Baking Bonanza ... and a little sup of soup

Peanut butter brownies

Party Pieces

While sorting out recipes cut from magazines recently, I came across one for marbled peanut butter brownies. Having been off chocolate in January, I decided that I would reward my abstemiousness with a chocolate treat. My self-imposed rule when I haven't given up chocolate in January is not to eat chocolate except on Fridays and Saturdays ... and perhaps a sneaky bit on Sundays. Back to the brownies recipe. When would I get to try it out?

The occasion arose. Two colleagues were moving on and in the time-honoured tradition of showing affection for people who are always on diets or lamenting their weight, a group of us marked their departure by going out for lunch and then having a tea party about an hour and a half later! I baked, of course. First I made good
old-fashioned cup cakes using the batter and glace icing recipes from Mary Norwak's Breads, Cakes and Biscuits, which was published in 1978. Then I made the marbled peanut butter brownies (Good Housekeeping, April 2013). You can find the recipe here. Oh yes. There is nothing like the smell of baking chocolate.

But cup cakes can exert their own particular charm. I'm not a skilled cake decorator, but I know that the judicious use of fancy sprinkles can impress.

Cup cakes with lemon glace icing

Another baking effort was made for the spouse's birthday. I have a page from a Good Housekeeping magazine (April 1989) which has recipes for four different cakes: apricot almond, spiced pecan and apple, coconut and carrot, and chocolate brazil. I first made all of them for the older offspring's christening party. Tackling each recipe one at a time, I made the cakes and froze them in advance of the big day. The most popular at the time was the chocolate brazil cake. It used to be the spouse's favourite. Much to my surprise, he opted for the apricot almond cake on this occasion.
The ingredients included butter or margarine, caster sugar, eggs, self-raising flour, dried apricots, ground almonds, grated rind of an orange and milk.

Apricot almond cake

Stop! There's Soup
Just in case you're wondering, I have made a soup. Cannellini bean and leek with chilli oil from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Veg Everyday. The bliss of links. If you want to try it or just find out what's in it, click on that link! The only way I can of proving I made it is to upload my photograph of the prepared ingredients. It was a little fiddly and my chilli oil turned out green rather than red. Nevertheless, it went down well with the spouse and younger offspring.

Prepping for cannellini and leek soup

Bee Buzz

Here are some recent bee stories:

Feel the buzz: the album recorded by 40,000 bees (The Guardian, 8th February 2016)
Buff-tailed bumblebee voted Britain's favourite insect (The Guardian, 16th October 2015)

You can find the text of The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck here.

Look up Don't Swat at the Bee in The New Yorker (28th September 2015).

That's it for now.

Minnie

Tuscan Bean Soup

Tuscan Bean Soup This recipe calls for canned beans (borlotti, flageolet or cannellini) and as I have been tidying and cleaning out our cupboards I've used cannellini beans. I have to mention that the younger offspring has done an impressive job on the cupboards. That's enough about him. Back to me and my soup! Other ingredients include onion, carrots, leek, garlic, tomatoes, tomato puree (I substituted sun-dried tomato paste as there was an open jar of it in the fridge), chicken stock (I had to use a cube as my home-made reserves have been used up) and spinach.When ready it's served with ciabatta bread, grated Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. So it's quite a rich soup. We've just had the Tuscan bean soup for lunch. All enjoyed it. The adult males were particularly forthcoming in their praise. The spouse liked the "tomato-ey sharpness" and mused that ham stock should be considered as an alternative to chicken stock. Bees' Cheese and other recipes H

Lovage Soup

Lovage Soup Today I made lovage soup, the second recipe by Sophie Grigson in The Soup Book that I have used in the last four days. She introduces the recipe with these remarks: "If you don't grow this old-fashioned herb yourself, ask around among your gardening friends or head down to the nearest garden centre to see if they sell it. " As I mentioned in my last blog entry (18th May), lovage now features among the herbs in my front garden. As the spouse left the camera at home, I took some photographs. Parsley, sorrel and lovage in Minnie's garden. Rosemary, parsley and lovage in Minnie's garden. I had hoped to add chervil to my collection of herbs - there's a recipe for vegetable and chervil soup in The Soup Book - but "Young Stephen" wasn't able to source any for me. At least he tried. Just while I'm mentioning Stephen, I have to reveal that the spouse and the older offspring claim that he has been mention

Mulligatawny Manoeuvres

Mulligatawny I see it's only been six months since I last made mulligatawny. The first time was back in May 2011 when I followed Roopa Gulati's recipe in The Soup Book ; last September I used The Essential Asian Cookbook . Today I used Rick Stein's India , a Christmas present from the spouse. It's one of those luxurious recipe books with thick paper and beautiful, vibrantly colourful photos. We had all been impressed by Roopa's recipe, less so by the second book, so how would we fare today? Well, those two recipes both involved apple. Rick's did not, so I felt that this must be a more authentic recipe. If Anglo-Indian cooking has any authenticity these days. Still, Rick states that his recipe is on the menu at the Madras Club in Chennai. It involves making a spice paste first and then the soup. Ingredients: The paste called for coriander seeds, cumin seeds, peppercorns, curry powder, turmeric, garlic, ginger, and fresh coriander, curry and mint leave

Minnie's Soup Kitchen

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