrying about the childcare.

Bring on the chocolate trifle!

Makes 3 mini trifles (one for you and two for me)

Leftover chocolate cake (I get that this is kind of a weird concept, but me and Bert have been on our own a lot recently and found our banana and chocolate loaf a bit big to get through)

3 teaspoons raspberry or cherry jam

12 raspberries (give or take)

100g ricotta (or whipped cream)

1 tablespoon golden icing sugar

1/2 Cadbury’s flake, crumbled (hmm, what to do with the other half?)

Push slices or crumbled up pieces of the cake into the bottom of three ramekins, top each with a spoon of jam and then some raspberries. Beat together the ricotta and icing sugar (or whip the cream and fold the sugar in) and spread it over the fruit. Crumble flake on top and chill before serving.

 

Sticky toffee banana muffins with cheesecake frosting

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I see Bert’s inherited my thighs.

These are so delicious, I might have two.

As with sticky toffee pudding, the dates and dark sugar combine to create a dark toffee gooeyness. The icing is only just sweet, so it’s not sickly at all – New York cheesecake in icing form.

Makes 12 muffins

3 ripe bananas, mashed

175 muscavado (dark brown) sugar

175ml sunflower oil

100g chopped dates

175g brown self-raising flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

3 eggs, lightly beaten

For the frosting (to top half the cakes – double the quantities to top them all):

150g soft cheese

100g sieved golden icing sugar

Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 4/ 180 degrees. Gently stir all of the cake ingredients together until only just combined (this and the sunflower oil make them really light) then spoon the mixture into 12 muffin cases. Bake them for about 25 minutes. Allow to cool slightly in the tin then lift them onto a cooling rack to completely cool. I froze half the cakes at this point.

Beat the sugar and cheese together till combined then top the cooled cakes with it.

You can switch the banana for grated carrot and the chopped dates for raisins to make little carrot cakes.

Mini marmalade bakewells

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Though Bert often greets my offerings of food by saying ‘bleurgh!’, pushing them away or even crying (‘no mummy, please no. Pleeasse! Not nice, Bert not like’), he does just as often eat them greedily or say ‘mmm, Bert like – very nice.’ Substitute, in almost anything he says, the word ‘Bert’ for ‘Gollum’ and you see the true reality of what I’m living with. But anyway, at least he likes his food.

There are some people whose cooking is motivated by the desire to learn how to do something properly and accurately, those who want to feed their family frugally or easily and those who are greedily thinking about food most of the time and invent recipes out of sheer gluttony.

I think it’s clear which camp I belong to, and I hope very much that Bert follows me down the path of taking pleasure in his precious food.

Makes 8-10

200g shortcrust pastry (shop bought unless you’re feeling worthy – there is an upper limit on how much cooking I’m up for in a day and this almost always rules out making pastry)

8-10 teaspoons marmalade

75g ground almonds

75g self raising flour

150g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

Finely grated zest of two oranges

150g soft butter

Flaked almonds to top

Roll the pastry out thinly and cut circles to fit a muffin tray – I make the pastry slightly bigger than the hole since it shrinks in the oven. You can always snap off any over hang when it comes out. Put the pastry cases in the freezer for an hour or so – this prevents the soggy bottom issue without the hassle of blind baking.

Beat together the ground almonds, flour, sugar, eggs, orange zest and butter to make the frangipane.

Spread a teaspoon of marmalade onto each pastry case, then top with a generous desertspoon of frangipane. Sprinkle with flaked almonds and cook at 180/ gas mark 4 for 25-30 minutes, till the frangipane is risen and golden brown and firm to the touch.

Swap the orange zest for a teaspoon of vanilla essence and the marmalade for a scattering of frozen cherries for mini cherry bakewells. The same quantities also make a single 25cm tart of either type (cook this bigger version for 30-40 minutes).

Red and white jam tarts

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jam tart

Bert had half a cucumber and two jam tarts for dinner.

I obviously cut the cucumber up, rather than just hand it to him like a banana.

He could have had some home made fishcakes. But no. Just cucumber.

We met his friends Fearne and Hugo for a play in the playground this afternoon. He proudly showed Fearne his plastic dinosaurs and let her play with the ‘green ones’. If you know Bert’s obsession with green, then this is even more touching. He then wrestled her to the ground over possesion of a bouncy mushroom. And finished off with an air hug and a kiss on the lips.

The guy’s got style.

Makes 8 tarts

1 block of puff pastry

Flour for rolling

Strawberry jam

A punnet of mixed red and white currants

Roll the pastry out till it’s about 1-2 mm thick and cut out large circles with a big mug (or something of about that size). Line the compartments of a cupcake tin with the circles – not the ones with the little, shallow indentations, but proper deep ones. Drop a generous teaspoon of jam into each, and scatter over currants to cover the jam like little jewels, alternating white and red with each tart. Put in an oven at 180 for about 10-12 minutes, till puffed up and golden. (That’s near the bottom of the Aga roasting oven.)

The fresh currants look pretty and they give a sharper tang to balance the sweetness of the jam, so these feel more grown up than normal jam tarts. Saying that, I told Bert’s dad I’d made jam tarts and he ran over to them in great excitement, saw that they had fresh fruit on and wandered off saying he’d ‘save them for later’. Meanwhile, Bert ate two.

This would have been a good one to make with Bert if he showed any interest at all in cooking with me wasn’t sleeping off his adult portion of lunchtime meatballs.

 

 

Courgette and lime cake with Greek yoghurt frosting

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courgette cake

Shortly after this photo was taken, Bert’s dad was ‘naughty daddy’ for picking up a piece of cake Bert had dropped. Then I was ‘naughty mummy’ for putting a nappy on him and giving him his blanket before his nap. He’d only go to bed if he was put in an entirely green outfit, and was read three green books. Last night he screamed at me for not having the Peppa Pig towel to hand after his bath.

There is no Peppa Pig towel.

We’re completely terrified of him.

This is a tasty, moist cake. If you find the green speckles disturbing, you could peel the courgettes first.

For the cake:

2 eggs

170g soft butter

140g caster sugar

2 medium courgettes, grated (about 200g)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

75g self raising flour

75g plain wholemeal flour

1 dessert spoon lime juice

1 teaspoon baking powder

For the topping and filling:

3-4 dessert spoons lime or lemon curd

4 dessert spoons Greek yoghurt

1 cup icing sugar, sifted

1 teaspoon lime juice

Beat together the eggs, sugar, courgette and butter till smooth and light, then fold in the rest of the cake ingredients. Divide between two buttered small loaf tins (mine are 15 x 9cm) and bake at 180 degrees (or the grid shelf on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven with the cool shelf two rows above) for 20-25 minutes, till golden brown and firm.

Leave to cool slightly then turn out onto a rack.

Beat the icing sugar and remaining lime juice into the Greek yoghurt and cool for at least an hour. Spread one completely cooled loaf with curd, sandwich with the other, and then spread the frosting over the top – it should dribble down the sides.

 

Banana and dark sugar ice cream

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icecream

Bert has a very strict screen time policy (which he doesn’t apply to lego apps or watching Cars) so I got no photos of the icecream being consumed. This is him loving the scene in the Lion King where the daddy lion play-wrestles with his son.

The dark sugar gives the icecream a kind of Caribbean vibe.

Serves 3

2 ripe bananas, roughly chopped

50g dark brown Demerara sugar

½ a large pot of plain, unsweetened Greek yoghurt

A dash of double cream – maybe 30 ml

Sprinkle the sugar into the bananas and mix. Put everything into an ice cream maker and churn till frozen.

The day we ate this was one of those blissful toddler days that makes you forget the ones that are full of battles and tears. We made a den, watched the Lion King for the hundredth time and ate home made ice cream.

 

Fruit and seed flapjack

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flapjack

Makes 10-12

125g butter

125g brown sugar

125g honey

250g rolled oats

100g dried fruit – we had raisins and dates

30g mixed seeds

Melt the sugar, butter and honey together. Stir the dry ingredients together wildly so that the mixture is catapulted across the table, carpet and chairs. Add the melted ingredients and combine, flicking globules of warm mixture across the room and cackling madly. Press into a 20 x 25cm or so tin, bashing one small area like a drum until it is extremely flat but ignoring the rest. Cook at 180 degrees or on the grid shelf on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven with the cold shelf two shelves above, for 20-25 minutes. Put the bowl on your head and lick it from the inside. Dance on a chair while your mother tries to sweep the flapjack mixture up around you.

Cut into pieces in the tin while still warm.

Orange cake

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So winter has started in earnest, and so have the terrible twos. It’s howling inside and out. In an attempt to warm stomachs and sedate a toddler’s fury that he can’t scribble on my books while being spoon fed dinner from the comfort of a tiny red car, it’s beef stew and warm orange cake for dinner tonight.

In the picture he’s actually eating a hot cross bun as I daren’t take a phone to the table at the moment for fear I’ll end the meal by shouting ‘no bloody Peppa Pig!’ and throwing it across the room.

Makes a 21cm cake

Two large oranges, about 375g in total when pureed

6 eggs

225g golden caster sugar

250g ground almonds

A heaped teaspoon of baking powder

Cover the oranges with cold water, bring to the boil, put a lid on and simmer for 2-2.5 hours. Then remove from the water and blitz to a pulp. Weigh out 375g of it and beat with the other ingredients, cooking in a greased 21cm springform tin at 190 for an hour (or on a gridrack on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven).

We had ours warm with yoghurt or double cream.

Shortbread

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SHORTBREAD

Our Monday adventure was a bit compromised by the weather today so here’s our rainy day shortbread (the recipe’s a BBC Good Foods one). There’s some biscuit dough under that cushion somewhere.

Made about 25

250g soft butter

125g caster sugar (and more for sprinkling)

250g plain flour

125g semolina

Cream the butter and sugar together and then stir through the flour and semolina. Roll out to about a centimetre thick (it’s a pleasingly pliable playdough-like dough) and stamp out your shapes. Sprinkle with caster sugar on the baking tray. Bert measured ingredients, started the food processor, rolled out dough and stamped out shapes but looked at me as if I was insane when I suggested he sprinkle sugar on top.

In a two oven Aga, cook with the gridrack on the roasting oven floor and the cool shelf two rows above for 12-15 minutes till pale golden and then in the simmering oven on the third row down for another half an hour. In a conventional oven 160 degrees for 50 mins. So much easier to describe! But the Aga version was nice.

 

Light and dark birthday cake

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birthday cake

When Bert’s ill or very upset, the only thing that will comfort him is his dummy (not normally allowed outside of naptimes and bedtime), John the rabbit, cuddles … and to wear a sou’wester hat. There’s a logic to the toddler mind that’s inaccessible to the rest of us.

Let’s hope he feels better in time for Daddy’s birthday cake tomorrow.

Makes a 20cm sandwich cake

300g self raising flour

300g golden caster sugar

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

Half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

225g softened butter

3 eggs

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

225ml sour cream

100g good quality white chocolate, bashed to splinters with a rolling pin

For the icing:

75g unsalted butter

175g good quality dark chocolate

300g icing sugar

1 tablespoon golden syrup

125ml sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat all the ingredients for the cake together, folding in the chocolate at the last minute. If you’re a better woman than I am, do it the proper way, beating together the butter and sugar, gradually adding the eggs and then the flour. I bung it all in a food mixer.

Divide between two greased and lined 20cm tins and bake at 180 (or the grid shelf on the bottom of the Aga roasting oven with the cool shelf two rows above) for 35-40 minutes. I’d check after 30, especially if you’re cooking in an Aga, which makes its own rules.

For the icing, melt together the butter and chocolate, add the vanilla, cream and syrup and then sieve in the sugar and beat to combine. Ice the cake when it’s cold and the icing has cooled a bit or you’ll get that cow pat look. If you place rectangles of baking parchment under the edges of the cake when you ice it then whip them away when you’ve finished, you’ll avoid a chocolate streaked plate.

Bert decorated it with chocolates (because what this recipe really needs is more chocolate) – he has a ‘more is more’ approach.