MINCE PIES

This recipe is from Rachel Allen's lovely book Bake, which always seems to have easy, no-nonsense recipes when I need them. I love mince pies and was staring at them in Tesco this morning but resisted in favour of making some with Juno. Kids and baking are a great match when Mammy's in great form. Not so much today, but we got there :) And the mince pies are delicious.

INGREDIENTS 

For the sweet shortcrust pastry:
200 g plain flour, sifted
1 tablespoon icing sugar
100 g chilled butter, cubed
1 medium egg, beaten
Filling:
250 g mincemeat (c. half a jar)
1 egg, beaten
Icing sugar for dusting

METHOD

* On a floured work surface, roll out the pastry to 3 mm thick.
* Cut 24 rounds with a 6 cm cutter,
* With a smaller cutter or heart/star cutter cut-out 24 lids. Re-roll the trimmings, if necessary.
* Line the holes of the cake tin with the larger pastry rounds. Fill each base with a teaspoon of mincemeat and top with one of the smaller rounds or hearts.
* Brush the tops of the mince pies with beaten egg.
* Bake in the oven for about 13 minutes until pale golden brown.
* Cool for 5 minutes before removing from the tin and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
* Dust with icing sugar to serve.

VEGAN CHRISTMAS CAKE

Vegan Christmas cake

I finally got around to making my cake yesterday. This is my favourite cake in the world - moist, boozy, delicious. I am amazed we haven't cut it yet...This year I bought whiskey not brandy and I am worried it will taste different. If it does, I am going out for brandy pronto and I will douse the cake.

Juno studying the ingredients

As there are a lot of ingredients it is best to get everything ready before you start. We don't like icing but you can easily find vegan marzipan and royal icing.

The dry ingredients mixed with treacle

Juno helping me

This is a powerful cake - my wishes always seem to come true from it, so fingers crossed for this year's wish :) Happy Christmas!

INGREDIENTS:
350 gr wholegrain spelt flour
175gr vegan marg
175gr light muscovado sugar
1 tsp mixed spice
150gr sultanas
200gr raisins
150gr dates
50 gr flaked almonds
1 tblsp treacle
100gr glacé cherries, halved
grated zest of an orange
2 tblsps ground almonds
120ml soya milk
2 tblsps red wine vinegar
¾ tsp of bread soda (bicarbonate of soda)
6 tblsps (90ml) brandy/whiskey

METHOD:
• Preheat oven to 150˚C
• Grease an 8” cake tin and line with greaseproof paper
• Sieve the flour and spice
• Rub in the marg until the mix is like breadcrumbs
• Stir in the flaked almonds and treacle
• Add the sugar, dried fruit, cherries, orange zest and ground almonds and mix
• Warm half the soya milk in a small pot and add the vinegar
• Dissolve the bread soda in the rest of the soya milk, then add
this to the milk and vinegar mix
• Stir this into flour and fruit mix until well combined
• Spoon mix into greased tin and smooth the top
• Bake for 2 hours, until a skewer/cocktail stick comes out clean
• Leave cake in tin to cool, then turn out and peel off greaseproof
• Prick cake with a cocktail stick and feed with a third of the brandy
• Wrap cake in greaseproof and store in a tin
• Feed with the rest of the brandy/whiskey at weekly intervals
• Will keep for 4 weeks or so

FREE VEGAN BOOK

Get a free vegan cookbook Make It Vegan from Isa Chandra Moskovitz and Breville here. Pdf, or Kindle (only in the USA).

HAPPY HALLOWE'EN!

Brack and buns for Trick or Treat for Temple Street :)

See the ring poking out there?

I bought the paper cases in the USA

HEMP OIL

I was sent a sample bottle of hemp oil by HempSeedOil.eu and I tried it out in two salad dishes. Hemp seed oil is low in saturated fats, is a source of polyunsaturated fats, and is free from trans fat and cholesterol. The oil is of high nutritional value because of its 3:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids, which matches the balance required by the human body. Hemp oil is not really used in cooking, it's best used in dressings and dips and so on.

I used mine to make a salad dressing with red wine vinegar and a pinch of salt and pepper (three parts oil to one part vinegar). The hemp oil has a lovely clear green colour and has the slightly grassy taste of extra virgin olive oil, though I thought it was milder than olive oil. It was a good substitute and, as I find the smell of olive oil nauseating sometimes, the hemp oil pleased me.

I also used it to make the marinade for my Three Bean and Basil Salad, in place of olive oil, and it tasted great.

I associate hemp with hessian type clothing and woven mats so it was interesting to see this oil and try it out. If you find olive oil too pungent for dressings (as I often do), you might find that hemp oil is a pleasant alternative.

Gourmandize Interview

I was Blogger of the Day on Gourmandize on Saturday but, sadly, I was away and couldn't blog about it. They interviewed me though. A taster:

Are there any chefs that you admire in particular?

I love Nigella because she loves food.
In real life, Dennis Cotter, who runs the very excellent Café Paradiso in Cork, a gourmet vegetarian restaurant. We go there every September for my husband's birthday. And look forward to it all year. Veggie sceptics are blown away by Dennis's food.

We see that you're an accomplished writer, does writing a food blog as well help keep your pen in shape or is it more of a way of relaxing?

It's totally separate. Writing novels and short stories is the day job; baking is escape and relaxation. But I'm a compulsive writer so inevitably I write about the cooking!

The rest of the interview is here. Gourmandize is a great place for all sorts of recipes; well worth a browse.

Corner House Bistro, Athlone

Corner House Bistro Samosas

I have a new restaurant crush in Athlone, home of The Left Bank and Kin Khao Thai. The new place I've fallen for is The Corner House Bistro on Dublin Gate Street. I had the chickpea samosas above and my husband had excellent falafels. I'm not sure how often the menu changes but I will be happy to go back and have the falafels all to myself. Their cakes looked equally fab so even tea and buns will do. The chef is formerly of the excellent Wineport Lodge so, really, how could you go wrong?