Amish Sugar Cookies (#ReadCookEat)

There is a whole sub-genre of spin-offs of Jane Austen's works - sequels, prequels, adaptations of the classic stories as retold by different protagonists. Most of it is mediocre. Some of these books are amusing, and are a decent homage to the genius of Jane Austen.
Sense and Sensibility by Sarah Price is an Amish retelling of Jane Austen's classic. I have found this book in a charity shop, and just had to buy it. I have read a couple of books by Sarah Price in the past, so I was familiar with the Amish romance genre.
If you assume that's a bit of an improbable setting, think of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which gained lots of fans...

The Dashwoods - Elinor, Marianne and Margaret - become Eleanor, Mary Ann and Maggie Detweiler. Three sisters and their mother are forced out of their family home by their step-brother John and his unbearable wife Fanny. Their distant cousin offers them a chance to move to a run-down cottage on his land.
Eleanor, practical and sensible, falls in love with Fanny's brother, Edwin Fischer. Mary Ann, impulsive and immature, becomes infatuated with handsome Willis who is set to inherit his aunt's farm. She is the opposite of her older sister, as she is not able to hide her emotions.
As in Austen's novel, sisters' lives go through heartache before they manage to find their happy end. The relationships in the book are pretty close to the original, but the setting is very different.
Sarah Price has skillfully transferred Austen's story to blend with the Amish way of life.

I tend to read novels, looking for food descriptions and references, and this book didn't disappoint. I had quite a choice of quotes to pick from the novel, deciding which recipe to recreate.

"Perhaps, Eleanor said, you would like to come inside. Maem prepared some fresh meadow tea and sugar cookies for your arrival". She said the last part directly to Henry, a smile still on her face...

While the rest of the family enjoyed the fried chicken, corn salad, and sliced tomatoes, fresh off the vine, Eleanor had merely picked at her food...

Shortly after Saturday's supper, a simple fare of fresh bread, pasta salad, tomatoes and meatloaf, Mary Ann stood by the open kitchen window, her face turned to the breeze...

She tried to focus on baking chocolate chip cookies and double fudge brownies to donate to the local firehouse for their fund-raiser.

I started looking up Amish sugar cookies recipes, but they all seem to be catering for big families or events. They also seem to differ from author to author: some use butter, some oil, or a mix of oil and butter.
Then I remembered that I have downloaded The Best Amish Baking Recipes book by Jamie Smith a while ago, when it appeared as a freebie on amazon.
I halved the amount of every ingredient, and even then I got over 40 cookies. All the amounts are converted from cups into grams. I had to add more flour, as simply halving the original recipe made for a very runny batter, not suitable for cookies.

Amish Sugar Cookies
Ingredients:
280g caster sugar
2 medium eggs
180ml vegetable oil
250ml buttermilk
2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp salt
2tsp vanilla extract
1/2tsp cinnamon, ground
500g self-raising flour

In a big mixing bowl beat the eggs with caster sugar. Add the oil and buttermilk, baking soda, salt, vanilla and cinnamon and sift in the flour. Mix well.
You will need to bake these cookies in batches. Place the foil over the cookie trays, and place spoonfuls of the cookie dough on the tray, leaving about 4-5cm space between the cookies because they expand quite a bit. Sprinkle brown sugar on top of each cookie and flatten it a bit with a glass.
Bake at 180 for about 12+ minutes until golden in colour. They will still be very soft when you take the trays out. Once cooled a bit, carefully place cookies on the cooling rack, and later in a cookie tin.
These cookies are soft and chewy, and lovely with a cup of tea.
They will keep well for a few days in a closed container.

In this recipe I used two types of Tate & Lyle sugar - caster sugar and brown sugar with stevia (which is made from the natural extract of the stevia plant. 1 tsp provides approximately the same sweetness as 2tsp of sugar). If you are using just the brown sugar in the recipe, halve the amount of sugar for the cookie dough.

Have you read a book recently which inspired you to run to the kitchen and cook to your heart's content?

I hope you are inspired by books to join in the #ReadCookEat challenge.

The idea is to choose a book, either a world classic or modern fiction, or even memoirs and pick up a dish mentioned or described in that book and then recreate it in a recipe. Please say a few lines about your chosen book, and maybe even do a quote from the book.

If you decide to take part, please add the badge to your post and link up back to me, and either use a link-up tool or add the url of your post as a comment. Alternatively, email me with the link to your post (my email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com).

I promise to Pin all blogs posts taking part in this challenge, as well as RT and Google+

Roast beef with brown sugar, rum & mustard glaze

The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on 7 January, following the old Julian calendar for religious events and holidays. While many celebrate Christmas on 25 December together with most of the western world, Russians are happy to use any excuse for a holiday with a feast.

A proper Russian Christmas eve is a day of fasting, when you would eat very simple fare like a dried mushroom soup or sochivo (a dish of wheat soaked with dried fruit and honey). The next day you eat to burst. The meal traditionally consists of 12 dishes to represent 12 disciples of Jesus.
As it happened, I didn't serve 12 dishes, but we had plenty of food and drink.

Last Saturday we invited friends over for dinner. I often tend to cook a roast chicken as a main meal, but this time fancied a different roast. The starter was a simple Russian dish of mushrooms baked in ramekins with lots of cream.
I cooked the beef with a glaze of brown sugar, rum and mustard, and it was a lovely combination of flavours.

Roast beef with brown sugar, rum & mustard glaze
Ingredients:
1kg beef roasting joint
2tbsp mustard powder
1 and a half tbsp brown sugar
3tbsp rum
1tbsp olive oil + more for the veg at the bottom of the tray
1 and a half tsp sea salt with thyme
1 fennel bulb
1 medium carrot
+ more mustard to serve with (not powder)

Make a paste from mustard powder, brown sugar, rum, salt and olive oil, and rub it all over the beef joint. Let it marinade for at least 3 hours, or leave overnight, wrapped in cling film.
Take the beef out of the fridge at least half an hour before cooking. Preheat the oven to 200C.
Slice the fennel bulb and carrot into big chunks and put them into a deep roasting tray. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil.
Place the beef joint over the vegetables. Put the tray in the oven and cook the way you like it.
According to Delia, you give it 20 minutes at the start, afterwards lower the temperature to 190C and cook for 15 minutes per pound/450g for the rare beef. Add 15 minutes for medium rare, and 30 minutes for well done.
Baste the beef a few times during the cooking. Pour a dash of rum over the beef, as it cooks.
Once the beef is roasted to your liking, remove the tray out of the oven and let it rest for 15-20 minutes before carving.
Serve with roast potatoes & other vegetables, gravy, or mustard or horseradish sauce.

In this recipe I used Tate & Lyle brown sugar with stevia (which is made from the natural extract of the stevia plant. 1 tsp provides approximately the same sweetness as 2tsp of sugar).

Since I managed to finish a little pot of mustard powder, as well as a bit of rum (a bottle which will last me ages, I guess), I'm adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky run by Cheryl from Madhouse Family Reviews.

New Haagen Dazs flavour and baked apples with mincemeat

We are big fans of Haagen-Dazs and you can find a couple of tubs of Vanilla in our freezer at any time. Their Vanilla is a classic flavour, purely indulgent and perfect on all accounts. We have tried Vanilla ice cream as made by all major brands, here and abroad, and this is the one we return to again and again.
I'm also very fond of Dulce de Leche, it is absolutely decadent. I can't say we have tried every single flavour from Haagen Dazs, but definitely most of those which are widely available in supermarkets.
In summer we often eat ice cream with fruit salads, in winter we enjoy it with baked apples, hot puds and stewed fruit.
Haagen-Dazs has recently released a new beautiful seasonal flavour for Autumn/Winter 2016 - Honey, Walnut & Cream. It should be available now in all leading supermarkets and online. I found it in Sainsbury's locally.

I first discovered Haagen-Dazs over 14 years ago, when we lived in New Haven, Connecticut. I was pregnant with Sasha, and this delicious ice cream was one of my big cravings.

What did we all think of the new seasonal flavour? It proved to be a great success.
It is an inspired combination of flavours and textures. You get smooth creamy ice cream, speckled with crunchy pieces of walnut. It tastes wonderful too, sweet and aromatic.

I have served it with baked apples, as well as with plums roasted in sweet cider, and both desserts were temptingly tasty, yet very simple to make.

If you go out in our garden, our old apple trees are now naked, all the leaves have fallen. Yet there are still some very stubborn red apples clinging to the branches at the very top. Last week I picked a good amount of windfalls from the lawn. They wouldn't keep long, as some of them are slightly bruised from the fall. However, they are perfectly fine for cooking.
I have recently made a batch of mincemeat (recipe courtesy of Tate & Lyle) and had 1/3 mincemeat leftovers in one of the jars.

Baked apples with mincemeat
Ingredients:
5 small to medium apples
5 heaped tsp of mincemeat
75ml apple juice
cinnamon
good quality ice cream to serve with

Set the oven to 180C. Slice tops of the apples and core them using a small knife, taking care not to cut right through to the bottom.
Place the apples in a deep ceramic dish or smaller size roasting tray. Fill each apple with a heaped teaspoon of mincemeat. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Put the apple lids on. Pour the apple juice around the apples.

Bake in the oven for 40+ minutes until the apples are soft and fluffy inside.

Serve with a good dollop of ice cream. We are never patient enough to wait until the ice cream is soft enough to make a perfect ball-like scoop.

You might also like to try serving this ice cream with plums roasted in sweet cider.

Of course, you might just enjoy eating it straight from the tub, without any additional fruit.
This new Haagen Dazs flavour gets top marks from us.

Have you tried the new Haagen Dazs ice cream flavour?

Disclosure: I received two vouchers to buy two tubs of new ice cream. All opinions are our own.

Marmalade cookies

When my older son arrives home from school, he makes a bee-line for the kitchen, looking for something to eat. He loves cookies the best, and I often bake them as an afternoon treat for my boys.
As Eddie's off this week, being poorly, I haven't been out for the last few days. I had a good rummage in the kitchen today, thinking what should I bake today.
I've been putting away the jars of quince jam and mincemeat, when I discovered I still have a set of boozy marmalade I bought last year before Christmas in what-is-now-extinct Cargo (I still feel sad about its demise, I bought quite a few pieces of furniture there in the past, a lot of kitchen bits and bobs as well as jelly beans and preserves).
I used the remains of a bag of oats, and some sultanas (left over from the recent mincemeat making), so it was very much throw it all together kind of recipe. The resulting cookies are soft, crumbly and tasty.

Marmalade cookies (makes 20+ cookies)
Ingredients:
90g caster sugar
90g margarine (e.g. Flora light)
1 egg
1 small jar of marmalade (42g)
50g oats
200g self-raising flour
30g sultanas
juice of 1/2 orange and enough icing sugar to make a runny icing

Preheat the oven to 180C. Put the foil or greaseproof paper on two baking trays.
Beat together sugar and margarine, add the egg and mix until smooth. Add the marmalade, oats and the flour, mix together. Finally add the sultanas, mix until you have a soft dough.
Divide into walnut-sized pieces, roll into balls, then flatten them and place on the trays. Using a fork, make a slight indentation on top of each cookie.
Bake for 15+ minutes until lightly golden. Cool on the wire rack a bit before drizzling icing on top of each cookie. Make a simple icing by mixing orange juice with the icing sugar until you get a runny icing.

In this recipe I used two types of sugar - caster and icing, both Tate & Lyle brand. I probably use the caster sugar the most when baking cakes and cookies. It is light bodied and delicate in taste, and works well in all kinds of bakes.

Adding this recipe to #KitchenClearout linky run by Cheryl from Madhouse Family Reviews, since I used quite a few bits and bobs that needed using.

Mincemeat filling for mince pies

There is absolutely no escape from Christmas now, the shops are laden with gifts and Christmas decorations. Actually some shops had started even earlier than that, well before Halloween. I know some of my super organised friends boasted on Facebook that they've done all their Christmas shopping already weeks ago.
Well, I'm not that organised. I managed to squirrel just one Lego set for Eddie and a Ninja turtles PJs for him. And bought a tin of Roses, which I obviously didn't hide very well, as my older one found it, and started "working" on it already. Since he opened it, I said So be it, let's have some chocs.

I love foodie presents, and if you plan to make your own mincemeat for mince pies, now it's a good time to make a batch, either for yourself or as gifts. If you make the mincemeat in advance, you will give it a good
time to mature.

Mincemeat filling (recipe courtesy of Tate & Lyle)
Ingredients:
225g raisins
225g sultanas
50g ready to eat dried apricots, chopped
100g glace cherries, halved
100ml brandy or rum
1 medium eating apple
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp ground nutmeg
180g Tate & Lyle Darkk soft brown sugar
2tbsp lemon juice
2tbsp water
50g butter

1. To make the mincemeat, put the raisins, sultanas, currants, apricots, glace cherries and brandy in a large mixing bowl. Stir well, then cover and leave in a cool place for 4-6 hours, stirring occasionally, or leave to stand overnight.

2. When the fruit is soaked, peel, core and chop the apple, then blanch it in boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Drain well. Add to the fruit mixture with the cinnamon and nutmeg and stir well.

3. Add the Tate & Lyle Dark Soft Brown Sugar to the fruit mixture. Warm the lemon juice, water and butter in a saucepan until the butter has melted. Add to the fruit and stir well, then pack the mincemeat into sterilized jars. Seal and label. Keep in a cool place for up to 3 months.

In this recipe I used Tate & Lyle Soft Brown Sugar.
For the full range of sugar products, visit Tate & Lyle.

If you fancy baking mince pies, Tate & Lyle have a recipe for this Christmas classic (just click on the link).
I think I'll bake a batch this coming weekend, when my husband will be back from his travel.

Disclosure: I received a selection of Tate & Lyle products to try festive recipes. All opinions are mine.

Meringue words

When Tate & Lyle asked me to try their Meringue Words recipe, I agreed, rather recklessly on my part, cause I haven't done meringues for a very very long time and totally lost the knack. What could go wrong with simple meringues, right? Wrong, in my case, it was a case of a near-disaster.

Tate & Lyle cheerfully chirped: "These meringue words are a fun way of writing some edible messages for a birthday, anniversary or festive celebration. They also make a lovely place name for dinner or wedding parties".

So far, so good. First of all, I couldn't find any piping bags and nozzles in our kitchen (I really-really need to de-clutter), so I stopped by Lakeland and got a set of 9 nozzles and a reusable piping bag for £9.99 (hoping to use it for all the cupcake decorations). 
Now, let's study the recipe:

Meringue Words (recipe courtesy of Tate & Lyle)

That's what they were supposed to look like

"Makes:  about 36 letters

Prep time:  30 minutes

Cooking time: 1 ½ hours, plus overnight in the oven

3 large egg whites or 95g (3½oz) liquid egg white

185g (6½oz) Tate & Lyle Fairtrade Golden Caster Sugar

Christmas red, egg yellow, rose, lilac, mint green and baby blue paste food colours, or fewer or more as you like.

You will also need 3 baking trays lined with parchment paper, 6 disposable piping bags fitted with 1cm (½”) plain nozzles or snip off the tips instead, and 6 paint brushes, or fewer or more depending on your colour choices.

Preheat the oven to 200°C/Fan180°, 400°F, Gas 6.

Tip the sugar onto one of the baking trays and spread it out in an even layer. Warm through on the middle shelf of the oven for about 3-4 minutes or until the sugar feel hot to touch and has lightly coloured, stirring once. Don’t let it caramelize.  Pour into a small bowl.

Reduce the oven heat down to its lowest, 110°C/Fan90°C, 225°F, Gas ¼.

As soon as the sugar is ready, using an electric mixer, add the whites to the bowl and whisk at high speed until it is light and foamy, for about 1 minute. Slowly add the hot sugar, a dessertspoon at a time, and continue whisking until the mixture has cooled and is very thick and glossy. Scrape down the sides halfway through. This will take about 5 minutes.

Turn the sides of the piping bag down to the nozzle and, using a paintbrush, paint 3 lengths of one of the food colour pastes from the nozzle to about 10cm (4”) upwards. Carefully spoon in some of the meringue, and carefully pull the bag upwards over the nozzle and use a little to stick down the paper on the baking tray. Alternatively, if you’re not using nozzles, just snip the tips off with a pair of scissors. Pipe some letters on the baking trays, slightly spaced apart. Then repeat with the rest of the meringue and food colours.

Bake on the top and middle shelves of the oven for 1 hour, swapping the trays over halfway through. The meringues are ready when they are crisp on the outside and the bases are dry and not at all sticky. Turn off the oven and leave them to cool in the oven for a few hours or overnight.

Make-ahead

The meringues can be made up to 2 weeks ahead and stored in an air-tight container."

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The fun started when I was whisking the egg whites with sugar. The bowl wasn't big enough, and the meringue mix ended up everywhere, including my apron and hair. I have been whisking and whisking, and still the mix wasn't stiff enough for the turn-the-bowl-over trick. Don't know if there should have been more sugar in the recipe. Anyway, I decided to risk it and spooned the contents of the bowl in the piping bag. 

I don't think there is enough mixture to make 36 letters, unless they are truly miniscule. I wrote Edgar on the parchment paper, and used the remaining mix to do one big meringue on the 2nd tray.

After an hour, the letters were crispy. The big meringue was deliciously gooey inside, totally beautiful, and my older son polished almost all of it.

Eddie had fun, reading his name in meringue letters. He said they tasted good too.

If you enjoy baking, you might have seen promotional Tate & Lyle sugar in the shops with "Bake Your Dreams Come True" stickers. This exciting campaign has been launched recently to inspire the budding bakers to follow their baking dreams. Along the way, you have a chance of winning prizes and rewards.

I am almost never lucky with the instant win type of competitions, and a few codes that I have entered were all for %off vouchers which I am never going to use, but I will keep entering. Who knows, the big win might be just round the corner. 

What about you? Have you won a prize with Tate & Lyle baking promotion?

Disclosure: I got a couple of Tate & Lyle products for the purposes of testing the recipe.