Key Lime Pie

A couple of weekends ago, my brother and his girlfriend came to stay for a night. They spent the afternoon helping EHH in the garden and so I thought that I had better put together something good for dessert. I had already baked my mini blueberry and lemon loaf cakes for snacks (which my brother ate straight out of the tin!) and so didn’t want to make something cake-y for dinner. I’ve never made Key Lime Pie before and it is one of EHH’s favourite puds so I decided to give it a go.

I found this recipe on BBC Good Food’s website, but made a few adaptations based on the comments on the webpage. I reduced the butter in the base to 100g – which was plenty – and I used half Gingernuts and half Hobnobs instead of all Hobnobs, just to add an extra flavour dimension. As there were only four of us, I didn’t cover the pie in cream but served it on the side instead – so that we could keep the pie for longer in the fridge.

Making this dessert is fairly simple. Pressing the biscuit crumbs into the tart tin does take a bit of time but it is worth it. Make sure that you don’t end up with a very thick section around the rim rather than properly moulding the corners. I was worried about it coming neatly out of the tart tin - but as you can see, it came out beautifully! You do need to allow plenty of time for the pie filling to cool and set fully once it has been cooked – I didn’t leave mine for long enough and it was still a little runny.

Overall, I thought that this dessert was ok. I’m not a fan of the texture of the biscuit base (but I never am – I don’t like cheesecakes etc with similar bases) and I felt that the filling was perhaps a little sharp (perhaps due to using normal limes rather than key limes). I definitely preferred the lemon tart that I made a little while ago. However, EHH loved this one and my brother and his girlfriend also seemed to enjoy it.

(Key) Lime Pie

Ingredients

1. 150g Hob Nobs
2. 150g Gingernut biscuits
3. 100g butter, melted
4. 1 x 397g tin condensed milk
5. 3 medium egg yolks
6. finely grated zest and juice of 4 limes (preferably Key limes)
7. 300ml double cream
8. 1 tbsp icing sugar
9. extra lime zest, to decorate

Method

1. Heat the oven to 160C.
2. Blitz the biscuits to crumbs in a food processor (or put in a strong plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin).
3. Mix with the melted butter and press evenly across the base and up the sides of a 22cm loose-based tart tin.
4. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
5. Put the egg yolks in a large bowl and whisk for a minute with electric beaters.
6. Add the condensed milk and whisk for 3 minutes then add the zest and juice and whisk again for 3 minutes.
7. Pour the filling into the cooled base then put back in the oven for 15 minutes, or until set on top.
8. Cool then chill for at least 3 hours or overnight if you like.
9. When you are ready to serve, carefully remove the pie from the tin and put on a serving plate.
10. To decorate, softly whip together the cream and icing sugar.
11. Dollop or pipe the cream onto the top of the pie and finish with extra lime zest.

Blackberry and apple crumble

Just a quick post to type up my blackberry and apple crumble recipe. For me, blackberry and apple crumble is an autumn must! Having made blackberry and almond crumble squares with some of our foraged blackberry haul, next on the list was proper crumble. I love the combination of blackberry and apple, and crumble is just so easy to make.

My crumble isn’t actually the traditional flour, butter, sugar combination, I follow a recipe from The Good Granny Cookbook, which uses oats rather than flour in the topping and so is more like a chewy, crunchy flapjack on top – delicious! By cooking the fruit in a saucepan first and then reducing the juices, you intensify the flavour and prevent the top from becoming soggy.  The great thing about crumble is that there really aren’t any rules – I tend to throw in a bit of spice and whatever nuts that I have in the cupboard!

As I was visiting a friend who has just had a baby, I split the crumble into two disposable tin foil containers: one for them and one for us! These are great: you can pop them in the oven to bake and once cool, pop the cover on and put them in the freezer. Then, when you want to eat, just pop them straight back in the oven to re-heat.   

Blackberry and apple crumble

Ingredients

1. 700g mix of Bramley apples (peeled, cored and diced) and blackberries (I used 400g blackberries, 300g apple)
2. 60g soft brown sugar
3. 85g golden syrup
4. 85g butter
5. 175g oats
6. 60g hazelnuts / walnuts
7. 1.5 tsp cinnamon

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 175C.
2. Put the fruit in a saucepan with the sugar and enough water to cover the base of the pan.
3. Cook gently until the fruit are soft and the juices running.
4. Taste to check the sweetness – stir through more sugar if needed.
5. Strain off the juice.
6. Put the fruit into the pie dish / foil containers.
7. Return the juice to the saucepan and boil rapidly until reduced and syrupy.
8. Pour the juice over the fruit.
9. Melt the golden syrup and the butter together (easiest done in a microwave).
10. Mix the oats, nuts and spice into the syrup/butter mixture.
11. Spread the mixture gently over the fruit.
12. Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the top is lightly browned.  

Guernsey Gache Melee

So, what on earth is Gache Melee, I can imagine you saying! Pronounced "Gosh mellar", it is a traditional Guernsey apple cake. As is the way with these old family recipes, there seems to be an abundance of different recipes for this cake. Some are very cakey, some more sticky and gooey. The only thing that seems to be the same is that they all contain cooking apples, originate in Guernsey and are very dense.

I’ve no idea where the recipe I used on this occasion came from originally – as with the Crispy Pineapple Bakes, I copied this recipe out of my Nan’s recipe book, which is an amalgam of recipes copied from magazines, handed down through the family, passed on by friends …

I called my mum to ask advice before making this recipe – but she wasn’t a great deal of help! Her advice was that she “just knew when it was right!” Hmm, thanks Mum! So pretty much, this was a case of experiment and see how it turned out! She did, however, warn me that you always had to bake it for much longer than the recipe said – she wasn’t wrong there! The recipe said 30-45 minutes, I baked it for about 2 hours! Although this was possibly slightly long as the edges had begun to go beyond “caramelised”!

The end product was chewy, gooey and caramelly. Tasty, but not quite right in my mind – the edges were overcooked and the middle not quite cooked. Having posted on Facebook about this, I’ve got a couple of different recipes to try – so may give those a go and see if they are more successful.

Gache Melee

Ingredients

1. 2 medium-large cooking apples (peeled, cored and cubed)
2. 120g plain flour
3. 100g butter (at room temperature)
4. 100g soft brown sugar
5. Enough milk to make a firm paste

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C and line a brownie tin with baking parchment.
2. Place the cubed apple into a bowl and sprinkle over the flour. Use a knife to stir the flour with the apples.
3. Cut the butter into the bowl so that the butter is evenly distributed amongst the flour and apple.
4. Mix again with the knife, chopping everything together until the butter and apple are well integrated into the flour.
5. Add the brown sugar and stir everything together with a wooden spoon.
6. Mix in enough milk to make everything stick together without becoming runny.
7. Spoon into the prepared tin and place in oven.
8. Bake (for approx. 1 hour 30 minutes) until golden brown.
9. Remove from oven and leave to cool in tin.
10. Once cool, remove from tin and cut into squares.

Nan’s Crispy Pineapple Bakes

It was my birthday on Friday and so last weekend I decided to have a bit of a bakeathon in preparation.  Throughout the week, I had planned to meet up with some friends and so I decided to bake one of my old reliables – Sticky Ginger Cake with lemon drizzle icing. I just love this cake – it is easy and fairly quick to make (although takes an hour to bake), tastes amazing and lasts brilliantly – so great for making in advance.

Having made the Sticky Ginger Cake, I felt like experimenting with something new – so had a search through my recipe file and found two recipes that I had copied out of my Nan’s handwritten recipe book, but hadn’t yet made: Crispy Pineapple Bakes and Gache Melee. I decided to give both a go – and pop them in the oven at the same time. I’ll tell you more about Gache Melee in my next post.

I don’t remember ever having had Nan’s Crispy Pineapple bakes but they sounded delicious – pineapple cake topped with syrupy cornflakes! They were fairly simple to make – except you need to allow a bit of time as you have to boil up the pineapple mixture and then leave it to cool for 30 minutes. The tricky bit is trying to tell when the cake is actually cooked. The recipe I was using said bake for 40 minutes – I think I ended up baking for about an hour and a half. However, having just had a check, I’ve realised that the recipe said (in typical handwritten recipe style) “Gas Mark 5?” – I took a guess and thought that this would be about 165C – having looked it up, it should be 190C – which will explain why it took so long to cook!  It is difficult to tell when it is baked as the cornflakes on the top prevent you from being able to get at the top of the cake to give it a test. I used the skewer test and in the end, it finally came out clean.

This cake is a squidgy, dense cake (well it was when I made it) – and that works brilliantly with the crispy cornflakes on top. The pineapple flavour comes through beautifully. These cakes are definitely best eaten fresh. If they are left, the cornflakes will go soft and the contrast in textures is lost.

I’ve converted the imperial measures to metric – so hope they work out ok. I’m definitely going to have another go at these – EHH really enjoyed them and I’d like to really get them right!

Crispy Pineapple Bakes

Ingredients

1. Large tin of crushed pineapple (432g)
2. 60g butter
3. 120g caster sugar (preferably golden)
4. ½ tsp mixed spice
5. 150g self-raising flour
6. 1 large egg (beaten)

Topping

1. 30g butter
2. 1 tblsp golden syrup
3. 60g cornflakes

Method

1. Place the crushed pineapple and juice, butter, sugar and mixed spice into a medium saucepan. Heat gently until the sugar has dissolved, stirring the whole time.
2. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 3 minutes.
3. Remove from heat, pour into a bowl and leave to cool for 30 minutes.
4. Pre-heat the oven to 190C and line a brownie tin with baking parchment.
5. Add the flour and the egg to the cooled pineapple mixture and beat until smooth.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin.
7. Melt the butter and golden syrup and bring to the boil (easiest to do this in a bowl in the microwave).
8. Remove from heat and stir in the cornflakes.
9. Sprinkle the coated cornflakes over the cake mix.
10. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes or until firm.
11. Remove from oven and  leave to cool in tin.
12. Remove from tin and cut into squares.