Dairy free Christmas goodies

This year:

First up, stollen spirals as before. Lovely and light - I did the second prove in the oven on ultra low.


Gingerdoodle surprise muffins  - these were supposed to be Snickerdoodle Biscoff sandwich cookies, but I think the Vitalite sub for butter was the culprit. I made the mix largely as per the recipe (apart from the butter switch, using 3 very small 50g eggs instead of 2 large 75g, and adding some ground ginger because I was worried it would be bland), but it was cake-batter-like in texture. "Roll into balls and in the sugar and cinnamon" - pa ha ha ha. Out came the muffin cases (just 11 left in the pack, of course) and in went the mix. There was TONS. Given it supposedly makes 24 cookies, and I made 11 very generous muffins and a cupcake, I'm wondering what happened.

Anyway, I put the mix in the cases, sprinkled with a mix of granulated and demerara sugar plus cinnamon, and baked for ~35 mins at 170°C fan. They went a bit volcanic (the sugar sprinkle was widely spread!) but stayed in the cases and had a nice texture, close but light. When cool I cut an inverted cone out of the top, removed some of the cake, and filled with Biscoff spread slackened with soya milk. I omitted the sugar as it sounded far too sweet but I think another time I should re-add some, or use maple syrup in the soya.


"Healthy" 4-ingredient vegan fudge. With peanut butter, coconut oil, maple syrup and peanuts as the ingredients you can take the healthy label with a pinch of unhealthy salt. This came together quickly and seemed to last fine in the freezer. Tastes of the pan scrapings were yummy, approximating fudge to a fair extent. I made it in silicon cups and gave them with the gift!


Cherry chocolate coconut flapjacks. A straight sub of coconut oil for the butter this time, and again weirdness. When I melt and bubble the butter and sugar it goes treacly and beautiful. With the coconut oil I had a sublayer of treacly sugar, and a stubbornly separate layer of fat, no matter how much I mixed. This made for quite a dry flapjack and I had to try rescuing it with more syrup and some vitalite (as I'd used all my coconut oil). Adding cherries and dessicated coconut, and topping with generous drizzles of dark chocolate, sorted it. You have to cut it when cold, but refrigerating it makes it brick-like.


Finally, Chef John's Bacon Jam. I have wanted to try making bacon jam for a while, and went for this recipe. The one I really wanted was from Time To Cook, the blog by Mary-Anne Boermans who is one of my favourite ever Bake Off contestants. However, I couldn't really justify buying kecap manis and gentleman's relish for one recipe, so chose the simpler version. It seemed to work, despite me halving the bacon and onions and then forgetting to halve everything else. Lessons learned: cut the onions smaller, fry the bacon until crisp but not hard, and chucking in piri-piri seasoning (because it's easier than faffing with spices) works but... hooo-eeee, go easy on it! Subbing white wine vinegar for the sherry vinegar worked fine, and a splash of maple syrup was also a good addition. Getting really good bacon from the butcher is a must - I used streaky, because it's an American recipe and that's all they know. I realised I forgot the final olive oil - maybe this avoids the issue of the bacon fat going white in the fridge?

Stollen spirals and other festive gift goodies

Stollen spirals - really just festive Chelsea buns I guess...

BBC Good Food recipe

Take 1 (test run, not a gift):

All went fine except I crammed too many in the tin and the middle ones were too doughy. Next time space them out better/use more tins. Also use more fruit, and slice the marzipan rather than using a big wodge in the middle.

Take 2:

Made these dairy free by subbing in coconut oil for butter, and soya milk for the milk. Not a deliberate choice, just what I had in the house to make them for a dairy-intolerant recipient. Also made the changes as above, and happened to use more sultanas and cranberries, no mixed peel, no nuts, and no icing, purely for time reasons. They fit perfectly, with room to expand, at 12 to my big roasting tin, with the remainder (I hesitate to say rejects) in a smaller tin. The 12 were frozen as soon as they were cool, defrosted in the car while travelling, reheated in a low oven for half an hour or so, and hoovered up in no time, so this recipe is definitely a keeper!

Take 3:

Easterised as follows: soak the fruit (a sultana/cranberry/cherry mix) in a mix of tea and amaretto; sprinkle it in the buns along with grated marzipan and dark chocolate chips. Serve warm so the marzipan and chocolate are a bit gooey.


German cinnamon star biscuits

Outdoor Chics recipe

These went OK but cooked too quickly in my oven at 200°C, so were a bit toasty. They have a chewy macaroony texture. I put allspice in the icing, as I'd run out of cinnamon, and some lemon zest. The icing was very sticky to apply, and I also found the mixture a bit crumbly and liable to get stuck in the points of the star cutter,


Nigella's bar nuts

Recipe

Sweet, salty, spicy, herby roasted nuts. Yum. Again, made with coconut oil not butter - no difference.


Ginger cupcakes

A Jamie Oliver recipe

I was a bit worried by the amount of oil in these but they didn't come out greasy at all. Would be good with some sort of spicy dark chocolate topping.

Bakewell experiment

I'm going to be making some cakes for a charity afternoon tea later this month, and so am experimenting with a few new recipes to go with some old favourites. I saw a recipe some time ago which used grated marzipan in a cake batter, and thought that would make a nice bakewell-style cake. But I can't find that recipe, so I tried adapting Apple marzipan cake from UKTV Food.

As I went through the original recipe I found it a bit unclear and difficult in places. Flour and sugar in ml instead of grams is just odd, but seems to have worked. As to the method, I had no chance of "whisking" grated marzipan (which had lumped together) and softened butter. Melted butter, maybe. Then it says to put the egg yolks in the bowl with the marzipan and butter, but do you mix that together immediately or wait for the next ingredients? And even with the yolks, the marzipan mix is claggy and stiff enough that "folding in" the egg whites later is amost impossible without flattening them in the process.

I also (through not reading properly) beat all the air out of the first lot of egg whites after adding the sugar, so had to repeat it, but with only ~60ml of sugar as that's all I had left.

So, a good start but it needs a bit of tweaking I think. Here's my modified recipe...

Ingredients

• 250g marzipan, chilled and grated
• 200ml plain flour, sifted
• 150g butter, liberally softened
• 60ml caster sugar
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1.5 tsp baking powder, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp seedless raspberry jam
• icing sugar
• cold water
• 6 glace cherries, halved

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C, and line a muffin pan with 12 cases.

Mix together the grated marzipan and butter, and the vanilla extract. Separate the three eggs and combine the yolks into the marzipan mix; reserve the egg whites.

Sift the flour and the baking powder, plus a pinch of salt, into the marzipan mixture, and mix well. It will probably be quite stiff. Persevere :)

Using a clean whisk and bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold in the caster sugar gently, being careful not to knock any air out of the whites. Fold the resulting mixture into the the marzipan mixture, bit by bit. It's not easy but just take it slowly and keep cutting and folding. You might be able to mix an early spoonful in a bit more vigorously to loosen the marzipan mixture - you sacrifice a little of the air in the egg white initially, but I think you will keep more in the long run.

Divide half the mixture between the cases and make a small well in each. Place a blob of raspberry jam (about half a teaspoon) in each and cover with the rest of the mixture.

Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Ice with plain icing (icing sugar/water) and top with half a glace cherry.

Well, the following day, the verdict is that it's worth the faff! These are delicious sweet, almondy cakes with a nice crumb. They did not need more sugar.

Unfortunately the jam has leaked to the bottom in each case - I am not sure how I can stop this. Perhaps the batter is so light with the egg whites that the jam just sinks? Next time I will try baking them without the jam, then taking out a core, jamming them, and replacing the core before icing them. Not such a "surprise", but better I think.

The cakes only just fill the cases, so perhaps making 10 rather than 12 would be good if I don't manage to increase the volume of batter by retaining the air in the egg whites better next time