Mincemeat and Marzipan Teabread

Picture this . . .

Marzipan and mincemeat baked into a delicious tea bread . . .



Moist . . . mmm . . . . spicy flecks of mincemeat here and there, and scattered throughout the loaf bits of caramelized and yummy marzipan . . .



Moreishly delicious . . .

Taken from the Good Food Magazine cookbook entitled, "101 Cakes and Bakes."

This is one tasty loaf. Quick, easy and quite, quite edible . . . the perfect thing to do with that jar of mincmeat that is sitting in your larder just waiting to be used . . .




*Mincemeat and Marzipan Teabread*
Makes one loaf, cutting into 12 slices
Printable Recipe

If you like mincmeat you will love this moist and tasty tea bread. We like it spread with cold butter. You just can't beat a slice of this, enjoyed next to teh fire on a cold and windy evening. Comfortingly delicious!

8 ounces self raising flour
4 ounces cold butter, cut into bits
3 ounces light muscovado sugar
3 ounces golden marzipan, cut into small bits
2 large eggs
10 ounces mincemeat
2 TBS flaked almonds
sifted icing sugar to dust the top



Pre-heat the oven to 180*C/350*F. Butter a 2 pound loaf tin and then line it with some baking parchment. Set aside.

Measure the flour and butter into a bowl. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in the sugar and the marzipan bits. Beat the mincemeat and eggs together. Stir this into the flour mixture until it is well combined. Spoon into the prepared pan and level off the top. Sprinkle with the flaked almonds.

Bake for 1 hour, until well risen and golden brown, and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and lightly dust with the icing sugar whilst it is still hot. Allow to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Cut into slices to serve.



Now that folks is what I'd call some serious good!

Mince Pies

When I was growing up in Canada, one of the things I really disliked at Christmas time was . . . Mincemeat. Oh, but it was horrid. That probably has something to do with the fact that it had real meat in it . . . ground beef . . . and ground beef made me want to gag. Mixed with raisins and other fruits, it made me want to gag even more . . .



Combine that with the interesting fact that my Aunt used to make her mincemeat out of venison that my Uncle shot every year, and I could never trust whether the mincemeat my mother was using had come from my Aunt or not . . . and I just could not face eating Bambi . . .

Aside from all that . . . it just didn't taste good to me . . . not at all. Never, no never . . .



Oh, how very different mincemeat is over here in the UK. I just love it and I can't get enough of it any time of the year, but MOST especially during the Christmas Season!!!

Filled with lovely bits of bramley apple . . . raisins . . . currants . . . sultanas . . . candied peel . . . not to mention lovely warm spices and oranges and lemons, chopped almonds . . . all bound together with soft dark brown sugar, brandy and suet . . . Just the thought of it gets my taste buds tingling.



I love them cold . . . all buttery and spicy sweet in my mouth.



They are a special treat when gently warmed . . . all meltingly delicious and crumbly, with lashings of brandy cream or custard . . . mmm . . .

I usually make my own, using Delia's Foolproof Recipe, but the grocery shops are full of wonderful mincemeat as well. Marks and Spencers make a really yummy luxury version.



There is nothing like spending an afternoon with a cd of Christmas Carols creating the festive mood whilst you bake lovely mince pies . . . the smell of them baking so homey and warm, the music . . . just so soul enriching . . . the cold wind outside buffeting the windows as the rain lashes against the glass . . . me all tucked up warm and cosy in the kitchen, my slippers padding across the floor and Jess stretched out and softly snoring on the carpet in front of the AGA . . .



Ahh . . . this has to be bliss. Can there be anything else on earth so wonderful??? I think not!



Well . . . eating them comes a close second, I do have to admit!




*Mince Pies*
Makes about 24
Printable Recipe

I just adore these delicious Christmas Treats! Crisp and buttery pastry encasing a delicious filling of spiced fruits, and dusted with icing sugar. Oh, so very wonderful. It just would not be Christmas without a breadbox filled with these!

560g mincemeat
(either homemade or storebought)
350g flour
pinch of salt
75g of cold butter, cut into bits
75g cold lard, cut into bits
ice water as needed
For the finish
some milk for brushing
sifted icing sugar for dusting

Sift the flour and salt into a bowl. Drop in the butter and lard and rub it into the flour/salt mixture using your fingertips. Rub until the mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Add the ice water by the tablespoon, mixing in with a fork, until you get a dough that leaves the sides of the bowl clean. Shape into a ball, wrap in cling film and place in the refrigerator to rest for half an hour.

Roll half of the dough out 1/4 inch thick on a lightly floured board. Cut it into 24 rounds with a 3 inch fluted pastry cutter. Place them into two lightly greased patty tins, lining the holes. Spoon a dessertspoon of mincemeat into each. Roll out the other half of the dough in the same manner, and cut out 24 rounds iwth a 2 1/2 inch cutter. Brush the edges of these rounds with a bit of water and then place them on top of the mincmeat filled patty tins to form lids. Press around lightly to seal. Brush the tops with a bit of milk. Prick with a fork if desired. Place on the top rack in the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown and crisp.

Remove from the oven and cool completely before disting with icing sugar. Store in an airtight container.

Florentine Biscuits

About this time of year I get a yearning to bake cookies . . .



oodles and oodles of cookies. Crisp one, chewy ones . . .



Cookies filled with nuts and fruit . . .



Plain cookies . . . and not so plain cookies.



Cookies glazed with sweet buttery icing, and others simply dusted with clouds of confectioners sugar . . .

Crumbly shortbreads all buttery and crisp, some with ginger and some with cherries . . . other's with nuts . . .



Rolled out gingerbread men . . . with sticky currants for eyes, and squiggly white icing smiles and trim . . .



Big cookies . . . small cookies

Tasty in-between cookies.

I like to give them as gifts to my friends. There is naught so welcome as a tasty Christmas tray of baking. It is always well received.



The simple and cheerful act of baking cookies for your loved ones and friends, whilst Christmas music serenades and plays about your ears . . . is the first sign that Christmas . . . cannot be far off.

What a sweet and joyful chore.

I love it. Can I help it if a few make their way into my mouth while I am busy at work????

I think not. Who can blame me. Tis a most delicious job indeed . . . and very rewarding.



*Florentine Biscuits*
Makes 24
Printable Recipe

These are lovely and buttery and chock full of tasty ingredients . . . cherries and candied citrus peel . . flaked almonds and sultanas, butter and sugar . . . The dark chocolate drizzle is their crowning glory.

4 ounces butter, softened
4 ounces caster sugar
1 large egg, beaten
6 ounces plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 ounce flaked almonds
(Lightly crush with your fingers)
2 ounces glace cherries, chopped
2 ounces mixed candied peel
2 ounces sultana raisins
3 ounces good quality dark chocolate, melted

Pre-heat the oven to 190*C/375*F. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets and set aside.

Place the butter and sugar in a bowl. Cream together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg. Sift the flour and soda together and then stir this into the creamed mixture. Mix to a soft dough.

Mix together the almonds, peel, cherries and sultanas. Stir 1/2 of this mixture into the dough. Mix in well. Shape into 24 even balls, rolling spoonfuls of the dough between the palms of your hand. Place onto the baking sheets, leaving a good space between each. Press out slightly with your fingers. Scatter the remaining fruit and nut mixture evenly over top of each.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until pale golden brown on the edges and bottoms. Remove from the oven and allow to sit on the pan for about 10 minutes, before removing to a wire rack to finish cooling completely.

Melt the chocolate and then drizzle this over top of the biscuits. (I do this in the microwave by blasting it at 30 second intervals, stirring after each blast)

Leave to set until the chocolate has hardened. Store in an airtight container.

Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Chicken Breasts

I just love cooking with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. They're very versatile and there is no limit to the manner of ways in which you can dress them up!

You must be really careful when you are cooking them, mind . . . for an overcooked chicken breast, dry and tasteless has about as much flavour and as much texture as an old boot . . . and it has taken me years of experimentation to get my cooking times down pat.



A tasty piece of chicken breast is the perfect canvas on which to paint a delicious dinner. This recipe, for example shows you how, with just a few additional ingredients, you can create a dinner that is sumptuous and special enough to serve to your honey on an intimate occasion. It's very easy to increase the quantities though, should you want to serve this to more . . .



I guarantee your honey will love it . . .



hmm . . . you may want to double it anyways . . . just in case.



They do say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. ☺

♥ ♥ ♥ I heartily concur ♥ ♥ ♥



*Bacon Wrapped Chicken for Two*
Serves 2
Printable Recipe

This is quick delicious and special enough to serve for a intimate dinner a deux! It's also quite easy to double the quantities to serve more than two.

2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 ounces crumbled blue stilton
2 heaped TBS chopped toasted walnuts
1 spring onion, finely shredded
4 slices of good quality dry cure smoked streaky bacon
olive oil
1 TBS butter
1 TBS plain flour
4 ounces chicken stock
2 ounces single cream
1 TBS grainy french mustard

Pre-heat the oven to 190*C/375*F. Get out a shallow baking dish large enough to hold two portions. Set aside.

Take your chicken breasts, and using a very sharp knife, cut them in half horizontally, not quite all the way through, so that you can open them up like a book. Pound them lightly with your fist. Season well with salt and pepper on both sides. Divide the spring onion amongst the two pieces, placing it on one half of the book and leaving a bit of a border on the edge. Sprinkle with the blue cheese, in the same way, as well as the toasted walnuts. Bring the other half of the chicken breast over top to cover the filling completely encasing it. Using two strips of bacon per breast, wrap them around the chicken securely. Fasten with toothpicks so that it won't unroll.

Heat a medium nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add a touch of olive oil and then brown the chicken breasts on all sides evenly. This will take 5 or 6 minutes. Place the browned breasts into the baking dish and pop them into the oven and roast for 8 to 10 minutes longer or until the juices run clear. Do not overcook.

While they are baking make the sauce as follows.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Whisk in the flour. Cook and stir for about a minute before whisking in the chicken stock. Cook, whisking, until it thickens then wisk in the cream and the mustard. Het through. Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.

Remove your chicken from the oven. Cut in half diagonally and place on heated plates. Drizzle with a bit of the sauce and serve.

Mushroom rice and a tossed salad goes very well with this. Enjoy!

Mont Blanc

It may be surprising to know that chestnuts have been a staple food in continental Europe much longer than the potato. It's taken us British a bit longer to embrace it's goodness, but I think we can safely say that it has become well ensconced in our diets and favour. Indeed you can find delicious recipes using this very versatile and flavourful ingredient scattered amongst cookery books from the 19th century onwards . . . puddings, soups, sauces and savoury stuffings . . .

Chestnuts differ a great deal from other nuts in that they have a high starch and water content, yet are low in protein and fats, which makes them ideal for storage. Dried and ground, they can be easily incorporated into breads, cereals, soups and batters.

In Britain wild sweet chestnuts are generally not available until they fall from off the trees in late October, and in a good year a lucky harvester can come away easily with a carrier bag or two! Plump, smooth and shiny, be sure to avoid any that are wrinkly or dried looking, and don't confuse the nuts from the horse chestnut tree with edible sweet chestnuts. They are completely un-related in the edible sense and the horse chestnuts are only really good for conkers! Edible sweet chestnuts are encased in a shell of long sharp spikes and inside there will be anywhere's from two to four nuts.

If you are lucky enough to have a bag of them and want to prepare them for roasting and eating I would suggest that you soak them in some water for a good 30 minutes before scoring them with a sharp knife on their rounded side and then roasting them in a hot oven for 25 to 30 minutes . . . and there is no tastier treat than to buy a fresh bag of hot roasted chestnuts from a street vendor in the depths of a cold December's day . . .




I recently purchased some delicious sweetened vanilla flavoured chestnut puree and was able to create a delicious dessert for some guests we had here at the cottage a few nights ago. I am sure most of you have heard of Mont Blanc, which is essentially a dessert composed of tasty meringues, sweetened chestnut puree and chantilly cream. (sweetened whipped cream)



The chestnut puree was so delicious, I could have just stood there and eaten it by the spoonful, right out of the tin . . . but . . .

that would have been quite greedy, don't you think??? And . . . I do like to share . . .



Not only was this incredibly easy to put together, but it was most impressive to look at and had our dinner guests ooohing and ahhing all over the place . . . especially the ladies.

Every spoonful was bliss . . . total . . . and utterly . . . bliss. But don't take my word for it. Try it out for yourselves. I think you'll quite . . . quite . . . like it.

A lot!




*Mont Blanc*
Serves 4
Printable Recipe

This has to be one of the easiest and the tastiest desserts around. Your guests will think you have slaved all day.

4 glasses with stems
8 to 12 small plain meringues
250ml of double cream, chilled
2 TBs icing sugar
400g sweet vanilla flavoured chestnut puree
chocolate sprinkles (optional)



Crumble the meringues and divide them equally amongst the stemmed glasses. Put the chilled double cream into a large bowl and whip with an eletric whisk until it forms soft peaks, but is not stiff. (if perchance you have whipped it a bit much, gently stir some unwhipped cream into it to loosen it up a bit. It works a charm) Fold in the icing sugar. Cover the layer of meringue in the glasses with chestnut puree and then cover that with the sweetened whipped cream. Sprinkle with sprinkles if desired.





 

Brown Sugar and Butter Glazed Parsnips

Parsnips wasn't something that we really ate much of when I was growing up. My mom hated them. I remember her cooking them once, lightly boiled and then sliced and fried in butter. She wanted to see if her dislike for them had diminished.



It hadn't.



I loved them though, and I still do. (I know . . . what don't I love??? Well snails for one . . . and squid, but I digress.)



Parsnips.
They give soups and stews incredible flavour.



Mixed with cooked potatoes and carrots, they make lovely root vegetable mash.

Roasted in goosefat, and then glazed with honey, they are my favourite part of our Christmas dinner.



Boiled, and then glazed in brown sugar and butter, with a bit of nutmeg . . .

They make any dinner feel like Christmas.

I could eat a whole plate of these . . . and nothing else at all.



*Brown Sugar and Butter Glazed Parsnips*
Serves 4
Printable Recipe

Crispy tender parsnips glazed with butter, brown sugar and nutmeg. Delicious!!

1 pound parsnips, peeled and sliced in half
(If they are very large cut out the woody core and discard, cut into quarters)
2 TBS butter
2 TBS soft light brown sugar
salt and pepper
freshly grated nutmeg

Place the parsnips into a pot of lightly salted water and bring to the boil. Cook, just until crispy tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Drain well. Melt the butter and brown sugar together in a large skillet. Add the parsnips and season to taste with some salt, pepper and freshly grated nutmeg. Cook, stirring gently until the parsnips are lightly browned and glazed.

Spiced Apple Puffs

Back home in Canada, this is Thanksgiving weekend. If I was over there I'd be in a flurry of baking pumpkin and pecan pies, peeling a ton of spuds . . .

peeling carrots, and turnips and making a huge pan of dressing to serve with the gargantuan turkey waiting in the fridge. . .



Cranberries would have been bought and turned into two lucious sauces . . . one cooked and the other a relish . . .

Dough would be rising to be made into fluffy rolls, and apple cider would be chillin in the cooler.



I'd be busy freshening rooms, plumping beds and putting out fresh towels in the baths, making ready for the onslaught of family due to arrive . . .

Kids, and spouses and grandkiddies . . .



alas, I am over here, so none of that will happen.

I tried to do Thanksgiving over here once . . . nobody understood it, or really got into it. It was just not the same . . .

If I was having my family over, I'd be sure to make them these. Tasty single serving sized little puffs, all scrummy with an almond filling tucked underneath the apple and a spicy maple glaze gilding their tops . . .

Instead I just make them for Todd and I, and dream of Thanksgiving's gone by, as I stare out the kitchen window at the falling leaves . . .



*Spiced Apple Puffs*
Serves 6
Printable Recipe

These delicious tarts are incredibly easy to make and yet so impressive when they are done. Who wouldn't like a mini apple pie, in a deliciously flakey crust with an almond filling hidden beneath the apple. Glazed with maple syrup and mixed spice, it makes the perfect autumnal dessert.

50g butter, softened
50g icing sugar, sifted
50g ground almonds
1 X 375g pack of ready rolled puff pastry
3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cut in half, cored and then sliced thinly
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
2 TBS amber Maple Syrup (Grade B)
1 tsp mixed spice
Creme fraiche to serve



Pre-heat the oven to 220*C/425*F. Place the butter, icing sugar, and almonds in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy. It will look like this is never going to happen, but bear with it . . . all of a sudden like magic it will be creamy and smooth!

Unroll the puff pastry and cut 6 three inch rounds out with a sharp knife. Place some 2 inches apart on a baking sheet which you have lined with parchment paper. Divide the almond mixture between each, spreading it out and leaving a narrow border around the outside edge of each tart. Arrange the apple slices on top, trying to keep the shape of the half apple as best as you can, but allowing them to fan out a bit. Brush the edges of the pastry with a little beaten egg, trying not to let it drip down onto the parchment paper.

Bake the pastries for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oven.

Stir the mixed spice and Maple Syrup together and brush this mixture over top of the tarts. Return to the oven and bake for a further 5 minutes. Serve warm or cold with a dollop of creme fraiche on each. Delicious!