Cherry Pie!

You read that title and a little voice in your head said "oooooooooooo" didn't it? If you are anything like me you come over all 1950's and imagine diners sat at stools, waitresses in candy striped pinnies, "more coffee" and a piece of Cherry Pie (a la mode!).

I have been yearning to make this, ever since the purchase of a red pie dish (perfect) and the gift of a cherry stoner!More fun than you can ever imagine! Love this! Great Christmas present! I have so many summer cherry dishes in mind....x

So here we have it, Cherry Pie just like MrsB makes it!

300g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
150g chilled unsalted butter, cubed, plus extra for greasing 100g golden caster sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 tbsp cornflour
Pinch of ground cinnamon
500g cherries, stoned (2 for £3 currently in Co-op) 1 tbsp milk, for brushing
2 tbsp golden granulated sugar

Method

1. Put the flour, butter and 75g golden caster sugar into a bowl and using your finger tips rub the fat lightly in until the mixture resembles crumbs. Add the egg yolk and 2-3 tablespoons cold water. Use a palette knife to bring the mixture together and towards the end use your hands to bring the dough together to form a ball. Turn out, wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes. If you are technologically more advanced than me....(I am basically borderline Amish in the kitchen) use a food processor.....?

2. Mix the cornflour, remaining golden caster sugar and cinnamon together, then gently toss with the cherries in a bowl. Put a baking sheet into the oven and preheat it to 220C/fan200C/gas 7.

3. Grease a 23cm pie dish . Roll out half the pastry on a lightly floured surface and use to line the dish. If you have it, a fine layer of semolina (or cornmeal will help absorb some of the cherry juice.....hmmmmmmm cherry juice, and stop your base going soggy!) Trim the edges, pile the cherry mixture into the centre and spoon over 4 tablespoons water. Brush the pastry edges with water. Roll out the remaining pastry and use to cover the fruit, making a hole in the centre. Press the edges to seal, trim off the excess pastry and crimp the edges.4. Brush the pie with milk and sprinkle with the granulated sugar. Put the pie on the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 180C/fan160C/gas 4 and bake for a further 15-20 minutes until the pastry is pale-golden.Enjoy a la mode... ie with ice cream
OR
single cream
OR
in my faintly ridiculous "mode" with squirty cream!

x

Grab yourself a Cuppa......x

I'm going to and settle down with this......

Winter Live

While Little Miss B naps!

Its a joy! Well done Waitrose! Clever peoples!
x

Say Yay For Tray.....

Bakes! How have I not, as a mummy, as someone who always wants to feed folk cake, as a busy but scatty, very modern mim, NOT discovered tray bakes before?
They are fabulous, make loads of yummy cake, take no time and can be turned into absolutely anything that takes your fancy (satisfying the creative side too....with minimal fuss!)Sooooooooooooooo here it is!

Take one throw away roasting tray!
Take a basic recipe for sponge cake (this makes enough mix for a 23x30x3cm roasting tray....half/ double for your size of tray).

225g/8oz soft margarine
225g/8oz caster sugar
275g/10oz self-raising flour
2tsp baking powder
4 eggs
2 tbsp milk

And then the fun can begin! What do you want your tray bake to be? Choc chip? Throw some in. Lemon? Add some zest! When cooked, stab lots of little holes in and squeeze lemon juice over, followed by a generous scattering of caster sugar. Chocolate? Add cocoa! When serving drizzle with warm chocolate fudge sauce! Fruit? Scatter apple slices, blackberries or blueberries, or plums, or strawberries......or yum, raspberries and chunks of white chocolate! Boozy or not! The options are endless! This is very freeing cooking!

FUN TIP
When you want to test if your cake is ready and like me you have no cocktail sticks or skewers, you can take a piece of humble spaghetti and insert this into the centre of the cake. Leave for five seconds, if when you pull the spaghetti out it is clean, with no sticky cake on it, your cake is ready!

And this is what I did with mine!

I sliced my tray bake up,
slathered on some August Bramble Jam and Vanilla Buttercream and dredged (I love that word!) with icing sugar! I think I broke every village WI rule regarding 'proper' Victoria Sandwich! But my, it was tasty with a good mug of hot tea and some knitting!

Love.... Roast Chicken!

Ah roast chicken! What does it mean to you?
Sundays at home, warmth, comfort, family....perfect left overs (MrB loves a buttie!)
This recipe is simply perfect! Lemons, thyme, garlic and melting butter! Just the ingredients make me smile!
Buy yourself a good chicken. Of course we all know this by now and most people I know would hide their baskets in shame if they were to buy a miserable, battery raised, skinny, anaemic looking bird. But I am all too aware that there is a lot of equally miserable, skinny, anaemic bank accounts out there! I do believe however that it is better to have slightly less meat and fill your plate with the delicious potatoes, that go with this dish and lots of veggies, than to eat something that will just leave your taste buds and conscience feeling cheated!
I bought this wee chicken, who was corn fed and free range and delicious, for only £4.88! My husband joked he looked more like a sparrow, when cooked, but what he lacked in size he made up for in flavour. We were all amply fed and I will use the carcass for soup today.  Two meals for under a fiver!

So children are being entertained, classic fm is on....happy chef, happy tummies!

Separate the skin from the breast of the chicken, by wiggling your fingers up through the neck skin, just pushing with your fingers (is it wrong that I actually enjoy this process??). Take a good couple of teaspoons of butter and push into the space you have made under the skin, flatten out, over the breast of the chicken. Next thinly slice your lemons and place as many as will cover the butter and fit in a single layer. Take three or four, stems of thyme and strip the leaves, push these under the skin. Next place, a small bunch of thyme, two or three peeled (but unchopped) garlic cloves and half a lemon (slightly squeezed) into the cavity. This is your chicken finished! Place this breast side down in a roasting tin.
Now for the most perfect potatoes! I used charlotte potatoes, the little waxy, new potatoey ones! I leave them unpeeled. Cut them into halves, bite size. Scatter them round the chicken. I use the whole bag, as I have a carbo fiend to feed, but you decide how many (just let it be re stated, they are amazing!!) Place blobs of butter all over the potatoes, using about 1tbs. Scatter four or five stems of thyme round the chicken and bury three peeled garlic cloves in the potatoes.

Finally pour about 400ml of water over the potatoes or as much to come half way up the potatoes.

Cook in a moderate, 180 oven for about an hour. The water helps cook your chicken quickly but keeps it moist.  Turn your chicken at this point and give it a further 2o minutes to crisp up the skin.

Remove the chicken and let it rest, covered with a clean tea towel.

In a saucepan, melt a tsp of butter. Remove from the heat, mix in a tsp of plain flour. Pour the juices from the roasting pan, into the saucepan, whisking as you go. Leave on a medium heat. This will make the gravy, the like you never get out of a tub! It is chickeny, garlicky, lemony.......blissfully yummy! While this is happening leave your potatoes in the now dry roasting tin to crisp up slightly.
There you have it, perfect potatoes, perfect chicken, perfect gravy!
Serve with greens, a glass of cheer and good company!

Lick your plate clean!
Hope for some left overs (fat chance in our house!)

x

Nurture with Nourishment!

Food: Nourishment eaten in solid form

Isn't the word nourish moreish! Nourishment, for the body primarily. But I eat for the nourishment of my soul, my imagination and (not always advisedly) my emotions. It is so vital for a life lived well! Making us whole, calm, energised, loved that I would like to start my first post with dispelling a dangerous myth...

There is no one food that makes a person fat!

Food should be enjoyed, savoured, eaten till we are content and calmed.

So then, there will be plenty of cupcakes, peanut millionaires shortbread, greek yoghurt, cherry biscotti, jam, jelly and all things sweet to come!

However equally and indeed more so, there will be warm, fresh from the garden cherry tomatoes (a veg sweetie!!), cinnamon scented roast autumn squash,
couscous bejewelled with pomegranate seeds, fat Tuscan Bean soups
with a thick slice of warm, wholemeal soda bread slathered with good, yellow butter....X
Good whole food,
cooked by your own hands (not glove-covered ones in a factory somewhere!)
followed by a wee "sweetie" hurts no man (woman or child)!
Indeed, I promise, you will smile more from a daily sweetness after a meal, look gorgeous and be no fatter in a years time!

Nourish yourself....put good things into you and yours! (homemade popcorn sprinkled with icing sugar....one of my Australian sister in laws childhood treats!)

Nourish.....so moreish!

Love MrsB x