In my kitchen - August 2011

In my kitchen (inspired by Celia).... some goodies from Bakery Bits - pure lemon oil, I can't wait to use this. It smells sweeter than lemons, lemony but without the acidic backnote of either zest or juice. I'm sure this will enhance anything lemon I make. And because I'm a chocoholic, chocolate essence. I just couldn't resist. Smells pretty good, but not as bitter as my preferred dark chocolate. I shall just have to wait and see. They have lots more too, here.

Obscure Objects of Desire. Thank you Joanna. My shiny new danish dough whisk, already used for mixing up bread doughs. It seems like the perfect object to mix the sticky sourdough starter into the water before proceeding with the rest of the flour. And easy to clean too, only one tiny bit where dough gets a little stuck. Fab, looking forward to using it more....

To make more bread like this. Once I'd succeeded with the rye and barley sourdough from Dan Lepard, I decided to make it with wholemeal flour rather than rye and barley. So not totally wholemeal (there is white flour in the recipe too, and my starter is white flour based) but I think that actually I prefer the flavour of this one to the rye and barley incarnation.

And a couple of pictures for Celia - I haven't opened either of these yet, wondering how to showcase them to best effect. I bought the mezzi rigatoni because they reminded me of a shape Nigella had used in a recipe containing squid rings. I don't like squid though....

And finally, I adore cut flowers and gladioli in particular, so when I saw these deep, velvety red gladioli I just couldn't resist!

What's in your kitchen this August? Head over to Celia's blog to see her round up of what's in everyone elses kitchens now!

Spring Blossom

I love spring, the promise of summer to come, the freshness of all the new green in the world....

White flowers, green leaves. I don't know what these are though - anyone out there recognise them?

Blue sky, happiness.

Still alive...

Bit busy at the moment, but hoping to return to normal soon..... bear with me. And enjoy some flowers in the interim.

Lavender shortbread biscuits

Lavender isn't a scent I particularly associate with baking, but I've seen a few recipes using it and my interest was piqued. What would lavender be like as a flavour rather than a scent? I kept an eye out for lavender in the shops because although it would be really lovely, and ideal to use dried homegrown flowers there's not a chance of me being able to do that. I really do love living in England, and in the North of it too.... most of the time. It's just that on the West side our summers are cool and damp - no sign of the barbecue summer forecast by the Met Office here (yes, I know they've now taken this back and said that their original prediction was only a 65% chance of good weather - seems like fairly rubbish odds to me, only just over 50% chance of good weather, but never mind!). Anyway, my garden is particularly wet and after heavy rain there's often standing water. Lavender bushes like to be dry, so like I say, no chance of homegrown lavender here. However, undeterred, I managed to source dried lavender flowers and set about making this recipe. I'd originally thought of cupcakes, but decided biscuits would be a good start to my lavender adventure.

I chose a fairly basic shortbread recipe, based on one I found in a little book called '200 cakes and bakes' that I've recently acquired. I think it was a little treat to myself recently to celebrate pay-day or some other non-celebration (i.e. I just wanted a new cook book!!!). Anyway it's already bristling with post-it notes marking the pages of recipes I want to make soon so I think it was £4.99 well spent!

Lavender shortbread biscuits
Ingredients
150g plain flour
25g semolina
125g butter, diced
50g caster sugar plus about 2tsp extra for sprinkling
1 scant tbsp dried lavender flowers

Method
- Place flour and semolina in a roomy bowl. Add butter and rub in until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
- Stir in sugar and lavender and then squeeze the crumbs together to form a ball of dough. I found it easier to make two smaller balls. It looks as if the mixture will never come together, but it does - just keep squeezing. I think it must partly be the warmth of your hands that helps bring it together.
- Form into a log, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

- Preheat the oven to 160C/Gas 3 and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Remove the dough from the fridge and roll out on a lightly floured surface. I found the dough broke up a lot, but perservere. It was easier to work the dough if I worked it and warmed it up in my hands slightly before rolling.
- Cut out biscuits to your desired size. Mine were 2 inches (5cm) and I got about 35 biscuits 1/2 cm/ 1/4 inch thick, roughly. Place on baking sheets as you cut, and keep re-rolling the dough to get the last few out. Sprinkle with a little extra caster sugar for a lovely crunch when baked.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes until lightly golden (although mine definitely took longer than this to become light gold, probably up to 20 minutes).
- All to cool on the baking sheet (although I'm not sure why the recipe said this!).

Perfect for a little pick me up, the lavender flavour wasn't overpowering at all, as I had worried it might be. It was subtle and pleasant, and I'll be baking with lavender again, and not just because I've now got a little pot of it to use up! I'll be using the biscuit recipe again, they were light and buttery and flaky and crunchy - everything I was looking for in them!

Slightly mixed reviews at work. All but one loved them. That one couldn't bring herself to try them because lavender reminded her of the hot-water bottle that she used when she was in pain. Everyone else had no such qualms, and pronounced them a success, as did J when she visited recently!

Spring is springing!

Well, it's spring now! The clocks have gone forward and even though it's been grey all day here (boo!) there's enough light to take photos when I get home in the evening. It's all good from now on! So I just thought I share this lovely daffy trying to flower in my front garden, having fought its way through the muck that passes for soil, and evaded drowning and repeated slug attack. It'll be even more beautiful when it opens!

Flowers and chocolates

I mentioned in this post that I shouldn't really have been blogging as I was supposed to be revising. Well, last Monday I had a viva and the results of my exams were published and I was absolutely thrilled to have passed my MSc. I still have to finish writing up the project part of it and hand that in, but the exams were a major stress for me and I'm really glad they're over. Luckily it doesn't seem that blogging and baking instead of revising (!!!) did me too much harm, and I did better than I expected.

My MSc is part of my job, and my colleagues were very pleased that I'd done well, hence the absolutely gorgeous gerbera in the photo above. I love gerbera, but would never buy myself one, so I was very surprised and pleased to find that one of my bosses had bought me this. I also love sunflowers and roses - flowers that are bold and really make an impact are fabulous. Having said that, I also love freesia and many others too. Although I don't tend to buy flowers for myself, I'm lucky that J quite often brings me flowers when she visits, and in return I try and take flowers for her too!

The other part of my present was this lovely box of Green and Black's miniatures. I adore dark chocolate and eat it pretty much every day. It turns out that my boss also loves dark chocolate, but has more expensive taste than me! This was pretty much the perfect present for a chocoholic like me, who also happens to be allergic to nuts (d'oh!) as there are only two little bars that I'll have to pass on to friends. As a slight aside, the other generally safe collection for nut allergic chocoholics tend to be mint chocolates, like Bendicks. Manufacturers don't seem to mix nuts and mint. Luckily I love mint too!

So yippee for passing exams and I'll enjoy eating these little bars!