Flipping Marvellous

As you all know, I have dazzlingly healthy eating habits; so when Joy The Baker posted a few weeks ago about making carrot cake pancakes my reaction was nought but glee at the idea of getting those extra vegetables in for breakfast.

Hee hoo hoo hoo. I just like the fact it has 'cake' in the name. CAKE FOR BREAKFAST, MOTHER. I TOLD YOU IT WAS THE FUTURE.


However, after the triumph of my carrot cake a few weeks back, the novelty of beta-carotene is wearing off a little.

Also I just like to be excessive, it makes me feel like a better blogger (not hard).

Also I like grating stuff.

To summarise: two batches of pancakes! (This is the kind of summary I enjoy). The first is Joy's carrot cake pancake recipe: I don't have much to bring to the party over those other than to say firmly, I APPROVE. The second is an apple pancake recipe from a book called 'Chocolate'; this is a little redundant as I left the chocolate out. Sometimes I'm so wild I scare myself.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

Adapted from the Food Network

Via Joy The Baker

Metric by me.

170g (1 1/4 cups) plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Dash nutmeg

1 egg, lightly beaten

50g (1/3 cup) caster sugar

240ml (1 cup) milk

200gish (2 cups) finely grated carrots

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Spread

120g (4 ounces) cream cheese

50g (1/4 cup) icing sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 dash ground cinnamon

1. In a bowl, combine flour, pecans, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, ginger, and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, combine egg, brown sugar, milk, carrots, and vanilla; mix well.

2. Stir carrot mixture into dry ingredients until moistened. Pour batter by 1/4 cupful onto a greased hot pan. Turn when bubbles form on the top of pancake; flip and cook until golden brown.

3. For topping, blend cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth. Sprinkle with cinnamon, and serve with pancakes.

I've even included a photo of the pancakes cooking (l: apple, r: carrot), just in case this concept is still blowing you away a little. A cake! in a pan! What a crazy world.

Apple Pancakes

Adapted from Chocolate by Parragon

225g (8oz) plain flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

4 tbsp caster sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp butter, melted

300ml (10 fl oz) milk

1 eating apple

1 tsp cinnamon

(50g chocolate chips - I left these out)

1. Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar into a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the egg and melted butter. Gradually whisk in the milk for a smooth batter. Peel, core and grate the apple and stir it into the batter (along with the chocolate chips if you're using those)

2. As for the carrot pancakes: cook in a hot pan. Flip 'em around the kitchen with reckless abandon and alarm flatmates who should know better and innocent visitors (pay them off with pancakes they'll get over it pretty fast). Good times.

Bread Basket-case

It may look like I have a bit of a craze for yeast-less bread going on at the moment, and that's because, uh, I have. Bread generally fulfills my baking urges, without me having to spend a small fortune on sugar, eggs and chocolate. And going for quickbreads or -today- soda bread saves me the whole waiting business that yeast involves.

Of all the urges to strike young people nowadays, I get baking urges. I'm practically a stone.


In my defence, I went to London for a couple of days at the weekend and managed to spend in that time what I usually spend in three or four weeks - as a result, this week, I resolved to curb my excesses a bit. Read: instead of buying drinks and going out on the razzle (people don't use that word nearly enough) I bought apple cider vinegar to make onion chutney and tried to tell myself it was a necessary purchase. It is now sat incongruously in our shared kitchen amongst tins of Asda Smartprice baked beans; I'm a little bit ashamed, but not enough to stop.

The good news (arguably) from your point of view is that, overwhelmed with goodwill and/or shame, I offer you two recipes this week! Calloo, callay, &c. &c.


Soda bread is the lazy baker's answer; it needs hardly any ingredients (although my recipe did just call for milk, and I thought buttermilk was a staple. Having bought vinegar anyway, I added a few drops to my milk to turn it into an acceptable buttermilk substitute. I'm just filled with such ingenuity), no yeast, no rising/proving time, bakes in half an hour... plus you get flatmates wandering into the kitchen, drawn to the smell of fresh bread, with looks of wonderment on their faces. Paired with Cheddar cheese and homemade onion chutney - the condiment you never knew you were missing, in the words of Eat Me, Delicious - and I have to admit my (half-sized) loaf was engulfed embarassingly quickly.

I'm now about to go to the gym, but that's nothing to do with anything.

Sodabread
Recipe from Easy Vegetarian by Ryland, Peters & Small.

500g wholemeal flour (I only had white)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cream of tartar (I left it out as I don't have any, and sometimes I like to leave out central ingredients. Just to mix things up, you know)
pinch of salt
25g butter, cut into small cubes
300ml milk
flour for dusting

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).

1. Sift (pfft) the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar and salt into a large bowl, and rub the butter in with your fingertips. Make a well in the centre and mix with a round-bladed knife to form a soft dough.

2. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 4 minutes. Shape into a round loaf 15cm diameter and flatten the top slightly. Place on a lightly floured baking sheet and use a sharp knife to score a cross about 1 cm deep in the top of the dough, making quarters.

3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes. Remove from the oven, and, protecting your hands with a tea towel, tap the bottom of the loaf to check it's cooked -if it's ready, it should sound hollow. If it doesn't, bake a few minutes more. Serve warm.

Onion Chutney

Recipe from Rebar: Modern Food Cookbook, via Eat Me, Delicious

2 tbsp butter
2 yellow onions, diced
1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp red chile flakes

1 tsp dried coriander (I'm not a coriander fan, so I used dried thyme. It was, you know, green. Close enough).

1 tsp brown sugar

4 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1/4 tsp cracked pepper

1. Heat butter in a pan over medium heat and add onions. Saute until translucent. Add salt, chile flakes and coriander and continue to cook for 15 minutes (I didn't need quite this long). Add remaining ingredients and cook until the onions are very soft and creamy.

Autumn Days

You know the idea of Autumn? Sitting inside in front of a glowing fire, all snug and warm when it's dark and cold outside; drifts of crisp red and gold leaves which you crunch underfoot and kick into the air; the air getting that little bit sharper and fresher, turning your cheeks pink and making you curl your sleeves around your hands to keep them warm. Pub lunches, with dark wood and bright candles... I love it.

What I hate is Actual Autumn; wearing about twelve layers to pad restlessly about the house in and still being cold, and being bored to death because there's nothing to do inside and you can't go out without getting soaked. Wet feet. Thoroughly depressing grey days.

You wouldn't think a season could change that much from one end of a country to the other (uh, unless you live in, I don't know, Russia. I'm talking an England-sized country, here), but Autumn has been a revelation to me these past few weeks. It turns out watching everything die is a lot more picturesque under bright, clear sunlight; on campus there's a bush such a bright shade of red that it looks like it's burning, and on Saturday my flatmates and I went walking on the common and found a baby Christmas tree growing in a secluded corner.

This is the sort of seasonal comfort food that my brain automatically associates with Autumn-in-inverted-commas, and it's been such a shock to actually have an Autumn (rather than the Northern alternative: 'Death Months') that I thought it was time to dig out the recipe. I made it for the first last year - just before Halloween, actually; I remember because I was hurrying to get tea ready for my dad and sister before I went out to a party. If it amuses you, imagine me cooking this dressed as Anne Boleyn. It adds a certain je ne sais quoi, I think.

Anyway, it's totally comforting, ridiculously easy (if you have a food processor. You know, the sort I Don't Have At Uni with me. I used a masher and tore up the breadcrumbs by hand) and extremely cheap, which gives me a good feeling about my ability to look after myself in the big wide world. Oh, and healthy, don't forget that. Don't let those Death Months strike you down, as we say up North.

...We don't actually say that. I might just tell people that we do.

Carrot & Parsnip Crumble
Recipe from Josceline Dimbleby's Complete Cookbook
Serves 4.

100g brown bread (leave crusts on)
675g carrots
450g parsnips
4 tbsp fromage frais or similar (this time I used yoghurt; I've used creme fraiche before)
1/4-1/2 tsp nutmeg
75g grated cheddar cheese
25g parmesan (I skipped this and use 100g cheddar)
2 tsp dried oregano
3 tbsp olive oil
salt & pepper

1. Whizz (or tear) the bread to crumbs in a food processor, then set aside in a bowl. Peel and chop carrots and parsnips roughly, then boil them til very soft. Drain and put in the food processor (may need two batches) with the fromage frais, and whizz to a smooth paste.

2. Grate in the nutmeg & add salt and pepper to taste. Turn the mixture into a shallow ovenproof dish and spread level.

3.Stir grated cheese, oregano and olive oil into the breadcrumbs and spread that evenly over the top of the pureed veg. Cook for 15-25 mins at 230C, til the topping is crisp and golden.

It's Always Tea-Time!

'I know this one! Slaying entails certain sacrifices, blah, blah,biddie blah, I'm so stuffy, give me a scone.' -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Back in the day (ie, April), I wrote about my friends and my ill-fated plans for a period style teaparty outdoors, but it was only last month that the weather actually stayed nice long enough for us to pull it off (it was a dismal summer, okay? Eventually we got desperate and said we'd do it outdoors unless it bucketed it down with rain, when we'd go to someone's house; on the morning, my friend Boy texted in bewilderment, 'bright but moist?! What do we do?', haha. The trials and tribulations we endured...)

The short notice meant that the British-themed blog post I'd had in the back of my mind never really came off, and I was baking scones and shortbread the night before with no time for a morning photo shoot (they're divas, those baked goods; the light has to be just so).

I had a load of yoghurt left over from... something or other... taking up precious fridge room (with one fridge between seven hungry students, you understand why I couldn't just leave it to ferment), so when I came across a scone recipe which used yoghurt rather than egg (I have a moral dilemna over eggs at the moment; free-range cost nearly £1 more, and I can't bring myself to spend it, but at the same time I can't bring myself to knowingly buy battery eggs. I'm solving this currently by just not using eggs, but I sort of recognise that this isn't much of a long-term solution) and which involved very little butter and only a tablespoon of sugar!- I don't take much convincing for these sorts of things.

And, of course, it meant that I finally got to post a scone recipe up on Happy Love Strawberry. It may not be my gran's recipe, and it may not be the one I made for our tea-party, and it may even be the first time I've made scones without a cutter, by shaping it into a square and cutting it into nine -- I don't know why I'm saying 'may' anymore. I don't have a circle cutter, it's the tragedy of my life -- but the point is, we British never say no to a scone, whatever the situation XD.

(Incidentally! I've found another Queen fan -no, new readers, I don't mean the Freddie Mercury type Queen, I mean, The Queen - here at uni; we have matching union flag cushions! It's meant to be).

Yoghurt Scones
Recipe found here
Makes 9 small scones

50g butter, chopped into cubes and softened
280g (2 c.) plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 Tbs baking powder
1 Tbs sugar
120ml (1/2 c.) thick yoghurt (I used lowfat) and 60-120ml (1/4c - 1/2 c.) water (start with 1/4c), mixed together

Preheat Oven to 220C or 440F

1. Sift dry ingredients onto softened butter, and mush together with your fingers until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Pour in the sugar, yoghurt mix, and quickly mix to form a soft dough. Add more water if the mixture appears dry and the dough feels tough.

2. Dust an oven tray with flour, and roll the dough out into a 20cm square. Cut into thirds horizontally and vertically so you end up with 9 scones, but DON'T separate. (I did, because I'm an idiot, but then I realised and pushed them back together again. My cunning knows no bounds).

3. Bake for about 10 minutes in center rack of your oven until tops are pale golden, then divide them up. Serve hot/warm - once cool, these taste better microwaved for 10 seconds.

These have a great texture, but like all scones, aren't very sweet, so they do need jam. Whipped or clotted cream would be perfect too, but I had cream cheese in the fridge so I ate some with that.

When I say 'ate some', I mean, 'had three for lunch', obviously. Ah, the student lifestyle. Who needs nutrition?