Tahini honey oat cakes

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Ta honey

These are lovely little biccies to have with your cup of tea, and they are pretty much guilt free as they contain no sugar, wheat, dairy, egg or butter! Also they only take 10 mins to bake and are super easy to prepare, being from the 'throw everything into a bowl and stir' family of recipes.

I love to have something sweet after my dinner and am trying a wheat free diet right now so these are pretty much a godsend and I know I will make them again and again.

Ingredients:

6tbsps Tahini paste

1/2 cup runny honey

1/2 a cup toasted flaked almonds

1/2 a cup raisins

6 dates, chopped

Blend the tahini and honey in a bowl, then add all of the other ingredients and mix well.

Using a spoon, divide the mixture into cookie shaped heaps on a greased baking tray. This should make about 12. Bake at 180c for 10 mins. Let them cool a bit and them transfer them to a cooling rack so that they don't go soggy underneath. Be careful when transferring them as they are crumbly when they are still hot, but get more solid as they cool.

You could use different variations depending on what you have lying around your kitchen, I will definitely be trying these with some of the following:

-toasted sunflower seeds

-hazelnuts (or any other nuts for that matter)

-lemon zest & a bit of juice

-candied peel

-Maple syrup

-peanut butter + some vegetable oil in place of the tahini (with chocolate chips which would make it not healthy but pretty delicious)

Jameson Whiskey Cake

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Paddy Cake!

We stayed in Wexford in a big old farmhouse over New Years and Lu's birthday. Lu and I are kind of fans of naff 70s decor, which is just as well because the whole place looked like the house from Father Ted, In fact, I was watching Father Ted recently and Mrs Doyle has the EXACT same ceramic dogs as were in this place.

Anyway, I digress...
On the night before new years, which is Lu's birthday, we cooked a meal for 12 people and one of our guests, Camille, who had just arrived from the USA that day, produced the most delicious whiskey cake all the way from DC for dessert/birthday cake.

Here is Lu blowing out the candles on the original version We thought it would be the perfect thing to make for Paddy's day so after some advice from Camille I decided to merge the earlier ginger cake recipe from Nigel Slater with the recipe Camille gave me. It produced a heavier cake that really soaks up the booze. Its different to the original recipe, but its still pretty good, as anything that contains a whole shoulder of whiskey is bound to be! Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

300g self-raising flour

1 level tsp bicarbonate of soda

a pinch of salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 teaspoon allspice

3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

200g golden syrup

125g butter

1/2 cup Jameson whiskey

100g chopped walnuts

125g dark muscavado sugar

2 large eggs

240ml milk

For the glaze

1 cup jameson whiskey

4 oz butter

1 tbsp water

2 oz sugar

Sift the flour, bicarb, salt and spices into a bowl. In a saucepan melt the syrup with the butter and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. Add in the whiskey. It will bubble madly. Add this all to the flour and stir well. mix the milk with the eggs and whisk. Then add this into the four mixture. It will look quite sloppy but it will be ok! Pour this into a grease cake tin and bake at gas 3/160c for about 40 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, combine all the glaze ingredients in a saucepan and melt until the sugar has dissolved. When the cake comes out of the oven and is still hot, pour 1/3 of the glaze over it. Allow the cake to cool and turn it out of the cake tin on to a plate. Pour a further 1/3 of the glaze over the underside of the cake. Wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate the cake for 2 - 3 days. When you are ready to serve, take the cake out of the fridge so that it can come back up to room temperature. Then gently heat the remaining glaze before pouring it over the cake and serving!!

Deicio! Our cake tin even is slightly reminiscent of a shamrock! Cant wait till tomorrow so we can eat it!

Thanks Camille

Apple Filo tarts

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Sunday paper-thin treats

I had a yen to make Parisian apple tartlets like these, but unfortunately, once again I couldn't find any ready made puff pasty in the whole of the Dublin 7 area (ok, I tried 3 shops and gave up). You may remember that we had a similar problem back in August when we were making the Beef and Guiness pie, and I actually had to go to effort of making my own! It turned out ok, but as all my tv cooking heroes (Nigel, Nigela, and Jamie) say, its not worth making your own puff, as the bought stuff is always going to be better. Anyway, Its a Sunday afternoon, and the less palaver involved the better.

Once again to the rescue came our local middle eastern shop Alauras. It stocks frozen filo, which can be used to make baklava (I will have to try it one of these days) and Lucy's famous home made jambons, (another improvised recipe which called for puff pastry but had to settle for filo) Using frozen ready made pastry means that these tarts are so quick and easy to make, and if you actually use puff pastry then you don't have to bother with all the brushing of melted butter. Just pop the sugar and apple on top of the pastry, and bake!

On reflection, I think I would actually prefer the filo version. These tarts were crunchy, melty, delicious. Perfect with a cup of coffee and the Sunday papers!

Ingredients:

Frozen filo pastry, defrosted

4 oz butter

1 large apple (2 small) such as coxs or braeburn

2 oz brown sugar

ground cinnamon

Start by melting half of the butter in a pan. Brush 6 individual tartlet cases with some of the butter. (If you don't have cases, you can just layer the pastry up in tart-sized squares on a buttered baking tray. This is what you would do if you were using puff pastry, too)

Layer the pastry, one sheet a a time into the cases, brushing each of the pastry sheets with the melted butter as you go. There should be 5 or 6 layers of pastry in each tart. Press the pastry in to the tins and leave the excess corners sticking out (I think they look lovely like that). Brush the top layer of pastry all over with the butter. Sprinkle some of the brown sugar into each of the buttered pastry cases.

Peel and core the apple, cut into quarters and slice very thinly. Arrange the apple slices in a fan shape in each of the pastry cases, and sprinkle with the remaining brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon on each. Cut the remaining butter into tiny cubes and sprinkle these over the apple and sugar.

Bake for about 15 minutes in a preheated oven at about 180c. You want the apple to be cooked and tender, the sugar melted, but the pastry not over cooked or burned.

Super Fast Bread & Butter Pudding

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My Secret Shame

After a hard days work in the garden, I decided have a nice relaxing bath. As the bath ran my mind turned to dinner, I had three slices of white bread, some cream and eggs..... hmmmm, then it struck me - bread and butter pudding, not really a dinner I know, but hey I deserve it. They've been discussing on the Guardian - about things people eat when they're on their own - I felt better about this dinner after reading it - some of them are so gross! Yuck - sardine juice on cottage cheese...... dear lord It's very quick and easy to put together, given more time - it's good to leave the bread soak up all the goo for an hour or so, but if you don't have that time - it's still very good. It's great for using up the end of a sliced pan that is a little stale.

Ingredients a few imprecise ones here - sorry!
3 slices of bread (I left the crusts on but you can remove if you prefer)
Butter
Cream
Milk
2 eggs
Raisins
Mixed Peel
2 desert spoons Caster Sugar 1) Butter your bread on both sides and cut into little triangles
2) Put them in a greased oven proof dish
3)Scatter around them the raisins and mixed peel
4) Combine - eggs, milk, cream and caster sugar and mix thoroughly together
5) Pour over the bread making sure that all the bread gets a moist or the dry parts may burn sprinkle on a little more sugar
6)Bake at gas mark 4 for 30 mins, till solid and a little browned on top. Serve - with cream, custard or ice-cream - or by itself.

Other variations include - throwing in some chocolate chips instead of raisins, or spreading the bread with marmalade after the butter and making mini marmalade sandwich pudding - both of these are delish!