Week 1: Walnut Crumbles

So there we were on New Year's Day, recovering from a night of entertainment and excellent company, feeling a little worse for wear. And where better to retreat to when a little worse for wear than the comfort of the kitchen? As a treat to both me and guests Shaun, Al and Francesca, I thought I'd try something simple and sweet and so reached for The Great British Bake Off book and found these easy Walnut Crumbles.

I've always been wary of baking biscuits every since every effort when I was a child results in wafer-thin burnt sugary crisps, but this recipe is easy, fast and produced delicious biscuits. The flavour's really good and if you fancy, you can throw in a few other ingredients: they carry herbs of your choice quite well too, adding another dimension to the taste! This recipe makes 24 biscuits. 

Ingredients:

·        100g unsalted butter	·        ½ tsp of vanilla extract
·        100g caster sugar	·        250 g self raising flour
·        40g Demerara sugar	·        85g chopped walnuts
·        1 large egg (free range, of course)	·        15g walnut pieces to finish

Pre-heat the oven to 180ᵒC. Put the soft butter into a mixing bowl with both sugars and beat well with a wooden spoon or an electric mixer. Lightly beat the egg with the vanilla, then beat into the butter mixture. Sift the flour into the bowl and work in with a wooden spoon or your hands. Add the chopped nuts and work in. If adding other flavours/herbs, do this now.

Using floured hands, divide the mixture into 24 even-sized pieces and shape each into a ball. Set the balls well apart on the prepared baking sheets (sheets already lightly greased) and flatten with a fork. Scatter the walnut pieces over the biscuits and gently press in. Bake for about 10 minutes or until golden with light brown edges.

Remove from the oven and leave the biscuits on the baking sheets for a couple of minutes to firm up, then transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely. Store in an airtight container and eat within five days.

Today's learning:

Biscuits are surprisingly easy to make!

Picture from: http://elizabethryan-bakingcakes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/week-10-biscuits-walnut-crumbles.html

Recipe adapted from: Collister, L. (2011) The Great British Bake Off: How to Bake. London: BBC Books

In the beginning...

Welcome to my kitchen challenge blog, 2014. Here I shall attempt to describe the how and why of what this is all about:

Between 2006 and 2008 I embarked on a journey of discovery, not of new lands and distant shores (although this did feature somewhat in my life) or of personal reflection and introspection (which again, did happen to some extent), but of a journey in the kitchen. In most weeks, after reading the Saturday Guardian magazine, I'd pick out one of the recipes from Yotam Ottolenghi, Dan Leopard or Hugh Ferningly-Stanley-Whittington-Davies that featured in the magazine, sandwiched somewhere between the horrific fashion section and the curiously-calming gardening pages, and make it. Over the two years there were seasonal gems with lettuce or beetroot and oriental classics with 'modern twists' (the triple tofu satay being one memorable meal).


And so, over this period my range of cooking skills and knowledge of ingredients and their properties increased, helping make me fairly competent in the kitchen.

After 2008 my culinary exploration didn't stop, but I wasn't as relentless in trying new recipes and boldly cooking [or baking] what I hadn't cooked [or baked] before. I came to rely on some tasty old classics which I began to notice, came out again and again. I only really tried new things when friends came round to eat, enabling me to have willing guinea pigs to give valued feedback on the success, or not, of what had been made. And so this went on.

Then last year, a good friend of 12 years (Fi Aish) blazed a trail of inspiration with her New Year's Resolution to bake a different cake every week of the year, the results of which can be found on her encouraging blog. Added to this was a recent present of a pizza cookbook and pizza stone from my brother and his fiancee, a present which found immediate use, taking me into the new, delicious and fun world of homemade pizzas. Now seeing bright light where once they had simply been a warming glow, I realised that I had been resting on my bay-leaf laurels for too long and should once again stretch and challenge myself in the kitchen, making dishes and plates I had not yet created. And so my challenge was framed: to cook something new, something I hadn't cooked before, each week of this very year, 2014.

OK, so not as difficult as baking a cake each week of the year, but a challenge all the same and one that I initially started on quite lightly. It wasn't until attending Jo Tomlinson's birthday drinks one week ago, that I was persuaded and motivated by the triumvirate of Penny, Fi and Jo to turn this resolution into a public record: and hence the blog. As I'd already cooked three new things, the pictures for the first three are lacking, or mostly: week 3 has some leftovers and that's what you get a picture of.

And finally to put this all into some kind of personal context, pictures of my kitchen where the cooking takes place and my local Morrisons, provider of most of my ingredients. OK there we are. 

Let's cook up!