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20
May 13

Moddershall Oaks

Moddershall Oaks

Moddershall Oaks

Moddershall Oaks is a newly built spa retreat nestled in 14 acres of parkland in Staffordshire. It calls itself a retreat, but is in fact a small, luxury boutique spa, with just 10 rooms, or suites as they are known here. It also offers a large spa, salon, gym and award-winning restaurant.

The suites at Moddershall Oaks are large with a private patio and outdoor hot tub. From here, you are free to wander the hotel and hop from the spa to the pool to the relaxation room, as you wish. The hotel has a strong emphasis on pampering and offers a whole host of hair and beauty treatments.

The Spa

The Spa

The restaurant at Moddershall Oaks is open all day, offering breakfast, lunch and dinner, with the evening meal being the highlight. Using as much produce from local suppliers as possible, the dinner menu offers five courses with a wide selection of wines and cocktails to accompany your meal. The highlights for us were the chicken terrine, and the 28-day aged Staffordshire steaks. The menu offers a good range of choice with around 7 choices for starters and mains and a separate vegetarian menu available. Allergies are catered for with notice.

If the weather is nice for your visit, there are some woodland trails you can enjoy a stroll around. There is also a tennis court with free racket hire and bicycles which you can borrow, again free of charge.

Moddershall Oaks is a great place in a lovely setting to come to get away at any time of the year. It’s an extremely comfortable place to stay, whilst you are pampered and very well fed. A visit is highly recommended.

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13
May 13

Homemade lemon curd with Vivien Lloyd

The ingredients to make lemon curd

The ingredients to make lemon curd

Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I have recently been discovering the art of preserving. I’ve made jam, chutney and marmalade, and recently my attentions turned to curds.

Vivien Lloyd is one of the UK’s leading preserves experts and her latest ebook entitled Fruit Curds: Make and Bake has been guiding me through every step of the way.

Curds are an often forgotten preserve, but are absolutely delicious, much more so homemade than shop bought, and have all manner of uses in cakes, desserts and ice creams. The first time I tried homemade curd, I was absolutely blown away by the flavour – it is in a completely different league to anything else I have tried.

Making curd is not difficult and the process is shown in much detail at every stage with photos and videos which are really useful as you know exactly how the curd should look and feel throughout the process.

Vivien’s book shows you how to use your homemade curds in baking producing a range of incredibly delicious cakes and desserts.  If you’re interested in starting to make your own curd, I highly recommend this ebook, as it contains all the information you’re ever likely to need, and some really special recipes to make, too.

Vivien has very kindly allowed me to share her extra special Lemon Curd recipe with you here. Do give it a go and let us know how you get on. Vivien Lloyd can be found on Twitter as @vivienlloyd.

Making lemon curd

Making lemon curd


Lemon Curd


Lemon curd is the best known and my favourite curd with its rich flavour and bright colour. This is a traditional, tried and tested recipe and one to consider for competitions. I first made this recipe during my early days of preserving and it has become the one I return to most often. This recipe was first published by HMSO in 1929, Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables.

Makes about 1.25kg/ 2¾lbs

300ml (½ pint) freshly squeezed lemon juice ( 5-9 lemons)
215g ( 7½oz) unsalted butter 
700g (1lb 9oz) granulated sugar
300ml (½ pint) fresh eggs (5-6 eggs)

1.Wash the lemons and peel them very thinly with a vegetable peeler or a sharp knife before squeezing out and measuring their juice. Place the butter and sugar in an ovenproof  bowl over a large saucepan of barely simmering hot water. Add the lemon juice and lemon rind, and leave until the fat has melted.

2. Lift the bowl off the pan and leave to cool slightly. Lightly beat the eggs in a large bowl but do not whisk them. Gradually stir in the fat mixture, then strain the curd through a sieve (leaving the peel behind) into a clean bowl and place it over a saucepan of barely simmering hot water.

3.Stir continuously until the mixture is slightly thickened- the curd is ready when it just coats the back of the spoon. This will take about 15-20 mins. Do not over-cook or it will curdle. Turn off the heat and leave to stand for 5 mins, during which time the curd will thicken slightly.

4. Sieve the curd for a smoother texture. Pour into clean jars, taking care to fill them absolutely full. Press a waxed disc waxed side down on the surface of the curd and leave to cool. Cover the pots with a cellophane cover when cold. Store in a refrigerator and eat within 4-6 weeks.

FIRST PRESERVES CURDS ebook cover2 sm 02

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8
May 13

A day with Lesley Waters

Lesley Waters in action

Lesley Waters in action

Dorset is a very foodie county, renowned for its excellent produce flavoured by many celebrity chefs. One of those is Lesley Waters, who has been a regular feature on our TV screens for years. Lesley fell in love with Dorset just over a decade ago and made Dorset her home, converting a beautiful stone cottage on the rolling hills near to the Somerset border to create her own cookery school.

I recently spent a day at the Lesley Waters Cookery School with Lesley herself,  hosted by Aga Rangemaster, cooking with some of the best of local produce. Lesley is a very dynamic lady and a wonderful teacher and hostess, making sure everyone gets involved and touches, smells and watches everything.

The cookery school itself is absolutely beautiful, with stunning views from every window. Inside, the kitchen is decorated in a rustic yet modern style, with both walls kitted out with gorgeous deep red Rangemaster cookers. Lesley is a fan of the Rangemaster cooker, which is a delight to use, with fan assisted ovens which make baking accurate and gas hobs which are easy to control and cook with.

We made a range of Lesley’s signature dishes on the day which we enjoyed for lunch with a glass of fizz and I’m delighted to be able to share one of my favourite dishes of the day with you below.

Peppered scallops with puy lentils

Peppered scallops with puy lentils

Peppered scallops with puy lentil dressing

Adapted from the original recipe with permission

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

12 scallops, hand-dived and cleaned

Sea salt

Pepper

2 tbsp torn basil leaves

10g butter

4 tbsp puy lentils, cooked

For the dressing 

5 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

110g wild rocket leaves

110g sundried tomatoes

Method

1)   Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan. Add the scallops and season with salt and pepper. Cook for around 2-3 minutes on each side. Add the basil, butter and lentils and allow the scallops to cook for a further minute in the butter.

2)   Mix the oil and balsamic vinegar together and add the rocket leaves and tomatoes. Mix well to evenly dress the salad. Place on a plate and top with the scallops and lentils. Serve immediately.

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7
May 13

Designer cakes

Alessi designer cake moulds

Alessi designer cake moulds

If you love design and are interested in style, it’s always curious to see how it comes together with food.

Alessi is a company which produces all manner of designer home wares, and are now making designer cake moulds. I was fascinated to see how these would work and keen to give them a go. I thought they would lend themselves best to a dense type of cake, so I immediately thought of this delicious favourite recipe.

Lemon and almond designer cakes

Lemon and almond designer cakes

Lemon and almond cake

Makes 12 individual cakes

Ingredients

250g butter or margarine

250g caster sugar

1 tsp almond extract

1 tsp lemon extract

5 medium eggs, beaten

250g ground almonds

50g plain flour, gluten free if needed

Method 

1)   Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease your cake moulds and set them out upside down on a baking tray

2)   Place the butter and margarine into a large mixing bowl and beat together well until light and fluffy. Add the almond and lemon extract and mix in thoroughly.

3)   Add the eggs and beat into the butter and sugar well

4)   Now add the ground almonds and sift in the plain flour and fold into the mixture. Spoon into the prepared cake moulds and bake for 20-25 minutes until a cocktail stick comes out clean.

5)   Remove the cakes from the moulds and allow to cool on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar and enjoy.

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3
May 13

Lemon polenta muffins

Lemon polenta muffins

Lemon polenta muffins

If you love cake, like me, but sometimes keep half an eye on how much you’re enjoying, these delicious mini muffins might just be for you. They’re wheat free and really quite nutritious for cakes.

Polenta cakes tend to be a little more crumbly by nature, so for the best results, use a really good quality non-stick tin, such as this one made by Judge, and make sure it’s greased well if you are not using paper cases.

Lemon polenta muffins

Makes 12 mini muffins

Ingredients

75g butter

75g caster sugar

75g fine polenta

75g ground almonds

1 large free-range egg, beaten

Finely grated zest of one unwaxed lemon and 1 tbsp lemon juice

Method

1)   Preheat the oven to 180C

2)   Line your mini muffin tin, or grease well. Set aside

3)   Place the butter and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl and beat together well until light and fluffy

4)   Add the remaining ingredients and beat together well.

5)   Spoon into the muffin tin and bake for 15-18 minutes until golden brown

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28
Apr 13

Luxury in the Lakes

Linthwaite House Hotel

Linthwaite House Hotel

Linthwaite Country House Hotel must be one of the most beautifully situated hotels in the country; adjacent to Lake Windermere and enjoying stunning views across the Lake from the grounds, lounges and many bedrooms. It has 14 acres of its own grounds, which even includes its own tarn which guests are free to explore.

It is a small, friendly and cosy hotel, which is tastefully decorated in a modern and sleek way that doesn’t feel fussy or overly formal. We received an extremely warm welcome and were shown around our room with wide-reaching views across the Lake. The room was large, yet cosy, luxurious and indulgent with every detail well designed and thought out. After a long day out exploring the wilds of the Lake District National Park, Linthwaite is a wonderful place to return to, with immaculate bathrooms, thick towels, crisp sheets and even a DVD library to hand to unwind with.

All staff are extremely friendly, helpful, knowledgeable and proactive, yet entirely willing to assist and extremely personable. Linthwaite is a small, independent hotel and offers free use of a local spa, gym and bookable beauty treatments in house, meaning guests can enjoy the intimate feel of a small hotel, yet all the amenities of a larger establishment.

Linthwaite has its own excellent restaurant which is well worth a visit even if you’re not staying at the hotel. Reservations are made half an hour before you sit down to eat so that you can enjoy watching the sun set in one of the comfortable lounges, or on the terrace if the weather’s fine, accompanied by an aperitif and some delicious homemade nibbles. Special diets are catered for with advance notice, and we were offered a beautifully presented, specially prepared selection of delicious treats to enjoy with our champagne.

There is a tasting menu and an A la Carte menu to choose from, with the main menu offering around four choices for each course. We particularly enjoyed a starter of dressed crab with lemongrass jelly and butternut squash, and a poached fillet of lemon sole for the main course. The wine list is excellent and extensive and staff are extremely knowledgeable and willing to advise when it comes to wine pairings.

Breakfasts are excellent, offering a wide selection of delicious and interesting treats, such as roasted plums, potato rösti with caramelized onions, French toast and homemade smoothies, as well as the more usual offerings.

Linthwaite Country House Hotel is highly recommended as a wonderful place to relax in complete luxury, with superb food in one of the most beautiful parts of the country.

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26
Apr 13

Making a wedding cake: Part Two

What we're aiming for! Photo from Bridal Truth

What we’re aiming for!
Photo from Bridal Truth

The next step in baking a wedding cake (see here, if you missed Part One!) is the decoration.

Now, there are a million and one permutations for decorating a wedding cake, and it all comes down to the preferred style of the bride and groom, but it is increasingly popular to start with a simple white iced cake and decorate it from there.

It is not hard to decorate a cake yourself, but you do need to be very accurate, have a clear idea of the design you’re aiming for, and to have good equipment.

My go-to website for wedding cake supplies is MakeBake which offers an amazing array of cake decorating equipment. Of all the equipment I have found useful, I would particularly recommend an icing smoother and polisher, the icing mat which is so helpful for rolling out your icing accurately, cake boards, cake tins, and decorating supplies, such as edible pearls. I also managed to pick up a really large cupcake carrier, which will be perfect for transporting cupcakes to the hen party, too.

When it comes to icing a wedding cake this video of Dan Lepard icing a cake is tremendously useful.

Do make the time to have a practice run. In fact, you can get polystyrene cake layers from MakeBake on which you can practice your icing to save you having to bake a cake especially to ice.

Finish your iced cake with coordinating ribbons around the base and fresh or fondant flowers. Please do pop back in the near future for photos of my cake on the big day!

Here's a slice of my completed trial run wedding cake!

Here’s a slice of my completed trial run wedding cake!

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25
Apr 13

Making a wedding cake: Part One

A wedding cake in the making

A wedding cake in the making

If you read this blog regularly, you will know that I am a keen cake maker. I’ve made thousands of cakes in my time and even make them for a living, but I am taking on my greatest baking challenge to date this year: baking a wedding cake for a very special wedding this year.

Where do you start? Well, obviously the first things we agreed on is that it has to taste great, and look good, too.

It seems popular at the moment to go for a round cake, with a different flavour for each tier, and that’s what we decided to go for. I knew which recipes I’d use based on favourite cakes baked in the past, but I would have to scale up the recipes accordingly, as we decided to go for a five tier cake, with 6/8/10/12/14 inch tiers. Even I have never made a 14 inch chocolate cake before.

Next, I wanted to find the best cake tins to use – I needed great quality non-stick tins. A good quality cake tin makes all the difference. Using one which is of a good weight and construction is essential to avoid a tough crust forming around the edge of a cake and that it bakes through evenly. A springform tin is ideal as it makes releasing the cake from the tin straightforward and minimizes the risk of damaging your cake. The best tins I found were made by Kaiser and Judge, which I will be using on the day. They have a great non-stick coating, are easy to use, and produce excellent results.

It is really important to do a test run, to make sure you have the timings correct and that you have enough mixture in each tin.

I did a practice run with an 8” victoria sandwich for one of the layers. Each cake would consist of three layers of sponge with a jam and buttercream filling.

I used this recipe written by Rose Prince for a Victoria Sandwich which is very good, and scaled it up to an 8 egg recipe. It works exceptionally well using gluten free self raising flour and dairy free margarine, too.

For the buttercream, I simply combined 200g of butter with 200g of sifted icing sugar, beaten well until smooth. You can make an allergy-friendly version of this, or just stick to jam. To assemble the wedding cake, you simply sandwich the layers together, as above in the photo, and then you’re ready to get icing!

I have also been practicing making cupcakes, using this recipe, as a special surprise for the hen party.

Look out soon for Part Two, which will cover the cake decoration!

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24
Apr 13

A superfood sundae

Superfood sundae

Superfood sundae

We all love a frozen treat, particularly when the weather is warm, and this is one of my favourite low-fat, nutritious desserts. It may sound like a slightly strange combination of ingredients but I promise you they all work fantastically well together, making a healthy dessert that’s full of flavour and texture.

Frozen yoghurt is much lower in fat than ice cream, and the fruit adds one of your five a day with plenty of essential fats and protein from the pumpkin seeds. A drizzle of maple syrup is naughty but nice, but do use Organic if you can, as some maple syrups are not pure. I used YooMoo frozen yoghurt which is really tasty and very low in fat and calories.

Superfood sundae

Makes 1 sundae

Ingredients

1 large scoop vanillamoo vanilla frozen yoghurt

¼ small banana, sliced

40g blueberries

1 tsp Organic maple syrup

1 tbsp toasted pumpkin seeds

Method

1)   Place the frozen yogurt into a bowl or sundae dish.

2)   Scatter over the banana slices and blueberries.

3)   Drizzle over the maple syrup and finish by topping with the pumpkin seeds. Enjoy immediately!

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22
Apr 13

Espresso chocolate moelleux

 

Espresso chocolate moelleux

Espresso chocolate moelleux

Having recently learnt how to make the perfect cup of coffee, I’ve been busy practicing at home and decided to try baking with a delicious shot of espresso.

I just prepared a standard shot of coffee in exactly the same way as I would to make a cup of coffee using my machine at home and left it to cool. You don’t want to use hot liquids when you are baking, as it will affect the properties of the other ingredients in the mix. This is particularly the case when baking with eggs, as if they come into contact with any hot liquids, they will curdle.

I was mulling over what to make and decided on a moelleux, which is a deliciously dense and moist chocolate cake that’s very popular in France. It’s quite like a lighter version of a brownie and is very easy to make.

I’ve also been using a Gaggia Carezza coffee machine from John Lewis which works extremely well and is a lot cheaper than the models I tried on my coffee making masterclass.

Espresso chocolate moelleux

Makes 12 large slices

Ingredient 

225g 70% cocoa dark chocolate

1 shot espresso, cooled

225g vanilla caster sugar

225g butter

3 large eggs, beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch sea salt

65g plain four (gluten free or wheat flour)

1 tsp baking powder

Method 

1)   Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 9” square baking tin with non-stick baking paper.

2)   Carefully melt the chocolate in a bain marie or in the microwave. Once melted, stir in the cooled coffee and allow to cool.

3)   Using the Kitchen Aid, whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla extract together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, vanilla and sea salt and pour in the melted chocolate. Whisk well until the chocolate is evenly combined with the butter and sugar

4)   Sift in the flour and baking powder and fold in to the mix gently. It will be a light and fluffy cake mixture by now.

5)   Spoon into the prepared tin and level off using a spatula. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the top has formed a crust. The middle will still be pretty wet.

6)   Allow the cake to cool in the tin for at least 45 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool. It can be sliced when cold or refrigerated overnight and then cut the next day.

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