Bob's Butter Dumplings

Ingredients:

• 100g butter


• 400g sifted flour


• salt & pepper


• water

Method:

• Dice the butter


• Add sifted flour and seasoning


• Rub with fingertips until well mixed


• Add a little water, a dribble at a time


• Work into smooth dough


• Roll into even balls about the size of golf balls


• Pop into the top of your stew and cover, leave to cook around 12-15 mins

Let me show you my dumplings

I never seem to have the time to get recipes written up at the moment, but there is much in store! Honest! I have had a very busy month so have tended to fall back on standard family meals rather than experimenting.  Beef stew, made with a very cheap cut off beef and cooked slowly (I use beef cheek) is substantial and warming for when your people come home after a long winter day. What makes it even nicer is good old-fashioned dumplings.

Whilst traditional British dumplings are made with suet, this is not something available in this country.  Suet has a higher melting temperature than other fats and, apparently, this makes for fluffier dumplings.  I used to get visitors from the UK to bring me suet, but decided I might as well try experimenting with butter.  The results have been delicious, just as fluffy as my suet ones, and with a nice buttery taste. Recipe here.

I am working on our Christmas menu, and will be posting recipes for homemade mincemeat and mince pies, pork pies, tiramisu log, gingerbread men and more. Tis the season to gain 5 kilos.

Cheesecake au dog fur, anyone?

Grrrr. Sunday I made a beautiful rasberry cheesecake, with mixed red fruits on top. The no-bake recipe that I use requires a few hours in the freezer to set, then remove from freezer about an hour before eating.  The Daughter was too impatient to wait for the damn thing to defrost, so when she cut into it in its semi-rock-hard state, it cracked down the middle and half of it ricocheted off onto the floor. Being a teenager, she is a great believer in the '5 second rule'.  Having three dogs and knowing exactly when that floor had last been mopped, I ruled against. Arrrrrgh! Hulk angry!

I was pretty much incandescent and lost all appetite for cheesecake (THAT's how upset I was).  Not my most mature moment, but I put my heart and soul into my food and to see it trashed like that..... well you might as well kick me in the fork and spit in my face.

Other than that, I have been tinkering around with different breads, such as cheesy baps (pwahahahah) and garlic dough balls (balls!), partly because I am enjoying improving my bread-making, partly because having the oven on warms up the kitchen a treat at this time of year. Perhaps I'll post some recipes/tips for breads later this week, but for now it's lunchtime. Hulk hungry. Bon appetit.

Just Add Season

Well the posts are thin on the ground again, but expect things to soon explode in a flurry of seasonal preparations.  Although we thoroughly embrace the culture of our adopted country, sentimentality (and a love of food everywhere) means that there are many British traditions that we include in our Christmas. For a bunch of atheists we certainly put a lot of effort into celebrating somebody else's festival, although I have been known to use some pretty obscure reasons to pop a cork. Today is St Brice's day. True story.

Anyway, brace yourselves, Internet, for my tried-and-tested mincemeat recipe and much, much more.  I am also toying with the an article on the cultural differences between French and British celebrations, if anyone is interested (and even if they're not).

Here's to you, St Brice: here's mud in your saintly eye!

Chocolate Pinwheels

• 240g flour


• 120g butter


• 120g sugar


• 4 tsps cocoa


• 1 medium egg

Method:

• Cream together the butter and sugar


• Beat in the egg


• Sieve in the flour


• Work into a dough, then divide into two portions


• 


• Knead the cocoa into one of these portions


• Roll each piece of dough out into even rectangles, about 1/2cm thick


• Place the chocolate rectangle on top of the plain


• Roll up together, length-wise for small biscuits, width-wise for fewer, larger biscuits


• 


• Cut into 1/2cm slices and placed on a lined baking tray


• Medium oven for about 10 minutes


• 

Chocolate Butter Biscuits

• 250g flour


• 95g butter


• 125g sugar


• 1 tsp baking powder


• 1 sachet, or around 10g vanilla sugar


• Milk


• Nutella

[caption id="attachment_947" align="alignleft" width="500"] Place a spoonful of Nutella in the centre[/caption]

• Rub together flour and butter as if for a crumble


• Add other dry ingredients and mix thoroughly


• Drizzle in a little milk and work into a moist dough


• Divide into approximately 12 even pieces


• Flatten the pieces into circles


• Place a spoonful of Nutella on each


• Carefully wrap the Nutella in the biscuit dough, trying not to leave any 'leaks'


• Place on a lined tin and bake for 15-20 mins at 180.

[caption id="attachment_951" align="alignleft" width="500"] Carefully wrap the Nutella in the biscuit dough

Chocolate Butter Biscuits[/caption]

 

Keeping Him Satisfied The Old-Fashioned Way

[caption id="attachment_944" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Chocolate Butter Biscuits[/caption]

A full biscuit tin can go a long way towards harmony in the home.  Especially when there is chocolate involved.

The Girl was feeling guilty about getting Her Boyfriend in trouble with his parents by leaving his swimming bag on the bus, but he refused to let her pay for the replacements.  Knowing his sweet tooth, and particular love of chocolate, I came up with the idea of a tin full of sugary treats by way of a mea culpa.  In addition to the usual mini muffins etc, I went with some of my Chocolate Butter Biscuits (crumbly, buttery outside with Nutella filling) and some good old-fashioned Chocolate Pinwheels from a recipe in a Good Housekeeping cook book my late ex-mother-in-law gave me twentysomething years ago.

First published in 1953, some of the recipes sound horrendous (kidney and mushroon omelette, anyone?) but others more than withstand the test of time.  I would like to think that the people at Good Housekeeping all those years ago would be pleased to hear that their recipes are still appreciated in 2012, in this case by a teenage boy in the South of France who has no swimshorts but a very full stomach.