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!

GBBO Pistachio and White Chocolate Churros

I treated myself to the latest Great British Bake Off recipe book since it was only £7 at a Book People book sale at work. This was when the series was only part-way through and I wasn't sure what they would be making each week though the recipes in the book do give a clue. I really liked the look of the pistachio and white chocolate churros, which I think I remember were made by Jane, the eventual runner-up of the show.

The full recipe is available on the BBC Food website which is helpful as it would have taken me ages to write out everything I did! I consider myself a fairly proficient baker, but I found these really hard - not to make as much as to assemble.

The book had a good explanation of how to shell pistachios; after you remove the hard shell there is still a brown skin covering the green nut. Bring the pistachios to boil in a pan of water and simmer for ten seconds; drain them in a sieve then rub with kitchen paper or use your fingers and the brown skins come off easily.

When I made the pistachio custard and pulsed the nuts in a food processor, I just couldn't get them smooth enough, so my custard was quite lumpy, even after I sieved it.

 

Making the churros was fairly easy but the largest star nozzle I have isn't that big - I wasn't aware that they come in bigger sizes but it meant that the churros that I piped were pretty thin. This wouldn't normally be a problem - I just rolled some of them in sugar and served them with chocolate sauce and they were brilliant. However, the idea is to pipe the pistachio custard inside the churros which I found absolutely impossible as they were so thin, and my custard was quite thick. I ended up splitting them down the middle and serving as a sort of open churro!

 

 

These did taste really nice but were quite fiddly to make with the various stages and I couldn't work out how to pipe them big enough to fill. I won't be making these again, or applying to go on the Great British Bake Off any time soon!

I'm sharing these with Treat Petite, hosted by Stuart at Cakeyboi and Kat the Baking Explorer.

Pistachio Chicken with Pomegranate

I'm always looking for different things to do with chicken and as I had half a pomegranate I took to the internet to search for recipes. I came across this one on All Recipes for pistachio chicken with pomegranate sauce which was perfect as I already had a bag of pistachios in the cupboard. It was really tasty, seemed quite unusual and indulgent but was actually really quick to make!

To serve 4, you need:
4 chicken breasts
the original recipe said to use 6 eggs but this is only to coat the chicken so 2 is probably enough
50ml milk
90g plain flour
130g finely chopped pistachios

For the sauce:
2 tbsp. minced shallots
120ml dry white wine
120ml chicken stock
120ml double cream
50g butter
1.5 tbsp. pomegranate juice - I didn't have any at the time so used pomegranate molasses, but I recommend POM Wonderful Pomegranate juice.

Preheat oven to 180C.

 

Beat the eggs with the milk and pour into a shallow bowl. Put the flour into another bowl and the chopped nuts into a third. Dip each chicken breast in flour then egg and then in the chopped nuts. I found it easiest to chop the nuts in a food processor.

Bake the chicken in the oven for 30 minutes.

Ten minutes before it is ready, fry the shallots and add the cream, wine, stock and pomegranate juice.

 Simmer for a few minutes and pour over the chicken to serve.

Nigella's Pistachio Pesto

The theme for this month's Pasta Please is homemade pesto, which is something I haven't made before. I don't often eat pesto as it seems quite oily but I thought freshly made would be more healthy and it was about time I had a go at making it! I did it for a mid-week dinner and it actually turned out to be very quick to make.

Pesto is usually made of garlic, basil and pine nuts, combined with olive oil, but the name actually comes from the Italian verb meaning to pound or to crush. So technically anything made in this manner would be a pesto - I had some pistachios I wanted to use up from this cake so when I came across a recipe for pistachio pesto in Nigella's Nigellissima, it seemed ideal.

She serves her pesto over green beans and says the following quantity will serve 6-8 as a side dish:

3 tbsp pistachios (shelled)

3 tbsp grated parmesan

leaves from a small bunch of fresh basil

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Place pistachios, fresh basil, grated parmesan and salt in a food processor and blend to a paste.

Slowly pour in some olive oil and a dash of lemon juice and blend again until you have a runny paste

Simply stir into cooked pasta. This tasted delicious though it was more oil than I would usually use so I think this would have to be a recipe I make less frequently than others.

I'll be interested to see the round-up for Pasta Please and if anyone has a healthier variant on pesto that doesn't use so much oil!

Pasta Please is hosted this month by Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes  and was started by Jacqueline at Tinned Tomatoes.

Pistachio, Rosewater and Strawberry Mother's Day Cake

This is the cake I made my mum for Mother's Day this year.

I wanted a cake that would remind us of spring and was trying to think of something with a delicate flavour, and came across this recipe on Woman & Home for a pistachio and rosewater cake. I decided to try out some of my cake decorating tools at the same time.

Here's what you need for the cake:

150g pistachios, shelled
225g softened butter
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
juice of 1 lemon
4 tsp rose water
1 tsp baking powder
125g self-raising flour

Weigh out the pistachios

Pulse in a food processor until they turn into fine crumbs.

Cream the butter and the sugar

Add the eggs, one at a time

Add the lemon juice and rose water

 Finally fold in the baking powder and flour

Spoon the mixture into a tin. I used an oval-shaped tin I bought at Cake International last year as it was only a couple of pounds, and I hadn't used it yet. I thought it would be a bit different and might look quite nice; also I didn't want to make a massive cake. There was enough mixture from this recipe to make two layers of cake in this tin, which I cooked one at a time.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until cooked (the cake would take longer if you were cooking all the mixture in one tin, but I split it in half).

I had some leftover strawberry buttercream I wanted to use up, and I thought strawberry would work well with the rosewater flavour and hopefully also with the pistachios.

I spread some on top as well as in the middle.

I also spread a thin coating around the side of the cake.

I rolled out some white fondant and covered the cake. I happened to have an oval cake board for some reason which was the perfect size and shape for this cake.

Here's the first piece of equipment I wanted to try out - I bought this at Cake International last year. It's a simple rose cutter. I rolled out some pink flower paste.

Use the cutter to press out a flower shape and use the ball modelling tool (I don't know if it has a technical name) to rub around the edges of each petal, which makes them curve inwards.

Roll a small cone of flower paste and place in the centre of the flat petals. Then one at a time curl the petals around the central cone.

I did the same with another layer of petals

Here's the finished rose:

This is from another set of cutters I bought at Cake International. I cut out several small shapes from the same pink flower paste.

Here's another piece from the same pack, which I decided to use to make a frill to go around the cake (forgetting until later I have an actual frill cutter I bought for a cake decorating course!)

Here are the frills after I cut them out

I used edible glue to stick the frills around the side of the cake

I then added the smaller pieces around the bottom of the cake, evenly spaced

I decided my rose needed some leaves so I mixed some gooseberry colour paste with white fondant and then used a leaf plunger cutter to cut out some leaves

I placed the leaves on the cake next to the rose

I then mixed some lilac colour with white fondant and used some small flower plunger cutters to make flowers

I added them to each point where the frills met on the cake

I used another set of plunger cutters I had to make three butterflies in different sizes

I added these onto the cake opposite the rose - I don't know why this photo came out sideways!

Here's the finished cake. I thought about adding the word 'mum' as well, but wanted to make sure it didn't look too cluttered. I'm taking this down on the train today in my trusty cake carry case, I hope my mum likes it!