Carrot cake

No time to make a cake? Think again. This might be the quickest one you'll ever make. I knocked it up while supervising two pans of simmering chilli (one veggie, one beef), cooking rice, refereeing sibling fights, defrosting a pot of salsa, fielding unwanted sales calls and making guacamole. The recipe comes from an old Sainsbury's card and is called Passion Cake. It will certainly stir passion within you for another slice.

Feeling the passion?

Passion cake

1 x 150g natural yogurt
110g grated carrots
75g raisins
2 teaspoons cinnamon
110g soft light brown sugar
150g self raising wholemeal flour
2 eggs, beaten

Topping:
125g cream cheese
50g butter, softened
225g icing sugar (sifted if you can be bothered)

Pre-heat oven to 180/gas 4. Place all the cake ingredients in a bowl and mix until combined. Transfer to a greased and lined 20cm square tin, and bake for 30-35 minutes. Mix the topping ingredients together and slather all over the top of the cake when it is cool.

Check out my buns

Perhaps it's something to do with the terror of being schooled by nuns from a young age, but I've always been obsessed by those coffee-iced choux buns they sell in French patisseries called Religieuses. So today I decided to make my own choux pastry - for the first time ever. I'd heard it's pretty easy, and yes, I did have misgivings when the pastry turned out to have the consistency of pancake batter, but I had faith in the recipe (and a decade of mumbled childhood prayers and unwilling Sunday mornings in church). You can see the results of my first attempt at the end of this post. Refusing to accept defeat, and spurred on by the scorn of the "it's easy" brigade, I finally got there with the help of a Delia recipe:

Chocolate and coffee choux buns

Delia says this will make 30 buns but I made about 10, being totally ham-fisted. It kind of depends what shape you're making and how big each one is.

60g plain flour (she stipulates 'strong plain flour' but I used the ordinary sort)
a teaspoon of caster sugar
150ml cold water
50g butter, cut into pieces
2 eggs, beaten well

Preheat oven to 200/gas 6. Put the water and butter into a pan and heat gently until it reaches boiling point and the butter has melted - then remove from the heat straight away. While that's happening, measure out the flour and sugar and beat the eggs. Locate and plug in an electric hand-held mixer. When the water and butter is ready tip the flour and sugar in quickly while beating vigorously. Keep going for about a minute until you have a smooth ball of paste. Now add the beaten eggs, a little at a time, beating well all the while. This should result in a smooth, glossy paste. Spoon mounds of it onto a greased baking sheet, leaving at least a couple of centimetres between each one. Bake on a high shelf for 10 minutes, then turn up the heat to 220/gas 7 and bake for another 10-20 minutes until the buns are a light golden brown colour. I would suggest watching them like a hawk at this stage. Once out of the oven, transfer them to a wire rack and pierce the side of each one with a knife to let the steam out.

Fill with whipped whipping/double cream. I topped mine with chocolate sauce (see below) and coffee glacé icing, but you could use melted chocolate, or just icing sugar. You could put jam or lemon curd inside the buns with the cream.

Chocolate sauce: Melt together 50g butter, 2 tablespoons golden syrup, 2 tablespoons drinking chocolate. Remove from the heat about 30 seconds after it starts to boil.

Coffee glacé icing. Melt a teaspoon instant coffee in a little boiling water, then add enough icing sugar to make a thick but spreadable icing.

First attempt: Anyone for poppadoms?

Cheese and onion quiche

The 8 year old vegetarian is giving me a headache; she has also given me an excuse to indulge my latest passion - buying cookery books from eBay. As I usually shop with one eye on the telly, the books that arrive can be a bit of a surprise, but what an education! Anyone for minced tongue and bacon with hot beetroot relish, liver sausage flan or hydropathic pudding?

Today's recipe for cheese and onion quiche is from an old favourite, The Big Food and Drink Book, which accompanied the tv series (remember Jilly Goolden's mad hair and mad wine descriptions?).

No liver sausage in this flan

Cheese and onion quiche   

Ready made pastry

a large knob of butter

225g onions, peeled and thinly sliced

150g Gruyere/Leicester cheese, finely grated (I used half Cheddar, half Gruyere)

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

100ml milk (I used up some double cream mixed with skimmed milk)

Pre-heat oven to 220/gas 7. Fry the onions gently in the butter until they are soft and sweet, but not browned. Line a 20cm (8inch) metal flan dish with the pastry, spread the onions across the base and top with the grated cheese. Beat the eggs, yolk, and milk together and pour them over the cheese and onion. Cook for about 25 minutes, then turn down the oven to 190/gas 5 and cook for another 10 minutes until the top is brown. 

Old Mother Hubbard's Sunday lunch

The cupboard was very bare so she went to the freezer instead. She found a single piece of cod and two salmon steaks. "Aha" she thought, "these will defrost quickly". The children weren't so keen and started squabbling about who would have the cod (salmon is pesce non grata here) and generally mithering about being made to eat fish. And then Child 1 had the bright idea of dipping the fish in breadcrumbs mixed with parmesan and shallow frying it. We did, and it was an unqualified success.

The magic ingredient

Cod and salmon in crunchy parmesan breadcrumbs

I had lots of home made breadcrumbs in the freezer (the by-product of making my own bread with tough crusts), and used a couple of handfuls mixed with a handful of grated Parmesan. I dipped each piece of fish in beaten egg, then dragged it through the breadcrumbs mixture, before frying in about 3 tablespoons hot olive oil for a few minutes each side.

Feeling dippy

Here's a great way to up your family's fruit quotient (note - marshmallows count as one of your five-a-day when served in this manner):

No double dipping, please!

White chocolate fondue

200g white chocolate, chopped or broken up

150ml double cream

50g unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Heat and stir gently until they have all melted and you have a smooth sauce.

Serve with pieces of fruit and marshmallows on cocktail sticks - or fondue forks if you are really sophisticated. 

From the Cookbook for Girls by Denise Smart 

Date night

I bought a couple of packets of luscious Medjool dates to get me through my self-imposed sugar ban over Christmas - but the Quality Street got the better of me and the dates got left on the shelf. So I made them into these toothsome crumble bars:

Dates, butter, sugar, oats, flour

Date Crumble Bars

175g plain flour
175g oats
175g butter
50g brown sugar

Filling:
175g dates, stoned and chopped
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon clear honey

Heat the oven to 190/gas 5. Put the ingredients for the filling in a pan and simmer gently until the dates are soft. Whizz the flour with the butter and about half the oats until it reaches the fine breadcrumbs stage. Stir in the sugar and remaining oats (for textural reasons). Put half this mixture into an 18cm square tin and pat it down. Spread the filling over it, then top with the rest of the flour mixture. Spread it into an even layer and pat it down. Bake for 35-40 minutes, then cut up while cooling in the pan and remove when cold - or you will be left with more crumble than bar.

Food on sticks

Admit it, you remember parties where the culinary climax was a half grapefruit covered in foil and studded with cocktail sticks containing a cube of cheese and a piece of tinned pineapple. Closely followed by sausages. I have made the cheese and pineapple hedgehog for my own children's parties and let me tell you that unless you get the right type of cheese it's a nightmare. Too crumbly, and the carefully cut cube disintegrates as you begin to thread it on the stick.

The French have a nifty way with a stale baguette and some sticks: Cut the bread into slices, thread them onto a skewer, grill one side, turn over, top with cheese (preferably goat's), grill and serve with a well-dressed salad.

But here, from a warmer continent altogether, is my favourite speared food:

Fragrantly spiced succulent chicken skewers

Chicken Tikka skewers

Serves 2:

2 chicken breasts
1½ - 2 tablespoons tikka curry paste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons natural yogurt
1 garlic clove, crushed

Mix the paste, juice, yogurt and garlic together in a bowl. Cut the chicken into even size chunks and put it in the bowl, mixing it around well to get an even coating of the marinade. Leave it for an hour (minimum) or overnight. Thread onto skewers and cook under a hot grill, turning half-way through.

I like to mix things up and serve these with a flavoured couscous for maximum taste and minimum cooking time.