Coffee Kisses

I was going to visit Penelope, a friend of mine who recently had a rather grisly operation (steel pins and all) on one of her feet and I wanted to take something along that’s a bit more exciting than grapes when you’re under doctor’s orders to rest up.  As a person of very good taste, I knew that Penelope would appreciate these biscuits called Coffee Kisses.  Under no circumstances should they ever be described as “cookies” as their heritage is very British and goes back to 1930!  The recipe is from the eighteenth edition of “Be-Ro Home Recipes”, which you could (and still can, I believe) obtain by writing to the manufacturers of Be-Ro flour.  I couldn’t resist showing you photos of my browned, splattered and rather musty-smelling copy, which belonged to my grandma, was then my mother’s and is now mine.  The book is quite a funny (or depressing, I can’t quite make my mind up) artefact in itself because the 1930s language is incredibly sexist.  An advert for Be-Ro flour on page 15 has a cartoon of “little Margery” with her shopping basket (you can tell Margery’s a 1930s child because she’s got a giant bow in her hair) telling us how “Baking days would be blank days in little Margery’s life without Be-Ro.  She looks forward to the pleasant hours spent with Mother making dainty Be-Ro cookies”.  Life on the edge, eh, Margery?

 

This recipe is the best use I can think of for Camp coffee essence (it sure as hell isn’t as a drink).  Incidentally, have you noticed how the label on Camp has changed recently, to make it not racist?  I always remember it as the guy in the kilt being served coffee by the Sikh guy, implying a master-servant relationship (still, he got his own back – he was giving him a foul chicory-based coffee substitute, after all).  Now they’re both sitting in front of the tent having a nice cuppa together.  Aww.

 

Anyway, I used to beg my mum to make Coffee Kisses (she loved them too) and I urge you to try this recipe because they are utterly delicious and nothing at all like anything you can buy in any shop.

Coffee Kisses (makes at least 20 sandwiched biscuits)

150g plain flour, sifted (use Be-Ro if you want to give a nod to the provenance of the recipe, not that it will make the slightest difference)

75g cold unsalted butter

75g caster sugar

One egg, beaten with 2 dessertspoonfuls of Camp coffee essence

 

Filling:

50g icing sugar, sifted

25g softened unsalted butter

A few drops of Camp coffee essence

 

1. Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/180 degrees C and grease two baking trays.
2. Rub the cold butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, then stir in the caster sugar.
3. Mix in the egg/coffee mixture until a stiff dough is formed.
4. Use a teaspoon to place small dollops of the mixture (the Be-Ro book describes them as “the size of marbles”), spaced well apart on the baking trays.  This should give you around 40 blobs (ie: 20 sandwiched finished biscuits).  As you can see in the photo, I ended up with 26 (ie: 13 sandwiched finished biscuits) because I can never exercise portion control and mine were pickled onion-sized.



Too big!



 



5. Bake for around 10 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch.  Watch them like a hawk because they do cook very quickly.  Carefully prise them off with a spatula or similar and leave them to cool on a wire rack.  They will harden slightly on cooling but not too much: their texture has more in common with soft American cookies (oops, I did say I wouldn’t use the other “c” word) than ginger nuts.

6. Beat the softened butter until pale and fluffy and then beat in the icing sugar and Camp until you have a smooth, spreadable buttercream.  Use the buttercream to sandwich together the biscuits halves.  Devour greedily with a nice cup of tea.

 

Spicy Meat Gumbo

My friend Mark came over for dinner last Tuesday and as he's a strapping lad and fellow meat-lover, I knew this recipe would fit the bill: Spicy Meat Gumbo.  It’s from Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie’s America”, which is divided into six chapters, each one focussing on recipes from a different American state or area (New York, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and the Wild West).  This is from the chapter on Louisiana and is a rather soupy meat stew, served with rice.  Jamie is very pedantic about ingredients but in case you’re put off by his list of commands recipe below, you should know that:

• Tesco do mixed packs of free range chicken drumsticks and thighs (£3.50 for around 7 pieces), so don’t stress yourself hunting around for them separately.
• One of those little packs of ready-cut bacon lardons work brilliantly in place of the suggested bacon.
• Chorizo also works well (good luck with finding andouille outside of London) but don’t forget to skin it before you slice it.
• Chicken stock cubes dissolved in hot water works perfectly well in place of the chicken stock (use a decent brand though and don't forget to use less salt as stock cubes are very salty).
• Dried bay leaves instead of fresh are fine.

Spicy Meat Gumbo (serves 6-8)

4 chicken thighs, skin on, preferably free-range and organic

4 chicken drumsticks, skin on, preferably free-range and organic

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Olive oil

400g smoked sausage, such as andouille or fresh chorizo, thickly sliced

4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon, the best quality you can afford, roughly chopped

1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 green pepper, deseeded and chopped

1 yellow pepper, deseeded and chopped

4 sticks of celery, trimmed and finely chopped

3 heaped tablespoons of plain flour

6 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1 kg sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped

6 sprigs of fresh thyme

4 fresh bay leaves

1.5 litres chicken stock, preferably organic

A small bunch of fresh curly parsley

4 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced

1. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne.  Put a large pot on a high heat, add a little olive oil and fry the chicken, sausage and bacon for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown and crispy.  Remove the browned meat pieces to a dish, leaving behind what looks like a scary amount of fat – don’t be tempted to discard any of it as you’ll need it to make the roux.
2. Turn the heat down and add the celery, onion and peppers to the pan.  Slowly stir and fry these for around 10 minutes, until they have softened.  Now for the roux.  Add the flour to the veg and stir thoroughly.  In order to give the roux maximum flavour, you have to take your time with this stage and make sure that it’s gently browned and everything is cooked evenly.  You should cook it for at least 10 minutes (and up to 30 minutes if you have time), stirring every now and then.  Jamie suggests that dark is good here (not burnt obviously) and says “peanut butter colour is a good starting point” (just as well as the book doesn’t come with a colour swatch).
3. Once your roux has achieved the Jamie-approved hue, add the garlic, sweet potatoes, browned meats, thyme and bay leaves and stir and fry for a further minute.  Pour in the hot chicken stock, bring to the boil and then pop a lid on the pan and turn the heat down and leave the gumbo to simmer for around 45 minutes.  When it’s done, the sweet potatoes will be soft and have thickened the gumbo slightly.  I did as Jamie suggested and fished out the chicken pieces and shredded the meat off the bones with a fork, discarding the skin and bones, before returning the meat to the pan.
4. Taste the gumbo and season if necessary.  Roughly chop the parsley and stir it in, before ladling the gumbo over bowls of cooked white rice (Basmati every time in this household – Uncle Ben can keep his American rice).  Scatter over the chopped spring onion before serving. 

Tabasco is a sound addition to this, I think, as despite the title, the gumbo is savoury rather than hot.  Don’t be tempted to miss out the spring onion, it does add extra flavour and crunch as well as a splash of colour.  This would be a really good dish to cook when you’ve got large numbers of people to feed.  It’s very hearty and bolstering and, if I’m honest, could never be put in the category “diet food”.  Mark and I went for it properly and followed it with all-American cherry pie and vanilla ice-cream.

Vegan Lemon Cupcakes

I was invited to a 40th birthday party last Saturday, at a location that is nothing like anything I've ever visited before.  My old school friend Zoe (the birthday girl in question) has lived in Sanford Walk in New Cross, south London for the past 9 years and has been vegan since her late teens.  Sanford Walk is the first purpose-built housing co-operative in the UK and is home to around 130 artists, students and others.  I met some very interesting people and a lot of the conversations I had during the course of the day were about food.  I would make the world's worst vegetarian as I just love meat too much but I found it really encouraging to see that there are vegetarians and vegans out there who really care about the quality of the food they eat and love cooking.  I was really impressed by the imaginative approach towards the vegan food that we ate (most of the credit should go to Zoe, Sue and Danny who were up at the crack of dawn shopping and cooking), which was delicious.  Of course, you can't have a birthday party without cake and we had a fantastic vegan chocolate fudge cake courtesy of Ruby Tuesday's Bakery - complete with candles of course - as the sun went down.  And I contributed a batch of Vegan Lemon Cupcakes.

Baking is all about the complex chemical reactions between the ingredients that cause the mixture to rise.  That's why it's important to weigh ingredients accurately and not just guess, which you can generally get away with in other forms of cooking.  The addition of eggs to a cake mixture are a crucial part of incorporating air into the mixture to ensure that it rises, so that the finished cake has that lovely light texture.  Obviously vegans don't eat eggs or products including eggs, so you have to find other ways of achieving this.  My personal favourite is to use Egg Replacer (Holland and Barrett stock a brand called Allergycare).  This is a powder made from soya flour which you add to the cake mixture along with the flour - 20g is the equivalent of 1 egg.  You will also need to add some sort of (non-dairy) liquid like soya milk or water - just a splash - to get the cake batter to the same soft dropping consistency that you associate with a traditional cake mixture.  Apparently you can use egg replacer along with soya milk to make vegan pancake batter, which I've not tried but I've been told works very well.

One of the slightly odd things I have noticed about vegan cake mixtures is the way they rise.  They DO rise and the finished texture is light and fluffy.  However, if there are any dents or bumps in the cake mixture, they stay there (you know how you sometimes make a slight hollow in the top of a sandwich cake mixture to stop it rising into a point?  Well, don't do it with its vegan equivalent!)!  I tried to capture this strange effect by making a groove in one of the cakes but I'm not sure how clear it comes across in the photos I took:

Before

After

I chose to use a sunflower-based non-dairy margarine just because I prefer the bland taste over soya margarine, which I find a bit unpleasantly oily but of course, if you have a preferred brand, use that.  A word of warning: I was so concerned about the lemon flavour not coming across strongly enough in the frosting that I added a bit too much lemon juice.  Be careful, as too much will cause the frosting to separate (which is why mine have that "cottage cheese" look in the finished photo).  If I was making these again, I'd probably use a lemon essence like this one, just to make sure they were nice and tangy.  Here's the recipe:

Cakes:
100g non-dairy margarine (I used Vitalite)
100g caster sugar
40g egg replacer
100g self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Lemon juice and water to adjust the consistency of the batter
(** You'll also need a 12-hole muffin tin and paper cases of a suitable size - fairy cake ones are too little, go for cupcake/muffin cases).

Frosting:
100g non-dairy margarine (Vitalite again)
150g sifted icing sugar
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Tiny squeeze of lemon juice

1) Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 4/180 degrees C and line your muffin tin with papers.

2) Beat together the non-dairy marge and caster sugar until the mixture is pale, soft and fluffy (I always use my electric mixer to do this now).  Add the grated zest of one lemon, the egg replacer, the baking powder and around half the flour and beat them in thorougly. 

3) Using a large metal spoon, gently fold in the remaining flour until no lumps of flour are visible.  The consistency of the cake mixture will probably be a little too thick here, so fold in a little lemon juice, water or soya milk until you get a soft dropping consistency (not runny like pancake batter).

4) Divide the mixture between the paper cakes and bake for 20-25 minutes until the cakes are golden brown and spring back when pressed gently with a finger.  Leave them to cool on a wire rack whilst you make the frosting.

5) Beat the remaining marge until it's pale and fluffy, then gradually beat in the sifted icing sugar until you've got a soft, spreadable frosting.  Beat in the remaining lemon zest and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice.  Use to top your cupcakes and decorate them with whatever is pleasing to you (as long as it's edible and vegan).  I used edible rice paper cake toppers (of which there are THOUSANDS on Ebay - you could have any design from Justin Beiber to a Cocker Spaniel) but summer berries would work a treat.

I'm told that "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the definitive book on the subject so maybe I should check it out.