Garlic Butter and Cheddar Scones

I always get over excited when I buy a new cookery book. I then get intimidated by it and ignore it for a few weeks before I finally decide what the first attempted recipe shall be. So it was with Short and Sweet by legendary baker Dan Lepard. I didn't find the cover to this particularly appealing but one short minute of peering inside and I had to have it. It covers absolutely everything from basic bread to banana fudge cookies via black russian caramels and soft raspberry coconut ice.

The real decider was Joe disappearing off with three friends on Sunday to go and watch the football and I decided that nothing would be nicer for them at half time than some Garlic Butter and Cheddar scones... so that's what they had. Now these aren't going to win any beauty contests because some of the cheese makes a sort of skirt at the bottom of the scone but this is actually a bonus because this garlicky, leaked cheese is amazing and almost better than the scone itself. What I found especially pleasing is I didn't have to tweak this recipe at all!

Garlic Butter and Cheddar Scones

Makes 6 scones

100g plain flour, plus extra for shaping
100g wholemeal or rye flour
2 tsp mustard powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine salt
1 tsp brown sugar
1 clove garlic, finely mashed
50g unsalted butter, in 1 cm cubes
200g cheddar, diced
1 large egg
about 4 tbsp low fat plain yoghurt

Heat the oven to 210C/190C fan/ 410F/ Gas Mark 6.5.  Line a baking tray with non-stick paper. I'd also like to recommend that you dice the cheddar quite small - mine was pretty small but my cheddar skirts were pretty big. I think the smaller the dice, the smaller the skirt.

1. Place the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the garlic and butter. Rub everything together until the butter has almost disappeared and toss the cheese through.

2. Beat the egg with the yoghurt and stir this in to make a soft dough.

3. Pat this out on a floured surface until it's about 4cm thick and either cut out 6 circles of dough or tidy the edges and cut into squares.

4. Place them a small bit apart on the baking tray and bake for 20-25 minutes until golden on top.

5. Leave on the tray to cool slightly before eating.

Inoffensive Fruit Salad

Now I really don't like fruit - don't like the taste of it, the smell of it, hate touching it but I know that I am in a minority so when I made brunch a few weeks ago I knew it was going to be a necessity. However, I also knew that I would probably vom if there was a fruit bowl on the table and people were just eating it willy-nilly and not sticking to the rules (people who eat bananas and leave the stringy bits lying around HOW DARE YOU?) So i decided to get some fruit that I find least offensive and make a glamorous fruit salad that I could deal with.

It all went very well until I just got a little grossed out and Joe had to finish it but I directed and that's important too!

Joe finishing the fruit salad - he'll be cross he's got his glasses on in this photo

INOFFENSIVE FRUIT SALAD

Serves 4 (easily)

500g strawberries
2 ripe mangoes
1 tub/box/punnet/thing blueberries
1 lemon
A bit of sugar

I made this in a crystal bowl I got for my christening. A bit swanky for brunch I know but a) when am I ever going to use it otherwise? and b) it fitted and made the fruit look yummy (even to me).

1. Remove all the green gross bits from the strawberries and cut them into quarters. Put them straight into your serving bowl of choice.

2. Cut the mango into cubes. They have a big stone in the middle so you but round the middle length ways a bi like you would a avocado but you have to slice it completely off the flat stone. Then you most of a half of fruit still in the skin so you cut it into cubs with a knife, invert the skin to make it look like a hedgehog and then cut each cube off individually. I haven't explained that very well have I. I shall get Joe to comment below with a more normal explanation. Anyway, plonk the cubes in with the strawberries.

Joe's mango hedgehog - you can see the other bit of mango on the work surface if that helps!

3. Tip the blueberries on top and mix with salad tongs.

4. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon and sprinkle over a tablespoon (ish) of sugar, mix the fruit together and taste. You may want to add more lemon, more sugar or even a bit of orange juice which just sweetens the whole thing rather nicely.

Finished fruit salad

I actually tried a bit and it was quite nice - Joe got to have the leftovers for breakfast the next day which made me feel like a good wife.

Ina Garten's Easy Cheese Danishes

I absolutely adore Ina Garten and watch her program Barefoot Contessa whenever it's on. She's so calm and soothing and homey - you'd never know that her brain bulges and she used to work for the White House. I only have one of her books - I find you spend a lot of time converting temperatures etc as these are definitely for a US audience but she has great suggestions for events, brunches, snack lunches, romantic dinners etc so I used one of her recipes for the brunch I cooked recently.

Her quick cheese danishes are easy if a little fiddly and, although I was originally drawn to these because they involve cheese, they are in fact sweet. They went down incredibly well and there were enough left over for tea. What was actually ideal about these was that I had made them the night before which meant they just needed heating up for five minutes in a hot oven and I could do this for people as they arrived so our stomachs weren't rumbling too much by the time everyone had appeared. These also inspired me to make my own savoury cheese pastry recipe which is going to be the first think I attempt once I'm off this bloody diet!

Ina Garten's recipe is below (taken from her book At Home and amended slightly by me). I've converted them to grams but put the (original) ounces and cups in brackets after.

Easy Cheese Danish

Makes 8 Danish (I actually found this made about 12)

225g (8oz) cream cheese, at room temperature
40g (1/3 cup) sugar
2 extra-large egg yolks at room temperature (I used 3 medium egg yolks)
2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
1tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (2 lemons)
2 sheets pre-rolled puff pastry
1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6. Line a big baking sheet with baking paper. I had to use two which was a bit of a pain but I'm not sure a big one would have fitted in my fridge - these do need chilling so make sure yours will fit. Now I actually used 300g cream cheese and would use 1 lemon zest max but as I've said I hate lemon. I also think that in the US the puff pastry sheets are square so I would get three packs maybe and trim our rectangles to be more square.

1. Place the cream cheese and sugar in a bowl and cream together on low speed until smooth. Ina uses a KitchenAid mixer which I don't have so I used my lowly hand mixer on it's lowest setting which seemed to work fine.

Cream cheese and sugar

2. With the mixer still on low, add the eggs yolks, ricotta, vanilla, salt and lemon zest and mix until just combined. Don't whip!

Egg yolks, lemon zest and ricotta

3. Unfold one sheet of puff pastry onto a lightly floured board and roll it with a floured pin until it's a 10x10 inch square. Cut the sheet into quarters with a sharp knife. I then found it easiest to put the squares onto the baking sheet before putting the filling in.

4. Place a heaping tablespoon of cheese filling into the middle of each of the four squares. Brush the boarder of each pastry with egg wash and fold the two opposite corners to the center, brushing and overlapping the corners of each pastry so they firmly stick together. Brush the top of the pastries with egg wash. Refrigerate the filled Danish for 15 minutes.

Ready for the fridge

5. Bake the pastries for about 20 minutes (my oven blows hot so I found 15 was fine), rotating the pan once during backing, until puffed and brown. Serve warm.

Finished Danish - in no way as beautiful as Ina's

You can make these the night before and keep in an airtight tin, then reheat them in a 180c oven for five mins before serving.

Brunch

In my continuing quest for food perfection I invited my sister and her husband over for brunch before the football last Sunday. Not content with the usual fry up I think the boys would secretly crave and well away of the size of the stomachs that would need filling before 2 hours spent sitting in the cold shouting I got into a bit of a panic. My sister had requested scrambled eggs and smoked salmon (which I had offered before you think she's a bit of a princess!) but what goes with that?? After an hour with my cookery books I came up with what I think was a pretty great brunch menu that fed five (including three big boys) happily.

SUNDAY BRUNCH BEFORE FOOTBALL
Serves 5

Fruit juice, tea and coffee

*

Cheese Danishes

*

Scrambled eggs and Smoked Trout

 *

Bacon

*

Fruit salad

*

Big Tom Bloody Marys

I'm going to post all the recipes for this brunch separately so this isn't the longest post in the whole world. I was initially drawn to the cheese danish recipe because it involves cheese but these are in fact sweet which sounds weird but they went down really well and were not only fantastic to warm up as and when people arrived (I didn't want to start scrambling until every one here) but there were some left over for post-defeat tea. 

I made the danishes the night before, they would just need heating up for five minutes in a hot oven, and put the bacon in just before people were due to start arriving. I cook bacon in the oven as it smells less and once it's cooked you can keep it warm and its a bit of a pain to have to keep darting backwards and forwards to the kitchen when you want to be eating your eggs. Bacon probably seems like a weird choice but Joe is obsessed with Oscar Meyer bacon (which he has now got me hooked on too) and I just couldn't imagine a brunch with out it. It was fantastically crispy so we all ate it with our fingers. 

The fruit salad I'd made that morning - well I directed as Joe made, I'm really not that keen on cutting up fruit. In fact, I'm not that keen on fruit at all so the thought of just having a fruit bowl on the table while we were eating was just not ok so I thought a fruit salad would be the way forward. In the end even I had a bit.

I know many people turn their noses up at Big Tom but I honestly find normal tomato juice too thin and it seems impossible to find Clamato juice anywhere which is my absolute favourite. If you can find it, try it and tell me where you got it!