Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake!

Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cake


When I was very little (under six), my birthday cake was always the same thing—at least as far as I remember, which probably means it was made at least a few years in a row around the time I turned four and five years old*—a layer cake (alternate layers of chocolate and Party Rainbow Chip yellow cake) with Betty Crocker Rainbow chip frosting.  Which I loved.  However, the cake I had most growing up (between the ages of 6 and 19) was the Baskin and Robins Ice Cream Cake, with Chocolate Cake and Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream.  Now, let me tell you, I LOVED this cake.  The only reason that I stopped having this cake for my birthday's was because there wasn't a Baskin and Robbins in a convenient location in either New York City (where I went to university) or in Lowell, MA where my mother had moved.   And let me tell you, I missed that cake (there was a particularly bad incident of a Carvel ice cream cake, which I thought was rather disgusting).  Sure, there were times, especially after I met my wonderful husband, and he started buying the cakes, when there were still some great cakes.  I am particularly thinking of the year I turned 25, when Alex bought me a fantastic hedge hog chocolate cake:

Although it was hard to cut into the cake the first night (I looked away, Alex did the deed), but I must say, the cake—amazingly—tasted better and better the older it got!

Anyway, I was very excited when in January 2011 (or perhaps it was late 2010), I saw that a Baskin and Robins had opened on Great Russell Street (right across from the British Museum).  My excitement grew when we discovered in late January 2011 that they could indeed make me an ice cream birthday cake with a chocolate cake base and mint chocolate chip ice cream!  So we ordered the cake and agreed to pick it up on Sunday after church (my birthday being on a Monday that year).  There was a brief hiccup when the store wasn't open when we went to pick up the cake and had to run back over there after they called us a few hours before closing. But in the end it all worked out.  And it was (very, very, very nearly) just as good as I remembered it.  But...it was much, much, much, much, much, MUCH more expensive than it had been when I had last purchased one in 2002 in New York.  And also, the whole time I was eating it I was thinking—apart from yum, yum, yum—but, I could make this myself, surely.  Indeed, when a wonderful lady gave us an ice cream maker for our wedding, my plans became surer.  For my birthday this year I would make my own ice cream cake.  And I did. Here's how.

Cake Base


For the cake base I used Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake recipe.  Of course, you could use any chocolate cake recipe that you want to use, any particular favourite cake recipe at all really (no need to go with chocolate, if you love a different flavour of cake)!  However, I can really recommend this particular cake recipe as it is very delicious (even when it is coming out of the freezer, which tends to take a bit of flavour away from any cake).  Nigella tells you how to do it all just wonderfully, so the only thing I will add is that if you are making it for an ice cream cake is that although Nigella gives instructions for making it as a sandwich cake using two tins, I made it in one large spring form pan.

Here's how it looked when it came out of the oven:

So, after the cake has come out of the oven, you need to let it cool down completely to room temperature.  Then, you get on with making the ice cream.

I have to say, this may be one of those recipes that is best if you have an ice cream maker.  I know you can make ice cream without one by churning the ice cream by hand every hour or so as it is freezing, but frankly, that is just too much of a complicated faff for me.  The other option is to go with a no churn ice cream, which usually is made by whipping double cream (and the flavourings) to very soft peaks (do not over beat) and freezing.

Anyway, we do now have an ice cream maker, so I didn't have to worry about that (Thank you, thank you, thank you Lauren!).  My only consideration was to go with the full "proper" ice cream which, which is made by first making custard and then adding double cream, chilling and putting in an ice cream maker, or whether I would make "cheat" ice cream, which I recently discovered, which is made by dissolving sugar in double cream and pouring it then straight into the ice cream maker.  My only concern was that I although nine times out of ten I can make delicious custard, I didn't want my birthday ice cream to be that 10th time.  So I bought extra cream and decided to try the "proper" kind, but if it went wrong to just go the easy way with the extra cream.

My decision was swayed as well because I found a fantastic "proper" ice cream recipe for mint chocolate chip...Isaac Mizrahi's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream.   To me that just sound's fantastic!  What better way than to make you feel indulgent on your birthday than by having your favourite flavour of ice cream in a recipe by a wonderful fashion designer.  One who actually seems like a nice guy (with the only other "nice" male fashion designer in the public eye that I can even think of being Tom Ford).  So, I went with Isaac Mizrahi's Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream recipe.  And it was delicious, lovely, even as a custard before I put in the double cream, and even before it was made in to ice cream (I could have eaten it all up like soup, just as it was).  Just for information, the "cheat" recipe that I was going to use (and have used other times) is this Easy Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Recipe, which I still highly recommend as a lovely way to have home made ice cream on a Friday night after work as with an ice cream maker you can put it on when you come in, let the machine do its work while you get dinner, put it in the freezer before you sit down to eat and it will be ready when you are for dessert.

Anyway, here is the ice cream in the machine:

Of course, normally when making ice cream with our ice cream maker we would put it in the freezer to harden up a little bit more, but when making an ice cream cake you need to use the ice cream straight from the machine (or if this isn't possible/convenient, you need to let the freezer hardened ice cream melt a bit before adding it to the cake).

So, I took the ice cream from the machine and spooned it onto the top of the chocolate cake up to the brim of the spring form pan.  As shown here:

Then I covered the whole thing first in a couple of layers of cling film and then in a couple of layers of tin foil and popped it back into the deep freeze.

The next day once it had had a chance to get good and hard, I got on with making the frosting.  Now, I thought long and hard about frosting, and after reading widely on the subject and thinking about it, I decided that the only way to go was with a whipped cream icing.  You could use buttercream, but it will be a bit odd, so be warned.  Also, I love whipped cream, and my husband is only okay with it in certain dishes, never on its own, but once it is made into a frosting and frozen it is really more ice cream than whipped cream, even my husband agrees with that!

In my search for the frosting recipe, I turned to the good old American stalwart of The Joy of Baking for this frosting recipe, which was wonderful, so I'm glad I did!

Here is a picture of how it looked being made in our KitchenAide Mixer:

Then I took the cake out of the deep freeze, unwrapped it and frosted it:

Then I re-wrapped it in cling film and aluminium foil and put it back into the freezer to freeze the frosting.

Then I had a fantastic birthday!

First, my husband surprised me by getting up in the middle of the night to blow up balloons for me to wake up to:

Then, after work, he took me out for a wonderful romantic dinner at "our restaurant", the fantastic Gourmet Pizza Company in Gabriel's Wharf on the South Bank, and we came home and had ice cream cake.

And this makes a lot of cake (thank goodness!) and so we enjoyed it again and again (it last very well in the freezer).

On the Friday after my birthday we even had it with my favourite meal from when I was six (only this time I made it from scratch, just like the cake, rather than getting it from a restaurant): Pepperoni and Pineapple Pizza.  Which we ate while watching 'From Here to Eternity' (GREAT film) and drinking "Crockford Mai Tai's" in bug cocktail glasses (another fantastic and fun wedding present)!

Next Time: A Valentine (or anytime) treat!


*update:  my mum has just informed me that when I turned one and two I had a Raggedy Ann decorated cake

Pasta with Mushroom Cream Sauce

Creamy Mushroom Pasta for a Monday Night

So, not this past week, but the week before, my husband gently expressed his slight weariness with having whole wheat pasta with pesto every Monday (and sometimes every Wednesday or Thursday as well) in the  few weeks after New Year, when I have been a bit busy.  But eating pasta on Monday nights while watching our Monday Night Serial (currently 'The Borgias') is one of our ingrained traditions.  So, I decided that a more exciting version of pasta was called for.  I thought I had come across a recipe for a creamy mushroom pasta on BBC Good Food, but it turned out that it wasn't exactly what I wanted for last Monday (even though it looks good).  So, I blithely assumed that I would easily find a recipe for a creamy mushroom sauce for pasta. But after about 20 minutes of looking, I hadn't found one that really fit the bill, and I needed to get doing on cooking it.  So, I created my own, and here it is (you may have noticed I did a live twitter update as I was cooking it).

Creamy Mushroom Sauce for Pasta


Ingredients


1 onion, chopped
4 bulbs of garlic
1 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
250g (or one supermarket sized package of) chestnut mushrooms, sliced
dried herbs to taste (rosemary, basil, oregano, etc.)
1 chicken stock cube (or veggie stock cube if making vegetarian)
1/2 cup dry sherry
250ml double cream
1tsp salt
100g parmesan cheese, grated

Method


Sauté the onion, garlic and mushrooms in the olive oil and butter (I chopped and added the onion, then chopped and added the garlic to it and then chopped and added the mushrooms).

Boil a kettle and add 1 and a quarter cups of water to the stock cube.

Add the herbs, the stock and the sherry to the pan and bring to a boil.

Now add the cream, salt and parmesan cheese and reduce to a simmer.

You can cover, turn off the heat and let it keep warm while you get on making your pasta.  I made whole wheat fusilli with broccoli.

Enjoy!

Muffins and More Muffins!

That's right it's time for some Muffin Mania here on Doctor Kitten in the Kitchen, quite literally as the recipe featured in this post is my own variation on a muffin from a fantastic little book called, you guessed it, Muffin Mania (it is a fantastic book, which, although currently out of print as far as the big sellers (such as Amazon) are concerned, can be obtained through the website of the granddaughter of one of the two Canadian women who originally wrote the book.  If you have any doubts whatsoever about the widespread love and devotion, which really does reach cult status, you need only check the blog devoted to  paeans of praise for it.  Indeed, a quick internet search has led me to believe that an unusually high proportion of baking bloggers have a copy of this book (often photocopied from their mother's copy).

My own copy of my mother's much battered copy, filled with annotations and notes is a treasured possession.  And I have to say, our copy was liberally shared around a great number of friends of the family (who in turn, I believe, passed it on to everyone who tasted muffins made to the recipe in this book).  Indeed, so much is this the case that I figure a good high percentage you you reading this blog will have a photocopy of the book already (especially if you knew me when I lived in California).

The book has any number of fantastic recipes divided into categories (Breakfast, Coffee Break, Lunch, Brunch or Instead of Bread, Teatime and Dessert), with some of my favourites being Muffins that Taste Like Donuts and Chocolate Cheesecake, but there are delicious savoury ones as well.  At the start of the book is a plain basic muffin recipe, which makes a great springboard for throwing in anything else you want to throw in (like seasonal, frozen or dried fruit, or anything really).  This plain recipe is on the fan blog, here.  I find that this plain recipe (or most of the recipes in the book really) make 6 large 21st century style muffins, so double if you want to make 12.

However, as much as a love all the recipes in this book (with the possible exception of Sandy's Seafood Muffin—which to be fair, I'm not sure I have ever actually tried), some of my favourite muffin recipes are the variations that my family has developed based on the recipes in this book, for instance, the Blueberry Cornmeal Muffin (use the Cornmeal muffin recipe and add blueberries).

Anyway, I recently decided to play around with the Muffin Mania recipe for Peanut Butter Muffins (page 34 in the section entitled "Coffee Break").  Now, I always have peanut butter in the house.  Moreover, guided by the fact that peanut butter is easily obtainable in all the major and minor supermarkets in the UK, I had thought that most people must also have peanut butter in the house at all times.  Not so I believe.  Nor, so far as my British husband would have me believe is PB&J (Peanut Butter and Jelly, a.k.a Jam) a mainstay of the average British schoolchild's lunchbox, let alone the Peanut Butter variation sandwiches (such as Peanut Butter and Banana slices and especially not the wonderfully named "fluffernutter", which is Peanut Butter and Banana Marshmallow spread—indeed, no amount of descriptions of this Marshmallow Spread that I had eaten in my youth, or glimpses of the product in the pantry of Nigella's BBC kitchen could actually make my husband believe that such a thing really did exist until I showed him a jar of Marshmallow Fluff up close and personal in a candy store in Greenwich, although I would like to point out that it is available via Ocado as well).  However, I have not put Marshmallow Fluff in my muffins yet.  Thus far, my main aim has been to make my husband truly accustomed to PB&J as a culinary concept.  So, I added jam to my Peanut Butter muffins. Now, the  batch that I made back in June (see photo below), were your basic peanut butter muffins with homemade raspberry jam just spread on the muffins as they came out of the oven (as the recipe suggests as a variation).

However, having made muffins with "surprise" centres before (particularly the Chocolate Cheesecake) muffins from Muffin Mania) and having just had some of my cousin-in-law's Nutella muffins during the Christmas festivities, I decided to make these truly PB&J muffins, which required rejigging the recipe a little.  So here it is:

PB&J Muffins adapted from the Peanut Butter Muffins of Muffin Mania

170g Plain (All Purpose) flour (which is about 3.5 cups)
60g of golden caster (or granulated) sugar (about 2 cups)
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
50g melted butter
2 cups of milk
4 eggs, beaten
100g peanut butter (or to taste)
50g jam, plus a tbsp more more the topping

Large 12- Muffin tin
Muffin cups or baking paper cut into large squares


Pre-heat the oven to 180C/360F.

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl (or a food processor), combine and then add the peanut butter.

Either stir/cut in the peanut butter, or if using a food processor, just blend.

Combine the melted butter, the milk and the eggs.

Add the wet mixture to the dry, stir (just) to combine, but don't over mix.  The mixture may be quite wet at this point.

For the baking tin, if you are using muffin papers, place these in the tin.  If you have run out of muffin papers or forgot to buy some, cut up large squares of baking paper.

Put one large spoonful of muffin batter into each muffin compartment (if using baking paper, try using a one cup measuring cup to first press down the paper, then take the cup out and quickly and carefully put batter in the compartment.  The batter should hold the baking paper in place).

Add a small spoonful of jam (I used homemade raspberry jam, but any flavour of home made or store-bought should do) into each muffin compartment.

Cover each muffin with an additional large spoonful of batter (covering the jam), or as much batter as you have left.

Cook the muffins in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Take the muffins out of the oven.

Place a couple of TBSP of jam in a cup and microwave it for about 30 seconds to a minute, or until it is all gooey.

Spread the jam over the top of the still warm muffins.

Enjoy (they should keep on the counter for about 5 days to a week, if covered or in a sealed container, or for a few months in the freezer).  For reheating either a few days old or frozen muffins, place a damp paper towel/piece of kitchen roll under the muffin and microwave for 30 seconds/1 minute.

Bannannannanna Bread (i.e. Banana Bread)

To those of you who get the obscure literary reference* in the title of this blog post, well done!  But in all seriousness, I have to admit that I still need to sing out the old "Yell Leader" (yes we had yell leaders and a dance squad rather than the traditional combined cheerleading squad at my high school) chant "B-A-N-A-N-A-S Go Bananas, go, go bananas!" in order to spell the name of the fruit (and then remember to drop the letter "s", yes, I really am that pathetic with spelling—this week's triumph is finally learning how to spell restaurant instead of just randomly typing something, usually "restaraunt", and letting spell checker fix it...and yes before spell checker I would just let my handwriting go a bit to hide the misspelling).

Anyway, just like Nanny Ogg, I spent most of my honeymoon drinking variations on a theme of banana and milk (in the daytime) and banana and rum (in the evening and night time).  I didn't one tire of this from the day we arrived till the day we left, but once we were back I needed a bit of a break (as my husband would say, we had had several years worth of potassium—indeed, my husband did actually question, in all seriousness, whether we would have any negative side effects from so much potassium during our first week there).  However, this only lasted a few weeks and by the end of last week I was well ready for another banana fix.  However, we weren't in hot and sunny St Lucia, we were in cold and Dreach, as the Scots (or at least Andrew Marr) would say and I didn't really fancy a "La Belle Connection" (banana and rum),  a "Rendezvous Kiss" (banana, coconut and rum) or even a "Sea Breeze" (banana, rum, coconut and rum coffee liqueur) or (my favourite) "Kiss Kiss" (banana, rum, more rum, coconut rum and rum coffee liqueur).

So, I decided to make banana bread instead.  So I purchased my bananas and left them on the window sill to ripen (or even over ripen, although the cold grey view didn't allow this even after five days of yellow, not green, bananas).  But luckily, they were ripe enough to allow me to make banana bread last night.  Now this recipe really is very easy to make.  Monday nights in our house are about two things (1) watching a "classic serial", (2) eating pasta.  The pasta bit being the quickest and easiest thing we can think of to make (and one which can be made by either myself or my husband).  Making elaborate meals is something generally frowned upon on Monday night.  This was especially true last night as we were about to watch the final hour or so of The Thornbirds (we start on Bleak House next Monday), and it was already getting a bit late by the time my husband came home.  I had meant to make it earlier, but I had been writing the previous blog posting, so...Anyway, my husband was just saying that he was presently going to be getting out of the bath and planning to start on the pasta, when I announced I was going to make banana bread.  My husband was highly suspicious that it would really be quick, but in the end, the bread was in the oven before he was out of the bath and in his pyjamas (in our house, a keen measure of the quickness of a recipe).  Now, just a note of caution, although this recipe is ultra quick to make, it does take about an hour to bake, so don't try to make it before you leave the house (unless someone else will be at home, that is).  Anyway, here is my favourite version of banana bread (and I've tried a bunch), inspired by the recipe for it in the Avoca Cafe Cookbook 1.

Banana Bread


Ingredients


225g Plain (all purpose) flour (n.b. although in a pinch, self-raising will do)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoon all spice, nutmeg or cinnamon (depending on the type of nuts you are using, your personal choice and the time of year—in the spring and summer I use walnuts and cinnamon, in the autumn I use any type of nut and nutmeg and in the winter I use pecans and all spice)
110g caster sugar (or use light brown sugar if you prefer)
1 egg, beaten
75g butter, melted (I find that melting butter in a mug for 1 minute on 70% power works for my microwave.  Always keep an eye on butter in the microwave, otherwise it is liable to boil and end up all over the inside of your microwave—but hey, that is a powerful incentive clean your microwave)
more butter for greasing your tin
1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence
100g nuts (no need to chop them up, unless they are very large)
7-8 ripe bananas
2 tablespoons light brown sugar (optional)

1 large bowl, 1 medium bowl, 1 potato masher (or fork) and 1 loaf tin (or cake tin if you don't have a loaf tin)


Directions


Pre-heat your oven to 180 C/ 350 F.  Get out your tin and grease it and/or line it with baking paper.


Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl (except the nuts) and stir to combine.

Peel the bananas and place them in a medium bowl (if they are not "over ripe" it may help if you chop the bananas up into bite size pieces before adding them to the bowl).  Then mash the bananas up so you have a big "mush" (technical term) of banana.

Add the beaten egg to the dry mix.  Add the melted butter to the dry mix.  Stir, briefly, to combine.  There will be lumps, leave them be.

Add the banana mush to the big bowl of everything else.  Add the nuts to the big bowl as well.  Stir to combine.  Again, there will be lumps.  That's fine.  Just combine till everything is wet (no dry mix left) and then stop.

Pour into a loaf tin (buttered and/or lined with baking paper).  If you are using the optional light brown sugar, sprinkle it over the top of the mix (this will create a sweet top to the finished loaf).  Place in oven.  Bake for an hour.

Yum!

Loaf

Slice

*See Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

Nice Day for a White Wedding...and Soup! (Honeyed Parsnip Soup)

Hello,

So I haven't blogged recently.  Well, that's because I was rather busy getting married (see photo!), going on honeymoon, starting new jobs and getting over various cold weather illnesses (tonsillitis the week after honeymoon anyone?).  I had the choice to do all of that and cook or do all of that and blog about it.  I chose to do the cooking, mainly because you can't eat a blog post (no matter how delicious the photos are). Now I'm a bit more settled in my new jobs, I've got Christmas (presents) sorted and the only wedding related admin left over are the thank you cards to write (which are doubling up as Christmas cards, just as last years Christmas cards doubled up as Save-the-Date magnets) and all the paperwork that goes along with changing your name on two sides of the Atlantic.

But I have been keeping up with the cooking (although admittedly for the first couple of weeks after my honeymoon that mainly translated to boiling whole wheat pasta and mixing in frozen peas and different flavours of pesto), so what better recipe to start back up on the blog with but this luscious soup, which has a nice 'winter white' colour to it and has honey (as in honeymoon) as a main ingredient!  Last Tuesday, however, I was all in a tizzy as to what to make.  I was out of work early enough to cook and I could sense that my *husband* (still so exciting to use that word) was becoming a bit tired of whole wheat past and pesto (even with three new pesto flavours in the 'fridge).  So, what to cook, what to cook.  The task of deciding was additionally complicated by the fact that because it was cold I wanted something comforting and warm, but because it was only a few weeks after our honeymoon at an all inclusive Caribbean resort I wanted something healthy and not too heavy (by the by the aforementioned whole wheat pasta is not only quick and cheap it is also healthy and is partially responsible for the fact that after not restraining myself at all on honeymoon, I am back to my wedding day vital statistics—also partially responsible would be the dreadful case of tonsillitis which made it nearly impossible to swallow anything for a week after returning, followed by a lot of running around trying to make up on everything that hadn't been done for three weeks).  Anyway, wandering around Morrison's I decided that I quite fancied having some fruity Irish soda bread and some parsnip soup.  I was pretty sure I had a recipe, although I had never tried it before, for honeyed parsnip soup at home (and after eight years of making soup from the recipe book I thought it was from I figured I could make a pretty good guess at the rest of the ingredients).  I duly loaded up the basket with parsnips, buttermilk and cranberries for the soda bread, cherries for the scones (but that is for another blog), along with Jim Henson's The Christmas Toy—A great movie that used to show on the Disney Channel back in the late '80s and early '90s and which for a good twenty years no one else on Earth seems to have remembered except for myself (really, even back when Toy Story 1 came out—which I didn't want to see as I thought the premise had already been done better with muppet-like live action toys—no one seemed to remember it), only for me to come eye-to-eye with it on the shelf near the self check-out machines in Morrison's (n.b. DVD is not actually required for the recipe, but it is still a great Christmas programme).

Anyway, when I got home I discovered that I did not have a recipe for honeyed parsnip soup.  It was not in the Avoca cookbook I had thought it in, nor in the Cornucopia cookbook, or even in the New Covent Garden Soup for all seasons book, so I made the recipe up.  And luckily it turned out yummy.

Honeyed Parsnip Soup


Ingredients 


500g parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
1 large potato or two small ones (waxy or floury will do, but I prefer a baking potato), chopped *not* peeled
1 onion, peeled and chopped
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon of olive oil for roasting
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil for sweating the potato
1 pint milk
1/2 of a large pot of natural flavoured yoghurt
2 chicken (or veggie) stock cubes
salt and pepper to taste
cinnamon to taste
lots of honey

medium size roasting tray
large soup pot
hand-blender or heatproof stand blender

Directions

Pre heat your oven to 180 C/ 355 F, meanwhile peel and roughly chop your parsnips.

Place the peeled and chopped parsnips in a roasting tray along with the honey, salt, pepper and cinnamon.  Mix well to combine and place in your pre-heated oven.

While the parsnips are roasting, peel and roughly chop your onion and garlic.  When the parsnips have been in the oven for about 15 minutes, add the onion and garlic to the roasting pan, making sure to coat them in the honey-oily-parsnipy juices.  Return tray to oven and continue to roast for another 15 minutes.

Roughly chop your potato and place in a large soup pot along with the butter or olive oil, turning the potato pieces over to cover with the fat (note: if you are out of oil/butter/benecol, you can, at a pinch, sweat the potato in a little bit of water).  Turn on the hob on to a low heat and sweat the potato for 10 minutes (making sure that the potato does not stick to the pan too much and burn—keep the heat ultra low and stir from time to time).

By this time your parsnip onion garlic mix should be ready to come out of the oven.  Pop the kettle on and take the tray out of the oven.  Add its contents, along with all the juices in the roasting tray, to the potato in the pot.  Give everything a good stir.  Crumble the stock cubes over the veggies in the pot and add 2 pints of boiling water to the pot as well.  Now bring to a boil, then cover, reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Take the pot off the heat (or at least turn the heat down) and blend the soup.  If you are using a hand held blender, you can go ahead and blend pretty much straight away; however, if you are using a standard jug type blender, it might be best to let the soup cool for a few minutes before putting it into the jug and blending (unless you know your blender won't react badly—in my experience, blenders are temperamental little prima donnas, well worth providing break down cover for and given to disliking very hot liquids being blended in them, but you know your blender best).  When you have blended your soup, go ahead and add the pint of milk, stir that in, then add the yoghurt and stir that in as well.  Then add a good large dollop more of honey and gently reheat, stirring as you do so.

And there you have it, and hopefully you'll find it yummy.

I served this with a delicious version of Irish soda bread, inspired by the Avoca cafe recipe for Irish Fruit Soda.

Cranberry Irish Soda Bread

Ingredients


450g self-rising flour (actually, plain flour, also known as all purpose flour, will also work with this recipe, but might take slightly longer to bake)
1 teaspoon of bicarb of soda (baking soda)
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
170g dried cranberries
568ml buttermilk (note: buttermilk in the UK is sold in 284ml containers), you can also use 300ml natural/plain yoghurt and 300ml milk

20cm springform cake tin (or a loaf tin, although this will add to the baking time), greased, but unlined is ok.


Directions


Pre-heat your oven to 200 C/ 390 F.

Place all the dry ingredients in a big bowl, stir to combine.  Add the buttermilk (or yoghurt and milk) to the bowl, stir to combine (it will remain lumpy, thats ok).  The mix should be *very wet*, but not as liquid as, say soup or melted ice cream, more like thin-ish porridge.  Pour into in the prepared tin, amking sure to cover the bottom evenly, and place in the oven.

Cook at 200 C/ 390 F for 20 minutes, then turn oven down to 180 C/ 355 F and cook for an additional 20-25 minutes (note: your cooking times may be just slightly longer at 180 C/ 355 F if you are using plain ("all purpose") flour and rather longer if using a standard loaf tin.).  When the cooking time is up, take the loaf out and tap it, if it sounds hollow, its done, if it doesn't sound hollow, put it back in the oven and cook it until it sounds hollow (note: if you are unsure about how bread will sound if it isn't ready—in order to be able to tell if it does sound hollow—try taking it out when you turn down the heat after 20 minutes and tap the bread then—that's what it will sound like when it isn't done, i.e. "not the hollow sound").

That's it!

Serve the soup and the bread with some cheese: a strong cheddar works well, but so does brie and even Wensleydale.  we ate it in front of a lovely warm the fire while watching a dvd, but really the choice is up to you.  If serving with wine/drinks, a nice sweetish cider (especially if mulled) or a sweet German white go nicely.


In the end, last Tuesday I felt something of the domestic goddess, as I did the shopping, made the soup, the bread and some cherry scones (for our breakfast the rest of the week), did a pile of ironing (saved up since before the wedding), which was, I kid you not, as tall as I am, did a couple of loads of laundry, tidied the kitchen and all of this by the time my husband was home from work, bathed and ready for dinner.  I got to pick what we watched while eating dinner that night; I didn't have to do the dishes either (normally my job Monday–Thursday).

By the by, my husband also writes a blog, mostly on travel, which is called The Ginger Wanderer, and is very amusing!

A taste of September with Raspberry & Apple Crumble Squares

I'm really enjoying autumn (a.k.a. fall) at the moment.  I think there are several reasons for this as well.  For one thing, I have just always loved this season.  Even though growing up I loved the California summers, there was always something magical about the fall—well, October.  However, now that I've moved to London, I enjoy the whole season.  See, even in northern California where I grew up (South Bay Area/Silicon Valley) September was still a really very warm month.  Not that I minded too much, but I was either back in a wool school uniform or excited to wear my new autumn clothing, with the result that most of my memories of September are of being too warm and sweaty. Then I moved to New York City, where it is also often too warm in September—and not evening enjoying the hot, humid, sticky East Coast summers, I was in no way impressed with this weather carrying on into September.  But then I moved to London and discovered how lovely September could be.  The first year I was here (2006), September was still hot and gorgeous, but completely minus the humidity of the East Coast from whence I had just come.  In the following years it ha not really been warm (although this month, while not warm per say, it has been warmer than August was), but it has tended to be less rainy than the summer months.

Just to make me even more excited about this September, I feel as if it is the first one I've experienced for two years.  You see, this time last year I was in Sydney, Australia, having spent the earlier part of the month (and the tail end of August) in New Zealand.  Now, it was an absolutely BRILLIANT holiday, but as it was in the antipodes, it was early Spring, not early Autumn, and it felt more like March than September to me.  Moreover, having left in August and arriving back just before October, I realised just how important the transitional month of September is.  It's the time when you can still feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, but catch a whiff of falling leaves.  Likewise, it is the time when you can blend the flavours of Summer with those of Autumn; indeed, it's is a wonderful time of fusion in cooking.  And it also happens to be the month that I first started cooking for Alex and myself as a couple on nightly basis way back in 2007 (even though we hadn't quite moved in together yet, we had moved a 10 minute walk away from each other, so we ate together most evenings), so it will always be special for me in that respect (memories of making my first roast chicken, etc.).  As such, I am finding myself drawn to September recipes old and new.  So here is one of the new ones (and don't worry, I'm still loving "tray bakes").

Raspberry & Apple Crumble Squares


I found this recipe for Raspberry & Apple Crumble Squares as a suggested recipe of the day on BBC Good Food about a week ago and decided it would be this week's breakfast bake.  It is a perfect example about I am talking about.  Raspberries still feel like a lovely summer taste, after all the first British raspberries came into season in late July, but apples have such a lovely autumn taste association.  After several months of eating pears, peaches and plums for our afternoon snack, the new season of British apples are again in the stores.  Not only does this (like the peach melba squares) have an autumnal falling leaves colour scheme, it really does taste like September.

This really isn't very difficult to make "as is", but I made a few adjustments to make it even simpler to make on a weeknight.  Indeed, had it not been easy to make, I would not have made it last night.  We had gone home at a reasonable hour, with ready made asparagus ravioli and artichoke sauce, and the intention was to start watching the first hour of The Thornbirds (which we had both read about a year ago) and have an early night; we had had our respective hen (a.k.a bachelorette) and stag (a.k.a. bachelor) parties over the weekend (with Alex's having been in Dublin and requiring him to be up and leave the flat at 5:20 on Saturday and not return till 23:00 Sunday night—so he was really in need of a good night's rest).  However, when he said he was about to run his bath I said I was just printing off a recipe to make that night for the weeks breakfast.  I told him it would only take about 20 minutes, but he was not convinced.  Anyway, I was half done by the time he actually got into the bath and by the time he got out the Squares had been in the oven for fifteen minutes and dinner was just about done (and the dishes were washed and drying in the drainer by then as well).

So, how did I make this already simple recipe simpler?  Well, for a start I didn't bother to peel the apple.  Why bother?  I like cooked apple peel and it's not as if this is a pie!  I also made things simpler by not watching over the diced apple in a bit of water too much as it simmered on the stovetop.  I let it simmer for the whole time I made the crumble topping.  Which was five minutes (maybe seven at the outside), which is what the recipe calls for.  However, by that time half of the apple slices had turned to apple sauce instead of just being slightly softened.  But I didn't worry about it!  I'll repeat that because it is important:  I didn't worry about it!  When things go slightly wrong, don't sweat it.  Anyway, I've cooked enough in the States with unsweetened Apple Sauce to know how brilliant it is in baking.  Indeed, you can always substitute unsweetened apple sauce for oil (but not butter or marg) in muffins and cakes.  It's a lot healthier and very tasty (although if you are in the UK and don't have access to cheap, storebought unsweetened apple sauce and have to make your own, it can be a bit of a faff).  I have to say I also misread the recipe (even though  I read this bit twice) and but the crumble topping on before sprinkling on the raspberries, but I think I prefer it this way (I just push the raspberries into the top with my fingers).  Oooh, and I used 340g of raspberries, not 200g...what can I say, British raspberries are still in season and they were on special offer at the store and I think most recipes are improved by doubling the fruit in them.  Also, the recipe calls for golden caster sugar, but you could just as easily use white caster sugar or even (light or dark) brown sugar.

I must say, they taste great as well, and are surprisingly different tasting from the Peach Melba Squares and other tray bakes that I've made recently.  I think it's partly the apple (sauce), but they are much denser and moister than the others, more like an afternoon tea cake.  Indeed, these would make a very good cake to serve for afternoon tea, althoug I would add some caramel or toffee sauce swirled through the dough and drizzled (once it has come out of the oven) over the top.  You could even serve it after dinner with some custard, double cream or ice cream.  So without further ado, here is the finished product:

p.s. I have something else fun to show you as well.  A few months back my iphone/ipod headphones died (no hearing in one ear), so I've been using Alex's.  Then while I was sick earlier in the month, Alex's developed the same problem (plus the audio was starting to fade in the remaining ear).  So I ordered two news pairs off Amazon (using my Amazon iphone app in bed under the covers, so quick!).  Unfortunately, they have still not arrived (merchant says give just a few more days).  I'll give till a week past it's arrival guideline (last Thursday), then claim. But anyway, I needed no earphones that on the same day.  So I popped into Joy in the Brunswick Centre and these are what I got:

Yes, those are miniature, strawberry topped cupcakes on the sticky-out bit of the earbuds!

Peach Melba...for breakfast?

Yes indeed, Peach Melba for breakfast. Ok, I admit, this isn't the classic Peach Melba, the classic dessert of poached peaches, ice cream and a fresh raspberry sauce—actually, I'm not certain if I've ever had a classic Peach Melba, despite my love of opera, the Savoy Hotel, and desserts named after opera singers.  Rather, this is a "tray bake" variation that I found called Peach Melba Squares, the recipe of which may be found on BBC Good Food.

In fact, Tray Bakes are fast becoming one of my favourite breakfast food types, right up there with muffins.  They are just as easy to make, although they do tend to take longer to bake than muffins (you're looking at about an hour or more with a tray bake, as compared to fifteen to thirty minutes with muffins), although they take about the same amount of time to prepare (about fifteen minutes from walking into the kitchen to popping them in the oven).  Indeed, I suspect you could adapt most tray bake recipes to be muffins (although as many tray bakes are highly layered, this might be a bit fiddley to do for twelve muffins, where it isn't for one tray).  Moreover, they taste like cake, but are perfectly acceptable to eat for breakfast.  This Peach Melba tray bake is my second proper tray bake, following on from the Blackberry & Coconut Squares that I made the week before I went on holiday to the Peak District.  And I promise I will blog about those as well.  But at the moment I am nibbling on the Peach Melba Squares, so that's what I'm writing about them.

There is something wonderfully autumnal about these Peach Melba cake squares, which I can't quite work out.  Something about the combination of peaches and almonds and raspberries just seems to ooze September.  Perhaps it's the colours—the red of the melting raspberries and the different shades of gold from the almond cake and peach slices—which are so reminiscent of the turning colours of the leaves at this time of year.  Indeed, although as I write this now on the second day of September it has been a surprisingly warm 25 C today (that's 77 F), autumn came early in London this year (it was supposedly the coldest summer in eighteen years) and the leaves have already been falling off the trees around where I live.  But whatever the reason, this recipe just called out to me, reminding me that I had tentatively planned on making it for this week when I first discovered the recipe in early August.  And what a reward it has been!  I was simply transported when I first tasted this last night (I know, I know, I made it for breakfast, but I often forget to eat my breakfast until I get home from work; actually, on a school night that's when I prefer to eat "breakfast", as my afternoon/evening snack).  I'd come home from my first training session to be a volunteer tour guide on the (later) Medieval Europe eyeOpener tour at the British Museum, and was rather disappointed that Alex was still at work and not home with me.  However, having been a good girl and done all the ironing (while watching "The Simpsons"), I sat down, turned on "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" on the Discovery Home and Health Channel and began to munch on my Peach Melba Square.  Suddenly, things seemed much more pleasant.  Oh, and it went really well with Vita Coco's Coconut Water with Peach and Mango!  Tonight, have bought various  Spanish tapas dishes from M&S, so I don't have to cook (last night was ti-coloured pasta with sun dried tomato pesto, blue cheese, petit pois, parmesan and salad, yum!).  Instead, I worked on postdoc applications (just imputting all the formal data like who my references are), watching the tele and again eating this far too delicious tray bake.


Here's what mine looked liked like before we started to wolf it down:

The recipe is straightforward and easy to follow—and I did follow it (with the exception of leaving of the confectioner's (i.e. "powdered") sugar off the top (I forgot, but I really don't think it needs it).  And it is easy to make, I made mine while Alex took a quick shower.  I was listening to the Broadway recording of Jane Eyre (I'm very excited about the new film coming out over here a week from today), and I don't think I got through more than a few songs at most.  So do try these, and indeed, buy (buy in the USA or buy in the UK) the soundtrack for Jane Eyre as it is very good, and little known.  As for the tray to use, I used a "brownie tray", but I suspect most rectangular trays would work (indeed, whatever you would bake brownies in should do).  Also, I should add that I put the tray on the lower shelf of the oven and "borrowed" the top shelf of the oven to first cook garlic bread and then a frittata, and it still turned out magnificently (I can hardly take the credit for this being such a delightful recipe, so saying that isn't bragging), so it seems to be pretty foolproof.