Nyomtastic Scones

Ingredients;

625g Tipo 00 Flour
1 rounded tsp baking soda
2 rounded tsp cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt (if using salted butter use 1/2 a teaspoon)
100g chilled butter cubed
1 egg beaten
300ml milk
25g castor sugar

Hard to believe it’s nearly 3 weeks since I wrote this post about Roma’s excellent Tipo 00 flour, time sure is flying. Why do I mention it here? Well, Will made a comment that pasta flour makes great scones. As I had been meaning to have a blast at making some scones, this was a great excuse to try something a little different.

I started with Rhyleysgranny’s Scone recipe and after a little playing around with the ingredients I came up with this.

Pre heat your oven to 200C.

Take all your dry ingredients and sieve them into a large bowl. Next add the butter and work this in with your hands until you have what looks like breadcrumbs.

Next add about half the beaten egg and the milk and continue to mix this together until you have a moist dough. Then on a well floured surface pat or roll the dough out until it’s about 2cm thick and cut with a circular cutter. Place these on a greased and floured baking tray, don’t be afraid to roll up the off cuts and make a few out of that as well. Then place them in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes or until they have risen and turned golden on top.

Remove from the oven to a cooling rack and as soon as you can hold them without burning your fingers serve with butter and Jam – preferably home made and strawberry. If you can stop at just one you’re doing well!

Freshly cut Lemon Cake

Ingredients;

For the sponge:

170g softened butter
170g caster sugar
2 eggs
170g self-raising flour

For the icing:

Freshly-grated rind of 1 lemon
Freshly-squeezed juice of 1-2 lemons (I used the juice of one and a half lemons, so add the juice of one and then taste)
110g caster sugar

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Put the butter, sugar, flour and eggs into a bowl, or into the bowl of a food mixer. Mix gently to combine.

Spread the mixture evenly into a well-greased Swiss Roll tin or a 9-inch cake tin. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden-brown and well-risen.

Meanwhile, mix the icing ingredients together, and pour over the sponge as soon as it comes out of the oven and leave to cool. Cut into squares/slices and serve.

George says
“This goes great with Strawberry Ice Cream as a Dessert”

With thanks to TheLovingSpoonful for the recipe.

Strawberry Ice Cream

Ingredients;

5 large eggs
600g fresh ripe strawberries
Juice of half a freshly squeezed lemon (about a tablespoon)
100g sugar
200ml milk
200ml double cream

The restaurant that inspired me to start making my own pizzas (Da Michele, Stezzano, Italy) also makes their own ice cream and while I’m a sucker for their vanilla (it really is divine) Elly and Anto were completely taken with the strawberry when we visited last September. I waited until strawberry season began this year to start perfecting my own strawberry recipe and I’m really happy with this one.

The most important thing with this recipe is to use the freshest strawberries you can get your hands on, it really makes a difference to the overall flavour. They should be sweet but still have that tart bite.

So once you have strawberries, give them a rinse under running water and remove the cores. Next, purée them in a blender, until smooth and pass it through a sieve to remove the seeds, you may need to do that last step twice to remove all the seeds.

Place the strawberry purée in a pan along with the lemon juice and heat the mixture gently, as the purée warms up it will begin to give off a strong strawberry smell, just before the mixture comes to the boil remove it from the heat and put it to one side to cool.

Next separate the egg yolks. The egg whites are not needed for this recipe so you can put them to one side to be used later for and egg white omelettes or meringues. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar until they turn a pale yellow and have a smooth consistency.

Next bring the milk to a gentle simmer and remove from the heat. While whisking the egg mixture add the warmed milk in a slow trickle – if you add it too fast there is a chance you could scramble the eggs, which is no good for making ice cream.

Now place the egg yolk mixture over a low heat and while stirring continuously, allow this to thicken into a custard. You’ll know when it’s ready when it coats the back of a spoon easily and does not just flow off. Be careful to keep the egg mixture below 76C as the eggs will scramble at that temperature. Once you are happy that the custard has thickened, remove it from the heat, mix in the strawberry purée and place in a sealed container in your fridge and allow it to cool down as much as possible (5C or less).

While you’re waiting for the custard to cool down whip the cream to soft peaks. Once the custard has cooled completely, gently fold the cream into the custard and either follow your ice cream machines instructions to freeze it or place in a sealed container in your freezer until frozen, remembering to stir it every ten to fifteen minutes to break up the ice crystals.

Once the ice cream has frozen you’re ready to serve, be aware that this is a strongly flavoured ice cream, while sweet it also has that fantastic tart bite that just makes a strawberry, it goes great with most sweet pies and if you’re a real strawberry lover is fantastic on it’s own.

Beer Sorbet

Ingredients;

500ml Hoegaarden
5 tablespoons sugar

On a hot summer’s day, with the BBQ ablaze and beers on the go, show off to your friends with this cool refreshing beer sorbet at the end of your meal.

Pour 500ml of Hoegaarden into a large bowl and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Adding the sugar will cause the beer to foam rapidly, so use a bowl at least 3x the volume of the beer.

From here, follow the instructions on your ice-cream or sorbet maker to freeze your sorbet.

Perfect Peach Ice-cream

Ingredients;

1 400g tin of peaches, drained
6 large egg yolks
125g golden castor sugar
400ml milk
300ml double cream
1 vanilla pod, halved and seeds scraped out

Another Soul Food classic, peaches are plentiful in the Deep South so it’s no coincidence that they are used in so many Soul Food recipes. This is a very subtly flavoured ice-cream so can be easily over powered if you partner it with a pie, I find it at it’s best served on it’s own or with some sliced peaches.

There are 2 options regarding the fruit the first is to purée the drained peaches and the second is to purée half and chop the rest into chunks to be added when freezing. I find that adding the peaches as chunks gives a bit more texture but the fruit chunks tend to lose their flavour when they are frozen. So I tend to go with the “purée all the fruit” option, but both work well.

Next put the egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and whisk them until they are creamy and smooth. Then add the milk, cream and vanilla seeds and whisk them together.

Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir continuously over a low heat until it thickens into custard that coats a spoon when dipped in it. You don’t want the mixture to overheat as the eggs will scramble, so if you have a suitable kitchen thermometer, use it. Ideally you want to keep the mixture between 65C to 70C this gives a margin for error as the eggs will scramble around 75C.

Once the custard has thickened remove it from the heat and pour it into a bowl to allow it to cool.

Now if you have a home ice-cream maker simply add the peaches to the cooled custard, stirring them in well and follow your ice-cream machine’s instructions to freeze the ice-cream.

If you don’t have an ice-cream machine then simply stir the peaches into the mixture and pour it all into a sealable container suitable for use in your freezer and pop it in your freezer. It can take anywhere up to eight hours for the ice-cream to set fully and during this time you will need to stir it every 20-30 minutes while it’s freezing to prevent ice crystals forming.

If you’ve ever put some melted ice-cream back into the freezer you will know exactly why you don’t want the ice crystals forming, basically it makes it frozen flavoured custard rather than ice-cream, but that said an ice-cream maker does not have to be expensive. We pickedup one in a Lidl offer a few years back for around €30 and I saw this similar one available from Amazon. So why not treat yourself, summer is almost here and this does make the process of ice-cream making far easier

An Empty Sweet Vanilla Pastry Pie Case

Ingredients;

250g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
50g icing sugar
125g good quality unsalted cold butter, cut into small cubes
1 vanilla pod, halved and seeds scraped out
1 large egg, beaten
A splash of milk

Makes approx 500g

This is an all purpose sweet pastry mix for making pies and it is remarkably easy to make.

Start by sieving the flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl. Using your (clean) hands gently work the butter in to the flour and icing sugar mix until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Next add the milk and egg. Work it together using your hands until you have a ball of dough. Don’t over work it at this point as it will become chewy not crumbly. I’ve also heard that cold hands make better pastry, so if you have warm hands, rinse them under the cold tap as much as you can to cool them before you start to work the dough together.

Sprinkle a little flour onto a clean work surface and place your ball of dough on this, then flatten the ball until it’s about two and a half centimetres thick. Sprinkle some flour over it and then wrap it in cling film and pop it into the fridge to rest for at least thirty minutes.

At this point you can also place the wrapped pastry in a freezer bag and freeze for up to one month.

Next grab a 9 inch cake tin, preferably one with a removable bottom, and grease it lightly using some kitchen roll and vegetable oil.

Once the dough has rested, sprinkle some more flour on to a large work surface and grab a rolling pin. You want to roll the dough out turning it occasionally until it’s about half a centimetre thick.

The best way to get the pastry from your work surface to the cake tin is to roll it gently around the rolling pin and then unroll it over the oiled tin. Carefully ease the pastry into the tin making sure to get it into the corners. Trim off any excess, by running a knife around the top of the tin and then using a fork, prick the base all over. Place the tin and pastry into your freezer for about 30 minutes, while you heat your oven to 180C.

Take some greaseproof paper and scrunch it up, then use this to line the visible surface of your pastry case, making sure to press it into the sides as well. Next, fill it with either ceramic baking beads or plain rice and bake blind for about 10 minutes.

Remove the baking beads (or rice) and the greaseproof paper and bake the pastry case for another 10 minutes until it firms up and gets a bit biscuit like.

Choconana crumble: Photograph by Redmum

Ingredients;

225g Plain Flour
60g sugar
145g butter
a pinch of salt
195g Dark Chocolate
6 Tablespoons of cream
1 tablespoon of sugar
half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
1 tablespoon of cognac
115ml Water
6 medium sized bananas

Serves 6

Making the crumble

Take your flour, 60g of sugar, 115g of butter and a pinch of salt and place them in a bowl, simply scrunch the lot together with clean hands until it looks like breadcrumbs and put this to one side.

Making the chocolate sauce

Take a small saucepan and place it on a low heat, to this add 115ml of water and a tablespoon of sugar. Bring this to a low simmer while stirring. Keep it simmering until all the sugar has dissolved.

Once the sugar has dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and add 30g of butter and the dark chocolate while stirring constantly. It’s best to break the chocolate and butter up into small chunks as they will melt quicker this way. Keep stirring until all the chocolate and butter have melted completely.

Next, add the Vanilla essence, cognac and cream and keep stirring until they all combine to give a smooth looking sauce.

Assembly

Peel the bananas and split each of them lengthways into 3. This is done by gently pushing your finger into the end of the banana where that tough seed like lump has been removed and running your finger to the other end. This should leave you with 3 separate segments.

Arrange all the segments in a large oven-proof dish and pour the chocolate sauce over them, making sure that all the bananas are chocolate coated.

Unless you are planning on cooking and eating immediately stop at this point and cover both the crumble and the chocolate+banana and refrigerate until ready to cook.

When you are ready to cook, get your oven up to 200C. Sprinkle the crumble over the chocolate+banana making sure to spread it out evenly. Then pop it in the oven for 30 minutes. If the crumble has not turned a golden brown at this point simply pop it under the grill for a minute or 2 to brown the top and let it stand for a few minutes before serving with a few scoops of berry ice-cream.

Berry Ice-cream

Berry ice-cream

The Berry Ice-cream I make to go with this is based on Kieran’s Banana Ice Cream with Chocolate Shavings recipe over on Ice-cream Ireland. Many thanks for sharing this recipe Kieran, I would have given up on trying to making ice-cream myself long ago without this.

I follow this recipe exactly except for 3 things…

1. I use 150g of Raspberries and 170g of Blackberries instead of the Bananas
2. I mash the Rasperry & Blackberry mixture through a sieve as I add them to the custard
3. I don’t add the chocolate shavings

This gives an ice-cream that while it is sweet and creamy, it is also tart enough to balance the sweetness of the rest of the dish.

Please give this a try, it’s a wonderful dessert. As always we’d love to here about your results and your thoughts on the dish as a whole.