Hugh's Pfeffernusse

This was my second attempt at Pfeffernusse this year. These are more like the ones I recognise in the shops completely covered in icing. 

Pfeffernusse (from The Guardian)
(Makes 40)

2 eggs
230g soft light brown sugar
2 tbsp marzipan, warmed to a soft paste
250g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
 4 egg whites
Around 500g icing sugar
1 tsp kirsch (optional)

Line two or three baking sheets with baking parchment. Beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy and pale, then beat in the marzipan. Sieve the flour, baking powder, mixed spice and pepper, over the beaten eggs and stir to combine. Turn out on to a lightly floured work surface, knead into a smooth dough, cover and refrigerate for an hour. Preheat the oven to 150C.

With lightly floured hands, roll the mixture into about 40 balls of around 3cm in diameter and place on the baking sheets, leaving space for them to spread. Bake for 16-18 mins, until starting to turn golden around the edges. Peel the balls off the baking parchment while they're still warm, and leave to cool completely on a wire rack. 

To make the icing, you will need around one part egg white to four parts icing sugar, so weigh your egg whites before you start. In a clean bowl, beat the whites until stiff. Sieve the icing sugar and gradually fold it into the beaten whites until smooth. Stir in the kirsch, if using.

Dip each biscuit into the icing until coated all over, then place on a wire rack to allow the excess to drip off. Put them back on the parchment-lined trays and return to the now cooling oven, with the door open, for five mins to help them harden. Make sure the icing is fully hard on top and bottom before you try to move them. The cookies will be very hard at first, though they will soften slightly with time. The flavours will improve if you keep them in an airtight tin for a week or so.

Pfeffernusse

So it's Boxing Day and we are all lovely and relaxed after a fab Christmas Day. I thought I'd share another Christmas biscuit recipe with you. These are lightly spicy, definitely less spicy than the lebkuchen yesterday but delicious nonetheless. Apparently anise seed or extract is impossible to get here and star anise is impossible to grind up without a spice grinder so I just left it out.

Pfeffernusse (adapted from Barefeet In The Kitchen)
(Makes 36)

113g butter, softened
150g light brown sugar
4 tbsp molasses
1 egg
280g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/8 tsp ground cloves
187g icing sugar

Cream together the butter, brown sugar and molasses in a large mixing bowl. Add the egg and beat to combine. Sieve in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and all of the spices and fold together with a metal spoon until well combined. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 180C. Scoop about 1 tbsp of cookie dough and roll into a ball with your hands. Place the dough balls on a parchment or silpat lined baking sheet. Bake for 13-14 minutes, until firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on the sheets for 3 mins.

Put the icing sugar in a ziploc bag. Drop a few cookies at a time into the powdered sugar and shake gently to coat. Transfer the coated cookies to a wire cooling rack and leave to cool completely.

Lebkuchen

Merry Christmas 2015!

Lebkuchen (from Good Food Magazine January 2006)
(Makes 30)

250g plain flour
85g ground almond
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch each ground cloves, grated nutmeg and black pepper
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp baking powder
200ml clear honey
85g butter
1 lemon, finely grated zest

For the icing
100g icing sugar
1 egg white, beaten

Tip the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Heat the honey and butter in a pan over a low heat until the butter melts, then pour into the flour mixture along with the lemon zest. Mix well until the dough is combined and fairly solid. Cover and leave to cool.

Heat oven to 180C. Using your hands, roll dough into about 30 balls, each about 3cm wide, then flatten each one slightly into a disk. put the biscuits onto baking trays lined with greaseproof paper Bake for 15 mins, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

To ice the biscuits, mix together the icing sugar, egg white and 1-2 tbsp water to form a smooth, runny icing. Dip the top of each biscuit in the icing and spread with a knife. Put back into cooling oven turned off for 5 mins with the door open. Remove from the oven and leave to cool and the icing to set.

Frangipane Mince Pies

Merry Christmas! I thought I'd post a nice Christmas recipe on Christmas Day! As I don't do the majority of the cooking at Christmas I thought I'd share some special mince pies My Mum made these yesterday to go alongside some ordinary ones. I'm not a huge fan of almonds or frangipane type cakes but these were really good. The almondy frangipane goes really well with the mincemeat. We are having a quiet Christmas this year, with goose coming at about 4pm! I hope everyone is having a lovely relaxing Christmas.

Frangipane Mince Pies (from Waitrose Kitchen December 2013)
(Makes about 24)

150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
25g caster sugar
75g unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes
75g soft cheese
50g ground almonds
1 egg yolk
410g mincemeat
50g flaked almonds
icing sugar for dusting

for the frangipane
150g ground almonds
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
25g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest 1/2 lemon

For the pastry, tip the flour, baking powder, sugar and a pinch of salt into a bowl, Add in the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the soft cheese, ground almonds, egg yolk and 1 tbsp cold water and stir to combine until the dough starts to come together. Bring the dough together into a ball and flatten into a disc. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Lightly flour a work surface. Halve the dough and roll out one piece to a circle about 0.2cm thick. using an 8cm fluted cutter, cut out as many circles as you can and line a shallow 12 hole bun tin gently pressing the dough into the holes. Repeat with the second half of the dough. You should have around 24 pastry cases in total. Chill the pastry cases for 20-30 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C. To make the frangipane, mix all the ingredients together with an electric whisk or wooden spoon.

Put 1 tsp of mincemeat into the bottom of each pastry case and top each one with 2 tsp frangipane, spreading it to cover the mincemeat. Scatter with flaked almonds and bake for about 20 mins, until puffed and golden brown.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tins for 4-5 mins, then transfer to wire rack until the pies are at room temperature. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

We have had some lovely food over the festive period. We started on Christmas Eve with Whole Roasted Carp with Capers. I made potatoes boulangere to go with it. The texture of the fish was far too soft for me though, I much prefer a meatier fish, but it was good to try it.



Opening the presents on Christmas Day was accompanied by lovely canapes made by my sister. We had vol au vents filled with olives and spicy peppers,

salmon and creme fraiche blinis and basil pesto and cheddar palmiers. They were delicious.

For our main course on Christmas Day we had Venision Wellington, Red Cabbage, Spaghetti Squash, Mash Potatoes, Roast Potatoes and Mangetout with Gravy.

Then for pudding my sister made Chocolate Truffle Cake from Nigel Slater's Real Fast Puddings. It was gorgeous but very rich so we only needed a small slice. We had some more for pudding on Boxing Day with raspberries and cream and the tartness of the raspberries cut nicely through the rich chocolate.

Christmas Meals

Christmas is over as my Father would say! We have had a lovely and quiet couple of days with lots of yummy food, a roaring fire and lots of lovely presents.

Our starter for Christmas Day was a Shellfish Selection from Waitrose. We had a last minute dash round Waitrose on Christmas Eve whilst waiting for my sister to have her hair cut. We went in for two items and came out with a basket full! The Shellfish Selection contained smoked salmon, prawns, crab and prawn mousse. It was really tasty.

This is how the table looked for Christmas dinner, although I have managed to cut out the top of the centerpiece, which is a very large champagne glass shaped glass container with lots of silver baubles in it, and a candle in the middle.

We had beef wellington for Christmas Dinner, with roast potatoes, roast carrots, mange tout, broccoli and red wine gravy. It was absolutely delicious. The beef wellington had a portabello mushroom, fillet steak and ardennes pate all wrapped in puff pastry.

On Boxing Day we had relatives over for lunch and had the more traditional roast goose for lunch. with stuffing, roast parsnips, roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage and gravy.

Christmas Canapes

As my Mother usually does the main cooking for Christmas, this year I decided to make Canapes for both Christmas Day, and today when we had relatives for lunch. They were used as a starter so that she didn't have to cook an extra course. The Canapes were inspired by the drinks party I went to a couple of weeks ago where they had fantastic Canapes. I chose quite simple recipes, and there were only six of us on Christmas Day and eight today, so it was a good number to practice on. I made some Hummus and some Muhummara, as made by Were rabbit, do check out her blog as the bento's are beautiful, for earlier in the day but these were eaten before I had a chance to take a photograph. For a first attempt these Canapes were a success.

I made Lemon Chilli Prawn Sticks and Lemon Marinated Tortelloni with Olives.



To go with these there were Mini Jacket Potatoes with Garlic and Herb Cream Cheese (from Delia Online), and Cumin scented Kofte with Minted Yoghurt Dip, from Canapes by Eric Treuille and Victoria Blashford-Snell.



Cumin Scented Kofte with Minted Yoghurt Dip (from Canapes by Eric Treuille and Victoria Blashford-Snell)
(Makes 20)

350g lean minced lamb
1 medium onion, chopped or grated
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tbsp finely chopped coriander
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

Dip
175ml Greek yoghurt
15g mint, finely chopped
15g parsley, finely chopped
juice of half a lemon
salt, cayenne pepper

Place lamb, onion, garlic, cumin, ground coriander, lemon, fresh coriander, salt, and cayenne pepper in a food processor and whizz until combined and slightly pasty.

Divide into 20 equal sized pieces, with wet hands roll into balls, cover and refrigerate for 30 mins
For the dip, combine yoghurt, mint, parsley and lemon. Add salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate for 30mins so that the flavours combine.

Grill the Kofte for roughly 5 mins on each side until browned, serve hot or cold with the dip.

Today's canapes were Smoked Salmon and Creme Fraiche Blinis, more of the Minted Yoghurt Dip, Avocado Lime Cream Dip, Herbed Pitta Crisps, Hummus and Prosciutto wrapped Asparagus. The avocado dip was delicious, I put in about a quarter of the amount of chilli, as we are not a big chilli family, and it had a delicious hint of heat at the end that was just right.