Weekend Brunch.

I love brunch. And since it is the long weekend, I thought I'd try out a scrummy brunch recipe and share it with you guys.

I made another batch of gnocchi recently and had some ricotta left over from it, so thought I'd whip up a batch of lemon ricotta pancakes. I've really wanted to make these with blueberries, but we didn't have any in the house and I was too lazy/down with flu to go out and get some, so made do with some strawberries on the side.

The recipe below makes enough pancakes for about four people (or three really hungry people).


Lemon Ricotta Pancakes
4 eggs (separate the yolks and whites)
310g ricotta
190ml milk
225g plain flour
1tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
110g caster sugar
40g butter
Grated zest of 1 lemon

Place the egg yolks, lemon zest, ricotta and milk into a bowl and stir until combined.

Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into the ricotta mixture, then add the sugar and mix well

In a separate, clean bowl whisk your egg whites until they form soft peaks. Add approximately a third of the egg whites to the ricotta mixture and gently stir in until the mixture has loosened a little. Gently fold the remaining egg whites into the mixture.

Melt the butter in a frying pan on a medium low heat and add a small ladle of the batter to the pan. Once the surface of the pancake begins to bubble a little (after approximately 2 minutes), turn the pancake over onto the other side and let it cook for a further 2 minutes until the pancake is firm. Repeat until you have used up all the batter.

Serve pancakes stacked on top of each other with a good drizzle of honey or maple syrup over them. Serve with berries on the side.

Note: If you do have blueberries at hand (about 100g for 4 people) then gently fold them into your batter after you have folded in all of your egg whites.

Enjoy your weekend brunch! 

Facing my fears...

Cookies and I have been locked in a terrifying battle for years now. It's a love-hate thing; I love them, they hate me. Without an ounce of exaggeration, it has actually been years since I've managed to make a successful cookie. Pastry? Sure, no problem. Cakes? Easy. Cookies? *hides* The boyfriend ever so helpfully reminded me that the last biscuits I made were so hard, they could have been used as ammunition. Not good.

I finally decided that enough was enough, and decided to face the Cookie Gods once again. It was time.

I thought that I should start with the innocuous chocolate chip cookie. Seemed harmless enough... And thankfully, it seemed as though the Cookie Gods have finally forgiven me. Huzzah! Lo and behold, I have conquered the chocolate chip cookie...


Ingredients:
150g soft unsalted butter
200g soft light brown sugar
25g caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg, fridge cold
1 egg yolk, fridge-cold
300g flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
100g oats
225g semi-sweet chocolate chips


First, preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius on a fan oven and line a baking tray with non-stick baking paper.

Melt your butter, then set it aside and let it cool a little. Mix together your caster sugar and brown sugar, then pour the melted butter over them and beat them together.

Once combined, beat in your vanilla extract, the cold egg and the cold egg yolk until your mixture is light and creamy, like so...

Slowly mix in the flour and the bicarbonate of soda until they have just blended, then fold in the chocolate chips and the oats until you get a thick batter.

Once your batter has combined, scoop the cookie dough into balls and lay on your baking trays. I used a teaspoon measuring scoop for the cookies and found that the cookies came out at just the perfect size - big and chewy, but just small enough to let you have one, two, three cookies in a sitting.

                                                    Love. Like teeny little chocolate-oaty aliens.

Aren't they adorable? This really amused me more than it should have, and I honestly don't know why. They are just so cute...

You'll need to bake the cookies in batches (I found that I could fit about 11 cookies on each tray, and I made 3 trays of cookies). 

Bake for 15 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Leave them to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring them to wire racks. 

They seem to firm up a little after they cool, so don't worry if they initially seem a little soft after baking. They are still chewy and soft after 15 minutes, but if you'd like them to be a little crisper then leave them to bake for 17 minutes instead.

Of course, I wouldn't be able to know if the Cookie Gods had truly forgiven me without a very quick little taste-test... You know, to make sure they weren't inedible or poisonous.... 

...And all was well. I survived. Cookies were successfully made. Chewy, soft, tasty cookies. So, grab a cup of milk (...or some ice-cream, as I might have done...), whip up some cookies and enjoy. They are really quick to whip up, so you could be enjoying warm cookies in 30 minutes.

Lime-Ginger Syrup Cake.

I know, I know... I've been a bad blogger. Unfortunately, 11 hour work days and 5 hours of sleep do not a good blogger make. However, in my attempt to appease the angry, pitchfork-bearing crowds demanding an update (i.e. my seven followers...ahem), I come bearing gifts. Delicious, cake-like gifts.

                                                                  See? Present! For you!

A couple of weeks ago at a girly dinner with friends, I had a slice of cake (shock horror!). It was a rather delicious (albeit it too crumbly) lime, ginger and coconut loaf cake. A little light-bulb went off over my head. "I can make this!" said the little light-bulb. (Yes, my light-bulbs speak. Yes, we shall swiftly move on from this mildly worrying confession of mine).

And thus, after a bit of rooting around our rather extensive collection of cookbooks, the lime-ginger syrup cake was born.

I decided against using coconut, to avoid an overly-crumbly texture, and also decided on a syrup cake in the hopes of getting a flavourful, light cake. I think it turned out rather well, and it was very well received by my guinea-pigs, but I'll let you be the judge of that. This recipe is actually adapted from Nigella's lemon syrup cake in "How to be a Domestic Goddess".


Lime-ginger Syrup Cake.
Ingredients

For the cake:
125g unsalted butter
175g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of two large limes
Juice of four limes
Pinch of salt
Two tablespoons of milk.

For the syrup:
Juice of two limes
Finger of young ginger
100g of caster sugar
Approximately 100ml of water


Before you get started, preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius (fan oven). Butter and line your loaf tin well, making sure you really get into the corners. Few things distress me more than cake getting stuck in the tin (this may or may not be true).

Next, step back and admire the sparkling emerald gems that are going to make this cake extra special. Then frown and figure out how on earth you're going to make their knobbly-looking friend look photogenic.

                                For an amateur photographer like me, apparently there is no way...

The first step, as with any basic cake, is creaming together your butter and sugar. It really is important to make sure you cream your butter for long enough as the friction of the sugar beating against the butter helps to create a fluffier, lighter cake. You want to cream the butter and sugar until the butter begins to turn pale, rather than a bright yellow. 

I very recently acquired a new toy, so very much enjoyed this part of the baking process. I've always wanted a stand mixer (especially since I make a lot of meringue/pavlova and it just makes life that much simpler), and I managed to nick this rather nifty Kenwood Chef off my grandmother, who just doesn't really use it. It's not quite a Kitchenaid, but it'll do for now and I'll just have to keep lusting over Apple Red Kitchenaid mixers online instead... 

                                                                      My New Friend.

Anyway, back on track... Once your butter has started to turn pale, add in the eggs, lime juice and zest, makig sure to beat them in well. Don't worry if the lime juice makes the mixture curdle slightly - it will sort itself out once you add your flour and so far I haven't found that slight curdling affects the taste or texture of the end product. 

                                                              Pretty, pretty zest. Love zest.

This is probably a good time to note that the amount of juice and zest suggested here is very much to my personal taste. I really wanted quite a tangy flavour to the cake, but if you aren't too keen on overly zingy cakes then reduce the quantity of juice. The zest adds a nice aroma to the cake rather than actually contributing to the tanginess, so you can omit the juice and just keep the zest if you are not looking for a very 'limey' flavour. 

Once your eggs and zest have been well combined into the mixture, sift in your flour and salt. Fold the flour into the mixture thoroughly, but gently, and then add in your milk. 

When the batter has been thoroughly combined, spoon it into your prepared cake tin and step back and marvel at the tiny little green flecks of zest peeping through the batter. 

  
Place your cake into the oven and bake for 45 minutes or until it is golden and has risen in the middle. It is ready when an inserted cake-tester comes out clean and without any batter sticking to it. 

While your cake is baking, this is a good opportunity to make your lime-ginger syrup. Take your finger of ginger and give it a quick rinse/scrub to clean it. Roughly chop it up into slivers and then place it in a small saucepan with your caster sugar, lime juice and water. Bring the mixture up to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly; you do not want the mixture to boil. After a few minutes you should be able to really smell the ginger beginning to infuse in the syrup. Again, the quantities suggested are very much to my own personal taste - if you are not a fan of ginger, you can certainly leave it out and make a simple lime syrup instead. Once the syrup has thickened slightly but is still runny enough to pour freely, strain the mixture so that you have only the liquid syrup. 

You should pour the syrup quite liberally over the whole cake. As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, puncture it with a cake-tester (or whatever you have that is suitable - you don't want to gouge big chunks of cake out, but you do want to puncture holes right down into the bottom of the cake without breaking through the other side). When you have thoroughly punctured holes all over your cake, pour the syrup over the cake. Make sure to let the middle part of the cake absorb the syrup as well as the sides, then leave the cake aside to soak up the liquid. 

It is important that you don't try to take the cake out of the tin until it has cooled completely as it will be sodden with syrup and will crumble if you try to remove it from the tin too early. Once the cake reaches room temperature, you could clingfilm the top and leave it in the fridge overnight to really let the syrup do its work. Otherwise, wait until it is completely cooled then carefully turn it out of the tin, grab a fork, and enjoy! 

Definitely try this out - it is a really great tea cake, or a rather light but more-ish dessert. I'm sure it would taste great topped with a little whipped cream on the side if you were feeling naughty, but it tastes lovely on its own. I brought it as a light dessert to our friend's house, and between 8 of us we managed to polish off the lot in one sitting...