A traditional Scottish dish; I love them slathered with plenty of butter and honey, but you could eat them with bacon and egg for breakfast too.
Category: Baking
Almond pastry
Perfect for an apricot tart … or any other sort of fruit tart. Bake blind, add a layer of crème patissière if you want, and then top with fruit of your choice, arranged in a nice pattern and glazed with redcurrant jelly or sieved apricot jam.
Yoghurt cake
I’m always looking for ways of using up home-made yoghurt so it doesn’t linger in the fridge too long. This cake is a well-known one in France, especially as something that’s easy for children to make (no weighing involved). You measure everything in a yoghurt pot; unfortunately the recipe didn’t specify what size a yoghurt pot is, and since I make my own I didn’t have any to hand. However, I decided it was about 100 ml, used a small jar of that capacity, and the recipe came out OK.
Orange and white chocolate cake
From Good Housekeeping; a lot of work, but worth it for a special occasion, and you can make the cake ahead and freeze it. I think you could use lime instead of orange; I love the combination of lime and white chocolate.
This makes a very large cake — at least a dozen servings. Reduce by half for a 15-cm tin; baking time will be the same.
Simple biscuits
I haven’t made biscuits for years, but today I wanted to make some simple, buttery sultana biscuits, and to my surprise a trawl through the most likely suspects on my bookshelf (Delia, Jane Grigson, Katie Stewart, Georgina Horley) came up blank. I ended up googling, and even that took a while. But eventually I hit lucky, and less than half an hour later I was able to sample the result. Very nice, albeit a bit crumbly; I might add a spot of milk next time, as the dough was very short. I added sultanas, but see suggestions at the end of the recipe for alternative flavourings. This recipe makes about a dozen.
Credit: from tafn.org.uk, but the site was down when I visited so I used Google’s cache.
Petits pains au lait
This recipe makes about 8 soft, slightly sweet brioche-like rolls, which are nice for breakfast or afternoon tea. You can easily make and prove the dough in a bread machine.
Tuiles
This is my favourite way of using up surplus egg whites. They are time-consuming and fiddly to do, but they keep for ages in an airtight tin, and are a way of filling up a rainy Sunday afternoon. They make an elegant accompaniment for ice cream, but they go well with other fruity/creamy desserts too. You can also make little baskets by forming them in cups, or small tart tins, and fill with fruit. This quantity makes about 20-25.
Madeleines au miel
Classic French delicacy — best eaten while still slightly warm. For best results you should start a couple of hours in advance and chill the batter in the fridge before baking. The thermal shock produces a better rise with the characteristic bump.
Guggy cake
Want to make a cake and don’t have any eggs? Here’s the answer! Very easy to make, and delicious. You can serve it spread with butter, but it’s just fine on its own.
A wartime recipe, hence lack of eggs. The original was made with lard, but these days we can use butter.