plenty more fish...

p l e n t y - m o r e - f i s h . . .
I was told by a former colleague that salmon is too common and, in many ways, I think I agree; Every restaurant you go to now has at least one salmon dish but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. I am aware there are plenty more fish in the sea, metaphorically and literally I suppose, but I really do love salmon (particularly a giant bit of smoked salmon if anyone is thinking about a good Christmas present).
 

My Dad is brilliant when it comes to flavour combinations; He has great taste in wine and is my kindred spirit when it comes to sharing a giant pot of raw garlic in oil and polishing off a kilo of Roquefort in 20 minutes! And as much as garlic, wine and French blue cheese feature heavily in his (and my own) life he also creates some other amazing concoctions in the kitchen - one incredible salmon recipe in particular which he has shared with a few people, and it now comes recommended by their local fish man (someone who, I imagine, is not like this...)!

Salmon in marinade

So for the recipe:
For the marinade – 1 ‘glug’ soy sauce; 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar; 1 ‘glug’ white wine; 3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced; 4 chopped spring onions; ½ inch ginger, finely sliced; ½ chilli, finely sliced.
For cooking – 1 ‘glug’ white wine; 1 tbsp olive oil; 2 tsps honey; 1 tsp dried tarragon

Cover the bottom of a dish with the soy sauce then add the other marinade ingredients. Place the Salmon steaks on the marinade with the skin side up, cover and place in fridge for at least 6 hours.
Cover the bottom of a dish with olive oil, remove the salmon from the marinade and place skin side up in the dish and rub some olive oil on the skin. Cover with tin foil and bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 180C.
Pour the left-over marinade into a pan, add another glug of white wine, some olive oil & slowly heat the mixture. When hot add 2 tsps of honey and keep stirring until the honey is dissolved. Add a teaspoon of dried tarragon and let mixture simmer until reduced slightly.
When the salmon is cooked, serve with the cooked marinade mixture poured over the top. I usually serve it with spring onion & crème fraiche mash and a glass of the remaining white wine which seems to compliment it pretty well!

Eat Mair Pie is a lovely recipe blog which has my dad’s salmon recipe on it too.
And Vince – maybe have a go with this salmon recipe...it’s not that common and "Hugh’ll" probably be impressed!!

Baked salmon with 'nomathon' mash

recipes

r e c i p e s . . .
The last time I followed a recipe exactly I think I was doing a badge for Brownies and needed to make meatballs – I don’t believe it was a meatball-specific badge, probably just a cookery badge!
The whole meatball-making process started after school about 4pm and the food wasn’t on the table until 6.30pm! By this time I had to go to Brownies so I think I had a jam sandwich for my dinner that night (which tasted much better than my attempt at meatballs)! My unlucky brothers were the recipients of what was probably described as “another one of Laura’s cooking attempts” ... around the same time I burnt potatoes when boiling them, couldn’t use a tin opener and tried to pass off porridge oats and raisins as home-made muesli!

Things have progressed since then, I learnt to follow recipes and then I learnt not to follow recipes.

For me, there are times I need to follow recipes – making pastry

And there are times when I don’t – making anything other than pastry

As a Disney pirate once said “the code is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules” and this is perfectly applicable to recipes too!

So substitute away, probably within reason, and if you need any more encouragement to ditch the coriander* and try something different then have a look at The Flavour Thesaurus. It’s an inspired book about flavours that go and flavours that contrast & compliment. Really well written and easy to reference if (like me) you don’t have everything in your cupboards that a recipe suggests. 

*NB – I would like to take a moment to point out that I don’t have anything against coriander as an ingredient in recipes!

pistachio-joy!!

p i s t a c h i o - j o y ! ! . . .
Now I’ve showed you what I think are my standard cakes (carrot cake, vegan chocolate cake, Marieke cake), I can move on to my favourite cake...

I could eat an entire one of these cakes in one sitting....partly because I love cake but mostly because I LOVE pistachios!! It would make more sense for me to just eat a bag of pistachios but it’s not really the same!!
The most laborious part of making this cake is shelling the pistachios so you should either put some time aside to do that or get some recruits (even Niall helps with shelling pistachios for this one and it’s rare that he will help with anything baking related given there is no reward for him – he doesn’t really like cake...I know, weird!!).

I'm surprised there are pistachios left on the top!

So for the recipe:
125g butter - soft; 175g caster sugar; 3 eggs – beaten; 125g plain flour; ½  tsp baking powder; 100g(ish) pistachio nuts – chopped; 1 lemon – juiced & zested
Cream together the sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add in the flour & baking powder. Stir together until combined. Stir in most of the chopped nuts and finally add in the lemon juice & zest. Bake at Gas Mark 4 for 20 – 30 minutes, until the top of the cake is golden and it bounces back up when you press it gently.

To ice it I just sprinkle it with some icing sugar – you really don’t need anything more than that...the pistachios do all the work.

I did once end up with hardly any pistachios in my cake as I’d eaten so many in the baking tasting process. I tend to cook with some at the side now!!

carrot-cake-collection

c a r r o t - c a k e - c o l l e c t i o n . . .
I love the texture of carrot cake, even when it's being cut, it has a different sound and feel to it (sounds weird but it’s true!).
I’d been watching Cook Yourself Thin a while ago which was a completely genius show that made me think a bit differently about what I put into food. They used sweet potato, beetroot and other root vegetables in cakes & desserts to make them more moist and, I think, replace some of the processed sugars or at least take out some of the calories... I don’t really like beetroot but one of my friends had made beetroot chocolate brownies and you really can’t taste the beetroot when it’s grated through (and probably the fact that it's mixed with chocolate)! The courgette in the carrot cake is the same...grated up you can’t taste it at all but it really adds to the texture of the cake. The mixture isn’t very cake mix-ey and looks more like a smoothie when you’re adding all the ingredients, but once it’s cooked it really is fab.

juicy carrot & courgette cake

So for the recipe:

100g butter; 220g dark brown sugar; 2 eggs; 175g self-raising flour; 1tsp cinnamon; ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda;  ½ courgette; 1 carrot; 1 tsp orange extract.
Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs one at a time and beat. Sieve in the flour, cinnamon, orange extract and bicarb. Wash and peel the carrot and courgette and grate into mixture.
Pour mix into tin and bake for 20 minutes at 180C. 

I made the recipe in cupcake form too - topped with orange icing (icing sugar, orange juice & a little cream cheese) with orange rind and walnut to decorate for an afternoon tea...and wine (obvs)... with some friends. Nom nom!

smaller-scale carrot & courgette cupcakes

chocolate-orange

c h o c o l a t e - o r a n g e . . .
My flatmate loves orange flavour in baking so I’d made these for him mostly (but also for me because they taste pretty good).
I make these quite a lot....in about 40 minutes start to finish (sometimes including washing-up time). The smell when you're baking them is impressive and they're great if you had told someone you'd bake for them and then totally forgot until just over an hour before you need to leave...not that I've ever left anything that last minute!!

The recipe is really simple and if you want to add a little extra something to the muffins, put half the mixture into the muffin cases, add a little bit of chocolate spread and then cover with the rest of the mix.

I find that the trick to making these muffins is to only just combine the ingredients...and add a spoonful of natural yogurt at the end if the mixture is getting too sticky!

So for the recipe...

Chocolate Orange Muffins

150g butter (melted); 175 ml milk; 1 egg; orange rind (grated); 1 tsp orange extract; 375g self-raising flour; 2 tsp baking powder; 100g chocolate chips; 50g caster sugar; 50g brown sugar.
Mix together butter, milk, egg, orange rind and orange extract. Sift flour & baking powder into a bowl & stir in chocolate chips and sugars. Add the milk mixture to the dry mixture and stir briefly until only just combined.

Spoon the mixture into the paper muffin cases and pile it up a bit more in the centre.
Bake in a pre-heated oven (190C/Gas Mark 5) for 15 – 20 mins.

I also make batches of lots more mini-muffins by using smaller cases and this will only take 12 - 15 minutes in the oven. They're better for taking to work (to share obviously) as people are much more likely to take a "wee bit" of a treat rather than having "a huge muffin" (although I don't think muffins are that huge)!!

the-tower

t h e - t o w e r . . .
One of the guys at my work was leaving and had asked me to make a big cake for lots of people to share. I think I perhaps took it a bit too far but the reaction from my colleagues was what I’d aimed at. 

Vegan and not-so-vegan tower cake

It’s made from a basic sponge cake on the bottom iced with chocolate buttercream icing, chocolate drops and marzipan stars. Then vegan chocolate cake (recipe below) with soya buttercream icing and raspberries. Finally, baby vegan cupcakes with the chocolate buttercream icing on top.

Transporting the cakey tower into work was quite tricky and I got arm cramp on the way in but it was far easier carrying an empty tray back home!

marieke-cake

m a r i e k e - c a k e . . .
When I was much, much younger my family would have Dutch girls come and stay with us for a few months and they would work in the hospital in an admin job to improve their business English.

Marieke was the third Dutch girl who came to stay with us and her first gift to us was a round cake. I think it is usually called kruidkoek (in Holland) but we refer to it as Marieke Cake. I’m not entirely sure how a Marieke Cake was transported so safely all the way from Holland but it didn't lose any of the flavour in transit!

I was old enough to appreciate a ‘big sister type’ when Marieke came to stay with us. She loved Leonardo Di Caprio almost as much as I did. We sat in the front row of the cinema when Romeo and Juliet came out, swooned in unison, and when she went back to Holland she sent me a beautiful postcard of his face – which I instantly stuck to my mirror! She inspired a lot of my idiosyncrasies (I was clearly eager to be quirky from a young age), gave me some amazing advice and was just so cool.

Marieke Cake is my favourite cake to make. It’s low-ish fat (in cake terms), smells absolutely delicious before, during and after baking and is quite difficult to mess up! It’s now become something of a tradition whenever I go home I have to make a Marieke Cake for my best friend, Maryam, and her family (her dad eats most of it though!).

Marieke Cake - someone stole a cranberry!

So for the recipe:
250g self-raising flour; 250g brown sugar; 2 tsp mixed spice (mostly cinnamon & nutmeg); salt; 250ml milk; handful of raisins.
Mix everything together. Pour into a round tin and bake for about 30 - 35 minutes at Gas Mark 4 (or until a skewer comes out clean). Simples!


This cake has quite a 'bouncy' texture to it once it’s cooked and I think part of the joy of it is the hole in the middle - but this is optional of course!!
I made this at Christmas time for the office and even people who don't like dried fruit loved the cake!!

for-starters

f o r - s t a r t e r s . . .
I first made these cakes for a friend's birthday. Her flatmate is vegan and I thought it would be nice if she could eat cake...everybody should get to eat cake on birthdays!

The recipe came from a combination of a vegan recipe book I'd seen in the library and a youtube clip!

Vegan chocolate cupcakes with some soya milk and some vegan chocolate icing

Vegan chocolate cupcakes

240 ml soya milk; 1 tbsp vinegar; 150g granulated sugar; 80ml vegetable oil; 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract; ½ tsp orange extract; 140g flour; 45g cocoa; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda.

Whisk soya milk & vinegar in bowl and allow it to curdle a little.  Add sugar, oil and extract to soya milk and whisk until it's all foamy on top. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa & bicarb. Add the dry mix into the liquid mix in two batches & beat until there are no large lumps.
Pour mix into cake cases & bake for 18 mins at 180C/Gas Mark 4.

It's really easy to make these cakes and they taste delicious. I think it tastes a bit different to a regular chocolate cake and it's definitely lighter...maybe not very 'structurally sound' if you're making a bigger cake and trying to cut it though.
You can safely lick the mixing spoon clean but there is sometimes a slight taste of vinegar (this definitely disappears during cooking)!

kitsch-beginnings

k i t s c h - b e g i n n i n g s
I'm not restricting this to cakes....or just baking...but that's what takes up most of my time.

And I'm not sure where to start, or whether anyone would continue to read this if it was an autobiographical post about when I started baking (to be honest, I'm not even sure if I know when I started)!

I've been taking photos of my cakes for a long time but more so I could create a colourful recipe photo album and have something to show for all my time in the kitchen! I hope this will be a colourful recipe photo album of a virtual kind!

So, taking inspiration from many people (my mum most definitely included) I've decided to let other people see my creativity. And ok, so you can't taste it but you can try making it yourself and see how it goes.

I'm not a baker or a cook so can't claim any authority on what I do but I do love seeing people's faces when something that I made really seems to make them pleased!

My secret tip - keep my sister out of the kitchen - my baking blunders have come from spending too long chatting to her!
My flavour of the moment - pistachio (and vanilla)

- h o m n o m ! !