Peanut Butter Fudge

Having seen one of my fellow foodies make some beautiful Peanut Butter Fudge I just had to search out a recipe and give it a try, I just adore Peanut Butter.

Ingredients

• 110g butter
• 475g brown soft sugar
• 125ml milk
• 200g peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 425g icing sugar

Prep: 15 mins | Cook: 5 mins | Extra time: 1 hour

1.

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in brown sugar and milk. Bring to the boil and boil for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla. Pour over icing sugar in a large mixing bowl. Beat until smooth; pour into a 20cm square baking dish. Chill until firm and cut into squares.

I also found an article about making fudge on the Sainsburys website which makes the whole process very easy to understand..

Secrets to success The primary tip for good fudge is to follow the directions exactly: confectionery is the most precise of the pastry arts. Use an accurate sugar thermometer and allow the mixture to reach the temperatures called for in the recipe before proceeding to the next step. Add each ingredient in the order listed by the recipe.

Think before you stir

Don't attempt to achieve smooth fudge with vigourous stirring after it has reached the soft-ball stage, or 115 degrees C: stirring at the wrong time can actually promote crystallisation of sugar into large grains. Small sugar crystals equal smooth fudge that melts on the tongue.

Method Once the fudge reaches soft-ball stage (115 degrees C), do not stir it or even shake the pan until it has cooled to about 43 degrees C. When pouring the fudge from the saucepan to the tin, don't scrape the sides or bottom of saucepan or you may introduce unwanted sugar crystals into your finished fudge.

For beginners...

Look for recipes that call for cream or evaporated milk – these are less likely to curdle than regular milk.

Equipment For best results, use a heavy, high-sided saucepan that holds about twice the volume of your fudge recipe. A heavy pan is less likely to cause scorching, and the extra room will help prevent boil-overs. You can also save yourself a lot of frustration by having an accurate sugar thermometer before you attempt your first batch of fudge. Making sweets and confectionery is a very precise activity. External factors – the temperature of your hob, the type of pan, the temperature of your kitchen and the weather – affect cooking times, but the temperature of the fudge is always the best measurement to gauge doneness.

Be prepared Do all your preparation and gather all your equipment before beginning; once you start making fudge, you can't stop in the middle without the risk of ruining the batch. So before you turn on the hob, you should butter the tins, measure the ingredients and test the sugar thermometer. Test the thermometer by boiling a pan of water, inserting the thermometer, and ensuring that it reads 100 degrees C. Follow the directions faithfully and use good equipment: your fudge should be a sweet success every time.

Spice speculaas

This is a lovely recipe I came across recently, sadly after the festive season but certainly one that I will be using for next year.
Spice speculates evoke very fond memories for me as when I was little my Dad had two jobs by day he was a postman and in the evening he worked for a lovely lady he ran a food importers and she always sent home home for Christmas with some lovely food goodies, including packets of spice speculaa biscuits, so these little treats were always muchly anticipated.

This recipe was found on the baking mad website.

160 grams	Plain White Flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)
1 tsp	Ground cinnamon
1 tsp	Ground ginger
1 tsp	Mixed Spice
1 tsp	Baking Powder
1 pinch	Salt
100 grams	Unsalted Butter
70 grams	Molasses Sugar (Billington's)
4 tsp	JUST MILK

1. Pre heat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/Gas 4.
2. In a large mixing bowl rub in the flour and butter using the tips of your fingers until you create a very fine crumble.
3. Add all the other ingredients to the bowl and mix until it comes together as a dough.
4. Once combined turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and roll the dough out to a thickness of about 2/3cm.
5. Using an 8cm cookie cutter, cut discs from the dough and place onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
6. Place in the oven and bake the biscuits for 10-15 minutes until golden brown.

Try baking these cinnamon and ginger spiced biscuits. Traditionally these are eaten at the Dutch festival "Sinterklaas" on 5th December.

My Secret Kitchen Predicts 2013 Food Trends

On Saturday I travelled to the wonderful Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire to the annual consultants awards for My Secret Kitchen, everything about the day was impressive from the location to the 4 course meal and everything inbetween.

We had an inspiring talk by Holly Bell who was runner up in the 2011 Great British Bake off, she is so funny and charming and a natural speaker, her story is an inspiration.

As the day progressed towards the new product launch, everybody was getting very excited, but after lunch we had a very thought provoking presentation by Phil Moran who is co-founder of My Secret Kitchen. At the beginning of the year Phil made 10 food trend predictions for 2013, they make very interesting reading.

The New Year is upon us and here at My Secret Kitchen we love to have a stab at the next food and drink trends for the coming year and beyond. So without further ado:-

1.Not just Chilli – increased heat has been happening over the last few years in the UK but increasing curiosity on the differences between types of chilli will mean more named varieties coming into fashion. It’s already happening with chipotle but look out for more dishes naming the chillies such as Pasilla, Poblano, Guajillo and Ancho.

2. Popcorn to explode – More companies are experimenting with some wonderfulvariationofflavours to move popcorn into a real gourmet treat. Blue c
heese and Walnut, Strawberry cheesecake 
and Madras are already out there and will be more mainstream through the year. And they’re good! How about getting that popcorn maker out from the back of the cupboard and do some seasoning sprinkling yourself?

3.Free (from) – Awareness of allergies has been ever increasing but the quality of the foods now being offered as “free from” is right up there. We expect to see these foods moving to the mainstream aisles rather than the specialist niche area they currently hold and improving even further.

4.Creative cocktails – The big new trends in bars across the pond are incredibly creative cocktails using some quite bizarre ingredients such as smoked ice cubes, cardamom syrups and yuzu bitters. We don’t think these will be coming into the UK home too soon yet but the idea of blending certain alcohols with new and varied syrups is not in the too distant future. 

5.Fair game- We predicted an increase in foraged ingredients for 2012 and we were right on this. The next step is an increase in popularity in local meats; so you rabbits, pheasants and deer reading this – start running….

6.Be Brazilliant – We will be awash with all things Brazil as we gear up for the world cup and the 

Olympics over the next few years, and why not? Brazil has a wealth of wonderful dishes such as Feijoada and Moqueca and is the home of the Caipirinha cocktail. Watch these influences infiltrate our plates this year.

7.Naturally Novel – Here in the UK we’re still looking for the more unusual ingredients we can get from nature and we’re looking for something good for you as well. We’re going to stick our necks 
out and go for two that may well be hitting our stores this year - purple tea is high in anthocyanin and an excellent source of antioxidant whilst bee pollen is known as “the fountain of youth” and is high in protein. 

8.Pickling – many of you I’m sure were watching Masterchef the professionals before Christmas and the amount of pickling going on was very interesting to see. Will this see a rise in another way of getting a new flavour from some common ingredients? (As long as Sauerkraut is bypassed we’re happy.)

9.Sweet n Savoury – So common to see in the USA and becoming more popular here too,; unusual combinations challenging your taste buds – we’re still not sure about chocolate and bacon but brie and fig, salted caramel, pretzels and chocolate – bring it on!

10.Hot but not – Heat comes from chilis right? But there’s more out there that will give you a tasty burn – Varieties of pepper like Telecherry, an increase in the use of Szechuan (a delightful numbing sensation!) will become more prevalent in 2013

Well what do you think? Which of these predicted food trends do you think we will see come to fruition in 2013

I certainly think Sweet n Savoury, Pickling, Popcorn to explode & free from will all be seen throughout 2012.
Maybe I was a trend setter when I blogged last Pancake day about my Pancakes with Bacon & Maple syrup.

MSK Chicken Schnitzel with Bacon & White Wine

Cooked By Paul Tonight

Yesterday we went to Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire to the My Secret Kitchen annual convention, it was a very inspiring day with Holly Bell from GBBO, who was a lovely guest speaker.

Tonight's dinner was inspired from a recipe from the Nigella Express cook book but with a MSK twist.

Chicken

2 teaspoons MSK Oak Smoked Rapeseed Oil

1 teaspoon MSK Wild Garlic Secret Spice

4 Chicken escalopes approx 125g each.

If you only have chicken breasts then slice them 3/4 through the middle and open up, mine looked heart shaped. Place the Chicken breast between two pieces cling film on flatten with a rolling pin.

4 rashers Streaky Bacon - finely chopped

100ml White Wine

Pasta accompaniment 

50g dried pasta per person

3 dessert spoons MSK Tapenade with Smoked Garlic 

• Add the wild garlic and oak smoked rapeseed oil to the frying pan and add the finely chopped bacon, fry until the bacon is crisp and remove the bacon. Drain on kitchen roll and set aside.
• Bring a pan of water to the boil Dont salt the water and cook the pasta until tender.
• Fry the Chicken escalopes for about 4 minutes on each side, check that the juices run clear, also like to make a cut into the middle to make sure that the chicken pieces are cooked through with no pinkness.
• Drain the pasta and stir in the tapenade with smoked Garlic making sure the pasta is well coated.
• Serve pasta into the bowls and place a Chicken piece onto each serving.
• Return the bacon to the frying pan and pour in the white wine, simmer gently for 3-4 minutes and pour over the chicken pieces.

Don't be tempted to add additional seasoning as the bacon can be salty.

Lorraine Pascale Dream Like Shortbread

Has anyone watched the Great British Bake Off for Comic relief this week. I have always loved cooking, especially baking & it is great to see the nation so enthused with the baking bug. 

The show is addictive and I can't quite put my finger on why? for me one of the reasons is the great presenting duo of Mary Berry & Paul Hollywood, don't you just love Paul Hollywoods eyes, how lovely is to the competitors & he can bake he ticks all the boxes.

On Monday the first challenge was Shortbread which is one of my favourites, so this afternoon after baking cookies for Abi I decided to make some using the Lorraine Pascale Dreamlike Shortbread.

Ingredients

• 130g/4½oz butter, softened
• 60g/2½oz caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
• 130g/4½oz plain flour ( substitute up to 30g flour for custard powder for a creamier taste )
• 60g/2½oz rice flour
• pinch salt

Preparation method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the plain flour, rice flour and salt, and stir well until the mixture is smooth and uniform. (I find it easiest to keep pressing the mixture against the side of the bowl to mix it.)
2. Bring the mixture together and press into a 20cm/8in loose-bottomed cake tin, smoothing it with the back of a spoon. Crimp the edges by pressing with the tips of two fingers, then score into eight pieces with a knife and prick each triangle three times with a fork. Put in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up.
3. Preheat the oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3.
4. Remove the shortbread from the fridge and bake in the oven for 30–35 minutes, or until pale golden-brown.
5. Remove the shortbread from the oven and sprinkle over some caster sugar. Leave to 
   cool in the tin for a few minutes before removing it from the tin and cooling on a wire rack.
   
   
   When I bake this recipe I usually make individual biscuits, to do this I layout a sheet of cling film & roll the dough into a sausage & wrap loosely in the cling film and roll out the sausage and chill for 20 minutes.
   
   
   After listening to some of Mary Berrys comments she was talking about adding some cornflour, so today when I was making the shortbread I substituted 30g of the flour for 30g Custard Powder. This gave a creamier vanilla taste with the same light texture.

Lorraine Pascale's "Big yummy double Choc Chip Cookies"

Lorraine Pascale's "Big yummy double Choc Chip Cookies"

My daughter  is studying hard for her 'A' levels as well as doing extra shifts at her part time job these past few weeks, on her way out to work this afternoon she asked if I would bake her some cookies to dunk in milk  and so I thought I'd bake her one of her favorites Lorraine Pascale's "Big yummy double Choc Chip Cookies"


This recipe comes from Lorraine's "Baking Made Easy" book that was released to coincide with her TV series.  I came across Lorraine's programme completely by chance as a repeat on one of the food channels last year and instantly fell in love with her cooking style and the relaxed way in which she presents her show. So purchasing her books was a must.

I love cookery books with lots of pictures, Lorraine's books always achieve an excellent balance, but also in the instructions for these cookies she tells you that ' the tops will crack' I love these  thoughtfully little notes.

The recipe states this makes eight large American-style cookies, but as you can see I got over a dozen large cookies from the recipe.

Big yummy double choc chip cookies
By Lorraine Pascale

110g butter
200g soft light brown sugar
1 egg
seeds of 1 vanilla pod or 2 drops of vanilla extract
165g plain
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
30g cocoa powder
100g milk chocolate chips
100g dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5/190°C and line your baking trays.

Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and cream together until combined. Add in the egg and vanilla and
mix well. It might look like the mixture has curdled but just give it a good mix and it will come good.

Add the flour, salt, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and cocoa powder and mix until the dough comes together. (It will be quite stiff)

Add the chocolate chips and mash everything together with a wooden spoon.

Divide the mixture into balls and space evenly on your trays. Bake in the oven for between 10-12 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the tray, they will be very soft but will harden up.

Welsh Cakes

Over the last couple of weeks I have heard a couple of people talking about Welsh Cakes, Until then I had never heard of these little regional treats. Well with the wonders of google I found a recipe and have just made my first batch of welsh cakes.
I did a little research into the history of Welsh Cakes.

A Brief History of Welsh Cakes

“A griddle-bread, circular with deckle edges about 50-70mm diameter, 10-15mm deep. Flavour and texture: Close soft, texture, rich flavour.

Pice ar y maen (Welsh for ‘cakes on the stone’, where they are also known as cacennau cri) have become so well known outside their native area that they are simply termed Welsh cakes. They are a Welsh variant on the theme of flat griddle-breads and scones found throughout western and northern Britain.  The recipe now used, leavened with baking powder, cannot date much before the mid-nineteenth century when this ingredient was first introduced. They were known in Glamorgan at the end of that century and they were baked either on a griddle or in a Dutch oven, a three-sided tin over that was placed directly before the flames of the kitchen fire (Tibbott, 1976). They are still very popular and widely made.” Quoted from the Taste of Britain by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown

Ingredients

• 225g/8oz Self-raising Flour, sieved
  1/4 tsp Mixed Spice
• 110g/4oz  Salted butter
• 1 Egg
• 50g Sultanas
• Splash of Milk
• 85g/3oz Caster sugar
• extra butter, for greasing

Preparation method

1. Rub the fat into the sieved flour to make breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, dried fruit and then the egg. Mix to combine, then form a ball of dough, using a splash of milk if needed.
2. Roll out the pastry until it is a 5mm/¼in thick and cut into rounds with a 7.5-10cm/3-4in fluted 
   cutter.
3. You now need a bakestone or a heavy iron griddle. Rub it with butter and wipe the excess away. Put it on to a direct heat and wait until it heats up, place the Welsh cakes on the griddle, turning once. They need about 2-3 minutes each side. Each side needs to be caramel brown before turning although some people I know like them almost burnt.
4. Remove from the pan and dust with caster sugar while still warm. Some people leave out the dried fruit, and split them when cool and sandwich them together with jam.
   
   
   

   
   

   This is the recipe that I used and it was very easy to make up, but I don't have a griddle so I made my Welsh Cakes in my Paella pan, and I found there is a very fine timing between Caramel brown and burnt when using the Paella pan and frying in butter, but they tasted fabulous served warm with Homemade Strawberry jam.
   
   

Italian Chicken Bake

One of my aims for 2013 is to try at least one new recipe a week, this weekend is a great opportunity as we are all at home this weekend together. A recipe that caught my eye in a foodie magazine this week was from the recipe book by Fay Ripley What's for Dinner.

1tbsp Olive oil
3 Skinless Chicken breasts, diced
2 Cloves of Garlic peeled & thinly sliced
1  Onion peeled & diced
2 x 200g tin chopped tomatoes
125g Mozzarella Ball - reduced fat if you can get it 
2 tsp Dried Oregano
50g Chorizo or Pepperoni
Salt & freshly ground Black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6. In a frying pan, fry the onion in the oil until translucent.
2. Add the diced chicken and fry for 5 minutes.

3. Add the garlic and oregano and fry for 1-2 minutes before pouring in the tomatoes. 

4. Let it gently bubble for 5 more minutes.
5. Pop the lot into an ovenproof dish and top it first with the mozzarella, then with the pepperoni. I found a Lasagne dish was the perfect size.
6. Bake for 25 minutes.

7. Serve with Garlic bread. 

This was a very flavoursome dinner, but the 2 tins of chopped tomatoes made the bake very runny. Next time I would add some tiny pasta that would absorb some of the excess juice.

Red Onion Marmalade

A few weeks ago I joined up with My Secret Kitchen as a consultant, for those of you that have never attended a MSK food tasting you are missing a treat, friends getting together to share and explore new foods, what could be better, why would you not want to try it. December is a very busy month, as is the beginning of January so today is the first opportunity I have had to experiment with my new kit.
I love spending time in the kitchen and today is an ideal day, it's cold and bright but threatening to snow so I decided to make some comfort food, Red Onion Marmalade this is great with cheese and crackers or as a relish to serve with sausages and garlic mashed potatoes.

Red Onion Marmalade

1kg red onions
1/2 tsp MSK Secret Wild Garlic Spice
4 tbsp MSK Oak Smoked Rapeseed Oil
2 tsp mustard seeds
Generous grating of MSK Lemon & Chipotle spiced sea salt and Szechuan pepper
3 sprigs Fresh Thyme
75g Light Muscovado Sugar
2 tbsp MSK Balsamic Reduction
2 tbsp MSK Red Wine & Port Finishing Sauce
75ml White Wine
1 tbsp Red Wine Vinegar
75ml water
Knob of Butter

This recipe makes 600ml / 1 pint

Peel and cut the onions in half and slice thinly
In a frying pan or wok heat the MSK Oak smoked rapeseed oil 
Add the Onion, MSK Wild Garlic Spice, Mustard Seeds, sprigs of Thyme to the oil in the pan. Stir in a generous grating of MSK Szechuan Pepper and MSK Lemon & Chipotle Spiced Sea Salt.
Gently cook, uncovered for 20 minutes, stirring often.
The onions will have reduced, so cook for a further 15 minutes occasionally stirring until they just begin to caramelise. Lower the heat if the onions start to stick.
Stir in the Light Muscovado Sugar, MSK Balsamic Reduction, MSK Red Wine & Port Finishing Sauce, White Wine, Red Wine Vinegar and the water.
Continue cooking the mixture gently bubbling for 20 / 25 minutes, stirring occasionally until the mixture is caramelised but still moist.
Remove the Thyme Springs and stir in a knob of Butter.
While the marmalade is still warm, spoon the mixture into clean sterilised jars.

This will keep for 4 - 8 weeks in a cool place.