Recipe Books - My Favourite Go-To's

Although I am a prolific collector of recipe books, there are always a few in my arsenal that act as standards for many of the things I make, both for sensible meals and for naughty treats. So, here are my three absolute favourites, and why.

The Three Sisters Indian Cookbook, written by Sereena, Priya and Alexa Kaul, published by Simon & Schuster Ltd. Current Amazon price - £10.22.

This book was a present from my in-laws one year, alongside an Indian spice kit and I use it at least once a week, every week. Inside, you'll find recipes for carnivores and vegetarians alike, all with varying degrees of heat, and there's something that will tickle the tastebuds of everyone who has ever or could ever like Indian food. My personal favourites are the aloo gobi, masoor dal, and the tamatar baigan. Because I'm veggie, I've found that many of the meat dishes also work well if you use Quorn fillets/chicken-style pieces, or even tofu instead of the meat. This book also has drinks and puds, but I must admit we haven't tried any of those just yet. 

How To Feed Your Whole Family A Healthy, Balanced Diet With Very Little Money, etc. Written by Gill Holcombe, published by Spring Hill. Current Amazon price - £6.99.

This book was an instant favourite, partly because of the hilarity of the super-long title: 'How to feed your whole family a healthy, balanced diet with very little money...and hardly any time, even if you have a tiny kitchen, only three saucepans (one with an ill-fitting lid) and no fancy gadgets - unless you count the garlic crusher...'. And BREATHE!!! Title aside, the reason I am so madly in love with this book (as you can see by the bajillion post-it tabs sticking out of it) is that the recipes really are easy, affordable and very healthy. For the most part. There are cakes and puddings, but we'll overlook that for now.

If you want soups, this has them in abundance. Want something to use up lots of great veg? Check out the ratatouille or moussaka recipes. Easy pork meatballs, lasagne of varying types, plus small, easy-to-throw-together-in-a-hurry recipes for busy mums. But what else makes this book great are little features you don't normally see: how to help give fussy children foods they don't like. Meal plans according to budget, with attached recipes. The best uses for myriad herbs and spices. If you want to know almost anything about basic, healthy and affordable cooking, or the ingredients themselves, this book is your new Bible and you will love it just as much as I do. 

Lorraine Pascale's A Lighter Way To Bake. Written by Lorraine Pascale, published by Harper Collins. Current Amazon price - £7

This was a Christmas present and yes, I could have been insulted! No, I actually am a huge fan of Lorraine Pascale's and genuinely think she's one of the most incredibly talented (not to mention unreasonably beautiful) bakers out there. She left modelling to become a pastry chef, which makes her ultra-cool in anyone's books! "Modelling? No thanks, I'd much prefer a slice of pie". 

Her most recent book, this contains recipes for all the comfort-food favourites - macaroni cheese, cakes, cookies, etc - but without such high calories. Yes, some of the recipes are a little more 'out there' to ensure you get the flavour without the fat and sugar you'd normally use (there are an awful lot of cakes with low-fat yoghurt and light cooking oils to replace the butter), but this is one of my favourites because sometimes, you want a treat without having to hide from the mirror for days afterwards. But at the same time, you don't want to compromise on flavour. This is the first book I've ever come across that helps you achieve both those goals, and it's a real achievement. 

So there you have it - three fabulous cookbooks, all offering a multitide of options to spruce up your weekly dinners. So what are you waiting for!?

Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group Food Fair 2014

Blimey, that title was a mouthful!

Oooh the food fair was FUN!!

As you'll probably know, I was really, really nervous about this one. Although it wasn't my first stall, it was my first big stall and in previous years we've had literally hundreds of people through the doors for this event. The pressure was on.

My parents (who have been extremely supportive of my venture so far) found me a refriedgerated display case to put my cheesecakes in at events so they'd stay below 5 degrees C. So they ordered that for me and lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. Plus, the cheesecakes looked SO great in the display case!! I decided to do four cheesecakes in all: lemon and lime, chocolate caramel swirl, strawberry, and very vanilla.

I also did devil's food cupcakes with bright blue icing, which worked really well at getting the attention of kids who walked past. Sold a LOT of them! I did lemon meringue cupcakes for the grown-ups, and cookie pies for all. What, you might ask, is a cookie pie?! Okay, so you may well have heard of 'whoopie pies'. Just in case, here's a pic:

They're discs of chocolate cake, sandwiched with buttercream. But personally, I prefer a really dense, chewy cookie. So, I created the cookie pie. And I'm stunned at how well they sold - I think I sold more of them than anything else, which makes me incredibly happy.

So, overall, how did it go? I had braced myself for the possibility I might not sell much. I had braced myself for the possibility some people might be unkind about what I'd made, or even perhaps what they'd bought from me before. What I wasn't prepared for was how incredibly kind and generous everyone was. I can't tell you how much it meant to me to have so many wonderful people stop by and tell me how much they loved the products I'd sold them at the AGM, or taste the bits of cookie and lemon sponge I had as samples, and tell me how great they thought they were. It was such a boost for my confidence and I'm so grateful to everyone.

I also had a LOT of help on the day, and thank goodness, because by the third hour my legs were failing me and I was having real trouble standing. I was shaking all over and the dizziness was getting pretty bad, and if I hadn't had my husband, my parents, my sister and brother-in-law and my Gran there to help, I wouldn't have made it through the day. So a HUGE thank you goes to all of them.

Right, that's enough gushing from me! Here are some pics:

Until next time, food fans!

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes!

Ooooh the excitement!

I'm just three days away from the food fair and I'm up to my ears in cheesecake, cookie dough and cupcakes. But I'm taking a quick break to tell you all about my latest gluten free venture - lemon meringue cupcakes.

I hadn't really thought seriously about trying them because I'd assumed they'd be incredibly complicated, especially since I don't own a blowtorch. Always thought I'd look mega cool wielding one but never got round to buying one (surely everyone looks pretty awesome holding a lit blowtorch??).But then, a few weeks ago, a customer put in a request for them. Eek!

The cupcake part was pretty easy, but then I had to tackle the part that really worried me - the meringue. A lot of the recipes I came across just used a normal meringue...which meant the inside of the meringue would be raw egg, and that just doesn't sit right with me. So the only option was an Italian meringue. Why so scary? You have to make a hot sugar syrup and pour it slowly into the egg whites.

I have to say, the outcome was dead exciting for a first-timer! The sugar syrup was easy-peasy, but pouring it into the mixer was tricky because you can't get any on the beaters; it'll stick to them and/or flick the scalding hot syrup back out at you! Ack! But when you pour it in, it starts emitting steam from the egg whites, which looks VERY cool. The end result is light, fluffy, cloud-like meringue and it's beautiful. And then comes the REALLY exciting part - blowtorching! Haha! Oh, the power you feel holding a blowtorch...I had a couple of practise goes before turning on the cupcakes, but all in all, I think they turned out pretty darned well! What do you reckon!?

The great news is, I can now offer these cupcakes on my website (yay!) at www.buttercupbakerybournemouth.co.uk, and I'll be selling them at the food fair on Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Easter Fun - Buried Egg Bunny Bum Cupcakes!

Wohoo! Easter is upon us. A time of unrelenting chocolate, family time and more chocolate!

This year, I wanted to do something a little different to share with my family for Easter, and a couple of days ago, I finally hit upon an idea while I was scouring the internet. I found a seriously great carrot cake cupcake, which was decorated with a bunny burrowing through a barrell of carrots. I wouldn't have been able to eat it, it looked that brilliant.

Anyway, I don't like to do blatant copies, but I did like the idea of the bunny bum. C'mon, doesn't it just sound adorable!? Say it with me. Bunny bums! But how to incoporate said bunny bottoms into a cupcake for Easter? Well, thanks to the Mini Eggs I had left over from a previous order, I decided to do buried eggs inside a cupcake, with a super-cute bunny, poking his head down towards it, hiding it away for Easter Sunday!

Now, I must tell you that I have never done any modelling before (sugar paste modelling, that is. Not that I've done any of the other kind either, mind!), so I'm absolutely over the chocolate moon at how they've turned out!

What do you think!?

I've also never made 'grass' from icing before, which is why one or two of the cupcakes have fairly ill-formed grass. But I worked it out in the end. If you want to give this a try, here's a tip - make sure you hold the nozzle slightly further from the cupcake than you think you need to. If you hold it too close, the 'blades of grass' merge together, rather than forming separate strands.

Oh, and here's a pic of the inside, with the hidden egg:

So there you go! Buried Egg Bunny Bum Cupcakes. I might need a slightly shorter name for them...

Happy Easter everyone!

Food Fair, Here I Come!

It's been exactly a month since the Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group's AGM and it's now just under two weeks until the Food Fair.

And as you may have gathered from an earlier post, I have decided to have a stall at it.

Gulp.

If you're a regular reader, you'll know that I wasn't exactly overwhelmed with sales at the AGM, which is why it took me so long to make up my mind whether or not to do the Food Fair. In short, my confidence took something of a knock, and I've spent the last few weeks mentally cowering in a corner, rocking steadily back and forth and asking myself over and over 'Can I do this?'.

Of course, in the end, what it comes down to is YES, damnit! Because I chose to do this and giving up would make no sense whatsoever. So the best thing to do is get back on the metaphorical horse and jump the next metaphorical hurdle.

Having made this decision, I've ordered the clear plastic cake boxes I need for the cheesecake slices and I'm working out exactly what goods I want to sell. Here's what I'm thinking so far:

•  Strawberry cheesecake
•  Lemon and Lime cheesecake
• Chocolate Caramel Swirl cheesecake 
• Bakewell cupcakes

The problem is, I need a fourth cheesecake and something in addition to the bakewell cupcakes. Maybe ice cream sandwich cookies? Or, if I can master them in time (!!) maybe some macarons. That's not a spelling mistake, by the way. Apparently, the proper French ones are spelled with one 'l'! Who knew!? (Besides Raymond Blanc, anyway).

Any and all suggestions are very welcome!

In the meantime, I'm TERRIBLY excited to have been awarded a '5' for cleanliness after my inspection with the local council. Yay! Since I haven't got an exciting photo for you today, here's a pic of my certificate, and two pics of our garden, which is just starting to show signs of growing fruit and veg. Don't you just love Spring!?

A New Blackboard!

Okay, I know what you're thinking - 'a BLACKBOARD!? So what!? A whole blog post on one of those things?' But this isn't one of those kiddy blackboards. I decided to turn part of our kitchen wall into a giant blackboard. Evidence, Your Honour?

Ignoring for a moment the fact that apparently I can't write in straight lines, this has taken me a whole week. How depressing is that?! Okay, last weekend, we hit B&Q to get some DIY stuff and we came across this great stuff - magnetic blackboard paint! That's right - turn just about any dull, plain surface into a fun, chalk-friendly surface with (so it says) just 3 generous coats of paint!

Well, the finished product you're seeing here is actually SIX coats of paint, carried out over the course of the whole week. And the reason there are no magnets on it? Well, magnetic, my EYE! All but one magnet we tried to stick to it just slid right off. But just look at it! The bright colours on that matt black surface (courtesy of Crayola Dust-Free Assorted Colour Chalks)? And the fact I can wipe it all off then re-use it? Still so worth it!!There's just such a wonderful nostalgia that goes with blackboars - it harks back to the olden days at school where you'd fight for the chance to scribble something naughty while the teacher was out The days where you'd be constantly braced for that hideous scraping sound if someone scratched the board. Urgh! 

Anyway. Now all upcoming orders, all ingredients I need to buy, quick notes to myself, all of it can go straight on the board. Honestly, I am stupidly over-excited about my blackboard! Just one small problem...I haven't actually got hold of a chalk eraser yet. Ah well!

WFBD Jam Doughnuts - A Review

As promised, what follows is a review of the jam doughnuts by the Wheat Free Bakery (Wheat Free Bakery Direct).
 

So...at first glance, they appear pretty promising. You get two in a pack for £1.49, which seems a reasonable price to me, although they are quite small (see picture). They're also quite squishy. What a great word. SQUISHY. Anyway, as a group, we're used to doughnuts you could kill, or at least mildly concuss someone with, so the general squishiness of them is encouraging.

The jam inside the doughnuts is plentiful, which is great to see, and the oozy jammy sticky sweetness (I'm very into adjectives today) works perfectly with the doughnut, especially since the sugar on the outside had either melted or slid off. I'm not sure which?

I can't go so far as to say this is my idea of the 'perfect' treat; it's still a bit dense to bite through, and the dough itself isn't as flavourful as I might like. But it would be a great treat for coeliac children and it would go very well with a cup of tea or a mug of coffee for an adult, especially for just £1.49 for two! However, be warned: if you can't eat two in two days, and you have nobody to share with, I strongly advise against purchase. They're nice doughnuts and they CAN be frozen. But they turn very tough once defrosted if you freeze them. DON'T DO IT!!!!

I'd give them a good 3 out of 5 stars and a jammy-fingered thumbs-up! 

Supplies Shopping!

Having finally earned a small profit from the early sales, I found myself able to get some new (and desperately needed) equipment, at long last!

Now, I'll be honest, it wasn't just that I needed it. The truth of it is that I LOVE Lakeland! You know that feeling most women get when they find a new pair of shoes or a handbag? I get a similar feeling when it comes to baking equipment. Lakeland is like a toy shop full of bright, shiny trinkets that I can use and therefore justify buying. Dangerous stuff!

Despite my magpie-like longing for shiny things, I decided recently that I will be having a stall at the Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group's Food Fair on 26th April. Terrified? Me!? Well, yes, but only because it's about 300 times bigger than the AGM! Eep! Anyway, it means that I don't have all the equipment I need to make everything I'm planning to sell. So I've used that as a great excuse to visit my beloved Lakeland...aha! And I came away with this little lot..

So, here we have two 8 inch cake tins, some magic liner paper (AMAZING stuff - cookies come off it like a dream, even when they stick fast to greaseproof paper!), an ice cream sandwich tin, a feather duster (rude jokes widely encouraged), macaron mould sheet and some blackboard paint. Whyyyy blackboard paint, you might ask? Well...the plan is to turn a wall in our kitchen into an 'orders and shopping list' wall. It's even magnetic, so we can stick things right on the wall! Pictures to follow once it's done.

Some of you might be a little confused about why I shop somewhere as expensive as Lakeland. It's a fair question. But I know that I'm getting great quality from there; things that will work well and last very well. I once bought a cake tin from a well-known supermarket chain and it warped out of all proportion after about three uses and leaked cake mix all over the bottom of the oven. Not cool!

Anyway, in the next week, I plan to practise a couple of new products - lemon meringue cupcakes and macarons. I'm slightly nervous that they won't work out but SO excited to try some new products! I'll let you know how it goes!

Cheesecakes, cheesecakes everywhere!

There's just something about cheesecake, isn't there? That sort of dense but light, creamy, rich and decadent filling, and that crunchy, chunky biscuit base under it. It makes for this textural explosion on the palate on its own, but once you add particular flavours it becomes something even more incredible.

When I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, it was leaving cheesecake behind that crushed me more than anything. In 2003, there weren't any biscuits that would have been good enough to make it and you'd never even hope to see a cheesecake in any shops anywhere. Imagine that - a world without cheesecake!?? So of course, before going gluten free I had a HUGE cheesecake binge. An entire 20cm cheesecake in two days. Yupp. I felt very sick but it was sooooo good!

Aaaaaanyway, I digress. So, the cheesecakes I've made this week are toffee apple, white chocolate and lavender, and coconut and lime (what I've begun affectionately calling 'Put-The-Lime-In-The-Coconut-Cheesecake'). Pictures, you ask? Oh alright...

Lavender and white chocolate cheesecake

Toffee Apple Cheesecake

There's no picture of the coconut and lime cheesecake just yet, I'm afraid. It's still chilling out in the fridge (enjoying a cider with the tomatoes, I imagine), but I will post pics once it has been de-cake tinned. I had a sneaky taste earlier and it was pretty good!

All of them need a little bit of fiddling with, recipe-wise, but they were surprisingly tasty! Now look, I KNOW there will be those of you who are thinking 'Er...I'm sorry...did she just say LAVENDER?!?!?!?' Okay, I know it sounds weird and flowery and a little gross but please, please trust me on this - it works! I did slip a little when I made the mini cheesecake and put a whole teaspoon in, so the lavender is a touch too strong in that one but actually, it complements the white chocolate perfectly. I'm seriously tempted to make that one for the Bournemouth & Poole Coeliac Support Group's Food Fair later this month. But will people want it??

The toffee apple was SO good! The apple needs to be a little softer before cooking next time, but this would be a great product around Autumn in particular. I layered up homemade caramel, slices of apple and cheesecake mix, then topped the cheesecake with a little crumble mix, for some extra crunch. 

Lastly, the coconut and lime cheesecake. The lime came across REALLY well, but the coconut wasn't very strong at all. So it tastes good but not really in the way it was meant to so next time I'll try using more coconut next time.

In all, feeling pretty good about the cheesecakes. Next up is something I'm keeping under my hat as a surprise (partly because it's VERY cool and partly because it might go horribly wrong) but I'm very excited. Watch this space! So many ideas!

Wheat Free Bakery Direct Review Series - Part I

Regular readers will know the general euphoria I feel at the discovery of a new product, and while the Wheat Free Bakery Direct is not exactly new to me, I still feel a great deal of excitement. Why? First of all, it's been over a year since I ordered from them. Secondly, in that year they've been busily working away on their products, so they've improved since my previous experiences.

I should explain why it has been over a year since my previous order. Although I have never stopped being a fan of the WFBD, I had previously been VERY eager to try their caramel fudge doughnuts, but I'd been disappointed. The icing had slid off the top and what there was of it had a very peculiar, synthetic taste. The doughnut itself was like a rock and not really the squishy, squashy, doughy texture I'd been missing since I was diagnosed.

But when a friend said she wanted to order something and she wondered if I'd be interested in placing an order too, I jumped at the chance. Delivery is quite expensive, at just under £6, so we've always done orders en masse to make it really worthwhile. My order arrived today and what a lovely array of goodies it was!

So, what you see above is (starting from bottom left and working clockwise) parisienne demi-baguettes, tiger demi-baguettes, sandwich rolls, jam doughnuts, crusty bloomer (let the jokes commence!), apple and caramel flans, and iced ring doughnuts.

All the products are best eaten on the day of delivery, but clearly attempting that would be ridiculous, however tempting it might be to try! So for convenience, everything can be frozen. Lactose intolerant coeliacs will also be pleased to learn that much of the range is also dairy free. Happy days all round!

So from this point forward, I'll be doing a review of each product as and when I eat them, so you'll know what products you can really trust and look forward to!

If you want to check them out in the meantime, you can visit the Wheat Free Bakery Direct at their website: http://www.wheat-freebakerydirect.com/index.html.

Note added 15 April 2014
 Unfortunately, there were mistakes in the above blog post and I'd like to take the opportunity to make the necessary corrections, as follows:

- Baguettes have a 5 day shelf life
- Caramel& Apple flans have a 5 day shelf life
-Crusty Bloomer has a 5 day shelf life
- Sandwich Rolls have a 14 day shelf life