Winter Hot Drinks - Mulled Cider, Ribena, Hazelnut and Pistachio Coffee

This time of year a hot drink is lovely but tea and coffee doesn't always quite hit the mark. I've tried a couple of things recently that I want to share with you, which have varying levels of difficulty!

First of all I can definitely recommend a hot chocolate with marshmallows floating on top - whipped cream isn't even really necessary in my opinion. The best hot chocolates are the ones you make from chocolate flakes and heating a pan of milk - but at a push, cocoa powder and boiling water will do!

Next, I came across a new flavour of Ribena called Winter Spice. I'm not entirely sure what the spices are, since reading the ingredients, there's actually nothing I recognise as an actual spice. But it does contain 35% blackcurrant juice from concentrate, which is the main thing.

The suggestion on the bottle is to drink Ribena Winter Spice hot; I tried it both hot and cold. It is nice - a little reminiscent of mulled wine but sweeter and fruitier and particularly when drunk hot, does conjure up a bit of a festive atmosphere. Having said that, in my opinion it isn't anywhere near as nice as regular Ribena, which I really like!

 

Speaking of hot drinks, I was sent a packet of Schwartz mulled cider spice to review. They are like little tea bags - you get six in the box and they cost as little as £1 (current price in Tesco). The spice is a blend of allspice, orange peel, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg; you do need to buy cider to go with it then you put 1 litre of dry cider, 2 tbsp. brown sugar and 2 sachets of Schwartz mulled cider spice in a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes, and remove the sachets to serve.

 

I had to wait quite a long time until the cider was cool enough to drink but it was really rather nice; I preferred it to the hot Ribena and the spices brought out the apple flavour of the cider well. It would be a good drink to serve at parties, garnished with apple slices.

 

 

Finally I had a coffee in the canteen at work from their menu of special Christmas drinks that I liked so much I decided to make a version of at home (I don't even drink coffee normally!). I had a packet of Nescafe Coffee Choca Mocha in the cupboard - individual sachets - though of course you can use normal coffee.

I made up the coffee and added a shot of Monin hazelnut flavour coffee syrup, then whipped some cream which I piped on top with a star nozzle. I sprinkled the top with chopped pistachios and drizzled over a swirl of Choc Shot liquid chocolate. It was delicious!

Vegetarian Winter Crumble

Recently my parents came to stay for the first time since I moved house and we invited my boyfriend's mum over for dinner for the first time as well. She's vegetarian so I turned to a book called the Creative Vegetarian I picked up recently in a charity shop, in the hope that it would have some more interesting recipes. It's not illustrated so it's hard sometimes to imagine what a particular dish might be like, but this one caught my attention - it's basically a root vegetable pie, but instead of a pastry or mashed potato topping, it has crumble - like you'd have on an apple crumble, but savoury. It turned out to be really nice; the root vegetables are perfect for this time of year. It was filling and the cider sauce had a lovely flavour.

I did make one significant change from the recipe, as it called for a tin of black eyed beans which I just didn't think went with the English root vegetables, so I left it out. I also adjusted the quantities for the sauce as it didn't seem quite right. Finally, the last stage of the recipe after you have done the root veg and made the sauce - before you spoon over the topping - is to add some sliced tomatoes and I completely forgot! But I don't think the recipe needs them at all (you may disagree), so this is what I did.

To serve 4-6, you need:
90g butter or marg
120g flour
60g rolled oats
120g vegetarian cheese, grated
280ml cider
175ml vegetable stock
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 parsnips
2 carrots
1 head broccoli
1/2 head cauliflower
1 stick celery

Preheat the oven to 175C. Make the topping by rubbing the butter into the flour to make breadcrumbs then mix in the oats and the cheese. Put to one side.

Peel and slice the parsnips and carrots, place in a pan of slightly salted water and bring to the boil. Add the broccoli, cauliflower and celery and parboil until slightly softened but not fully cooked.

In another pan bring the cider and stock to simmering point and add the sugar. Mix the cornflour with a little water and stir into the pan; keep stirring the liquid as it simmers until it has thickened. Remove from the heat.

Spoon the vegetables into a large casserole dish and pour over the liquid. Spoon the crumble topping evenly over the top and place in the oven for half an hour until the topping is crisp.

I served this with potato wedges but really it's a one-pot meal in itself, which you can prepare in advance and finish off in the oven later.  It's great for a winter's day!

I'm sending this to the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment2Kitchen, as the chosen colour this month is white vegetables and parsnips and cauliflowers are white.

She is also hosting the Eat Your Greens challenge which asks for recipes using green veg which this also includes.

Pork in a Spiced Cider and Mustard Sauce

 I created this original recipe for the Co-operative Electrical's Winter Warmer competition. I thought about the flavours and textures that I like to eat on a cold winter's day and wanted as well to keep the recipe largely British, to showcase some of the Co-operative Food's best ingredients. Pork and apples is a great traditional combination so I decided to use cider rather than apple sauce and slow cook the pork in the oven in a casserole dish so it would be beautifully tender. I love the zingy taste of mustard and there are some great mustards available from the Co-op, so I decided to combine two of them from the Co-operative's Truly Irresistible range, the wholegrain and the dijon, in this recipe. However, I also wanted to add an original twist and a slightly unexpected flavour that people would enjoy and perhaps wonder what it was - so I used star anise. Mushrooms add to the texture and make the dish more substantial; what's more this is a relatively inexpensive recipe as you could substitute pork chops for the pork fillet.

To serve 4, you need:
about 750g pork fillet

salt

pepper

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, diced

100g button mushrooms, halved.

150ml Co-operative Tillington Hills premium dry cider

100ml pork or chicken stock made up from a stock cube

1 tbsp Co-operative Truly Irresistible wholegrain mustard

1 tbsp Co-operative Truly Irresistible dijon mustard

2 star anise

150ml plain yogurt (optional)

1 tsp cornflour

Preheat the oven to 180C. In a large frying pan, season the pork fillet and sear on both sides in a little oil then remove from the pan.

In the same pan, fry the chopped onion and button mushrooms until browned.

Make up the stock cube and mix with the cider in a large jug. Stir in both mustards. Place the pork fillet in a large casserole dish, add the onion and mushroom and star anise, and pour the liquid over the top.

Cover and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Five minutes before the end, remove from the oven, carefully pour off the liquid into a small pan and re-cover the pork to keep warm. It doesn't matter if a little of the onion and mushroom gets into the pan, but do remove the star anise.

Mix the cornflour with a little water and stir into the liquid in the pan. Heat, stirring, until the liquid has thickened and reduced.

If you want a thicker, creamier sauce, you can stir in a couple of spoonfuls of plain yogurt or creme fraiche. Slice the pork fillet on the diagonal and pour over the sauce to serve.

This goes really well with mashed potato and green veg like cabbage or broccoli and carrots. It's a lovely winter warmer!

I am sending this to Co-operative Electrical for their Winter Warmer competition; you can enter the competition here.

Apple Cider Crumble Traybake

 

 

 

Today my work colleagues and I spent a day volunteering at a children's centre as a team building day - we worked on the centre's garden, making raised beds, weeding, planting a sensory garden and treating wooden fences. I decided I would take along some cake for elevenses, as I knew we would want a break and would be hungry from all our hard work - and I was right, my colleagues were really pleased when we stopped for tea and I produced some cake!

 

I wanted to make something that would travel well and would be easy to eat so some kind of tray bake. One of my team doesn't eat chocolate so I found this recipe for a cider crumble slice on the Caked Crusader. It also seemed perfect for autumn with the apples and raisins.

 

I adapted the recipe slightly; this is what I did:

 

You need:

For the base:

20g butter

2 tbsp. golden syrup

150ml cider

250g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp ground ginger

50g brown sugar

75g raisins or sultanas

75g walnuts

1 egg

 

For the topping:

2 apples

40g butter

2 1/2 tbsp. caster sugar

60g plain flour

 

Preheat oven to 160C. Line a square tin with baking paper.

 

Place the butter and golden syrup for the cake base into a saucepan and melt over a gentle heat. Stir in the cider and remove from the heat.

 

In a bowl mix the flour, ginger, sugar, raisins and walnuts. Fold in the golden syrup and cider mixture then add the egg and stir until well combined

 



To make the topping, peel and chop the apple. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the sugar, flour and apple.

Spread the cake mixture into the base of your lined baking tin and spoon the apple mixture over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes and leave to cool.

 

Slice into squares and serve

 

I'm sending this to Feel Good Food, hosted by Victoria at A Kick at the Pantry Door, as the theme this month is apples.

 

 

 Tea Time Treats has as its theme this month flapjacks and tray bakes so I am sending this to Karen at Lavender and Lovage, who is hosting the challenge this month. The challenge is hosted in alternate months by Kate of What Kate Baked.

 

 

I am also sending this to Baking with Spirit as the ingredient chosen by Janine at Cake of the Week is cider. I do enjoy an occasional cider but think this is the first time I have used it in baking; I think it gives the cake a lovely flavour and of course works perfectly with the apples.

 

 

 

Finally the theme for this month's Four Seasons Food is 'sliding into autumn'; I think the flavours in this tray bake are very autumnal. The challenge is hosted by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg.

 

 

Food from Fiction - Delicatessen - French onion soup

This month's movie choice for Food 'n' Flix is Delicatessen, a 1991 French film. It wasn't at all what I was expecting - from the name I pictured something like a cross between Chocolat and Amelie. I couldn't have been further from the truth.

Delicatessen is set in an apartment building in some sort of post-apocalyptic France. You never know what has happened, or what year it is, but there is clearly a shortage of food and everyone is starving. Every so often, we learn, a new tenant arrives to live in the apartment building - but they don't last long. The butcher, Clapet, kills them and serves them up to the other residents.

It's more a black comedy than a horror film and you never see anything particularly gory. The film is also a love story between the newest tenant to move into the building (Louison) and Clapet's daughter, Julie. Julie wants to save Louison's life so ventures into the sewers to seek help from a group of 'rebels' who live there (which again makes me wonder about the nature of the apocalyptic-style event). The rebels are known as Troglodistes and are, crucially, all vegetarian.

The idea of Food 'n' Flix is to cook a dish inspired by the film. The plot of Delicatessen actually put me off cooking anything with meat so I wanted to think of something that the Troglodistes might eat. They forage off the land and live off pretty basic provisions - their reward for helping Julie is bags of corn. I decided that because the film is French, and onions are a cheap, basic staple that would have been probably one of the few things the Troglodistes can get hold of, I would make French onion soup.

I've made this a few times before and this recipe is a combination of ones I have used before and me just making it up as I went along.

This made one large serving or would serve two as a starter. Take four small onions, peel and slice into thin rings.

Melt some butter in a pan and sweat the onions over a low heat until really soft - you can do this for as long as you like but I would say at least 30 minutes, up to 1 hour.

Chop some thyme

For the stock I decided to use cider - I used about 300ml

When the onions are soft, pour the cider into the pan and add another 300ml of stock- either vegetable or beef.

Bring to the boil then simmer for about half an hour so the stock has really thickened. If it's too thick, add a little more water or cider. I also added a dash of balsamic vinegar towards the end.

I think generally French onion soup is served with pieces of crusty bread covered with melted cheese that sit on top of the soup, but I didn't think that would be true to the Food 'n' Flix idea as the Troglodistes wouldn't have cheese... and I wanted to keep this recipe simple.

This month the Food 'n' Flix challenge is hosted by Elizabeth at the Law Student's Cookbook.

I am also sending this to Credit Crunch Munch, the frugal food blog challenge created by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food 4 All. This month the guest host is Janice at Farmersgirl Kitchen. This recipe is cheap to make in terms of both ingredients and energy, as it's all made in one pot.

Christmas Stollen Bundt

Stollen is a fruit cake containing candied fruit, nuts and marzipan, usually dusted with icing sugar. It originally comes from Germany and is traditionally eaten at Christmas time, so I thought it would be a nice bake for several reasons. Firstly, it's a traditional festive Christmas bake; secondly, it begins with S, which is this month's letter for Alphabakes, and thirdly it's meant to keep for a few weeks and I thought it would make a good edible gift for my grandparents as they could eat it after Christmas and not need to use it up right away when there is so much other food around.

I found a recipe on the Telegraph website and though there are a lot of ingredients, it's quite simple to make, and the smell is delicious. I did adapt the recipe so this is what I used:

100g candied mixed peel
50g flaked almonds
250g raisins or sultanas
about 300ml pear cider
250g flour
50g sugar
half a sachet of dried yeast
150g butter, softened
50g marzipan
75ml milk
pinch of salt
1 vanilla pod
grated rind of 1 lemon
icing sugar to dust

First wash the sultanas in hot water and drain. I have no idea why you do this - I can't imagine it's to make them swell up as you go on to soak them overnight. Can anyone explain?

Combine the sultanas in a bowl with the mixed peel and nuts.

The recipe I used then says "cover with rum and leave overnight". However, in the ingredients list, it says you need 1 tbsp rum... which I didn't see until later and found very confusing. Are you meant to sprinkle 1 tbsp of rum over the top, or completely cover the fruit and nuts in rum, in which case I reckon you'd need about two cups? Again, if anyone knows....

I only discovered at the last minute that I didn't have any rum, which shouldn't have been a surprise as I don't drink the stuff, but I had thought I might have a bottle knocking around at the back of the cupboard but it turned out to be gin. I didn't think gin-soaked fruit would quite work for a stollen, so instead I used the best part of a 500ml bottle of pear cider. I think that's suitably festive!

Leave the fruit and nuts overnight to steep.

The next day, heat the milk until it is lukewarm and mix with the yeast. The recipe says to add "enough flour to create a mud-like starter culture". Being a bit more specific would have helped as I had no idea how much flour to use, I think I used about 80g in the end. I'm not even sure what texture mud is meant to be - having just been to Yellowstone, and seen a lot of mud pools I can verify that it's all different! You do need to keep track of how much flour you use though as this comes out of the 250g allowance - the recipe didn't spell that out which tripped me up later!

Anyway when you have your starter culture of whatever consistency you want it to be, cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 20 mins. The volume is supposed to triple.

Next you need room temperature butter. Unfortunately my heating wasn't working that day and my house was freezing so the butter was just as hard as it was in the fridge, so I used the microwave to soften it. (You'll be pleased to hear a nice man called Frank came round and sorted my heating out so I'm nice and warm again).

Cream the butter, marzipan, sugar, salt, lemon rind, vanilla and cardamom.

Add the proven starter and remaining flour. This is the point where I realised I hadn't measured how much flour I'd used for the starter culture, forgetting it was meant to come out of the 250g, so I estimated how much I thought I'd used.

Knead the dough until it binds. The recipe says to do this on an unfloured surface but I found I could do it just fine in my mixing bowl.

Pour the fruit and rum/cider/ whatever liquid you used over the top, and work in with your hands until it is evenly mixed.

Cover with a damp cloth, put in a warm place - I had to use my oven on its lowest temperature as my house was still cold at this point - and let it rise for about 90 mins. At this point I also wondered again how much rum/liquid I was supposed to have used, as the mixture looked very wet.

The recipe I used tells you to form the mixture into a loaf - it doesn't even mention using a tin, and mine was definitely far too wet for that. In any case I'd already decided I wanted to make a bundt - since this is a German cake, and a bundt is also a German invention, and I had a silicon bundt tin I'd bought in Germany and hadn't used yet. In fact this was my first bundt!

I cooked it at about 160C for about an hour - I think I gave it a little longer as the mixture was so wet, though towards the end the raisins started to slightly take on a burnt appearance even though I had covered the tin with greaseproof paper. After leaving the stollen to cool in the tin it did firm up a lot though.

It turned out neatly, albeit slightly overdone, and I dusted the top with icing sugar.

I'm going to take this to my grandparents when I visit them this weekend. Apparently the stollen is best left for two weeks before it is eaten so maybe I should have made it last week, but I didn't know that and it's a bit late now! But people always have so much food at Christmas, hopefully they will appreciate something that will keep a bit longer and not need to be eaten right away.

I'm sending this Stollen to Alphabakes, hosted this month by my co-host Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter we are baking with in December is S.

Calendar cakes, hosted by Rachel of Dolly Bakes and Laura of Laura Loves Cakes, has Christmas as its theme this month and a Stollen is definitely a festive bake so I am sending this their way as well.

Baking with Spirit, a blog challenge hosted by Janine at Cake of the Week, is inviting bakes using any type of alcohol this month, and since there is cider in my Stollen, I'm sending this in!

 And finally I came across a blog challenge on Nivedhanam's site and cohosted by My Cook Book, looking for vegetarian treats and eggless bakes. There are no eggs in stollen and it uses ingredients that are suitable for vegetarians so I am sending my Stollen to the challenge.