Pear Brownies

It feels like an age since I wrote a post for the blog. This is probably because we were camping last week down in sunny Dorset, which you may well have seen from my Instagram page. The break from technology that our camping trip enforced was very restful, but that said I must admit that I am not a natural camper. I find the change in routine when the children refuse to settle until 9pm frustrating. Luckily for me, Simon is ridiculously calm and takes all these changes in his stride and doesn’t let little things like small children deciding that bedtime is not longer applicable when camping bother him.

My first thought when we arrived home was yippee we are back, now I can make cake. Then I realised we had no eggs and the children were sound asleep as it was 9.30pm. So I was grown up and patient (yes patient, it is rather surprising) and decided to send Simon to the supermarket for eggs wait until the morning.

This morning it took me all of around 2 minutes to decide what we would make. We bought some chocolate spread while on holiday for easy sandwiches for the kids (yes unhealthy, but I am ignoring the guilt that is threatening to emerge as it was a camping treat along with chocolate cereal…) and it was only half used. I decided we would make brownies to finish the chocolate spread and top it up with the Nutella from the pantry as we didn’t quite have enough leftover. In all honestly, the pears were added as a small nod to healthy eating and a balanced diet, as who doesn’t love chocolate with pear?!

Note to self, PLEASE remember cooking with the kids the morning after returning from a camping trip is not the wisest idea as the aforementioned children may tend towards grumpiness due to over tiredness. Bickering may well ensue over who gets to help out with which bit of the activity and a couple of deep breaths from the adult supervisor may well be required. Oh yes and a strong cup of coffee. I want to stress that no children were harmed during the making of these brownies, and all children left the table with extremely chocolatey faces and fingers and huge grins plastered across their tired, but happy faces.

Ingredients

  • 400g chocolate spread (we used half Nutella and half plain chocolate spread)
  • 50g butter/margarine (we used Flora)
  • 3 large eggs
  • 140g wholemeal self raising flour
  • 25g cocoa powder
  • 100g chocolate chips
  • 1 pear, cored and sliced
  • 1tbsp runny honey

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 160°c fan and grease and line a brownie tin.
  2. Spoon the chocolate spread out of the jar and place it in a large mixing bowl keeping a beady eye on crafty children who may decide to try and divert spoonfuls into their mouths rather than the bowl.
  3. Crack the 3 eggs into the same bowl and add the butter. Whisk with an hand mixer until all smooth.
  4. Add in the flour and cocoa powder and mix with wooden spoons until fully combined.
  5. Add the chocolate chips and mix again.
  6. Pour and spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and gently smooth the surface.
  7. Remove the pear’s core (I did this bit for the children) and slice into long thin pieces.
  8. Gently place the pear on top of the brownie mixture (don’t push down or they will end up underneath the batter).
  9. Brush all the exposed bits of pear with a bit of honey and place in the over for 40-45 minutes. A skewer should come out coated with some batter for a slightly squishy brownie. Cook for longer if you want a firmer brownie.

These brownies have a slightly cake-like texture, but are 100% yummy. We cut them into 16 squares. The children enjoyed theirs as pudding after lunch, I preferred mine with my mid-morning coffee as I had to check that they were edible before distributing them to the children! Well that’s my excuse anyway…

Lavender, Lemon and White Chocolate Biscuits

I love a homemade gift. It gives me a legitimate reason to be in the kitchen with the kids making mess and enables me to create new recipes with new flavours (for us) all in the name of creating a nice gift.

We have these beautiful lavender plants in our front garden. They are a luscious shade of purple, smell lovely and never fail to attract bees. All of the children have at some stage enjoyed watching the bees on the lavender plants and it was here that Seb first said ‘bumbleey bees’ which always makes me happy. If I am honest I struggle to call them bees now as bumbleey bees sounds so much better!

I have been intending to make lavender biscuits for a couple of years, but they never quite made it to the top of my list. This year they finally did. I took some lavender, washed it and dried

Before the lemon zest was added.

it out in the pantry and then one day when Seb and Atticus were at their daytime activities I took the opportunity to make some lavender infused sugar for biscuit making. I left the lavender on its own in the sugar and then decided lavender and lemon would work well so also added lemon zest to the sugar and lavender. I found the scent of the lavender and lemon remarkably comforting.  When Seb helped me make the biscuits I had him smell the infused sugar first to guess the scents. He identified the lemon easily, but found the lavender harder to place.

We made these biscuits with gluten-free flour and regular flour. The regular flour biscuits were more moist and preferred in this house, but I have been informed that the gluten-free variety were tasty despite the more crumbly texture the gluten-free flour brings to the recipe.

Ingredients

Depending on biscuit size, this recipe will make around 20 biscuits

  • 200g butter or margarine (we used Flora)
  • 100g golden caster sugar
  • 8 sprigs of fresh lavender washed and allowed to dry
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 250g plain white flour (or gluten-free equivalent)
  • 1tsp baking powder (ensure it is gluten-free if required)
  • 100g white chocolate chips

Method

  1. It is nice to put the lavender flowers removed from the stalks and lemon zest into the sugar in an airtight container a day before you need to use it. However, if you don’t have time to do so just blitz them together a food processor briefly before using. We infused the day before and then pulsed them in the food processor too. Both and both flavours were present and not overwhelming.
  2. Heat the oven to 170°c and line two baking sheets with silicone mats or baking parchment.
  3. Cream together the butter and the sugar infused with the lavender and the lemon until light and fluffy.
  4. Add the flour and the baking powder and squish and squash with your hands to form a dough.
  5. Add the white chocolate chips and ensure fully combined.
  6. Divide the mixture into 2 equal pieces and make 10 biscuits from each pile by rolling them into balls and then gently squishing them flat on the baking tray with you hands (Seb used his fingers held together, but I used the palm of my hand and both worked fine.
  7. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking for 12-15 minutes until they are starting to  become golden (and any chocolate chips near the surface are bubbling.
  8. Leave to cool on the baking sheet for around 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Nicely presented in boxes.

These biscuits went into school and nursery for end of year presents for the staff who have worked with the boys this year. From the comments, they were well received!

Four-Cheese Baked Fondue

This week Simon and I are celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. I managed to convince Simon, a couple of months ago, to host a party at home for some close family and friends to celebrate. The fact that this falls the week after our daughter’s birthday and the weekend directly after Seb and Atticus finish school and nursery respectively means this week is crazy busy. Add to that a long list of savoury items and an even bigger list of cakes I want to make and we mustn’t forget about preparing the house!

I have, upon reflection, reduced the amount of food I had originally planned, but only because I don’t physically think that we could make or store any more! Initially I was planning to serve just cake, but Simon insisted that we couldn’t risk sending our guests off in a sugary coma. There will definitely be a blog post about this in the near future on this so keep your eye out.

After all the cake at Ophelia’s birthday, I decided that it was time to make something savoury again and to take advantage of Atticus being at home, something that will happen less and less as he starts school in the autumn. Out of the savoury items we make, the ones which comprise of copious amount of cheese are generally more successfully with the children. Cheese is a popular snack and we seem to go through a mammoth amount every week. I have no concerns about my children’s’ calcium intake!

I wanted to capitalise on this love of cheese to let the kids try some new types of cheese and what better way to do this than make fondues?! We enjoyed smelling the cheese and poking it as they all have different scents and textures. We did add fig relish to the bottom of these fondue pots and we put sliced fig on top, however, Atticus and Ophelia were not fond of the fig or the fig relish. Next time we make this for them, we shall leave out the fig relish for them and add it for the grown ups.

Ingredients

Makes 4 ramekin-sized fondues
Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food

  • 200g brie, rind sliced off and cut into pieces
  • 100g emmental, grated
  • 100g cream cheese
  • 30g parmesan, grated
  • 2tbsp milk
  • 2tsp cornflour
  • 3 sprigs of fresh thyme, leaves picked
  • Seasoning
  • 4tbsp fig relish and 1 fig, quartered (optional: if your kids like fig or if the grown ups want it!)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 140°c fan.
  2. Slice the rind off the brie and chop and grate the emmental and the parmesan.
  3. Put the brie, emmental, cream cheese and half the parmesan into a food processor with the milk, the cornflour, the thyme and the seasoning and pulse until all combined.
  4. Optional: put a tbsp. of fig relish in each ramekin and spread evenly.
  5. Divide the cheesy mixture between the ramekins and then sprinkle with the remaining parmesan.
  6. Place in the oven to cook for 15 minutes until bubbling. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 5-10 minutes before putting a piece of quartered fig on top and enjoy. You will need to remind your children that the cheese will still be quite hot. Mine enjoyed blowing on it to cool it down before dunking soldiers into it.

Atticus and Ophelia had these for lunch with some sliced pear and buttered toast. They could equally be served for a dinner with vegetable sticks, crusty bread or anything else you want to dip in them! My kids would probably enjoy dipping cocktail sausages in them. I enjoyed mine with olive bread, baby corn and sugar snap peas.

Rhubarb and Caramel Cake

It has been a particularly busy 10 days or so, with Simon away for work for some of it and school winding down for the year for one and the whole induction process starting for another child. I am a great planner. I love a list and ticking things off it and I thought this would be the best way to cope in Simon’s absence. My problem, however, is that I tend to try and cram too much into a tiny or even miniscule amount of time and end up getting stressed or upset when it doesn’t go to plan and I don’t achieve any of the fun stuff. So I had big plans for wonderful cooking projects with the kids this week in daddy’s absence, but they didn’t come to fruition the way I had hoped or expected.

Guess what lifted my mood? Something came and turned my frustration at the week around. Well I doubt you will guess, so let me tell you. I found some more reduced rhubarb in the supermarket! Yes, it is earth shatteringly exciting news and is such a non-event that I should gloss over it and claim the idea came to me some other amazing way, but alas no.  Three sticks of humble rhubarb managed to turn my week around as they gave me a reason to do some more experimenting in the kitchen with Atticus and Ophelia. We also have a jar of dulce de leche which has been peering at me from its position in the pantry (next to the honey and the Nutella if you are curious as to where we keep it) and longing to be loved and used in a recipe. These two ingredients sounded like a good match with the sweetness from the dulce de leche contrasting nicely with the sharpness of the rhubarb so I set about developing a recipe to combine the two.

Now Atticus’s track record with Rhubarb isn’t great. Both Ophelia and Seb liked the rhubarb in the Rhubarb and Strawberry Flapjacks, but Atticus wasn’t as keen. On the other hand, his track record with cake is particularly good (no surprise there) so maybe combining the two might lead to success? My hope was that Atticus would enjoy the rhubarb in this recipe and then it would be the beginning of a long and happy lifetime enjoying rhubarb-based puddings. And before you ask, yes I do  think about food, how to encourage my children to eat and try new foods and what I can make next most with them. But, while the kids and I are both enjoying ourselves, I believe it is a pattern that will continue for the foreseeable future.

Ingredients

  • 110g unsalted butter
  • 170g light brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 250ml Greek-style natural yoghurt
  • 60g dulce de leche
  • 1tsp vanilla
  • 450g self raising flour
  • 100g fudge chopped into small pieces
  • 3 sticks of rhubarb sliced and mixed with 50g light brown sugar
  • Icing sugar for serving

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 160°c fan and grease and line a 23cm circular cake tin. Atticus had fun trying to draw around the tin although it did need tidying up!
  2. Place the sliced rhubarb in a small bowl with 50g of light brown sugar and let it sit.
  3. Cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.
  4. In a separate bowl mix the yoghurt, the dulce de leche and vanilla extract together and then add to the egg mixture and mix until fully combined.
  5. Gently mix in the flour.
  6. Chop the fudge into small pieces and add them to the cake batter and then add the sugar coated rhubarb and fold them both in.
  7. Put the mixture in the tin and gently flatten with a spatula. Then place in the oven for 40-50 minutes until a cake skewer comes out clean. Check the cake after the first 20 minutes as it may need to be covered to prevent burning.
  8. Remove from the oven and cool in the tin for a bit. Take out of the tin to finish cooling and sprinkle some icing sugar on top before serving through a sieve. It is much harder to get a nice effect when you let a four year old try and do it alone!

Despite the yumminess of this cake, Atticus is yet to revise his opinion of rhubarb. I shall have to try harder to find a way to convince him.  However, seeing as the rhubarb season here in the UK is coming to an end, I guess it will have to wait until next year.

 

 

 

Cherry and Basil Cake

After my delight with our cherry crop from the garden, I spent all of around ten minutes deciding whether to just eat them or to bake them in something. It is no surprise that I chose to bake with half of them and gobble the rest up!

Fresh from the garden.

There are so many classic recipes with cherries and I must admit to having been somewhat overwhelmed by the choice. I started researching what flavours might go well with cherries as I was in an experimenting mood and read somewhat incredulously that basil and cherry go well together. This idea really tickled my fancy as I had some leftover basil from another recipe and I was happy to be able to use it for something special (read a bit different and out there!).

Atticus and Ophelia didn’t bat an eyelid when I said we were going to put the basil in the cake. That said, Ophelia isn’t really old enough to understand that it might be an unusual ingredient for a sweet treat! When I told Simon what I had used them for, there seemed to be a small sigh on the other end of the phone, the sound of resignation and of course you wouldn’t do anything normal with them, Kat!

When it was out of the oven we eagerly took it to a friend’s house for lunch. She may well have been taken aback by the contents of the baked goods, but when we tried it for pudding we were both pleasantly surprised. Simon also agreed that it was quite nice. For one of my stranger ideas, this is high praise from him.

The recipe may need a few tweaks as it was my first time making it, but I wanted to share it with you anyway to let you see what I did with the cherries from the garden that I posted a picture of on Facebook and Instagram.

Ingredients

  • 125g butter or margarine
  • 125g caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 150g self-raising flour
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 1tbsp milk
  • 100g of cherries, stones removed
  • 3 sprigs of basil

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180º fan and grease and line your tin. We used a loaf tin, but you could also use a round or square one.
  2. Put the butter, caster sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder into a large bowl and mix together until fully combined.
  3. Mix the stoned cherries with a tbsp of flour and add them to the mixture.
  4. Cut the basil into the bowl using scissors and mix until everything is combined.
  5. Place in the oven and bake for 40 minutes until the cake is springy to the touch or a skewer comes out clean.
  6. Wait for it to cool before removing it from the tin and slicing it.

If you do try this flavour combination, please do let me know how it works out as I am interested to see if others enjoyed it too. I am sure I will be back with another unusual flavour combinations sometime in the near future!

 

Strawberry and Rhubarb Flapjacks

We got some reduced strawberries and rhubarb from the supermarket and my initial thought was this would make a really tasty crumble. However, then I remembered that the boys really don’t get on with it so I started thinking of other options to use the ingredients. My little grey cells got on it and my brain jumps as it so often does to flapjack. Have I mentioned before that my love for flapjack runs deep and true? Well I can tell you right now that it does.

It has to be said that Simon was somewhat confused at my making flapjacks instead of crumble (he really loves crumble and was expecting a crumble!). However, after having tried one he told me they were delicious. Seb and Ophelia loved them. Atticus, after eagerly devouring the remnants left in the bowl decided he didn’t like them. Contrary child. It isn’t at all frustrating when a child will happily lick the bowl and then refuse to try the end product said no mum ever! He did end up gobbling one up later and declared how yummy it was…

These fruity flapjacks were made with coconut oil so are dairy free. The oats could easily be substituted for gluten-free oats. I love it so much when a recipe can easily adapted to make it suitable for everyone!

Ingredients

  • 175g coconut oil
  • 175g golden syrup plus 1 tbsp to coat the rhubarb
  • 175g light brown sugar
  • 350g oats
  • 250g rhubarb
  • 250g strawberries
  • 50g desiccated coconut
  • 50 flaked almonds

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 160ºc fan and grease and line a brownie tin.
  2. Slice the rhubarb (Atticus needed help with this as it is very hard before cooking) and mix with 1 tbsp of golden syrup and roast in the oven for 15 minutes.
  3. Slice the strawberries (pay close attention to the kids at this point, as if yours are anything like mine they will try to sneak copious amounts of strawberries and you may well have to replenish your stock!)
  4. Measure out the coconut oil, golden syrup and sugar and place in a sauce pan and put over a low heat and mix until melted and stir to combine.
  5. Put in the oats, desiccated coconut and flaked almonds and mix well. Add the sliced strawberries and the rhubarb. Please beware as the golden syrup coating them will be very hot. Atticus carefully slid them in with the spoon while I held the hot baking tray.
  6. Cook in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Leave to cool completely in the tin before removing them and slicing. The result is a beautifully moist and sticky flapjack, with a fruity flavour!

Parmesan and Rosemary Quinoa Muffins

So this will be the last recipe with rosemary in it for while I promise. Otherwise I would have to consider renaming the blog Just Add Rosemary. I can report that the rosemary bush in the garden is now looking somewhat smaller – please don’t misunderstand me, we still have more rosemary than any family would want to eat in a year, but I seem to have banished the need to use it all up.

Whenever we use herbs and spices, I am always letting the kids have a smell so they can get a feel for the flavour before we use it and therefore be more likely to enjoy it or barely notice it in the recipe.The children now recognise the scent of rosemary and are happy when we use it. Atticus is in fact always offering to go and get me more for the cooking projects that we do. This is even for projects which don’t require it, and as I have been using it is all sorts of things recently this isn’t really surprising! It is not as if we are running low on the stuff so I see no need to complain if he is enjoying himself.

I have been wanting to try quinoa in muffins for a while. Initially I had in my head to use them in something sweet, but then after eating a quinoa salad I changed my mind and decided that savoury muffins would be really tasty. That is how these rosemary and parmesan quinoa muffins came about.

Ingredients

  • 150g uncooked quinoa
  • 450ml water
  • 200g finely grated parmesan
  • 3 large sprigs of rosemary
  • 4 eggs
  • Salt and pepper

Method

  1. Place the quinoa and the water in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 15 minutes until the quinoa is tender. Allow to cool. I did this bit for Atticus and Ophelia.
  2. Preheat the oven to 170°c fan.
  3. Grate the parmesan with or without the help of your little people.
  4. Wash and dry the rosemary. Take the rosemary off the stalks and chop. Atticus enthusiastically pulled it all off the stalks and then helped with the chopping. This will need quite a sharp knife, so there was discussion about sharp knives, being careful and paying attention and not getting distracted.
  5. Put the cooled quinoa in a big bowl. Add the chopped rosemary, the parmesan and a small amount of salt and pepper.
  6. Crack the eggs in and mix thoroughly.
  7. Evenly distribute between the 12 muffin cases and cook for 25 minutes.
  8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.

 

Spiced Brownies

We love cooking with chocolate. Every time I make a batch of brownies, I wonder why I don’t make them more often. Then after eating quarter of the batch in less than 30 minutes I remember why I don’t! I have no self control when it comes to baked goods containing chocolate.

Before I had to remove Atticus to supervise handwashing!

It seems I have also passed this on to Atticus as I had to snatch the bowl from him after he had licked it clean after making them and practically frog march him to the sink to wash his hands and face. I did not want any of the mixture on my walls or furnishings!

These brownies were a really tasty experiment and are my latest creation with the rosemary from the garden. We paired the rosemary with olive oil and some ground coriander to balance the flavours. The olive oil makes me think they are healthier than they really are and alleviates some of the guilt that I can assure you came about after eating as many as I did! I also did a spin class the following morning to balance the binge! Using olive oil in this recipe also means that if you use dairy free chocolate these brownies would be dairy free.

They sort of reminded me of the spiced chocolate Christmas cake (hence the name) I made last year, but without the fruit and the rum. I was in two minds whether I should post this now or wait until nearer Christmas. Then I decided that I would make them anytime so why not?! They are definitely on my list to make again before the winter. I must add I cut them into 12 large brownies. You could easily cut them smaller, but I am always worried I will eat loads more without noticing if they are small whereas at least I realise what I am doing when I eat more than one of these!

Ingredients

  • 80ml olive oil (we used extra virgin)
  • 185g dark chocolate
  • 85g plain flour
  • 40g cocoa powder
  • 1/2 tsp ground coriander
  • 100g dark chocolate chips
  • 3 large eggs
  • 275g golden caster sugar
  • 3 sprigs of washed and dried fresh rosemary (You should have around 3tbsp of rosemary once it is off the stalks)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 160°c and grease and line a brownie tin.
  2. Melt the chocolate and the oil in a glass in a double boiler (on the stove in a heat proof bowl over a pan with a small amount simmering of water in it which doesn’t touch the bowl). and put to one side to cool.
  3. Put the sugar and the rosemary (not the stalks) into a food processor and blitz until the rosemary is smaller and distributed throughout the sugar. (You can do this step in advance to allow the rosemary flavour to infuse more).
  4. Whisk the egg and rosemary infused sugar with an electric hand whisk until thick and creamy. Think about a bubbly milkshake and then you will have the right consistency. It will end up double the size.
  5. Gently fold in the cooled melted chocolate mixture with a metal spoon.
  6. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder and ground coriander and fold again. You will probably need to hold the sieve above the bowl rather than resting it on it as the whisked eggs will have increased in size and you don’t want the sieve touching them.
  7. Add in the chocolate chips and fold.
  8. Pour the mixture into the brownie tin and spread out. Level it with a spatula and cook for 25 minutes. If the brownie is still wobbly in the centre, return it to the oven for another 5 minutes.
  9. Remove the brownies from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin before removing them and slicing.

Blueberry Blondies

A while ago the children and I tried a brownie recipe which included chocolate Weetabix in the ingredients. Remembering how much fun the kids had smashing the Weetabix to smithereens, I decided that we would have a go with Shredded Wheat and make blondies. I love the idea of cereal in brownies or blondies. Adding cereal to baked goods makes me feel a bit less naughty when I eat them and I bet if I didn’t mention it and I offered you one, you probably wouldn’t realise that they contained Shredded Wheat.

Whenever I mention a cooking project in the vicinity of the children, Ophelia always pipes in with: ‘me too, me too.’ This made me realise that she would probably like to have a project on her own. She was the other reason for using cereal in this recipe. At 22 months, she clearly has very little concept of quantity, but she can count to three. We counted two packets of Shredded Wheat together (4 biscuits in total) and while she bashed them still in the packets (less mess) I measured out the rest of the ingredients and melted the butter and the white chocolate.

I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure she may have (well OK definitely) eaten some blueberries. She ate more blueberries in this process than chocolate. Knowing Ophelia as I do, I didn’t find this particularly unusual. What did surprise me was the colour she had around her mouth and all over her hands afterwards.  If you are using frozen blueberries, you may want to have wipes to hand to stop your little one getting blueberry juice everywhere!

Ingredients

  • 110g melted butter or margarine
  • 100g melted white chocolate
  • 110g light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2tsp vanilla extract
  • 110g self raising flour
  • 2 Shredded Wheat packets (4 biscuits in total)
  • 100g chocolate chips (we used some Milky Bar buttons which we had leftover)
  • 50g blueberries (we used frozen)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180ºc fan.
  2. Grease a 16cm square tin and line with greaseproof paper.
  3. If you have young children let them crunch the Shredded Wheat in the packet while you melt the chocolate and butter. If they are older they may well enjoy measuring out the butter and breaking the chocolate and helping with the melting process.
  4. Once the chocolate and butter have melted mix them together until completely combined.
  5. Crack the egg and mix it with the sugar and vanilla extract. Once it has been completely mixed add this to the chocolate and butter mixture and combine.
  6. Add the flour and Shredded Wheatand mix and add the chocolate chips and mix again.
  7. Put the batter into the tin and push the blueberries into the top. If you mix frozen blueberries in they will bleed and you will have purple blondies which you may not mind, but I decided that we would avoid that this time.
  8. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes and leave to cool completely in the tin before removing them and cutting into 9 Blondies.

Ophelia was definitely proud to share her creation particularly with her brothers as she is desperate to be one of the big kids. I had expected that they would be a popular pudding choice. However, I was amazed that we managed to save some for Daddy and even my sister and her husband when they visited a couple of days later.

Rosemary and Lemon Baked Doughnuts

I will use literally any excuse to try a new recipe. I find that cooking with the kids allows me to spend quality time with them creating those all important memories that will keep me smiling long after the kids are in bed or when they are driving me insane. In addition to the aforementioned, the reasons for this recipe are two-fold; we have a surplus of rosemary in our garden and I wanted some new and interesting ways to use it and secondly 12-19 May 2018 in the UK is National Doughnut Week in aid of The Children’s Trust. So we made a donation and doughnuts!

Now I need to underline, I am not a professional baker and these were our first attempt at baked yeast doughnuts so they are not perfect. I am sure every home baker would say that they taste better than they look at some point. This is generally exacerbated when children are involved in the process as mine were in this one. That said, I was happy that the rosemary could be tasted in the doughnuts and think the lemon glaze was a good contrast.

Seb really enjoyed making up the dough with me and talking about yeast makes dough rise. We talked about kneading the dough to make the yeast ‘friendly’ (or activate it in grown up talk). He had so much fun with the doughnut cutters and the fact that he could pop the centre of them out and then re-roll the dough had him chuckling during the process.

Atticus was my glazing and decorating helper. He did keep on trying to eat the glaze as we made it. He enjoyed giving the doughnuts a dunk, but definitely preferred sprinkling the stars over them.

I would say, these are softer and more doughnut-like when they aren’t overbaked. So cooked in a preheated oven at 180°c fan and cooked for 7-8 minutes as for the large ones and 4-5 minutes with the smaller ones. They may look a little pale, but they will have the lovely soft texture inside. If you do decide you want a firmer doughnut, you can always return it to the oven for another couple of minutes. It unfortunately doesn’t work both ways so keep an eye on them! We did overbake some of ours and they lost some of their doughnutiness, but they still tasted nice.

I did make another half batch without the kids and managed not to overbake any of them and they we soooooooooo good that I wished I had made a full batch as I just wanted to stay up and eat them! Although it is probably best that I decided in my wisdom to reduce the quantities otherwise I think the kids would have to push me out of the door!

Ingredients

For the doughnuts

  • 1 sachet of fast action yeast
  • 1/4 cup of warm water
  • 3/4 cup of warm milk
  • 1/3-1/2 cup of sugar (depending how sweet you want them to be)
  • 3tbsp softened margarine
  • 1tsp salt
  • 3 – 3 1/2 cups of flour (you may need the extra half cup if your dough is very, very sticky and won’t come together)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
  • zest of 1 lemon

For the glaze

  • 2 1/2 cups of icing sugar
  • Juice 1.5 lemons
  • Zest of 1 lemon
  • 3 tbsp milk
  • Sprinkles of choice (we used gold stars and some chocolate strands)

Method

  1. Wash and dry the rosemary and place in a food processor with the lemon zest and pulse. Add 1 cup of the flour and pulse again. Transfer this to a Tupperware tub and leave for an hour if you have the time. This will allow the rosemary and lemon to infuse into the flour.
  2. Put the warm water into a large bowl or that of a food mixer. Stir in the yeast until it has dissolved. Add the warm milk, the sugar, margarine, salt and the rosemary and lemon infused flour. Mix well with the dough hook attachment or a wooden spoon.
  3. Add the eggs and the rest of the flour and combine until a soft dough forms.
  4. Knead for 6-8 minutes by hand or 3-4 in the mixer.
  5. Place in a greased bowl to rise in a warm place for 1 hr or until doubled in size. We use the oven to prove by setting its timer for two minutes and switching it onto 150°c fan. We then boil the kettle fill up a bowl and once the timer pings, switch the oven and its light off and put the bowl of boiling water into the oven along with the item which needs to prove and close the door.
  6. After an hour, turn it out onto a floured surface and stamp out doughnuts with a doughnut cutter or a biscuit cutter and then cut the centre out with the reverse side of a piping nozzle. Once you have used all the dough, leave to prove again for another 40-minutes to an hour or doubled in size. (Once again I used my oven, but I did end up reheating it and putting fresh boiling water in it.)
  7. Place in a preheated oven at 180°c for 7-8 minutes for large doughnuts and 4-5 for small ones. ( I left the doughnuts in the top oven while the bottom oven heated up)
  8. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before glazing.

To make the glaze

  1. Sift the icing sugar into a medium-sized bowl and add the lemon zest and juice. Mix and add the milk. You may need more milk. We went for a thin glaze, but if you want a thicker glaze use less liquid.
  2. To coat the doughnuts, dip them in the icing bowl and place on a cooling rack so the excess drips off (if you are wise, you will cover underneath the rack with a tea towel or newspaper to reduce clean up time. I didn’t do this and wished I had).
  3. Add sprinkles before the glaze sets and enjoy!