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I wanted something to eat and I decided to have a couple of croissants. I split them and spread a bit of butter on them, but I shouldn’t eat jam, so what else? I saw a banana, it’s a similar shape so I sliced along it’s length horizontally. One half folded into each puff pastry croissant. Delicious! I might try them with whipped cream next time!
Poached eggs on toast, on a botanical garden plate made by our local pottery, Portmeirion. Comfort food to cheer you up and warm you on a cold winters morning. A touch of salt and pepper. Butter on the toast.. I’m making myself hungry!
My loaf has a smile ! It’s crusty on the outside, soft and springy on the inside. I had a slice with a bit of butter and honey. I’m really pleased as my loaves usually turn out a bit dry and heavy. I tried to balance the liquid content and the stickiness and this time I tried to knead it a bit more.
Tasty!
How do you make it? Raisins and currents between slices of bread with a mixture of egg and milk and nutmeg and sugar somehow added to it? The outcome is a sticky, stiff, yummy lump of slightly crispy pudding.
Problem 1, I have no currents or raisins or even sultanas..
2, I have no sliced bread
3, I don’t eat sugar because of diabetes.
4. I have no recipe to work from and don’t know what temperature to cook it on.
Solution…just make it up as I go. So I sliced some slightly stale brown bread. Buttered it and placed it butter side down into a pyrex glass shallow oblong tray. Added a layer of sliced banana and some sliced pear. Then a few more bits of bread and dots of butter. Finally more banana and pear and a bit of a crust of bread on top. I then whisked up six eggs?! With milk, sugar substitute and a bit of cinnamon (I don’t have nutmeg).
Poured the liquid over the bread slowly so it soaked in.
What heat? I chose gas mark 5 (medium heat) and set the oven for forty minutes. It might be horrible. It might be OK. For future reference does anyone know a recipe?
A little bit flat, but I cooked this in a flan case.
Ingredients (approx amounts)
8oz self raising flour
4oz butter/ margarine
two tablespoonfuls sweetener (or 4oz sugar)
three eggs
two tablespoons milk
pinch of salt
large cooking apple peeled and cored
packet of raspberries.
I put the self raising flour in a bowl and then put bits of butter in plus the sweetener, then with a metal spoon I broke the fat up more, a pinch of salt, then crumbled the mix between my fingers so that it looked like breadcrumbs.
I made a dip in the mix and added the eggs, slowly stirring it in and trying to keep air in the batter, I added a bit of semi-skimmed milk to soften it more.
I added the apple slices and the raspberries to the cake batter so the fruit was evenly mixed into it. Then I poured the batter into the flan case which I had buttered.
I put the cake in an oven, gas mark 4, for 1 hour and 10 to 15 minutes.
It came out nice and moist, and it wasn’t completely cooled when we tore into it!
Note I used self raising flour that contains wheat, milk and eggs that can be allergens, butter which may not be in your diet and sweetener that you can cook with because I try to make sugar free cakes.
Tasty but a bit too greasy.
I decided to make a pear cake with a couple of large pears off the tree. I didn’t have a recipe to hand so followed the one on the back of my bag of self raising flour.
The ingredients were:
150 grams each of self raising flour, butter and sugar.
Three medium eggs
A small amount of water
This was to make a Victoria sponge. I decided I would add raw sliced pears into the base of my glass flan dish (I don’t have a cake tin or grease proof paper).
Method. It said cream butter and sugar together till its light and fluffy, then add the eggs and a bit of water. Then gently fold the self raising flower in.
Problem. I can’t eat sugar. So I used sweetener that you can bake with. The amounts were questionable. 150 grams when you don’t have scales. So I guessed the amounts and I think I put about 200 grams in. The sweetener said 200 grams was five tablespoons, so I used four instead. Then the eggs? I used three, but they were large. Finally I guessed a mug full of flour would be about right….
I creamed the butter and sweetener together and made it softish and fluffy. Then I slowly added the eggs. The mix started to curdle. I tried adding a bit of flour and it started to look like undercooked scrambled eggs! I got my hand whisk out and tried to beat some of the lumps out. Then I folded in the flour, I made a batter, but still saw flecks of butter in the mix.
So I spooned the mix over the pears in a well greased Pyrex flan dish. I put the cake in the oven on gas mark 4 (medium heat) initially for thirty minutes. When I checked it, there were bubbles of gas coming out of it and it was still pale. So I put it on for another twenty minutes. The bubbles were still happening but the surface felt fim and was golden brown. When I tapped it, it sounded hollow, and when I pricked it with a knife that came out clean.
I eased the cake out of its case. Some of it broke up because it had stuck in the dish. It was greasy, but I cut a section out and it held its shape.
It tasted eggy but nice. The pears had cooked through.
Next time I might start making it with flour, then rubbing the butter into that till its like breadcrumbs, adding sweetener, then making a hole in the flour before adding the eggs. I wish I’d remembered that before I made this cake.
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Bread pudding made, yum!
It was a bit burnt on top. I used half a stale crusty brown loaf, soaked in water overnight. Then I added a cup of dried mixed fruit, and stirred it in to break up the loaf. Then added two eggs, some milk, three teaspoons of sugar substitute, a few knobs of butter and a teaspoon of cinnamon to make a wet mix. I put it in a greased shallow baking dish and baked it in the oven gas mark six (mid temp not too hot). I cooked it for 1 hour and 20 minutes. It came out a bit burnt on top. The bits of crust were nice and crunchy. I served it hot with cream. You could use custard.
One way to use up stale bread. Thanks Frank’s wife for the original recipe.
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Mallaband-Brown