Chocolate Fudge Cake..

The Infant school where Bucket jnr goes has a very good parent association - they help and organise loads and raise money for the school.

I've decided to help a little more and this weekend they had a Food Festival where new and current parents met and mingled with some food and drink.

The idea was that we make a dish (savoury or sweet) to bring along, so I made a Chocolate Fudge Cake.  I don't really have a savoury dish that I wanted to share but this cake we make every Christmas and at other times when we remember to. It's one of those dishes that only get made at a certain time i.e. pancakes, simnel cake, roast turkey... you know what I mean.

The only thing was, I had to make two - one for the school and one for us.

This recipe was given to me by my Mother-in-law and she had it as a recipe card from Bourneville (the chocolate).

Chocolate Fudge Cake

4 oz butter
2 tbsp golden syrup
8 oz digestives
1 oz raisins
2 oz glace cherries (halved)
5 oz dark chocolate

Fudge Icing

2 oz chocolate
1 oz butter
3 dessert spoons water
6 oz icing sugar

Grease and base line a 1lb loaf tin.

Melt the butter and syrup in a saucepan. Stir in the biscuits, fruit and chopped chocolate until mixed. Press firmly into the prepared tin and leave in a cool place to set.  Later turn out onto a board.

For the fudge icing melt the chocolate and butter with 3 dessertspoons of water over a gentle heat. Remove from heat and stir in sifted icing sugar and beat until cool and thick.  Spread the icing over the cake and dust with icing sugar to decorate.

Now this makes a really nice cake but it's not that big and you might find that it goes WAAAAY too quickly. So do what we do.... double the ingredients and make a WHOPPER of a cake. Sorry, forgot to take a picture straight away but this cake never lasts long in our house as you can see.

Also, with all the butter and syrup this cake is quite rich so don't cut huge chunks off until you've actually tried it and know that you'll manage to eat it (piggy).

The cake disappeared in double time at the Food Festival and I also had a couple of the mums asking for the recipe, so I was really chuffed.

Thanks Mother-in-law. Sam xx

Fudge...

At the weekend all the Buckets went to a small food and craft fair. It was a lovely day, some of our friends had a stall there and we got back in time for Mr Bucket to see the Grand Prix.

On the way out we stopped at a fudge stall (which was delicious and didn't last long at all). As we were eating Mr Bucket casually said "you should make some of this" to which I naively replied "I think I will".

But first, let's go back....way back.... to about 1990 when I first made fudge - total disaster!!!

The recipe said to use Carnation condensed milk but I didn't read the recipe properly and instead of using a small can I used a big one. So the fudge didn't set, no matter what I did so I eventually put it in the freezer in the hope that it would harden even a little bit.

Nope, didn't seem to work although I started to notice that it wasn't all there, as if someone was sneakily eating it. I finally caught my mum in the act, her head in the freezer and spoon in hand, scoffing it. She said it was delicious and it was....it just wasn't fudge.

Back to now....

I read the recipe VERY carefully, it used Carnation condensed milk (I think I was trying to re-do the original recipe), everything went in the pan. So far so good.

Only it didn't seem to want to get firmer and after stirring it for ages, I fudged the fudge - I added some icing sugar to firm it up, whipped it for ages (my arm was killing me) and put it in a bowl.

And ta-da!!

It's still a bit soft and gooey but I'm getting there - the kids really love it, Miss Bucket wanted it before bed and for breakfast this morning (not a chance).

I'm definitely going to have another go, making sure all measurements are exact and I might even treat myself to a sugar thermometer. We'll see. Sam xx

Cookery Books...

A new cookery book...

As you know, I'm fairly traditional and I like most things to be straightforward. This is especially true when it comes to cookery books.

I'm not a flash person when it comes to cooking, if I see a recipe with millions of ingredients then I tend to run a mile (probably the only excercise I do), as it just puts me off.

I love cookery books but find it really hard to find a good 'un that suits me.

The HairyBikers are great and I have a Hamlyn Book that has pictures of every recipe and my Be-Ro home recipes booklet is looking a little dog-eared from the use it gets.

So as I was browsing round Sainsburys the other day, which is such a lovely thing to do without the kids as the books are situated right near the toy aisle (who was the bright spark who thought of that idea), I wandered by the books and spotted the cook books.

I looked at the ones that said 'traditional home cooking' and 'easy family meals' and to be honest they had a few meals that I would cook but then they seem to go off course and slip in some weird recipes that I've never heard of and probably could never pronounce - Family Meals???? who are they kidding! My kids would take one look and probably bleeuuurgh all over the place.

The Fay Ripley one looks nice but it didn't quite grab me and shout "BUY ME NOW!!", so I left it on the shelf. Maybe next time.

Then I spotted my book - as soon as I flipped through the pages, this book was straight in the trolley. The pictures are great, the recipes traditional and best of all not too complicated.

I think I'm going to give the Toad in the Hole another try using the recipe given here. My last attempt was really awful and I'm sure that it is one of the easiest things to do but somewhere along the line mine failed drastically (Mr Bucket can confirm this).

The  book gives a starter page showing what's in season and a little 'patting themselves on the back' over how they buy/sell their food. But I suppose they can as it's their book. It then goes on to give a history of food from the past 500 years.

It follows that with classic British dishes, modern British dishes and then a food tour of Britain giving regional recipes i.e. Pan Haggerty from the North; Pork pie from the Midlands; Cawl from Wales and so on.

After all this there is a section on picnics, street parties and afternoon tea.

It is a lovely book and one I think that I'm going to be looking at and using for quite a while.


Sam xx

p.s. I know that it seems like it but I'm NOT plugging Sainsbury's and it's goods, I just like to shop there once in a while and I do use other shops/supermarkets - I'm not that fussy as long as I can get a bargain.

Some cooking...

Source: Good Food  

This week has had a couple of firsts, cooking-wise, and it's amazing I haven't made them before.

The other day I did my first ever Paella and I must say it tasted delicious although it stunk out our kitchen for the next few days and if/when I make it again I'll probably make half the amount, as we had loads left over. I would have used the leftovers up but after reading lots of advice on the internet, most erred on the side of caution because of the rice and seafood. 

There were only a couple of problems; I bought some frozen fish mix and in my bags I had huge prawns but they had shells on. Now most people would know what to do but I had no clue whether to take the shells off or leave them on.  We left them on but would take them off next time as it was such a FAFF and really messy when all you want to do is eat your tea.

The second problem was that the kids had different tastes - Miss Bucket liked the seafood but didn't like the chorizo sausage and Bucket jnr loved the sausage but wasn't a fan of the mussels, although he loved the prawns and I had to sit there and peel loads for him (he was like a hoover).

But definitely easy to do and if anyone's interested, I got my recipe from the BBC Good Food site and it is called 'Easy Paella'.

Sorry about the picture but completely forgot to take one of my paella.

Today as I looked out onto the frozen street, I promised the kids that I would make brownies for them for after school - I've made flapjacks (a first last week - sorry forgot to mention, they tasted gorgeous), cakes, cupcakes, fairy cakes, big cakes, small cakes and even some cakes that came out looking sorry for themselves but tasted great.

I looked in a favourite book "BBC Good Food - 52 Cakes, Bakes and Chocolate" - yep, a really healthy book then. And there is a recipe for Toffee Brownies which sounded yummy, although mine won't necessarily taste of toffee as you're meant to use dark muscovado sugar and I only had light brown sugar, nevermind.

Toffee Brownies

350g/12oz dark chocolate
250g/9oz unsalted butter
3 large eggs
250g/9oz dark muscovado sugar
85g/3oz plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

1. Heat oven to 160C/fan 140C/gas 3. Butter and line the base of a shallow square cake tin. Melt the chocolate and butter together, then stir well and cool.

2. Whisk the eggs until pale, then whisk in the sugar until thick and glossy and well combined. Gently fold in the melted chocolate mixture, then sift in the flour and baking powder and gently stir until smooth.

looks lovely - forget the brownies and get my spoon

3. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 30-35 mins or until firm to the touch. Test by inserting a wooden cocktail stick into the middle - there should be a few moist crumbs sticking to it. The mixture will still be soft in the centre but will firm up on cooling.

4. Cool in the tin for at least 1 hr then cut into 16 squares and finish cooling on a wire rack.

5. Try and eat one before the gannets pile in and demolish the lot.

And the result.......an almost failure.  I have a feeling that my tray might have been a bit small so my brownies had a thick middle (a bit like me, hey ho) and that's why I had to cook it for an extra 15 mins. When I took it out, the middle then sunk down and it's a bit too gooey inside.

 Bucket jnr and I tried some and it tastes delicious so maybe add it to a dollop of ice cream instead. Not a complete failure then. Sam xx