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Mother’s Day marmalade cake (or a banana and oat loaf for toddlers)

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment


(I say the banana loaf versions for toddlers – Bert’s dad’s eaten about 1/2 a loaf in the last ten minutes.)

The marmalade version’s a mother’s day present for my mum. I overheard Bert telling his dad, ‘I love Gran!’ this morning – if only I’d recorded it that it could be a mother’s day present too.

Anyway, here’s an easy to make and easy to eat cake for the person in your life who taught you how to talk, spoon food into your mouth and wee in the right places.

Makes a small loaf

150g soft butter

100g golden castor sugar

50g soft dark brown sugar

1teaspoon baking powder

150g self-raising flour

3  eggs

I heaped tablespoon marmalade (to convert to a banana loaf, use 2 large or 3 small bananas instead)

Zest of one orange (to convert to a banana loaf, use 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence instead)

115g porridge oats

150ml double cream or full fat yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 180°C or gas mark 4. Line a 2lb loaf tin (one of the smaller ones).

If you have a mixer, bung everything in and cream together till fluffy (about 5 minutes). You don’t even have to mash the bananas for the banana version first. If you don’t, then cream the butter and sugar together before adding the wet ingredients (bananas mashed in this case) and stiring the dry ingredients through.

Bake for around a hour, till the top’s cracked and firm.

 

Many veg cottage pie

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As a blog I follow said the other day, it’s my job to put vegetables in front of my child, but it’s not my job to force him to eat them. My job’s somewhere in between giving up and feeding him chicken nuggets and chips every night, and bribing or threatening him until he eats courgettes.

So today Bert cried inconsolably at nursery drop off again. I thought we’d got past this, but it’s obviously all about his dad working away a lot and him feeling sadder and less anchored as a result. In the car on the way home I thought about my brief success with the ‘taking a dinosaur to school’ strategy and wracked my brain for how I could make the drop off okay again.

But I can’t. If he’s sad about his dad, he’s sad. I can’t take that away, much as I’d like to, just like I can’t force him to eat vegetables. I can offer them to him in loads of different forms, and I can be in the same room with him every day whether he’s sad or happy. But that’s it.

Dinner tonight is many veg cottage pie, with honey and butter popcorn* for pudding. Because food can nourish us and it can comfort us. And some days we really are just a bit sadder than others.

*2 tablespoons each of butter, brown sugar and honey melted together then poured over warm popcorn

Serves 4 (2 in the freezer for next week for us – I freeze it when it’s constructed but before it goes into the oven)

400g minced beef (5% fat if you’re 5:2ing)

Olive oil to fry (1 teaspoon if you’re 5:2ing)

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, finely diced

4 sticks celery, finely diced

2 cans chopped tomatoes

1/2 a can of tap water

2 tablespoons Worcester sauce

4 tablespoons tomato puree

2 bay leaves

Salt and pepper

For the topping:

1kg root veg, peeled and chopped – we had 2/3 sweet potato, 1/3 parsnips

200g creme fraiche (half fat if you’re 5:2ing)

(Obviously I’m not suggesting you put a child on a 5:2 diet, but with no portion restrictions and three good meals a day, this is just a hearty meal with tons of veg in. If you follow the 5:2 instructions, a quarter of this – a huge portion, even by my standards – is about 300 calories.)

Brown the meat in a large frying pan until it’s starting to brown and caramelise. Add the chopped onions, carrots and celery and cook for 10 minutes, until softened. Stir through the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, Worcester sauce, seasoning and bay leaves. Bring to a rapid simmer, then turn down and cook gently for at least half an hour. (Because I’m working at home I turn it down really low and cook for an hour to an hour and a half.)

Boil the root veg till tender then mash with the creme fraiche and season. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees/ gas mark six and construct the pie in an oven proof dish, topping the meat sauce (with the bay leaves fished out) with the mash. It’s easier to put together if filling and topping are cold, but obviously this is only possible if you’re hanging around at home all day procrasinating working. Put in a hot oven for 20-30 minutes, till bubbling and golden.

Serve with peas, or a green salad if you’re willing to watch your toddler mime vomiting as you eat it.

 

Tomato, ricotta and green veg pasta

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Table manners are coming along nicely.

Serves 2

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons ricotta

200ml passata

1 head broccoli, florets separated, stem peeled and sliced

2 tablespoons frozen peas

Grated zest of half a lemon

1 tablespoon pine nuts

Wholewheat pasta to appetite

Grated cheese to serve (we had Cheddar)

Gently fry the ricotta in the olive oil for a couple of minutes. Add the passata, lemon and pine nuts. Simmer.

Meanwhile put the pasta on to boil, adding the broccoli for the last five minutes and the peas for the last two. Drain, stir the sauce through, season and sprinkle with grated cheese.

Shove fistfuls into your mouth.

Storecupboard bakewell muffins

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Today, as on many days when I’m alone with Bert, we’re busy in the morning then have to fit in a dog walk after Bert’s luxuriously long lunchtime nap and before it gets dark. As a result, I bribe him into it by taking the pram and iPad, along with dummy, blanket and John.

So today at 4pm a maudlin Bert was dressed in his oversized fake fur deerstalker hat and only-just-big-enough green parka, dummy in, looking like a Russian gangster who was no less sinister for being tiny. Meet Sweet Cheeks – happy to sell you a sawn off shot gun for the right price.

Me: Look at the beautiful sunset!

Bert: [taps away at Dinosaur Trucks with very cold hands]

Me: It’s like Christmas lights in the sky!

Bert: [taps away at Dinosaur Trucks]

[Ten minutes’ silent trudging]

Me: Look, a digger.

Bert: [glances up, agrees] Yellow digger. [Back to tapping at Dinosaur Trucks]

In my pre-child fantasies there was more Boden knitwear, stamping through crisp leaves and collecting of acorns involved.

Makes 6 muffins

150g golden caster sugar

3 eggs

150g sunflower oil

150g self raising flour

100g ground almonds

100g frozen cherries, dusted in flour

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/ 180. Beat together all of the ingredients, except the cherries, till smooth, then stir the fruit gently into the batter. The flour dusting helps stop them from sinking to the bottom of the muffins. Divide the mixture between six muffin holes, making sure there are cherries in each. Bake for about 30 minutes, till golden and risen.

Marmite and pancetta pasta

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How can something so wrong feel so right?

Serves 2

200 diced pancetta

Splash of oil for frying

Pasta

Knob of butter

50g grated cheddar cheese

2 teaspoons marmite

Grated parmesan

Me and Bert have just got back from a lovely couple of days in Brighton. All very relaxing except driving on a busy M25 with a back seat passenger shouting ‘CRASH!!!!’ at random intervals.

I think this is a BBC Good Food recipe. If you use the quick cook pasta, the whole thing takes five minutes. Ideal for after a 3 hour drive that’s commentated on as if it’s a Lego Juniors iPad game.

Cook the pasta, scooping out about half a cup of the cooking water towards the end of the cooking time.

Meanwhile fry the pancetta in oil till it’s starting to crisp.

Return the cooked, drained pasta to the pan and quickly add the cheese, butter and marmite, stirring through till melted, and a splash or two of the pasta water – enough to make a silky sauce to coat the pasta. Add the pancetta and serve with grated parmesan.

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).

Not Heinz tomato soup

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And yet, strangely, very much like Heinz tomato soup.

Serves 2

1 tin of cherry tomatoes or plum tomatoes (cherry are a bit sweeter, but plum are fine)

1/2 a slice of white bread

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Salt

Water from the kettle

Bring the tinned tomatoes and their juice to a boil in a saucepan and add the torn up bread, sugar, vinegar and cayenne. Turn the heat off, leave for 5-10 minutes for the bread to absorb the liquid, and then puree, thinning to the right consistency with hot water from the kettle if you need to. (We have it a bit thicker than Heinz, but – importantly – thin enough to drink through a bowl with a built in straw.)

Season and liquidise. You can also add any leftover roast red onion, pepper or carrot (anything red-hued), if you’ve got it, before you puree.  Reheat gently, checking the seasoning, and serve with bread and butter.

 

Nearly Bird’s custard

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Mine and Bert’s relationship came as close as it’s ever come to crisis point when he refused to try this. It’s home made! It’s creamy and custardy! It’s a nursery classic! I was genuinely really annoyed.

But I’m over it now – at least enough to note down the recipe to force on him at a future date. It basically tastes just like a really, really nice version of packet custard.

Serves 3-4

2 cups of milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

4 egg yolks

1 tablespoon of cornflour

1/2 cup of golden caster sugar

I’m friends with the mother of the girl Bert loves most in the world. Fearne treats him with a firm hand, shares his love of dinosaurs, is up for most things and has loaned him spotty socks. Maybe those are the secrets to a lasting relationship right there. Anyway, her mum suggested stewed apple and custard as a toddler friendly pudding and I thought, that sounds bloody lovely. And it was, even though the toddler in question wasn’t friendly about it in the slightest.

Whisk cornflour with the eggs in a foodmixer (or by hand) till thick, add the sugar and beat till thick and pale. Bring the milk and vanilla to a simmer then add to the egg mixture slowly, whisking all the time. Return it all to a clean pan and heat gently, constantly stirring, till thick. Eat the lot yourself if necessary.

Fig, orange and walnut loaf

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I’m enthusiastically looking forward to the day that Bert stops loudly announcing in public that ‘Mummy likes big ones’. He’s talking about dinosaurs, specifically my love of the Tyrannosaurus Rex genus.

That’s a soldier of bread at the front of the plate; the cake is being abused at the back.

Makes a 1kg loaf (about 20cm x 10cm x 7cm)

120ml whole milk

120g honey

40g butter

75g golden caster sugar

225 self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon all spice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Good grating of nutmeg

Zest of two oranges (put the zested oranges in the fridge door and throw them away 10 days later)

100g chopped walnuts (we were lucky enough to have some fresh ones from next door’s tree) (given to us, not stolen)

120g fresh figs (the fresh ones give a bit more moistness and a lovely blush pink hint of colour, but you could used dried ones instead)

1 egg

Preheat the oven to 180/ gas mark 4.

Melt the butter, honey, milk and sugar together until the milk’s just about to come to the boil. Add the flour, spices, orange zest, fruit, nuts and egg and mix gently. Tip into a greased and lined loaf tin (approx 20 x 10 x 7cm) and bake for 25 minutes before turning the tin round and baking for about another 20 minutes – till the top is springy when you press a finger into it.

In the interests of honesty I’ll admit that Bert claimed this was ‘too nice’ without even trying it. I’m looking forward to a couple of slices in the morning.

 

Chicken skewers, veg fritters and potato croquettes

~ Kate ~ Leave a comment

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A one tray in the oven meal, using leftovers, but you could use fresh veg. As I handed it to Bert he said, ‘mmm, Bert like – very nice. Thank you Mummy!’ What an angel. He didn’t eat the fritters but I knew that was pushing it since the veg were a. visible and b. not raw or frozen.

Eaten on the sofa under a duvet because I thought he was ill, but he ate all of his (except the fritters of course), stole some of mine then had 3 portions of strawberry yoghurt. I think I’ve been had.

The fritters recipe is based on a recipe in the fantastic Fast Days and Feast Days by Ellie Pear.

Served 2

For the fritters:

1 small carrot, grated

Mixed leftover veg – we had peas and savoy cabbage – chopped if not already in smallish pieces

1/2 block of haloumi (100g), grated

1 egg

2 dessert spoons plain flour

Salt

A few leaves of fresh mint, finely chopped

For the croquettes:

Leftover mash

1 egg, beaten

Flour to dust

Storecupboard golden breadcrumbs

For the chicken skewers:

1 chicken breast, cubed

2 teaspoons dried rosemary

dessert spoon olive oil

dessert spoon lemon juice

2 large cloves garlic, crushed

Combine all the ingredients for the fritters, form into four patties and put on a large baking tray.

Form the mash into little barrel shapes, dush in flour, roll in egg and then coat in breadcrumbs. Put them on the same baking tray and put the tray in the fridge for an hour or two.

Combine the chicken in a dish with the rest of the marinade ingredients and pop in the fridge for an hour or two. Preheat the oven to 200/ gas mark 7, then thread the marinated chicken onto skewers and put on the same baking tray as the veg.

Put everything in the oven for 20-25 minutes, turning everything once halfway through. Ketchup for dipping if you’re a small boy.