Recipes - Maria Runs

Creme Brulee experiment

(And because of how I roll, I have got that High School Musical song in my head)

Sainsbury’s kindly sent me a creme brulee kit (sorry, can’t work out how to insert the right symbols), so this weekend I had a few attempts. I have never made it before, or made any fresh custard thing as I always imagine I will end up with a pan of scrambled eggs, so it seemed a good way to try it without that fear.

The kit contained a mixture (made up of cornflour, sugar and free range egg) to which you added cream and milk. It then magically thickened as you heated it.

I used Alpro cream because when I went shopping the dates on the normal creams were not good, and I also thought it would be more fun (?) to try something I had never made before and not follow the recipe. Anyway, it worked- phew!

It looks very pale here because we have no natural light in our kitchen, and it was night time anyway.

You then just poured it into ramekins and chilled, before topping with demerara sugar (also included) and grilling.

That part didn’t go quite so well for me- I think I should have smoothed out the custard before chilling- for some reason I thought it would settle down but of course it didn’t. This meant that the sugar crisped up in places, but didn’t make the proper crunchy top layer. Anyway, it tasted good.

As the pack contained 4 servings, I decided to make something else with the other half of the mixture- a sort of hot cross bun bread pudding (yup, carb loading here). A good way to use up any left over buns.

The start was the same- make up the custard part using the mixture, cream and milk.

I then cut up the hot cross buns, spread them with a little marmalade and poured the custard mixture over.

I baked it in the oven for 15 minutes just to warm the buns through. Super tasty and pretty easy to make.

Are you a creme brulee or custard fan? I quite like them but they are never the top of my dessert list.

*I was sent the kit but all opinions are my own.

New cookery books!

I love getting a new cookery book- I don’t tend to cook a lot of things (apart from baking), but I love looking through and seeing beautiful recipes. Last week I treated myself to a copy of Grains as Mains.

Of course, I could not resist the buckwheat pancake recipe for a post-parkrun breakfast. I have some Rude Health buckwheat flour (it is sprouted, but looks like normal flour, whereas I imagined it would look like sprouted beans or something). I didn’t add yoghurt to the mix because I forgot, but the cherry almond sauce is just amazing, and I had some coconut yoghurt to top them with. Mmmmm.

And although it does not match up to the beautiful photography inside the book, it looks pretty similar (and tasted wonderful). That cherry sauce has overtaken blueberries as my favourite pancake topping.

After my long run on Sunday I fancied some cookies, so after a visit to town and a nap, I spent a bit of time in the kitchen making these peanut and chocolate cookies, also with buckwheat flour.

Again these turned out really well- I love the combination of salted peanuts and dark chocolate (I think I needed some salt after running for all that time), and I think the buckwheat flour adds to the nuttiness.

No doubt I shall be trying some of the lovely looking salads and breakfasts over the next few months. So congratulations and thanks to Laura for making such a fab book.

Do you buy new books often?

All about the cake

Now I have had this song stuck in my head after St Albans parkrun posted some photos of the lake, saying something like “we’re all about the lake, about the lake…”. I don’t even know the song, such an earworm!

Anyway, last weekend the cake I went for was a red velvet cake. Again, from the CCC book- never had a bad recipe from it.

One of the ingredients was buttermilk, but having never even seen that (well apart from when we made butter at school) I googled for an alternative. BBC food assured me I could sour normal milk by adding a few drops of lemon juice, so I used that instead.

It was baked in two pans, and you were meant to cut each cake in two, so you ended up with 4 layers, but my cutting is terrible and I didn’t see the point, so just went for the two.

It had a cream cheese frosting, which I made, but about half of the suggested quantity, and that turned out to be plenty. In fact I could not shut the lid on my cake box! I had to cover it in cling film and hold it on my lap as Andy drove- goodness knows what it would have been like if I had made it all. A few sprinkles for good measure, as otherwise it looked a bit bare. The book has it covered with dried cranberries, which went with the red theme, but I didn’t have any (it’s not Christmas) (although I think they are Christmas sprinkles…).

We even had a few slices left over, so I had one on Tuesday after a tough run. Usually I add a bit on before Sweatshop, but I had a late meeting this week so knew I would not be able to. Coupled with being on a course on Tuesday (meaning I got home early) plus trying to give myself time before the 20 miles of this Sunday, meant that is was sensible to go out before the club run instead. I drove to our meeting place, did 2.7 miles, and then met the girls. There were only two of them, and they are the fastest ones- I managed to keep up for the 5 mile loop (apart from the dreaded Hill where they had to wait a minute for me) to total 7.7 miles. I was pleased with that, but once home and showered I started to feel pretty awful. I think I had not drunk as much as usual, but I had eaten well so it wasn’t that. Anyway, the cake was to help!

Another great recipe from that book anyway.

What are your weekend plans? I am trying to focus on Saturday and forget that Sunday is going to be dominated by such a long run….

Pretty baking!

Last weekend I knew I would be running for 20 miles, and we were seeing Andy’s parents after they had been away for weeks, so I decided that a pretty cake was in order.

Waitrose had a recipe card for a lemon and pistachio cake, so that is what I went with.

Basically you make a pistachio marizipan by whizzing up pistachios, ground almonds, sugar and an egg in a food processor. Then you make a lemon cake, and then you put 1/4 of the lemon cake mixture in each of two tins, cover with the marzipan mixture and then put the rest of the cake mixture on top before baking.

You then sandwich them together with icing- I had some Sugar and Crumbs pistachio icing sugar, so I made buttercream with that (I am not a huge fan of buttercream, but Andy and his family love it), and sprinkled a few more ground pistachios on the top. It is meant to be more stripy (as you can see in the Waitrose picture) but it was still pretty which was my main objective!

Also, it was very tasty. The pistachio filling was gorgeous- it stayed chewy, almost like the centre of a chewy meringue.

One to make again on another special occasion for sure.

Are you a pistachio fan?

Spring feels close!

The evenings are getting lighter at long last- hooray! This photo was probably at around 5.45pm- amazing. It means that soon I will be on the fields after work instead of running around the roads.

This week I finally got around to make these delicious Chocolate Chunk Bars.

I had printed the recipe off last year, but kept on forgetting about it.

Everything tastes better with peanut butter, right? I swirled a little bit in before baking.

And could not resist trying them straight away.

So delicious. I find coconut flour can be quite dry, but I think having lots of liquid ingredients (I used agave instead of honey, but it also has eggs, and the chocolate mylk) really helps with this. And of course a bonus is that I got to drink the leftover chocolate mylk while it was baking. Thanks Laura for another fab recipe!

This week didn’t quite go as planned. I went for a sports massage on Monday which helped massively after the long run on Sunday. All was well until about 11pm when I suddenly had a bad stomach and kept having to visit the bathroom all night. So Tuesday I was off work, and missed my club run. I was meant to run 8 miles one evening this week, but didn’t really feel up to it. I went for a little run by myself on the fields, and felt OK, but 4 miles was certainly far enough.

Seeing views like this helped. Going on the fields means I will be slower so I don’t worry about pace or anything, and just concentrate on doing the distance.

Then at work I had consultation evenings, so no time for running on those days either. I could have squeezed in a run on Friday when I got home, but I was really tired and so we had a walk before dinner instead. My mileage will be lower this week than planned, but I know I was being sensible.

Have you baked anything recently?

How brilliant are the lighter evenings?